Nature Allows Only Experimental Situations To Occur

It Is Probably True Quite Generally That In The History Of Human Thinking The Most Fruitful Developments Frequently Take Place At Those Points Where Two Different Lines Of Thought Meet. These Lines May Have Their Roots In Quite Different Parts Of Human Nature, In Different Times Or Different Cultural Environments Or Different Religious Traditions: Hence If They Actually Meet, That Is, If They Are At Least So Much Related To Each Other That A Real Interaction Can Take Place, Then One May Hope That New And Interesting Developments May Follow.

The Exact Sciences Also Start From The Assumption That In The End It Will Always Be Possible To Understand Nature, Even In Every New Field Of Experience, But That We May Make No A Priori Assumptions About The Meaning Of The Word Understand.

Can Quantum Mechanics Represent The Fact That An Electron Finds Itself Approximately In A Given Place And That It Moves Approximately With A Given Velocity, And Can We Make These Approximations So Close That They Do Not Cause Experimental Difficulties?

The Ontology Of Materialism Rested Upon The Illusion That The Kind Of Existence, The Direct "actuality" Of The World Around Us, Can Be Extrapolated Into The Atomic Range. This Extrapolation Is Impossible, However.

If Nature Leads Us To Mathematical Forms Of Great Simplicity And Beauty - By Forms I Am Referring To Coherent Systems Of Hypothesis, Axioms, Etc. - To Forms That No One Has Previously Encountered, We Cannot Help Thinking That They Are "true," That They Reveal A Genuine Feature Of Nature... You Must Have Felt This Too: The Almost Frightening Simplicity And Wholeness Of Relationships Which Nature Suddenly Spreads Out Before Us And For Which None Of Us Was In The Least Prepared.