Science Should Leave Off Making Pronouncements: The

The Universe Can Best Be Pictured As Consisting Of Pure Thought, The Thought Of What For Want Of A Better Word We Must Describe As A Mathematical Thinker.

Sciences Usually Advances By A Succession Of Small Steps, Through A Fog In Which Even The Most Keen-sighted Explorer Can Seldom See More Than A Few Paces Ahead. Occasionally The Fog Lifts, An Eminence Is Gained, And A Wider Stretch Of Territory Can Be Surveyed-sometimes With Startling Results. A Whole Science May Then Seem To Undergo A Kaleidoscopic Rearrangement, Fragments Of Knowledge Sometimes Being Found To Fit Together In A Hitherto Unsuspected Manner. Sometimes The Shock Of Readjustment May Spread To Other Sciences; Sometimes It May Divert The Whole Current Of Human Thought.

Put Three Grains Of Sand Inside A Vast Cathedral, And The Cathedral Will Be More Closely Packed With Sand Than Space Is With Stars.

The Essential Fact Is That All The Pictures Which Science Now Draws Of Nature, And Which Alone Seem Capable Of According With Observational Facts, Are Mathematical Pictures.

We May As Well Cut Out Group Theory. That Is A Subject That Will Never Be Of Any Use In Physics.