The Lightness of Being by Frank Wilczek

Author:Frank Wilczek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books

Passing from the ridiculous to the sublime, you may recall that Sir Isaac Newton was not satisfied with his theory of gravity, which featured forces acting through empty space. But because that theory agreed with all existing observations and he could not discover any concrete improvement, Newton put his philosophical reservations aside and presented it unadorned. In the concluding General Scholium to his Principia, he made a classic declaration:42

I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

The key phrase “I do not feign hypotheses” is Hypothesis non fingo in the original Latin. Hypothesis non fingo is the legend that Ernst Mach enshrined below the portrait of Newton in his influential Science of Mechanics. It is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia entry. It means, simply, that Newton refrained from loading his theory of gravity with speculation free of observable content. (In his private papers, however, Newton worked obsessively to try to discover evidence for a medium filling space.)

Of course, the easiest way to avoid unnecessary complications is to say nothing at all. To avoid that pitfall, we need a dose of young Maxwell. According to an early biographer, as a small boy he was always asking, “in the Gallowegian accent and idiom,” “What’s the go o’ that?” and, on receiving an unsatisfactory answer, asking, “But what’s the particular go o’ that?”

In other words, we must be ambitious. We must keep addressing new questions and strive for specific, quantitative answers. The phrase scientific revolution has been used for so many things that it has been devalued. The emergence of ambition to make precise mathematical world-models, and faith that one could succeed, was the decisive, inexhaustible Scientific Revolution.

There is creative tension between the conflicting demands of economizing on assumptions and providing particular answers to many questions. Profound simplicity is stingy on the input side, generous on the output side.

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