The Value of Science by Henri Poincare

Author:Henri Poincare [Poincare, Henri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82406-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS

What is the present state of mathematical physics? What are the problems it is led to set itself? What is its future? Is its orientation about to be modified?

Ten years hence will the aim and the methods of this science appear to our immediate successors in the same light as to ourselves; or, on the contrary, are we about to witness a profound transformation? Such are the questions we are forced to raise in entering today upon our investigation.

If it is easy to propound them: to answer is difficult. If we felt tempted to risk a prediction, we should easily resist this temptation, by thinking of all the stupidities the most eminent savants of a hundred years ago would have uttered, if someone had asked them what the science of the nineteenth century would be. They would have thought themselves bold in their predictions, and after the event, how very timid we should have found them. Do not, therefore, expect of me any prophecy.

But if, like all prudent physicians, I shun giving a prognosis, yet I cannot dispense with a little diagnostic; well, yes, there are indications of a serious crisis, as if we might expect an approaching transformation. Still, be not too anxious: we are sure the patient will not die of it, and we may even hope that this crisis will be salutary, for the history of the past seems to guarantee us this. This crisis, in fact, is not the first, and to understand it, it is important to recall those which have preceded. Pardon then a brief historical sketch.

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