The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 39

But more: these two aims are inseparable and the best means of attaining one is to aim at the other, or at least never to lose sight of it. This is what I am about to try to demonstrate in setting forth the nature of the relations between the pure science and its applications.

The mathematician should not be for the physicist a mere purveyor of formulas; there should be between them a more intimate collaboration.

Mathematical physics and pure a.n.a.lysis are not merely adjacent powers, maintaining good neighborly relations; they mutually interpenetrate and their spirit is the same. This will be better understood when I have shown what physics gets from mathematics and what mathematics, in return, borrows from physics.

II

The physicist can not ask of the a.n.a.lyst to reveal to him a new truth; the latter could at most only aid him to foresee it. It is a long time since one still dreamt of forestalling experiment, or of constructing the entire world on certain premature hypotheses. Since all those constructions in which one yet took a nave delight it is an age, to-day only their ruins remain.

All laws are therefore deduced from experiment; but to enunciate them, a special language is needful; ordinary language is too poor, it is besides too vague, to express relations so delicate, so rich, and so precise.

This therefore is one reason why the physicist can not do without mathematics; it furnishes him the only language he can speak. And a well-made language is no indifferent thing; not to go beyond physics, the unknown man who invented the word _heat_ devoted many generations to error. Heat has been treated as a substance, simply because it was designated by a substantive, and it has been thought indestructible.

On the other hand, he who invented the word _electricity_ had the unmerited good fortune to implicitly endow physics with a _new_ law, that of the conservation of electricity, which, by a pure chance, has been found exact, at least until now.

Well, to continue the simile, the writers who embellish a language, who treat it as an object of art, make of it at the same time a more supple instrument, more apt for rendering shades of thought.

We understand, then, how the a.n.a.lyst, who pursues a purely esthetic aim, helps create, just by that, a language more fit to satisfy the physicist.

But this is not all: law springs from experiment, but not immediately.

Experiment is individual, the law deduced from it is general; experiment is only approximate, the law is precise, or at least pretends to be.

Experiment is made under conditions always complex, the enunciation of the law eliminates these complications. This is what is called 'correcting the systematic errors.'

In a word, to get the law from experiment, it is necessary to generalize; this is a necessity imposed upon the most circ.u.mspect observer. But how generalize? Every particular truth may evidently be extended in an infinity of ways. Among these thousand routes opening before us, it is necessary to make a choice, at least provisional; in this choice, what shall guide us?

It can only be a.n.a.logy. But how vague is this word! Primitive man knew only crude a.n.a.logies, those which strike the senses, those of colors or of sounds. He never would have dreamt of likening light to radiant heat.

What has taught us to know the true, profound a.n.a.logies, those the eyes do not see but reason divines?

It is the mathematical spirit, which disdains matter to cling only to pure form. This it is which has taught us to give the same name to things differing only in material, to call by the same name, for instance, the multiplication of quaternions and that of whole numbers.

If quaternions, of which I have just spoken, had not been so promptly utilized by the English physicists, many persons would doubtless see in them only a useless fancy, and yet, in teaching us to liken what appearances separate, they would have already rendered us more apt to penetrate the secrets of nature.

Such are the services the physicist should expect of a.n.a.lysis; but for this science to be able to render them, it must be cultivated in the broadest fas.h.i.+on without immediate expectation of utility--the mathematician must have worked as artist.

What we ask of him is to help us to see, to discern our way in the labyrinth which opens before us. Now, he sees best who stands highest.

Examples abound, and I limit myself to the most striking.

The first will show us how to change the language suffices to reveal generalizations not before suspected.

When Newton's law has been subst.i.tuted for Kepler's we still know only elliptic motion. Now, in so far as concerns this motion, the two laws differ only in form; we pa.s.s from one to the other by a simple differentiation. And yet from Newton's law may be deduced by an immediate generalization all the effects of perturbations and the whole of celestial mechanics. If, on the other hand, Kepler's enunciation had been retained, no one would ever have regarded the orbits of the perturbed planets, those complicated curves of which no one has ever written the equation, as the natural generalizations of the ellipse. The progress of observations would only have served to create belief in chaos.

The second example is equally deserving of consideration.

When Maxwell began his work, the laws of electro-dynamics admitted up to his time accounted for all the known facts. It was not a new experiment which came to invalidate them. But in looking at them under a new bias, Maxwell saw that the equations became more symmetrical when a term was added, and besides, this term was too small to produce effects appreciable with the old methods.

You know that Maxwell's _a priori_ views awaited for twenty years an experimental confirmation; or, if you prefer, Maxwell was twenty years ahead of experiment. How was this triumph obtained?

It was because Maxwell was profoundly steeped in the sense of mathematical symmetry; would he have been so, if others before him had not studied this symmetry for its own beauty?

It was because Maxwell was accustomed to 'think in vectors,' and yet it was through the theory of imaginaries (neomonics) that vectors were introduced into a.n.a.lysis. And those who invented imaginaries hardly suspected the advantage which would be obtained from them for the study of the real world, of this the name given them is proof sufficient.

In a word, Maxwell was perhaps not an able a.n.a.lyst, but this ability would have been for him only a useless and bothersome baggage. On the other hand, he had in the highest degree the intimate sense of mathematical a.n.a.logies. Therefore it is that he made good mathematical physics.

Maxwell's example teaches us still another thing.

How should the equations of mathematical physics be treated? Should we simply deduce all the consequences and regard them as intangible realities? Far from it; what they should teach us above all is what can and what should be changed. It is thus that we get from them something useful.

The third example goes to show us how we may perceive mathematical a.n.a.logies between phenomena which have physically no relation either apparent or real, so that the laws of one of these phenomena aid us to divine those of the other.

The very same equation, that of Laplace, is met in the theory of Newtonian attraction, in that of the motion of liquids, in that of the electric potential, in that of magnetism, in that of the propagation of heat and in still many others. What is the result? These theories seem images copied one from the other; they are mutually illuminating, borrowing their language from each other; ask electricians if they do not felicitate themselves on having invented the phrase flow of force, suggested by hydrodynamics and the theory of heat.

Thus mathematical a.n.a.logies not only may make us foresee physical a.n.a.logies, but besides do not cease to be useful when these latter fail.

To sum up, the aim of mathematical physics is not only to facilitate for the physicist the numerical calculation of certain constants or the integration of certain differential equations. It is besides, it is above all, to reveal to him the hidden harmony of things in making him see them in a new way.

Of all the parts of a.n.a.lysis, the most elevated, the purest, so to speak, will be the most fruitful in the hands of those who know how to use them.

III

Let us now see what a.n.a.lysis owes to physics.

It would be necessary to have completely forgotten the history of science not to remember that the desire to understand nature has had on the development of mathematics the most constant and happiest influence.

In the first place the physicist sets us problems whose solution he expects of us. But in proposing them to us, he has largely paid us in advance for the service we shall render him, if we solve them.

If I may be allowed to continue my comparison with the fine arts, the pure mathematician who should forget the existence of the exterior world would be like a painter who knew how to harmoniously combine colors and forms, but who lacked models. His creative power would soon be exhausted.

The combinations which numbers and symbols may form are an infinite mult.i.tude. In this mult.i.tude how shall we choose those which are worthy to fix our attention? Shall we let ourselves be guided solely by our caprice? This caprice, which itself would besides soon tire, would doubtless carry us very far apart and we should quickly cease to understand each other.

But this is only the smaller side of the question. Physics will doubtless prevent our straying, but it will also preserve us from a danger much more formidable; it will prevent our ceaselessly going around in the same circle.

History proves that physics has not only forced us to choose among problems which came in a crowd; it has imposed upon us such as we should without it never have dreamed of. However varied may be the imagination of man, nature is still a thousand times richer. To follow her we must take ways we have neglected, and these paths lead us often to summits whence we discover new countries. What could be more useful!

It is with mathematical symbols as with physical realities; it is in comparing the different aspects of things that we are able to comprehend their inner harmony, which alone is beautiful and consequently worthy of our efforts.

The first example I shall cite is so old we are tempted to forget it; it is nevertheless the most important of all.

The sole natural object of mathematical thought is the whole number. It is the external world which has imposed the continuum upon us, which we doubtless have invented, but which it has forced us to invent. Without it there would be no infinitesimal a.n.a.lysis; all mathematical science would reduce itself to arithmetic or to the theory of subst.i.tutions.

On the contrary, we have devoted to the study of the continuum almost all our time and all our strength. Who will regret it; who will think that this time and this strength have been wasted? a.n.a.lysis unfolds before us infinite perspectives that arithmetic never suspects; it shows us at a glance a majestic a.s.semblage whose array is simple and symmetric; on the contrary, in the theory of numbers, where reigns the unforeseen, the view is, so to speak, arrested at every step.

Doubtless it will be said that outside of the whole number there is no rigor, and consequently no mathematical truth; that the whole number hides everywhere, and that we must strive to render transparent the screens which cloak it, even if to do so we must resign ourselves to interminable repet.i.tions. Let us not be such purists and let us be grateful to the continuum, which, if _all_ springs from the whole number, was alone capable of making _so much_ proceed therefrom.

Need I also recall that M. Hermite obtained a surprising advantage from the introduction of continuous variables into the theory of numbers?

Thus the whole number's own domain is itself invaded, and this invasion has established order where disorder reigned.