But For Harmony Beautiful To Contemplate, Science

If One Looks At The Different Problems Of The Integral Calculus Which Arise Naturally When One Wishes To Go Deep Into The Different Parts Of Physics, It Is Impossible Not To Be Struck By The Analogies Existing.

The Aim Of Science Is Not Things Themselves, As The Dogmatists In Their Simplicity Imagine, But The Relation Between Things.

Consider Now The Milky Way. Here Also We See An Innumerable Dust, Only The Grains Of This Dust Are No Longer Atoms But Stars; These Grains Also Move With Great Velocities, They Act At A Distance One Upon Another, But This Action Is So Slight At Great Distances That Their Trajectories Are Rectilineal; Nevertheless, From Time To Time, Two Of Them May Come Near Enough Together To Be Deviated From Their Course, Like A Comet That Passed Too Close To Jupiter. In A Word, In The Eyes Of A Giant, To Whom Our Suns Were What Our Atoms Are To Us, The Milky Way Would Only Look Like A Bubble Of Gas.

A Reality Completely Independent Of The Spirit That Conceives It, Sees It, Or Feels It, Is An Impossibility. A World So External As That, Even If It Existed, Would Be Forever Inaccessible To Us.

If We Wish To Foresee The Future Of Mathematics, Our Proper Course Is To Study The History And Present Condition Of The Science.