It Is True That Many Scientists Are

I Am Now Convinced That Theoretical Physics Is Actually Philosophy.

I Have Tried To Read Philosophers Of All Ages And Have Found Many Illuminating Ideas But No Steady Progress Toward Deeper Knowledge And Understanding. Science, However, Gives Me The Feeling Of Steady Progress: I Am Convinced That Theoretical Physics Is Actual Philosophy. It Has Revolutionized Fundamental Concepts, E.g., About Space And Time (relativity), About Causality (quantum Theory), And About Substance And Matter (atomistics), And It Has Taught Us New Methods Of Thinking (complementarity) Which Are Applicable Far Beyond Physics.

I Believe That Ideas Such As Absolute Certitude, Absolute Exactness, Final Truth, Etc. Are Figments Of The Imagination Which Should Not Be Admissible In Any Field Of Science... This Loosening Of Thinking Seems To Me To Be The Greatest Blessing Which Modern Science Has Given To Us. For The Belief In A Single Truth And In Being The Possessor Thereof Is The Root Cause Of All Evil In The World.

The Human Race Has Today The Means For Annihilating Itself--either In A Fit Of Complete Lunacy, I.e., In A Big War...or By The Careless Handling Of Atomic Technology, Through A Slow Process Of Poisoning And Of Deterioration In Its Genetic Structure.

If Alpha [the Fine-structure Constant] Were Bigger Than It Really Is, We Should Not Be Able To Distinguish Matter From Ether [the Vacuum, Nothingness], And Our Task To Disentangle The Natural Laws Would Be Hopelessly Difficult. The Fact However That Alpha Has Just Its Value 1/137 Is Certainly No Chance But Itself A Law Of Nature. It Is Clear That The Explanation Of This Number Must Be The Central Problem Of Natural Philosophy.