In the 3rd century B.C. the Greek scholar Eratosthenes read that a vertical stick, positioned in a place called Syrene, cast no shadow at midday. He then observed that in his own city, Alexandria, a vertical stick did cast a shadow. From these observations of real physical phenomena, he deduced that the earth was round. He then sent a slave to Syrene to measure the distance from Alexandria. Then, using simple geometry, he calculated the circumference of the earth. This is the real method of science in action. It is a mixture of observation, hypothesis and mathematical reasoning. Eratosthenes began with observation (both his own and that of others). Then, on the basis of this, he drew a general conclusion, the hypothesis that the earth is curved. He then made use of mathematics to give a precise form to his theory.

The brilliant achievements of Alexandrine science were eclipsed by the rise of Christianity in the Dark Ages. For centuries, the development of science was paralysed by the spiritual dictatorship of the Church. Only by freeing itself of the influence of religion did science manage to develop. Yet by a strange quirk of history, at the end of the 20th century determined attempts are being made to drag science backwards. All kinds of quasi-religious and mystical ideas are floating in the air. This strange phenomenon is closely related to two things. Firstly, the division of labour has been carried to such extremes that it has begun to cause serious harm. Narrow specialisation, reductionism, and an almost complete divorce between the theoretical and experimental side of physics has had the most negative consequences.

Secondly, there has been no adequate philosophy which could help to point science in the right direction. The philosophy of science is in a mess. This is not surprising, because the prevailing “philosophy of science” – or rather the philosophical sect of logical positivism, which set itself up in this capacity – is least of all able to help science out of its difficulties. On the contrary, it has made matters worse. In recent decades, we have seen a growing tendency in theoretical physics to approach the phenomena of the natural world from an excessively abstract and mathematical standpoint. This is clearly the case in the arbitrary attempt to reconstruct an alleged beginning of the universe. As Anderson pointed out in an article written in 1972:

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particles physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less society.[31]

In recent decades the prejudice has become deeply rooted that “pure” science, especially theoretical physics is the product of abstract thought and mathematical deduction alone. As Eric Lerner explains, Einstein was partly responsible for this tendency. Unlike earlier theories, such as Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism, or Newton’s laws of gravity, which were firmly based on experiment, and soon confirmed by hundreds of thousands of independent observations, Einstein’s theories were initially confirmed on the basis of only two – the deflection of starlight by the sun’s gravitational field and a slight deviation in the orbit of Mercury. The fact that relativity theory was subsequently shown to be correct has led others, possibly not quite up to Einstein’s level of genius, to assume that this is the way to proceed. Why bother with time-consuming experiments and tedious observations? Indeed, why depend upon the evidence of the senses at all, when we can get straight to the truth through the method of pure deduction?

We must remind ourselves that the great breakthrough in science came in the Renaissance, when it separated itself from religion, and began to base itself upon observation and experiment, setting out from the real material world, and always returning to it. In the 20th century, however, there has been a partial regression to idealism, both to Platonism and, still worse, to the subjective idealism of Berkeley and Hume. For all his unquestioned genius, Einstein was unable to free himself from this trend, although he frequently recoiled against the consequences that flowed from it. It is to his credit, for example, that he conducted a stubborn rearguard action against the subjective idealist interpretation of quantum mechanics put forward by Heisenberg.

Like many scientists, Einstein did not feel at home with philosophy, and honestly confessed that great scientists tend to make poor philosophers of science. Nevertheless, he himself made a number of pronunciations of a philosophical or semi-philosophical character, which, given his colossal prestige, were bound to be taken seriously by many scientists – with some very unfortunate results. In 1934, for example, he wrote:

The theory of relativity is a fine example of the fundamental character of the modern development of theoretical science. The hypotheses with which it starts are becoming steadily more abstract and remote from experience. The theoretical scientist is compelled in an increasing degree to be guided by purely mathematical, formal considerations in his search for a theory, because the physical experience of the experimenter cannot lift him into the regions of highest abstraction. The predominantly inductive methods appropriate to the youth of science are giving place to tentative deduction.[32]

In point of fact, it is not true that Einstein arrived at his theories through a process of pure reasoning and deduction. As he himself states in his Essays in Science, his theory of special relativity was derived from Maxwell’s work on electricity and magnetism, which, in turn, was based on the work of Faraday, with its solid experimental foundations. Only after 1915, when he turned to cosmology did Einstein turn to the method of abstract deduction to obtain his results. Here he departed from the established method by taking as his fundamental hypothesis an assumption which was contradicted by observation: the notion that the universe as a whole is homogeneous (evenly spread throughout space).

Setting out from this proposition, Einstein used his general theory of relativity to prove that space is finite. According to this view, the greater the mass of a given density, the more it “curves space”. A sufficiently large mass will lead to a situation where space curves round on itself altogether, thus producing a “closed universe”. This marked, in effect, a regression to the mediaeval world outlook of a finite universe, previously rejected as unscientific. However, even in 1915, there was sufficient evidence to show that the universe was not homogeneous. The theory collided with the facts established by observation. It is no coincidence that Einstein’s search for a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism during his last thirty years ended in failure, as he himself admitted.

  1. Quoted in Waldrop, M. op. cit., p. 81.

  2. Quoted in Lerner, E. op. cit., p. 128.