Scientia: Acknowledgements of Imperfection
About two and a half years ago, about the length of a conscript service or a part-time MBA, I remember writing about the (unjustified) divide between the humanities and the sciences.
In my examination of the sciences and my personal experience as a scientist, I always keep in mind the memory of Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923). In 1873, his doctoral thesis asserted the non-ideality of real gases in a time when even the molecular theory of matter was in dispute. Up to then, the ideal gas law (often expressed in the form of the equation PV=nRT) had been taken to be the underlying truth of things, made weak only by the limits of experimentation.
Van der Waals won the 1910 Nobel Prize for his admission that the real world was not ideal, and that the universe was in fact definitely to be treated as if ideality was unattainable in its reality. His work led to invaluable techniques in the compression and liquefaction of gases.
But the key point is this: with the physical thesis of van der Waals came the final disenchantment of the alchemists, a tradition which ended at Isaac Newton (1643-1727). Newton's assertion of the ideal, almost Platonic, nature of the world was in line with his beliefs as an alchemist. Those who worked with him and followed after him assumed the truth of the alchemical assertion, "As above, so below," which related earthly science with heavenly truths. Few now realise that Newton wrote more on alchemy, sorcery, religion and Biblical hermeneutics than on the science for which we inescapably remember him.
The line from van der Waals to Einstein is a short one: in fact, Einstein's 'miracle year', in which four of his most influential papers were published, was 1905. In slightly over 30 years from van der Waals' doctoral thesis to Einstein's annus mirabilis, we humans had come to discover just how uncertain and provisional our ideas about the universe could be.
Modern science is a striving after a perfection we know we cannot attain, unlike the natural philosophy or scientia of Newton and his age. It is a very human story of the attempt to control what we know we cannot but we dream we can. That dream goes back to the Promethean flame, the story of liberating fire, and the difficulties thereafter.
In my examination of the sciences and my personal experience as a scientist, I always keep in mind the memory of Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923). In 1873, his doctoral thesis asserted the non-ideality of real gases in a time when even the molecular theory of matter was in dispute. Up to then, the ideal gas law (often expressed in the form of the equation PV=nRT) had been taken to be the underlying truth of things, made weak only by the limits of experimentation.
Van der Waals won the 1910 Nobel Prize for his admission that the real world was not ideal, and that the universe was in fact definitely to be treated as if ideality was unattainable in its reality. His work led to invaluable techniques in the compression and liquefaction of gases.
But the key point is this: with the physical thesis of van der Waals came the final disenchantment of the alchemists, a tradition which ended at Isaac Newton (1643-1727). Newton's assertion of the ideal, almost Platonic, nature of the world was in line with his beliefs as an alchemist. Those who worked with him and followed after him assumed the truth of the alchemical assertion, "As above, so below," which related earthly science with heavenly truths. Few now realise that Newton wrote more on alchemy, sorcery, religion and Biblical hermeneutics than on the science for which we inescapably remember him.
The line from van der Waals to Einstein is a short one: in fact, Einstein's 'miracle year', in which four of his most influential papers were published, was 1905. In slightly over 30 years from van der Waals' doctoral thesis to Einstein's annus mirabilis, we humans had come to discover just how uncertain and provisional our ideas about the universe could be.
Modern science is a striving after a perfection we know we cannot attain, unlike the natural philosophy or scientia of Newton and his age. It is a very human story of the attempt to control what we know we cannot but we dream we can. That dream goes back to the Promethean flame, the story of liberating fire, and the difficulties thereafter.
Labels: Natural Philosophy, Science
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