Abstract
ADVANCE of inquiry into fundamental tracts of Nature is often perforce conducted by means of symbolism. The comprehensive character of the symbols counts for increase of knowledge, even though their physical interpretation is still shrouded in uncertainty. Thus it is that, for example, Prof. Eddington, on page 291 of “The Nature of the Physical World”, amusingly sums up our present knowledge of electronic operations inside atoms by saying: “Something unknown is doing we don't know what—that is what our theory amounts to”. Similarly the sentences quoted from one of my books, at the end of a review on page 942 of NATURE for Dec. 21, should be understood, not as a hopeless and helpless admission of ignorance but as a scrupulously fair and cautious stage in the advance of knowledge; for it is no gain to science to attempt the formulation of a nascent theory prematurely.
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LODGE, O. Legitimate Uncertainty. Nature 125, 17 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125017c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125017c0
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