Heisenberg sul metodo scientifico

Una citazione molto bella di Heisenberg, dove egli parla del metodo scientifico

Source:  W. Heisenberg, Encounters with Einstein, Princeton U.P.

“This method is sometimes misunderstood by terming it ’empirical

science’, as contrasted to the speculative science of former centuries.

Actually, Galileo turned away from the traditional science of his time,

which was based on Aristotle, and took up the philosophical ideas of

Plato. He replaced the descriptive science of Aristotle by the structural

science of Plato. When he argued for experience he meant experience

illuminated by mathematical constructs. Galileo, as well as Copernicus,

had understood that by going away from immediate experience,

by idealizing experience, we may discover mathematical structures in

the phenomena, and thereby gain a new simplicity as a basis for a new

understanding. Aristotle, for example, had correctly stated that light

bodies fall more slowly than heavy bodies. Galileo claimed that all

bodies fall with the same speed in empty space, and that their fall can

be described by simple mathematical laws. Fall in empty space could

not be observed accurately in his time; but Galileo’s claim suggested

new experiments. The new method did not aim at the description of

what is visible, but rather at the design of experiments and the production

of phenomena that one does not normally see, and at their

calculation on the basis of mathematical theory.

Therefore two features are essential for the new method: the attempt

to design new and very accurate experiments which idealize and isolate

experience and thereby actually create new phenomena, and the

comparison of these phenomena with mathematical constructs, called

natural laws. Before we discuss the validity of this method even in our

present science, we should perhaps briefly ask for the basis of confidence,

which led Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler on this new way.

Following a paper of von Weizs¨acker, I think we have to state that this

basis was mainly theological. Galileo argued that nature, God’s second

book (the first one being the Bible), is written in mathematical

letters, and that we have to learn this alphabet if we want to read it.

Kepler is even more explicit in his work on world harmony; he says:

God created the world in accordance with his ideas of creation. These

ideas are the pure archetypal forms which Plato termed ideas, and they

can be understood by Man as mathematical constructs. They can be

understood by Man, because Man was created as the spiritual image

of God. Physics is reflection on the divine ideas of creation, therefore

physics is divine service.”