Cosmology Old and New

Author(s): G R Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 25

THE PROLOGUE
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of the world before us" and its claim to be regarded as such is based on the method which it employs for the search of knowledge. The first step is to ascertain the facts connected with the problem by experimental investigation, for Science recognizes no authority other than Nature. The next step is to classify the facts in order that their significance may be better appreciated. The third essential step is the formulation of a theory or principle to explain the facts, because science is emphatically not a catalogue of facts but an attempt to fit them into a rational scheme. It is expected of a theory or a principle that it shall be capable of experimental verification and shall lead to a search for new facts. Thus, the journey is continued ever onwards into new realms of knowledge. The characteristic feature of this method is that it is constantly in touch with experimental facts and that is why science can justly claim to be the pursuit of truth. But are the theories of science absolute truths ? No, they are not.
"Science is a series of approximations to the truth; ai no stage do we claim to have reached finality; any theory is liable to revision in the light of new facts.... This is both the joy and inspiration of science that there appears to be no end to new knowledge with its interest. Each advance yields a more far reaching and interesting picture of the physical world, while at the same time opening up fresh views in the shape of new problems awaiting solution."!
Leopold Infeld in The World in Modern Science says:
"Scientific theory is an attempt to form a mental picture of the reality which surrounds us. It may embrace either a narrow or wide range of facts and also experimental laws, bringing them into due order. Science is not, however, a collection of laws and a haphazard agglomeration of facts. Theory, to begin with, binds them together with a common idea, and creates a picture of reality from which particular facts follow by a process of logical reasoning... theory is something more; it is a creative agent, a guide to a land of new and unknown phenomena; it shows how to evolve new systems and to discover new laws. It draws its life blood from experiments which confirm its conclusions. Experiments which conflict with its deductions overthrow and destroy it. Experiment is and will always remain the final court of appeal deciding the fate of a theory.
1. A. W. Barton.