N. Nersessian
Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories
Series: Science and Philosophy, Vol. 1
1984, XIV, 196 p.
Einstein often expressed the sentiment that "the eternal mystery of the world is its
comprehensibility," and that science is the means through which we comprehend it.
However, nearly every one - including scientists - agrees that the concepts of modem
physics are quite incomprehensible: They are both unintelligible to the educated layperson and to the scientific community itself, where there is much dispute over the
interpretation of even (and especially) the most basic concepts. There is, of course, almost
universal agreement that modem science quite adequately accounts for and predicts
events, i. e. , that its calculations work better than those of classical physics; yet the
concepts of science are supposed to be descriptive of 'the world' as well - they should
enable us to comprehend it. So, it is asked, and needs tobe"asked: Has modem physics
failed in an important respect? It failed with me as a physics student. I came to physics,
as with most naIve students, out of a desire to know what the world is really like; in
particular, to understand Einstein's conception of it. I thought I had grasped the concepts
in classical mechanics, but with electrodynamics confusion set in and only increased with
relativity and quantum mechanics. At that point I began even to doubt whether I had
really understood the basic concepts of classical mechanics.
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