Abstract
THE development of a scientific theory involves the interplay of observation, reasoning, and imagination. Experimental results are co-ordinated by generalisations of ever-widening scope through those imaginative leaps which place scientific method, as a whole, outside the scope of strict logic. The generalisations can then be regarded as premises on which may be built a deductive scheme, in which logical consistency is of paramount importance—logical consistency, in theoretical physics, appearing as mathematical rigour. The reasoning, however, is barren, scientifically, unless the deductions are confronted, as ‘predictions’, with experimental findings. If there is continued agreement, the premises take rank as a scientific theory.
The Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities.
By Prof J. H. Van Vleck. (The International Series of Monographs on Physics.) Pp. xii + 384. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1932.) 30s. net.
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S., E. The Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities . Nature 130, 490–491 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130490a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130490a0
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