[BRTM]

Lubię ten cytat d'Alemberta. Oczywiście dzisiaj ze stosowaniem matematyki w biologii jest o wiele lepiej. Natomiast cytat dowodzi, że w oświeceniu niektórzy w oświeceniu bynajmniej nie przeceniali stanu nauki.

It must be confessed, however, that geometers sometimes abuse this application of algebra to physics. Lacking appropriate experiments as a basis for their calculations, they permit themselves to use hypotheses which are most convenient, to be sure, but often very far removed from what really exists in Nature. Some have tried to reduce even the art of curing to calculations, and the human body, that most complicated machine, has been treated by our algebraic doctors as if it were the simplest or the easiest one to reduce to its component parts. It is a curious thing to see these authors solve with the stroke of a pen problems of hydraulics and statics capable of occupying the greatest geometers for a whole lifetime. As for us who are wiser or more timid, let us be content to view most of these calculations and vague suppositions as intellectual
games to which Nature is not obliged to conform, and let us conclude that the single true method of philosophizing as physical scientists consists either in the application of mathematical analysis to experiments, or in observation alone, enlightened by the spirit of method, aided sometimes by conjectures when they can furnish some insights, but rigidly dissociated from any arbitrary hypotheses

#filozofia #nauka