Henri Poincare

Jules Henri Poincaré (French: [ɑ̃ʁi pwɛ̃kaʁe] (About this sound listen);[2][3] 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist by Eric Temple Bell,[4] since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.

As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics.[5] He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, which was o­ne of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics until it was solved in 2002–2003 by Grigori Perelman. In his research o­n the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be o­ne of the founders of the field of topology.

Poincaré made clear the importance of paying attention to the invariance of laws of physics under different transformations, and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity. In 1905, Poincaré first proposed gravitational waves (ondes gravifiques) emanating from a body and propagating at the speed of light as being required by the Lorentz transformations.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincaré

Publication:

In English:http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=766

In Russian:http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=716

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The Foundations of Science

Science And Hypothesis

The Value Of Science

Science And Method

By

H. Poincare

Authorized Translation By

George Bruce Halsted

The Science Press

New York And Garrison, N. Y. 1913

https://archive.org/stream/foundationsscie01poingoog#page/n224/mode/2up/search/201+page

Excerpts about harmony

21. (Not author). We interpret as well as report Man is not merely made for science, but science is made for man. It expresses his deepest intellectual needs, as well as his careful observations. It is an effort to bring internal meanings into harmony with external verifications.

120-121. No o­ne doubts that Mayer's principle is destined to survive all the particular laws from which it was obtained, just as Newton's law has survived Kepler's laws, from which it sprang, and which are o­nly approximative if account be taken of perturbations. ….

The imposing simplicity of Mayer's principle likewise con- tributes to strengthen our faith. In a law deduced immediately from experiment, like Mariotte's, this simplicity would rather seem to us a reason for distrust; but here this is no longer the case; we see elements, at first sight disparate, arrange them- selves in an unexpected order and form a harmonious whole; and we refuse to believe that an unforeseen harmony may be a simple effect of chance. It seems that our conquest is the dearer to us the more effort it has cost us, or that we are the surer of

having wrested her true secret from nature the more jealously she has hidden it from us.

175. Maxwell's Theory. — ^Maxwell, we know, connected by a close bond two parts of physics until then entirely foreign to o­ne another, optics and electricity. By blending thus in a vaster whole, in a higher harmony, the optics of Fresnel has not ceased to be alive. Its various parts subsist, and their mutual relations are still the same.

189. But in the case which now occupies us, not o­nly these three definitions are no longer in harmony, but each has lost its mean- ing, and in fact:

207-208. Is mathematical analysis, then, whose principal object is the study of these empty frames, o­nly a vain play of the mind ? It can give to the physicist o­nly a convenient language ; is this not a mediocre service, which, strictly speaking, could be done with- out ; and even is it not to be feared that this artificial language may be a veil interposed between reality and the eye of the physicist ? Far from it ; without this language most of the inti- mate analogies of things would have remained forever unknown to us ; and we should forever have been ignorant of the internal harmony of the world, which is, we shall see, the o­nly true objective reality.

The best expression of this harmony is law. Law is o­ne of the most recent conquests of the human mind; there still are people who live in the presence of a perpetual miracle and are not astonished at it. o­n the contrary, we it is who should be astonished at nature's regularity. Men demand of their gods to prove their existence by miracles; but the eternal marvel is that there are not miracles without cease. The world is divine because it is a harmony. If it were ruled by caprice, what could prove to us it was not ruled by chance?

209. Does the harmony the human intelligence thinks it discovers in nature eidst outside of this intelligence? No, beyond doubt a reality completely independent of the mind which conceives it, sees or feels it, is an impossibility. A world as exterior as that, even if it existed, would for us be forever inaccessible. But what we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we shall see, can o­nly be the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. It is this harmony then which is the sole objective reality, the o­nly truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.

280. They would doubtless concede that these structures are wdl worth the trouble they have cost us. But this is not enough. Mathematics has a triple aim. It must furnish an instrument for the study of nature. But that is not all : it has a philosophic aim and, I dare maintain, an esthetic aim. It must aid the philosopher to fathom the notions of number, of space, of time. And above all, its adepts find therein delights analogous to those given by painting and music. They admire the delicate harmony of numbers and forms ; they marvel when a new discovery opens to them an unexpected perspective ; and has not the joy they thus feel the esthetic character, even though the senses take no part therein t o­nly a privileged few are called to enjoy it fully, it is true, but is not this the case for all the noblest arts ?

284. To sum up, the aim of mathematical physics is not o­nly to facilitate for the physicist the numerical calculation of certain constants or the int^ration of certain differential equations. It is besides, it is above all, to reveal to him the hidden harmony of things in making him see them in a new way. ….

If I may be allowed to continue my comparison with the fine arts, the pure mathematician who should forget the existence of the exterior world would be like a painter who knew how to harmoniously combine colors and forms, but who lacked models. His creative power would soon be exhausted.

285. It is with mathematical symbola as with physical realities; it is in comparing the different aspects of things that we are able to comprehend their inner harmony, which alone is beautiful and consequently worthy of our efforts.

289. Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves ; it is useful because it is grand ; that is what we should say. It shows us how small is man's body, how great his mind, since his intel-ligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is o­nly an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony.

290-1. And first of all, astronomy it is which taught that there are laws. The Chaldeans, who were the first to observe the heavens with some attention, saw that this multitude of luminous points is not a confused crowd wandering at random, but rather a disci- plined army. Doubtless the rules of this discipline escaped them, but the harmonious spectacle of the starry night suflSced to give them the impression of regularity, and that was in itself already

a great thing. Besides, these rules were discerned by Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, o­ne after another, and finally, it is needless to recall that Newton it was who enunciated the oldest, the most precise, the most simple, the most general of all natural laws.

291. And then, taught by this example, we have seen our little terrestrial world better and, under the apparent disorder, there also we have found again the harmony that the study of the heavens had revealed to us. It also is regular, it also obeys immutable laws, but they are more complicated, in apparent conflict o­ne with another, and an eye untrained by other sights would have seen there o­nly chaos and the reign of chance or caprice.

299. I will explain myself; how did the ancients understand law! It was for them an internal harmony, static, so to say, and immutable ; or else it was like a model that nature tried to imitate. For us a law is something quite different; it is a constant relation between the phenomenon of to-day and that of to-morrow; in a word, it is a differential equation.

352. In sum, the sole objective reality consists in the relations of things whence results the universial harmony. Doubtless these relations, this harmony, could not be conceived outside of a mind which conceives them. But they are nevertheless objective because they are, will become, or will remain, conunon to all thinking beings.

This will permit us to revert to the question of the rotation of the earth which will give us at the same time a chance to make clear what precedes by an example.

354-5. We can not know all facts and it is necessary to choose those which are worthy of being known. According to Tolstoi, scientists make this choice at random, instead of making it, which would be reasonable, with a view to practical applications. o­n the contrary, scientists think that certain facts are more interesting than others, because they complete an unfinished harmony, or because they make o­ne foresee a great number of other facts. If they are wrong, if this hierarchy of facts that they implicitly postulate is o­nly an idle illusion, there could be no science for its own sake, and consequently there could be no science. As for me, I believe they are right, and, for example, I have shown above what is the high value of astronomical facts, not because they are capable of practical applications, but because they are the most instructive of all.

366. I will not further insist, but these few words suffice to show that the scientist does not choose at random the facte he observes. He does not, as Tolstoi says, count the lady-bugs, because, however interesting lady-bugs may be, their number is subject to capricious variations. He seeks to condense much experience and much thought into a slender volume ; and that is why a little book o­n physics contains so many past experiences and a thousand times as many possible experiences whose result is known beforehand.

367. It is, therefore, the quest of this especial beauty, the sense of the harmony of the cosmos, which makes us choose the facts most fitting to contribute to this harmony, just as the artist chooses from among the features of his model those which perfect the picture and give it character and life. And we need not fear that this instinctive and unavowed prepossession will turn the scientist aside from the search for the true. o­ne may dream a harmonious world, but how far the real world will leave it behind! The greatest artists that ever lived, the Greeks, made their heavens; how shabby it is beside the true heavens, ours!

371. The celebrated Vienna philosopher Mach has said that the ro1e of science is to produce economy of thought, just as machines produce economy of effort. And that is very true. The savage reckons o­n his fingers or by heaping pebbles. In teaching children the multiplication table we spare them later innumerable pebble bunchings. Some o­ne has already found out, with pebbles or otherwise, that 6 times 7 is 42 and lias had the idea of noting the result, and so we need not do it over again. He did not waste his time even if he reckoned for pleasure: his operation took him o­nly two minutes ; it would have taken in all two milliards if a milliard men had had to do it over after him.

372. Mathematicians attach great importance to the elegance of their methods and their results. This is not pure dilettantism. What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration 1 It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at o­nce both the ensemble and the details.

374. But is it always needful to say it so many times; those who were the first to emphasize exactness before all else have given us arguments that we may try to imitate ; but if the demonstrations of the future are to be built o­n this model, mathematical treatises will be very long; and if I fear the lengthenings, it is not solely because I deprecate encumbering libraries, but because I fear that in being lengthened out, our demonstrations may lose that appearance of harmony whose usefulness I have just explained.

391. It may be surprising to see emotional sensibility invoked d propos of mathematical demonstrations which, it would seem, can interest o­nly the intellect. This would be to forget the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. This is a true esthetic feeling that all real mathematicians know, and surely it belongs to emotional sensibility.

Now, what are the mathematic entities to which we attribute this character of beauty and elegance, and which are capable of developing in us a sort of esthetic emotion t They are those whose elements are harmoniously disposed so that the mind without effort can embrace their totality while realizing the details. This harmony is at o­nce a satisfaction of our esthetic needs and an aid to the mind, sustaining and guiding. And at the same time, in putting under our eyes a well-ordered whole, it makes us foresee a mathematical law. Now, as we have said above, the

only mathematical facts worthy of fixing our attention and capable of being useful are those which can teach us a mathematical law. So that we reach the following conclusion: The useful combinations are precisely the most 'beautiful, I mean those best able to charm this special sensibility that all mathematicians know, but of which the profane are so ignorant as often to be tempted to smile at it.

532. By symmetry, there would be no reason for their going out of these planes, nor for the symmetry changing. This configuration would give us therefore equilibrium, but this would be an unstable equilibrium.

534. So we shall put the question otherwise : can geodesy aid us the better to know nature t Does it make us understand its unity and harmony?f In reality an isolated fact is of slight value, and the conquests of science are precious o­nly if they prepare for new conquests.

538. Is nature governed by caprice, or does harmony rule there? That is the question. It is when it discloses to us this harmony that science is beautiful and so worthy to be cultivated. But whence can come to us this revelation, if not from the accord of a theory with experiment? To seek whether this accord exists or if it fails, this therefore is our aim. Consequently these two terms, which we must compare, are as indispensable the o­ne as the other. To neglect o­ne for the other would be nonsense. Isolated, theory would be empty, experiment would be blind; each would be useless and without interest.

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