ilya_prigogine_isabelle_stengers_alvin_tofflerbookfi-org

53 THE TRIUMPH OF REASON
But what can be the attraction of getting to know such a
tiny section of nature thoroughly, while one leaves everything
subtler and more complex shyly and timidly alone?
Does the product of such a modest effort deserve to be
called by the proud name of a theory of the universe?
In my belief the name is justified; for the general laws
on which the structure of theoretical physics is based
claim to be valid for any natural phenomenon whatsoever.
With them, it ought to be possible to arrive at the
description, that is to say, the theory, of every natural
process, including life, by means of pure deduction, if
that process of deduction were not far beyond the capacity
of the human intellect. The physicist's renunciation of
completeness for his cosmos is therefore not a matter of
fundamental principle. 2s
For some time there were those who persisted in the illusion
that attraction in the form in which it is expressed in the law of
gravitation would justify attributing an intrinsic animation to
nature and that if it were generalized it would explain the origins
of increasingly specific forms of activity, including even
the interactions that compose human society. But this hope
was rapidly crushed, at least partly as a consequence of the
demands created by the political, economic, and institutional
setting where science developed. We shall not examine this
aspect of the problem, important though it is. Our point here is
to emphasize that this very failure seemed to establish the
consistency of the classical view and to prove that what had
once been an inspiring conviction was a sad truth. In fact, the
only interpretation apparently capable of rivaling this interpretation
of science was henceforth the positivistic refusal of
the very project of understanding the world. For example,
Ernst Mach, the influential philosopher-scientist whose ideas
had a great impact on the young Einstein, defined the task of
scientific knowledge as arranging experience in as economical
an order as possible. Science has no other meaningful goal
than the simplest and most economical abstract expression of
facts:
Here we have a clue which strips science of all its mystery,
and shows us what its power really is. With respect