ilya_prigogine_isabelle_stengers_alvin_tofflerbookfi-org

65 THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE REAL
The Newtonian synthesis is thus a surprise. It is an unexpected,
staggering discovery that the scientific world has commemorated
by making Newton the symbol of modern science.
What is particularly astonishing is that the basic code of nature
appeared to have been cracked in a single creative act.
For a long time this sudden loquaciousness of nature, this
triumph of the English Moses, was a source of intellectual
scandal for continental rationalists. Newton's work was
viewed as a purely empirical discovery that could thus equally
well be empirically disproved. In 1747 Euler, Clairaut, and
dlembert, without doubt some of the greatest scientists of
the time, came to the same conclusion: Newton was wrong. In
order to describe the moon's motion, a more complex mathematical
form must be given to the force of attraction, making it
the sum of two terms. For the following two years, each of
them believed that nature had proved Newton wrong, and this
belief was a source of excitement, not of dismay. Far from considering
Newton's discovery synonymous with physical science
itself, physicists were blithely contemplating dropping it
altogether. Dlembert went so far as to express scruples
about seeking fresh evidence against Newton and giving him
"le coup de pied de l'iine."6
Only one courageous voice against this verdict was raised in
France. In 1748, Buffon wrote:
A physical law is a law only by virtue of the fact that it is
easy to measure, and that the sale it represents is not
only always the same, but is actually unique . ... M.
Clairaut has raised an objection against Newton's system,
but it is at best an objection and must not and cannot
become a principle; an attempt should be ,made to overcome
it and not to turn it into a theory the entire consequences
of which merely rest on a calculation; for, as I
have said, one may represent anything by means of calculation
and achieve nothing; and if it is allowed to add
one or more terms to a physical law such as that of attraction,
we are only adding to arbitrariness instead of representing
reality. 7
Later Buffon was to announce what was to become, although
for only a short time, the research program for chemistry: