ABSTRACT
Theories or "laws" have no logical status: by this approach Popper eliminates drastically but effectively all the difficulties of the general deriving from the particular. According to this view, a theory may be inspiration, a leap of the imagination, or perhaps merely an analogy or a dream. With the possibility that many theories are silly and trivial, experiments that are carried out as easily as possible are desirable; and even more important, as few experiments as possible should be necessary in each check of the theory. We necessarily test the laws of physics by working over a limited range of variables; the simple gas laws, for example, have not usually been tested over enormous ranges of pressure, temperature, or time. This non-random distribution of forces must result in a relatively simple behavior of matter; and certainly no such behavior could be expected if there were a continuous distribution of forces.
