ABSTRACT
It is a curious fact that, just when the man in the street has begun to believe thoroughly in science, the man in the laboratory has begun to lose his faith. Whoever wishes to know how and why scientific faith is decaying cannot do better than read Eddington's Gifford lectures entitled The Nature of the Physical World. He will learn there that physics is divided into three departments. The first contains all the laws of classical physics, such as the conservation of energy and momentum and the law of gravitation. To begin with classical physics. Newton's law of gravitation, as everyone knows, was somewhat modified by Einstein, and the modification was experimentally confirmed. But if Eddington's view is right, this experimental confirmation does not have the significance that one would naturally attribute to it. Quantum theory, which is concerned with individual atoms and electrons, is still in a state of rapid development, and is probably far from its final form.
