Science and Hypothesis

Here is Poincaré's famous discussion of creative psychology as it is revealed in the physical sciences. Explaining how such basic concepts as number and magnitude, space and force were developed, the great French mathematician refutes the skeptical position that modern scientific method and its results are wholly factitious. The places of rigorous logic and intuitive leaps are both established by an analysis of contrasting methods of idea-creation in individuals and in modern scientific traditions. The nature of hypothesis and the role of probability are investigated with all of Poincaré's usual fertility of insight. Partial contents: On the nature of mathematical reasoning. Magnitude and experiment. Space, Force and Nature. Poincaré's was the last man to take practically all mathematics, both pure and applied as his province.