COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 93 



4 X 10 ~ 2 ligtit years. It seems to me that one cannot take such extrap- 

 olations seriously unless one subscribes to a metaphysics that claims 

 that laws of the necessary mathematical precision really control the 

 actual physical universe. 



Disagreement. In our cosmologies we do not agree. On the merits 

 of a purely scientific idea more than 25 years old practically all scien- 

 tists are in substantial agreement; cosmologic issues now millennia 

 old are often still the subject of acrimonious debate. Consider: hu- 

 mans, with their limited knowledge, can build a world-\'iew only by 

 relying very heavily on analogies. But analogies are less "given" than 

 "felt": where I sense fundamental analogy you may find only trivial 

 similarity, or even significant opposition. Consider further: prior to 

 the "hair-raising extrapolations," our choice of what we will extrapo- 

 late determines for each of us the nature of his cosmology, and con- 

 versely. Some cosmologists, adopting an "organismic" view, choose 

 to stress the continued failure to reduce all phenomena to mathe- 

 matical expression. Others prefer to stress the great successes already 

 won in the construction of mathematical laws and theories— successes 

 the cosmologic connotation of which was read by the eminent scien- 

 tist Jeans as: "God is a mathematician." The statistical form of cer- 

 tain scientific laws and theories is emphasized by some. The conno- 

 tation of an abstruse mathematical theory may then be read as : "The 

 uncertainty principle restores Free Will." An alternate connotation, 

 read with equal legitimacy but having a very different cosmologic 

 flavor, is: "At bottom everything is ruled by blind chance." Other 

 cosmologists may choose to emphasize the non-statistical form of 

 certain relations: the integral laws (of least action, etc.) are taken 

 by Planck and others to indicate a certain causal purposiveness in 

 nature. But this conclusion can be combatted, as it is by Born, with 

 the argument that: 



The minimum principles are not due to nature's parsimony but to 

 human economy of thinking, as Mach said; the integral of action con- 

 denses a set of differential equations into one simple expression. 



Rigidity and revolution. Because of its inclusiveness, my cosmol- 

 ogy involves what are to me matters of deep personal concern. I am 

 committed to my personal cosmology, and the hardening of my re- 

 solve to meet the perennial challenge of other cosmologies is mir- 



