CREATIVE SCIENCE 327 



the "ideal" attitude of passionless nihilism. The attitudes of such as 

 Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Liebig, Pasteur, and Einstein are charac- 

 terized far more by hot commitment than by cool detachment. More- 

 over, these men did not succeed despite their "unfortunate preju- 

 dices'—by those they were not simply guided but driven to labors 

 otherwise wholly incredible. 



Until we honor scientists for their inactivity, we will honor no sci- 

 entist who has not been committed to his personal vision of reality, 

 and so launched recklessly on action. The hazards of his commit- 

 ment are borne in upon him as he sees others, perhaps almost all 

 others, pursuing other visions through other actions. The hazards are 

 still further compounded in that a sound vision may lead nowhere but 

 to oblivion, while other ideas posterity will judge unsound may 

 prove instruments to discoveries that establish claims to lasting 

 fame. Given Kepler's successes, we honor his commitment. Had he 

 failed, he would at most be recalled only as a competent Central 

 European mathematician betrayed by his absurd Pythagorean faith 

 that nature embodies discoverable mathematical harmonies. Per- 

 haps it is less individual genius than history that makes the heroes. 

 But nobody has ever become a hero of scientific history by shunning 

 all faith because a case might be made for scepticism. Speaking of 

 Kepler, Planck asks us to: 



Compare him with Tycho Brahe. Brahe had the same material under 

 his hands as Kepler, and even better opportunities, but he remained 

 only a researcher, because he did not have the same faith in the ex- 

 istence of the eternal laws of creation. Brahe remained only a re- 

 searcher; but Kepler was the creator of the new astronomy. 



And his conclusion is this : 



. . . science demands also the believing spirit. Anybody who has 

 been seriously engaged in scientific \vork of any kind realizes that 

 over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the 

 words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot 

 dispense with. 



In positivist circles faith is a fighting word, Planck a "relic of the 

 old physics," and Kepler an atypical lunatic. Let us then come closer 

 to home. The creation of the theory of special relativity is often cited 

 as uniquely the fruit of positivist scepticism. Critical re-examination 

 of the concepts and implicit assumptions of classical physics, by 



