86 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION", 19 34 



usually be satisfied in a single map ; the only exception is when the 

 map is to contain only a small part of the whole surface of the globe. 

 In this case, and this only, all the qualities we want can be combined 

 in a single map, so that we simply ask for a map of the county of 

 Surrey without specifying whether it is to be a Mercator's or ortho- 

 graphic or conic projection, or whatnot. 



All this has its exact counterpart in the map-making task of the 

 physicist. The Newtonian mechanics was like the map of Surrey, 

 because it dealt only with a small fraction of the universe. It was 

 concerned with the motions and changes of medium-sized objects — 

 objects comparable in size with the human body — and for these it was 

 able to provide a perfect map which combined in one picture all the 

 qualities we could reasonably demand. But the inconceivably great 

 and the inconceivably small were equally beyond its ken. As soon 

 as science pushed out — to the cosmos as a whole in one direction and 

 to subatomic phenomena in the other — the deficiencies of the New- 

 tonian mechanics became manifest. And no modification of the. 

 Newtonian map was able to provide the two qualities which this 

 map had itself encouraged us to expect — a materialism which ex- 

 hibited the universe as constructed of matter lying within the frame- 

 work of space and time, and a determinism which provided an 

 answer to the question " What is going to happen next ? " 



When geography cannot combine all the qualities we want in a 

 single map, it provides us with more than one map. Theoretical 

 physics has done the same, providing us with two maps which are 

 commonly known as the particle-picture and the wave-picture. 



The particle-picture is a materialistic picture which caters for 

 those who wish to see their universe mapped out as matter existing 

 in space and time. The wave-picture is a determinist picture which 

 caters for those who ask the question " What is going to happen 

 next? " It is perhaps better to speak of these two pictures as the 

 particle-parable and the wave-parable. For this is what they really 

 are, and the nomenclature warns us in advance not to be surprised 

 at inconsistencies and contradictions. 



Let me remind you, as briefly as possible, how this pair of pictures 

 or parables have come to be in existence side by side. 



The particle parable, which was first in the field, told us that the 

 material universe consists of particles existing in space and time. It 

 was created by the labors of chemists and experimental physicists, 

 working on the basis provided by the classical physics. Its time of 

 testing came in 1913, when Bohr tried to find out whether the two 

 particles of the hydrogen atom could possibly produce the highly com- 

 plicated spectrum of hydrogen by their motion. He found a type of 

 motion which could produce this spectrum down to its minutest details, 



