Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature

by Steven Weinberg

In the folklore of science there is an apocryphal story about some physicist who, near the turn of the century, proclaimed that physics was just about complete, with nothing left to be done but to carry measurements to a few more decimal places. The story seems to originate in a remark made in 1894 in a talk at the University of Chicago by the American experimental physicist Albert Michelson: “While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.… An eminent physicist has remarked that the future truths of Physical Science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”