To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science

by Steven Weinberg

Science is cumulative; each new theory incorporates successful earlier theories as approximations, and even explains why these approximations work, when they do work.

in trying to understand the constants of nature we may face the same sort of disappointment Kepler faced in trying to explain the dimensions of the solar system.

But though Leibniz was the first to publish on calculus, as we shall see it was Newton rather than Leibniz who applied calculus to problems in science. Though, like Descartes, Leibniz was a great mathematician whose philosophical work is much admired, he made no important contributions to natural science.

Physical theories are validated when they give us the ability to calculate enough things that are sufficiently simple to allow reliable calculations, even if we can’t calculate everything that we might want to calculate.

Not only does Einstein’s theory not disprove Newton’s; relativity explains why Newton’s theory works, when it does work. General relativity itself is doubtless an approximation to a more satisfactory theory.