First Principles

Abstract

In the past, science has often been presented as a system of natural laws that are the product of experience and may be used as a rational basis for prediction. The laws were the laws of geometry, as formulated by the ancient Greeks, the laws of motion and gravitation, as formulated by Newton, and the laws of electricity and magnetism, as formulated by Faraday and Maxwell. During the twentieth century, however, these laws were found to be inexact and therefore unreliable in certain circumstances. Einstein’s theory of relativity first suggested the need for the revision of the laws of Euclidean geometry, Newtonian mechanics and gravitation; the discovery of quantum mechanics led to further changes, and classical and quantized field theories were developed in which the laws of electromagnetism were subordinate to more general gauge theories.