Complementarity and Statistics I and II [1958b]

Abstract

There still lingers a popular view of science (which scientists did much to encourage and nothing to dispel), according to which a scientific theory is accepted when it is in accord with all the facts it purports to describe: hence the unrockable certainty of scientific statements in contrast to the frailty of human judgments of other origin. Apart from the obvious tautology implied by the consideration of the totality of the evidence, this naive picture of the way in which science is made is as remote from reality as the meticulous preciseness of pre-raphaelite painting. Physicists know very well, when they are at work (although they do not usually put it down in so many words when they write about their work), that their decisions to adopt or reject theories are always based on a very small number of facts, which they regard as crucial.