An Introduction to the Meaning and Structure of Physics

Physics is said to be very difficult — even physicists believe this. But if we make an elementary distinction between creating new physics and understanding what others have done, physics, perhaps, requires no more pa tience or intelligence than poetry, foreign languages, or any of a dozen other products of the human imagination. It is the reward that differs. Music or painting can touch our emotions in a very direct way. In physics we hear no violins that sob, see no images that threaten. There is drama in the creation and power in the result, but our admiration for the work itself can be excited only by its elegance, consistency, and esthetic wholeness (as perhaps is true for the somewhat mythical pure novel). The forms are unfortunately less familiar than those we see in a painting, hear at the opera, or read in a novel, but — to the cultivated taste — equally rewarding. It is my hope that this book can provide an entrance into this world for those with no special technical abilities or pretensions — both for the pleasure of seeing what is there and for its obvious relevance to those other activities which together make up what we call civilization.