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Science and Hypothesis (French: La Science et l'Hypothèse) is a book by French mathematician Henri Poincaré, first published in 1902. Aimed at a non-specialist readership, it deals with mathematics, space, physics and nature.[1][2][3] It puts forward the theses that absolute truth in science is unattainable, and that many commonly held beliefs of scientists are held as convenient conventions rather than because they are more valid than the alternatives.[4]
Key Information
Title page of 1905 edition, with preface by Joseph Larmor
In this book, Poincaré describes open scientific questions regarding the photo-electric effect, Brownian motion, and the relativity of physical laws in space.
Reading this book inspired Albert Einstein's subsequent Annus Mirabilis papers published in 1905.[5]
This book was put into the Encyclopedia Britannica series Great Books of the Western World. A new translation was published in November 2017.[6]
Science and hypothesis (1905)
Table of contents to Science and hypothesis (1905)
Table of contents to Science and hypothesis (1905)
^De Laguna, Theodore (November 1906), "Science and Hypothesis by H. Poincaré", Reviews of Books, The Philosophical Review, 15 (6): 634–641, doi:10.2307/2177514, JSTOR2177514.
^Lalande, André (October 1954), "From Science and Hypothesis to Last Thoughts of H. Poincaré (1854-1912)", Journal of the History of Ideas, 15 (4): 596–598, doi:10.2307/2707678, JSTOR2707678.
^Darrigol, O. (2004), "The Mystery of the Einstein–Poincaré Connection", Isis, 95 (4): 614–626, Bibcode:2004Isis...95..614D, doi:10.1086/430652, PMID16011297, S2CID26997100With his friends of the informal “Akademie Olympia,” Einstein read Poincare´’s La science et l’hypothe`se sometime between 1902 and 1905.
