[F]rom all that has been said about modern science... modern physics is just one... but... characteristic… — Werner Heisenberg
[F]rom all that has been said about modern science... modern physics is just one... but... characteristic, part of a general historical process... toward a unification and a widening of our... world. This... would... lead to a diminution of... cultural and political tensions that create the great danger... But... forces in the existing cultural communities... try to ensure for their traditional values the largest... role in the final state of unification... and thereby adds to the instability of the transient state. Modern physics... shows that the use of arms... would be disastrous, and... through it openness for all... concepts it raises the hope that in the final state of unification many different cultural traditions may live together and... combine different human endeavors into a new... balance between thought and deed, between activity and meditation.
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But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. "All things are numbers" is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature.
The law of causality is no longer applied in quantum theory and the law of conservation of matter is no longer true for the elementary particles. Obviously Kant could not have foreseen the new discoveries, but since he was convinced that his concepts would be "the basis of any future metaphysics that can be called science" it is interesting to see where his arguments have been wrong.
The equation of motion holds at all times, it is in this sense eternal, whereas the geometrical forms, like the orbits, are changing. Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter. Actually this is a problem which has not yet been solved.
