That there is something unsatisfying about the scientific concept of nature has for long been recognized, and not least by scientists themselves. Of course there have been some remarkable changes in the foundations of science during the present century, and these have lessened the previously ‘mechanistic’ character of scientific theory; but it still remains true that physical science finds no place in its scheme of things for life and consciousness. “The ancients,” wrote Paul Valéry, “set their philosophy to peopling the universe as ardently as we, in our time, have set ours to emptying it of all life.” And similarly A.N. Whitehead has spoken of the opening up, since Descartes, of a deep division between two distinct and incompatible attitudes of mind; we seek to believe simultaneously in the mechanical theory of nature and in the self-determining or creative character of living things. Hence there is a radical inconsistency, he says, at the basis of modern thought.

The remarks which follow deal with the ideas which I developed in more detail in my book: between Experience and Metaphysics. They are inspired principally by the vigorous polemic aroused by the publication several years ago of a work which caused a great uproar in epistemological circles; I am speaking of The Structure of Scientific Revolution by T.S. Kuhn. One could thus consider this essay, as well as my book, as an element to be added to that polemic's dossier. It goes without saying that I am indebted to a great number of those who before me have given their points of view on the question, whether I agree with their opinions or not.

Born and Pauli, in talking of the style of science, meant its relatively stable features, which characterized a long period of scientific progress. “I do not mean,” wrote Born in 1953, “that there exist (outside mathematics) any unchanging principles, a priori principles in the strict sense of the term. But I think that certain general tendencies of thought exist, which change very slowly and which form definite philosophical periods with their own characteristic ideas in all fields of human activity, including science. In a recent letter to me, Pauli used the expression ‘styles’; styles of thought, not only in art but in science too. In adopting this term, I would assert that style is also a characteristic of physical theory, and it is precisely this fact that gives its principles a certain constancy. They are, as it were, relatively a priori principles in relation to the particular period. If one is familiar with the style of one's time, one can make certain cautious predictions. One can at least reject ideas that are foreign to the style of one's time”.

When we speak of a crisis in some domain, we usually think of an unfathomable situation which can only be resolved by a general upheaval. We can, however, assign another, more etymological meaning to the word: that of a critical evaluation. While admitting that the crises in contemporary physics have a good deal to do with the first meaning, I believe that their essential impact, on culture and human thought in general, issues from the second interpretation which allows us to envision these crises as a growing consciousness in physics of the range of its domain and the scope of its methods. These crises greatly contributed, on the one hand, to giving physics a new dimension in its field of action, and, on the other hand, they were brought about by a certain number of ideas which belonged to the general cultural heritage at the time they occured. From this point of view we may conceive of these crises as a cause, and conversely as an effect, of the penetration by wider intellectual horizons of an original structure which was somewhat artificially limited, by the selection of its constituent elements, to representing a sort of mental abstraction, justifiable in terms of the successes it achieved, but hardly representative of its human dimension as a whole.

In an earlier study, De la féerie à la science-fiction, I tried to show the internal consistency and the chronological succession of fairy tales, fantastic stories and works of scientific anticipation or extrapolation. They represent three styles of the imaginary, and illustrate, each in its own way (“like hollow molds,” I said), the chief epochs of man's changing situation on his planet, as he himself saw it, more or less naively, in each case. First he depicted himself as powerless and wonderstruck; then confident in science and technology, he considered himself the fortunate conqueror of the planet; and finally he saw himself as isolated and marginal in the immensity of space—just at the very time when he was learning to move about in it.

History is the child of narrative. It is not defined by an object of study, but rather by a type of narration. To say that history studies time means no more than that it arranges all of its objects of study in a temporal framework: to make history is to tell a story.