Intuition instead of more or less aimlessly roaming the field may be directed by staking out a path with the aid of certain principles and pegs of knowledge. At first a fairly broad path is advisable, which, in the course of the study in question can be narrowed more and more to achieve specific results. Directed intuition leads to correct predictions, discoveries and inventions with very much greater probability than haphazard intuition. Some of the basic principles and pegs of knowledge that have been useful in directing intuition in astronomy are as follows.
1. The principle of the flexibility of scientific truth
This principle states that no statement that is made in finite terms can be absolute (1, 25). (The fact that the statement just made is also subject to this fate can be shown to be irrelevant.)
For instance, the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics cannot be strictly true since it claims absolutely that
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This would mean that the product of the uncertainties
x and
px
in the determination
of the position x (on a straight line) and the linear momentum
px can never be smaller than Planck's constant
h.
On the basis of the principle of the flexibility of scientific (or communicable) truth I venture to predict that, once we can observe both the light quanta and the gravitons involved in the Compton effect for instance, the position and momentum of a particle at a given time will be determinable to any degree of accuracy desired. This thought has stimulated me to obtain some preliminary data on the properties of gravitons, deriving them from the fact, discovered by me but contested by masses of unbelievers, that there exist no bona fide clusters of stable or stationary clusters of galaxies (26).