The term 'energy' doesn't even pretend to stand
for anything 'objective.' It is only a way of measuring the surface
of phenomena so as to string their changes on a simple formula.
Yet in the choice of these man-made formulas we cannot be capricious
with impunity any more than we can be capricious on the common-sense
practical level. We must find a theory that will WORK; and that
means something extremely difficult; for our theory must mediate
between all previous truths and certain new experiences. It must
derange common sense and previous belief as little as possible, and
it must lead to some sensible terminus or other that can be verified
exactly. To 'work' means both these things; and the squeeze is so
tight that there is little loose play for any hypothesis. Our
theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes
alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the
truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective
reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already
partial; we follow 'elegance' or 'economy.' Clerk Maxwell somewhere
says it would be "poor scientific taste" to choose the more
complicated of two equally well-evidenced conceptions; and you will
all agree with him.
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