Axiomatics

To Weyl, who himself made important contributions to mathematical physics, it seemed that “the maze of experimental facts which the physicist has to take into account is too manifold, their expansion too fast, and their aspect and relative weight too changeable for the axiomatic method to find a firm enough foothold, except in the thoroughly consolidated parts of our physical knowledge. Men like Einstein or Niels Bohr grope their way in the dark toward their conceptions of general relativity or atomic structure by another type of experience and imagination than those of the mathematician, although no doubt mathematics is an essential ingredient.”

Constance Reid, Hilbert