Something Old, Something New:

Abstract

Some thoughts on the development of theoretical fluid dynamics in this century and some reflections on the developments of the past century were provided as an introduction to a broad-ranging conference. A written synopsis of these remarks is provided here. here. Our typical reaction to a theory is ‘Let’s see some computations. How does that compare with the data?’ Those pragmatic questions are legitimate, and of course, any theory must rush to answer them. However, first the theory exists alone, as an entity in and of itself, and deserves to be appreciated on its own merits. Is it internally consistent, does it connect all the known behavior in a minimalist way? Does it patch smoothly to previously accepted theories? A theory that does all that in an effortless way is often called elegant. Tomorrow, it may be wrong. Even so, it deserves to be regarded as one of the better things of which man is capable.