The test of science is not whether you are reasonableโthere would not be much of physics if that was the caseโthe test is whether it works. And the great point about Newtonโs theory of gravitation was that it worked, that you could actually say something about the motion of the moon without knowing very much about the constitution of the Earth.
Hermann Bondi[Newton's calculations] entered the marrow of what we know without knowing how we know it.
Hermann BondiAll science is full of statements where you put your best face on your ignorance, where you say: ... we know awfully little about this, but more or less irrespective of the stuff we don't know about, we can make certain useful deductions.
Hermann BondiWhat I remember most clearly was that when I put down a suggestion that seemed to me cogent and reasonable, Einstein did not in the least contest this, but he only said, 'Oh, how ugly.' As soon as an equation seemed to him to be ugly, he really rather lost interest in it and could not understand why somebody else was willing to spend much time on it. He was quite convinced that beauty was a guiding principle in the search for important results in theoretical physics.
Hermann Bondi