Philosophy and 20th Century Physics

The celebration in 2005 of the centennial of the “miraculous year” during which Einstein produced his articles on the energy quanta, on the Brownian motion and on restricted relativity has provided an opportunity to draw up a comprehensive assessment of the contribution of 20th century physics to human knowledge. One must recognize that this contribution is impressive. Contemporary physics has made available what is known as the standard model, namely, a set of effective theories that, with the help of a finite set of adjustable parameters, lead to an acceptable agreement with all experimental or observational data on the microscopic structure of matter and on the evolution of the universe.