Poincaré is a pre-eminent figure: as one of the greatest of mathematicians; as a contributor of prime importance to the development of physical theory at a time when physics was undergoing a profound transformation; and as a philosopher. However, I think that Poincaré, with all this virtue, made a serious philosophical mistake. In Poincaré’s own work, this error seems to me to have kept him from several fundamental discoveries in physics. The hypothesis that Poincaré would have made these discoveries if he had not been misled by a philosophical error is not one that lends itself to conclusive assessment; but what I wish to do is to lay out the main circumstances of the case so as to make clear, at least, that the issue of philosophic principle involved, and the questions of fundamental physics under discussion, are of considerable mutual relevance.

庞加莱是一位杰出的人物：作为最伟大的数学家之一；在物理学正在经历深刻变革的时代，作为对物理学理论发展的最重要贡献者；并且作为哲学家。然而，我认为庞加莱拥有所有这些美德，犯了一个严重的哲学错误。在庞加莱自己的工作中，在我看来，这个错误使他无法获得物理学中的几个基本发现。如果庞加莱没有被哲学错误误导，他会做出这些发现的假设并不适合做出结论性的评估。但我希望做的是列出案件的主要情况，以至少表明所涉及的哲学原理问题与所讨论的基础物理学问题具有相当大的相互关联性。