If, as is universally acknowledged, the proper goal of the mathematical sciences is the discovery of the least possible number of principles (notably principles that are not further explicable) from which the universal laws of empirically given facts emerge with mathematical necessity, and thus the discovery of principles equivalent to those empirical facts, then it must appear as a duty of indubitable importance to reflect carefully on the principles that have already surfaced with some certainty in one area of the natural sciences and present them in a form that really fulfills the equivalence requirement.