The Principle of Physical Proportions

We propose the principle of physical proportions, according to which all laws of physics can depend only on the ratio of known quantities of the same type. An alternative formulation is that no dimensional constants should appear in the laws of physics; or that all “constants” of physics (like the universal constant of gravitation, light velocity in vacuum, Planck’s constant, Boltzmann’s constant etc.) must depend on cosmological or microscopic properties of the universe. With this generalization of Mach’s principle we advocate doing away with all absolute quantities in physics. We present examples of laws satisfying this principle and of others which do not. These last examples suggest that the connected theories leading to these laws must be incomplete. We present applications of this principle in some fundamental equations of physics.