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The Evolution of the Stars [ch. vi 
how to retrace our steps and take a different road in the hope of coming to 
some other conclusion. On the other hand, our conclusions suffer from a good 
deal of vagueness. If we liked to introduce further definite assumptions we 
could make the picture as much more definite as we wished. Some assumptions 
would give results which would agree with observations, while others naturally 
would not. By a skilful choice of assumptions we could doubtless both add 
precision to our picture and accentuate its agreement with observation. But 
the procedure is too risky to be profitable. We might find an assumption 
which would intensify the agreement with observation enormously, but we 
should remain in ignorance of perhaps ten others that would do the same thing 
equally well. We should start on our journey with odds of ten to one that we 
were on the wrong track and that all our labour would be wasted. Con 
siderations of this nature suggest that it is more prudent to leave the theory 
in its present vague form than to gain additional precision by introducing 
special assumptions of a speculative or semi-speculative kind.