It is strange to note so little discussion of the exclusion principle in the philosophical literature. Philosophers, largely engrossed in their perennial problems, are hardly aware of the fact that, during the last two decades, there has been introduced into physical methodology a principle of utmost philosophical importance, easily rivaling that of relativity and, in some respects, indeed that of causality. Discovered by Pauli in 1925, it immediately elucidated a whole realm of physical facts and was accepted by physicists with (...) wide acclaim. Called the exclusion principle—or Pauli principle, or principle of anti-symmetry—it was embodied in the axiomatics of quantum mechanics; its peculiar methodological significance passed out of view. (shrink)