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Physicist Taketani dies at age 88

TOKYO, Japan - Mitsuo Taketani, a theoretical physicist known for his research on elementary particles, dies on April 22 at a Tokyo hospital, according to his family. He was 88. His family members decline to disclose the cause of his death. Taketani, a native of Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, presented in his graduation thesis a theory that scientific progress consists of three stages: (1) a phenomenological stage, (2) a substance-theory stage, and (3) an essence-theory stage. This theory came to be known as Taketani's Theory of the Three Stages.