Physics Quotes - Page 21

• At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C.E. and for whom even ancient man had a lively admiration.

  Svante Arrhenius

  Men, Sight, Firsts

  30 Copy quote

• A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Time, Believe, Math

  7 Copy quote

• Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Giving

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.131, VM eBooks

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.

  Albert Einstein

  Reality, Matter, Fields

  15 Copy quote

• What I do know about physics is that to a man standing on the shore, time passes quicker than to a man on a boat - especially if the man on the boat is with his wife.

  Woody Allen

  Funny, Time, Men

  7 Copy quote

• It is shameful that there are so few women in science. [...] In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine.

  Chien-Shiung Wu

  Men, America, Chinese

  "Queen of Physics". "Newsweek" no. 61, 20, May 20, 1963.

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.

  Eugene Wigner

  Grateful, Law, Miracle

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.549, Springer Science & Business Media

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I give this talk to a physics audience, I remove the quotes from my 'Theorem'.

  Brian Greene

  Giving, Mathematics, Mathematical

  6 Copy quote

• Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject.

  Harold Morowitz

  Learning, Character, Technique

  9 Copy quote

• My basic idea is that programming is the most powerful medium of developing the sophisticated and rigorous thinking needed for mathematics, for grammar, for physics, for statistics, for all the "hard" subjects.... In short, I believe more than ever that programming should be a key part of the intellectual development of people growing up.

  Seymour Papert

  Growing Up, Powerful, Believe

  154 Copy quote

• Natural science physics contains in itself synthetical judgments a priori, as principles. ... Space then is a necessary representation a priori, which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions.

  Immanuel Kant

  Space, Words Of Wisdom, Intuition

  10 Copy quote

• But in spite of the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics, I have never heard of a good a prioriargument that the world must be organised to mathematical principles.

  Lee Smolin

  Effectiveness, Words Of Wisdom, Principles

  4 Copy quote

• I think that in order to achieve progress in the study of language and human cognitive faculties in general it is necessary first to establish 'psychic distance' from the 'mental facts' to which Köhler referred, and then to explore the possibilities for developing explanatory theories... We must recognize that even the most familiar phenomena require explanation and that we have no privileged access to the underlying mechanisms, no more so than in physiology or physics.

  Noam Chomsky

  Distance, Thinking, Order

  4 Copy quote

• When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Believe, Law, Weather

  "A Theory of Roughness". The Edge Interview, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Thinking, Color, Branches

  82 Copy quote

• All those formal systems, in mathematics and physics and the philosophy of science, which claim to give foundations for certain truth are surely mistaken. I am tempted to say that we do not look for truth, but for knowledge. But I dislike this form of words, for two reasons. First of all, we do look for truth, however we define it, it is what we find that is knowledge. And second, what we fail to find is not truth, but certainty; the nature of truth is exactly the knowledge that we do find.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Philosophy, Two, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Mathematics catalogues everything that is not self-contradictory; within that vast inventory, physics is an island of structures rich enough to contain their own beholders.

  Greg Egan

  Islands, Self, Inventory

  4 Copy quote

• A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

  Richard P. Feynman

  Writing, Wine, Glasses

  "The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume I; lecture 3: "The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences")". Book by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, 1964.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Teaching physics at the University, and more general lecturing to wider audiences has been a major concern.

  Antony Hewish

  Teaching, Concern, Audience

  8 Copy quote

• We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Math, Law, Facts

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2014). “The Tractatus According to Its Own Form”, p.38, Lulu.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the task of scientific methodology is to piece together an account of what scientists actually do, then the testimony of biologists should be heard with specially close attention. Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding.
  Biology is complex, messy and richly various, like real life; it travels faster nowadays than physics or chemistry (which is just as well, since it has so much farther to go), and it travels nearer to the ground. It should therefore give us a specially direct and immediate insight into science in the making.

  Peter Medawar

  Real, Science, Giving

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact that science led me to spiritual insight is appropriate because the latest discoveries in physics and cell research are forging new links between the worlds of Science and Spirit. These realms were split apart in the days of Descartes centuries ago. However, I truly believe that only when Spirit and Science are reunited will we be afforded the means to a better world.

  Bruce H. Lipton

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

  Bruce H. Lipton (2010). “The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles: Easyread Large Edition”, p.230, ReadHowYouWant.com

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ancient wisdom and quantum physicists make unlikely bedfellows: In quantum mechanics the observer determines (or even brings into being) what is observed, and so, too, for the Tiwis, who dissolve the distinction between themselves and the cosmos. In quantum physics, subatomic particles influence each other from a distance, and this tallies with the aboriginal view, in which people, animals, rocks, and trees all weave together in the same interwoven fabric.

  Huston Smith

  Distance, Animal, Rocks

  9 Copy quote

• There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.

  William James

  Men, Finals, Lasts

  William James (2010). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”, p.208, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ... The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

  Arthur Eddington

  Drama, Shadow, Ink

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Introduction), 1928.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source