Physics Quotes - Page 30

• We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.

  Alain de Botton

  Class, Envy, Feelings

  Twitter post from Jan 05, 2013

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• What appear to be the most valuable aspects of the theoretical physics we have are the mathematical descriptions which enable us to predict events. These equations are, we would argue, the only realities we can be certain of in physics; any other ways we have of thinking about the situation are visual aids or mnemonics which make it easier for beings with our sort of macroscopic experience to use and remember the equations.

  Celia Green

  Reality, Thinking, Theoretical Physics

  "The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-body Problem". Book by Celia Green, 2003.

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• Whenever I want to represent or depict the official version, I will refer to them as 'mathematicians' or 'mathematical physicists' or idiots or something like that. There are no physicists in mainstream 'Physics.' From Newton to Einstein to Hawking, they are all just mathematicians as far as Science and Physics are concerned.

  Bill Gaede

  Want, Idiot, Newton

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• The mathematicians of this world regard themselves as 'physicists,' yet they know next to nothing about Physics.

  Bill Gaede

  World, Next, Mathematician

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• Quantum physics presents a new and exciting worldview that challenges old concepts, such as deterministic trajectories of motion and causal continuity. If initial conditions do not forever determine an object's motion, if instead, every time we observe, there is a new beginning, then the world is creative at the base level.

  Amit Goswami

  New Beginnings, Creative, Forever

  Amit Goswami (1995). “The Self-Aware Universe”, p.42, Penguin

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• Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Feet, Air, Support

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.172, Courier Corporation

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• While science continually uncovers new mysteries, it has removed much of what was once regarded as deeply mysterious. Although we certainly do not know the exact nature of every component of the universe, the basic principles of physics seem to apply out to the farthest horizon visible to us today.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Atheism, Principles, Horizon

  Victor J. Stenger (2003). “Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, Pyr Books

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• People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as a kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, "Oh, this great physicist believes in God - that means I'm free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ" - and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Mean, Talking

  "Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.

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• We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to public policy and psychology and classical music are so extremely abstract and technically complex and context-dependent that it's next to impossible for the ordinary citizen to feel that they (the developments) have much relevance to her actual life.

  David Foster Wallace

  Math, Psychology, Important

  Interview with Dave Eggers, www.believermag.com. November 2003.

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• A scenario is suggested by which the universe and its laws could have arisen naturally from nothing. Current cosmology suggests that no laws of physics were violated in bringing the universe into existence. The laws of physics themselves are shown to correspond to what one would expect if the universe appeared from nothing. There is something rather than nothing because something is more stable.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Law, Atheism, Currents

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• He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Science, Sunshine

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.140, David M Gross

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• No one must think that Newton’s great creation can be overthrown in any real sense by this [Theory of Relativity] or by any other theory. His clear and wide ideas will for ever retain their significance as the foundation on which our modern conceptions of physics have been built.

  Albert Einstein

  Real, Thinking, Ideas

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• The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Book, Science, Names

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• The powerful notion of entropy, which comes from a very special branch of physics … is certainly useful in the study of communication and quite helpful when applied in the theory of language.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Powerful, Communication, Special

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• In geometric and physical applications, it always turns out that a quantity is characterized not only by its tensor order, but also by symmetry.

  Hermann Weyl

  Order, Geometry, Symmetry

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• I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

  Edward Teller

  Simple, Common Sense, Way

  Edward Teller, Wendy Teller, Wilson Talley (2013). “Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics”, p.2, Basic Books

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• Can quantum mechanics represent the fact that an electron finds itself approximately in a given place and that it moves approximately with a given velocity, and can we make these approximations so close that they do not cause experimental difficulties?

  Werner Heisenberg

  Moving, Velocity, Causes

  Werner Heisenberg (1985). “Gesammelte Werke”, Springer

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• The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Ideas, Fundamentals, Neutrons

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• There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result … in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things.

  Paul Klee

  Music, Art, Learning

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• I feel that one should employ methods that reflect the physics of the problem at hand rather than the methods one happens to know.

  Lawrence Shepp

  Science, Hands, Problem

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• In the old physics, three times two equals six and two times three equals 6 are reversible propositions. Not in quantum physics. Three times two and two times three are two different matters, distinct and separate propositions.

  Paul Auster

  Science, Two, Different

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• ... The approach of von Neumann and Connes to the use of non-commutative algebra in physics is naive, the situation is much more complicated.

  Israel Gelfand

  Science, Use, Complicated

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• This is a rather unusual situation in physics. We perform approximate calculations which are valid only in some regime and this gives us the exact answer. This is a theorist's heaven- exact results with approximate methods.

  Nathan Seiberg

  Science, Giving, Heaven

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• It is easy to make out three areas where scientists will be concentrating their efforts in the coming decades. One is in physics, where leading theorists are striving, with the help of experimentalists, to devise a single mathematical theory that embraces all the basic phenomena of matter and energy. The other two are in biology. Biologists-and the rest of us too-would like to know how the brain works and how a single cell, the fertilized egg cell, develops into an entire organism

  Dennis Flanagan

  Science, Cells, Eggs

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• Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical formulation of physical laws.

  Tsung-Dao Lee

  Nature, Powerful, Science

  "Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory: Revised and Updated First Edition". Book by Tsung-Dao Lee, 1981.

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