Physics Quotes - Page 31

• The great problem of today is, how to subject all physical phenomena to dynamical laws. With all the experimental devices, and all the mathematical appliances of this generation, the human mind has been baffled in its attempts to construct a universal science of physics.

  Joseph Lovering

  Science, Law, Mind

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• The physics of undergraduate text-books is 90% true.

  John Ziman

  Truth, Book, Undergraduate

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• I do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics.

  Balfour Stewart

  Philosophy, Exercise, Science

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• The investigation of causal relations between economic phenomena presents many problems of peculiar difficulty, and offers many opportunities for fallacious conclusions. Since the statistician can seldom or never make experiments for himself, he has to accept the data of daily experience, and discuss as best he can the relations of a whole group of changes; he cannot, like the physicist, narrow down the issue to the effect of one variation at a time. The problems of statistics are in this sense far more complex than the problems of physics.

  Udny Yule

  Science, Opportunity, Data

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• There is no logical staircase running from the physics of 10-28 cm. to the physics of 1028 light-years.

  Norwood Russell Hanson

  Running, Science, Light

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• The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer.

  Paul Davies

  Nature, Science, Views

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• The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions.

  Antony Hewish

  Christian, Religious, Men

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• When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Christian, Dream, Atheist

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• There is not a soul on Earth who can read the deluge of physics publications in its entirety. As a result, it is sad but true that physics has irretrievably fallen apart from a cohesive to a fragmented discipline. ... It was not that long ago that people were complaining about two cultures. If we only had it that good. today.

  Abraham Pais

  Science, Long Ago, Two

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• Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect deliberate.... It is, therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligence -even to the limit of God.

  Fred Hoyle

  Thinking, Origin Of Life, Limits

  "Big enough to bury Darwin", www.theguardian.com. August 23, 2001.

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• While there is such a thing as correctness in ethics, in interpretation, in mathematics, the way to understand that is not by trying to model it on the ways in which we get things right in physics.

  Hilary Putnam

  Philosophical, Trying, Way

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• Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.

  Stephen Hawking

  Bored, Boring, Mathematics

  "Stephen Hawking: A Biography". Book by Kristine Larsen, 2005.

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• We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.

  Thomas Huxley

  Water, Together, Able

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2008). “A Scientific Education”, p.107, Lulu.com

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• The key to teaching anything is to remember what it was like not to understand that thing. That's a very hard thing to do. Every time you come to understand something you didn't understand before, you are transformed. You become a different person from who you were before. The key to teaching someone else to understand that same thing is to remember your former, untransformed self. If you can do that, I think you can teach anything, even physics.

  David Goodstein

  Teaching, Thinking, Keys

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• Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful results.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Example, Littles, Way

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

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• As a scholarly discipline, economics has always suffered from physics envy.

  Robert Kuttner

  Envy, Discipline, Economics

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• Now we see evolutionary trends in a variety of areas ranging from atomic and molecular physics through fluid mechanics, chemistry and biology to large scale systems of relevance in environmental and economic sciences

  Ilya Prigogine

  Environmental, Trends, Chemistry

  Ilya Prigogine (2003). “Is Future Given?”, p.22, World Scientific

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• Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Frustration, Law, Liberty

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• Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach. Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise - they are what they are.

  James Hansen

  Thinking, Law, Looks

  James Hansen (2011). “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity”, p.6, A&C Black

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• It's as if we think the laws of physics are subject to debate and amendment and political contributions can sway the laws of physics.

  Al Gore

  Thinking, Law, Political

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• It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mind, World, May

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.211, Modern Library

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• One aim of physical sciences had been to give an exact picture the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Giving, Achievement

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• The beauty of physics lies in the extent which seemingly complex and unrelated phenomena can be explained and correlated through a high level of abstraction by a set of laws which are amazing in their simplicity.

  Melvin Schwartz

  Lying, Science, Law

  Melvin Schwartz (2012). “Principles of Electrodynamics”, p.105, Courier Corporation

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• Eugene Wigner wrote a famous essay on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. He meant physics, of course. There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology.

  Israel Gelfand

  Effectiveness, Biology, Natural

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• We suppose that could be considered a hedged position for the awards committee, one that would never occur in the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry, where a prize shared among three with divergent views would be an embarrassing mistake or a bad joke. While a Nobel Prize might well be the culmination of a life’s work, shouldn’t the work accurately describe the real world?

  Seth Klarman

  Real, Mistake, Awards

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