What Do These Famous Quotes Reveal About the Minds of Great Scientists?

[Auto-Didact]

As Archimedes says, “It is easier to supply the proof when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.” In other words, by noodling around, playing with the Method, he gets a feel for the territory. And that guides him to a watertight proof.
This is such an honest account of what it’s like to do creative mathematics. Mathematicians don’t come up with the proofs first. First comes intuition. Rigor comes later. This essential role of intuition and imagination is often left out of high-school geometry courses, but it is essential to all creative mathematics.
- Steven Strogatz

 

[BillTre]

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
in the essay: Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
by Theodosius Dabzhansky

An essay written to encourage the teaching of biological evolution in schools (vs. creationism).
Dobzhansky had religious beliefs, but was very important in producing the modern synthesis, which brought together:

• evolutionary thought (natural selection for particular nitches)
• genetics (including mutations; not understood in Darwin's time;
  Mendel was only rediscovered in 1900 (but first published in 1866, a few years after the Origin of Species!))
• population genetics (newly created)
• a better understanding of the Earth's geological and evolutionary history.

More modern (post modern synthesis) additions to evolutionary thought might include:

• an understanding of the importance of DNA (and molecular/cellular biology) in the evolutionary process (starts 1953)
• immense amounts of evolutionary data in DNA sequences
• understanding random genetic drift's effects on evolution
• generative processes: considering developmental processes and emergent (higher order) phenomena (that arise in the proper, larger scale environment) effects on the generation of biological structure

 

[Auto-Didact]

One should mention that a quantization of the gravitational field, which appears to be necessary for physical reasons, may be carried out without any new difficulties by means of a formalism wholly analogous to that applied here.
- Heisenberg and Pauli (1929, p. 3)

 

[Duplex]

"Einstein was a giant, his head was in the clouds while his feet were firmly on the ground. The rest of us must pick one."
- Richard Feynman

 

[Auto-Didact]

Operationalism is not sidestepping the need for philosophical analysis, but is itself just bad philosophy!
- Michael Redhead

 

[A M]

A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.

 

[A M]

-A.Einstein (as written in the title!)

 

[Klystron]

"Stupidity got us here. Why can't it get us out?"

--English translation of Latin vulgate attributed to Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay trapped inside the walls of Ascalon. Probably apocryphal but Bernard was well educated.

...a setback for Ascalon occurred in August when the besieged tried to burn down one of the crusader siege towers; the wind pushed the fire back against their own walls, causing a large section to collapse. According to William of Tyre, knights of the Order rushed through the breach without Baldwin's knowledge where Bernard de Tremelay and about forty of his Templars were killed by the larger Egyptian garrison. Their bodies were displayed on the ramparts and their heads were sent to the caliph in Cairo.

 

[PGaccount]

"raffiniert ist der hergott, aber boshaft ist er nicht" - A. Einstein.

 

[PGaccount]

"It was not the love of something or someone, the image and the symbol, the word and the pictures. It wasn't an emotion that fades and is cruel; the symbol, the word can be substituted but not the thing."

 

[Auto-Didact]

Where in the Schrödinger equation do you put the joy of being alive?
- Eugene Wigner

 

[Vanadium 50]

"How can one smile when one is thinking of the anomalous Zeeman effect?" - W. Pauli

 

[Vanadium 50]

"An inordinate fondness for beetles" - JBS Haldane.

 

[strangerep]

"How can one smile when one is thinking of the anomalous Zeeman effect?" - W. Pauli

"How can one smile when one is (trying to) work with W. Pauli?" - E. Stuckelberg.

 

[Auto-Didact]

If you make axioms, rather
than definitions and theorems, about the ‘measurement’ of anything else, then
you commit redundancy and risk inconsistency.
- John Bell 1982

 

[Auto-Didact]

Only, they [logicists and formalists] must commit it the day they wish to make any application of mathematics. This science has not as sole object the eternal contemplation of its own navel; it has to do with nature and some day it will touch it. Then it will be necessary to shake off purely verbal definitions and to stop paying oneself with words.
- Henri Poincaré

 

[Demystifier]

Quantum foundations is to quantum physics what mathematical analysis is to calculus.
- Hrvoje Nikolić

 

[Auto-Didact]

"So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them."

"There are many interesting phenomena … which involve a mixture of physical phenomena and physiological processes, and the full appreciation of natural phenomena, as we see them, must go beyond physics in the usual sense. We make no apologies for making these excursions into other fields, because the separation of fields, as we have emphasized, is merely a human convenience, and an unnatural thing. Nature is not interested in our separations, and many of the interesting phenomena bridge the gaps between fields."
- Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Richard Feynman
"No one understands quantum mechanics"
https://www.quora.com/What-did-Rich...-he-said-No-one-understands-quantum-mechanics

 

[pinball1970]

There is no god and Paul Dirac is his prophet (Pauli)

 

[epenguin]

"How can one smile when one is (trying to) work with W. Pauli?" - E. Stuckelberg.

There is no god and Paul Dirac is his prophet (Pauli)

Re Pauli, I don't know which he is more famous for, his exclusion principle or his "not even wrong" put-down, but I came across an echo of the latter the other day in an article attacking Jordan Peterson (who I expect it would be taboo to discuss on this site):

"I don’t mean to say that all of what Peterson says is in the category of the “not even wrong.” Some of it is actually just wrong."https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve

 

[epenguin]

And the link that was supplied ^^^ to clarify the meaning of "not even wrong" yielded another quip by Pauli:
"What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."

( Peierls, R. (1960). "Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, 1900–1958". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 5: 186. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1960.0014. )

 

[Auto-Didact]

In fact, QFT is just wrong! Quantum mechanics is all-encompassing. A correct theory must include quantum gravity and QFT is not up to the task.
- Sheldon Lee Glashow

 

[afcsimoes]

"So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them."

"There are many interesting phenomena … which involve a mixture of physical phenomena and physiological processes, and the full appreciation of natural phenomena, as we see them, must go beyond physics in the usual sense. We make no apologies for making these excursions into other fields, because the separation of fields, as we have emphasized, is merely a human convenience, and an unnatural thing. Nature is not interested in our separations, and many of the interesting phenomena bridge the gaps between fields."
- Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures

Hi Auto-Didact
I like your posts. You apears to me as a person with open mind and not slave of dogmas that can block scientific progress.
Do you know the work of a portuguese scientist that has developed a new way tward unification of relativity and quantum theory? If you are curious about please go to his professional profile at http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt/equipa/jcroca.php
Best regards

 

[Auto-Didact]

The open problems in the area of non-linear partial differential equations are very relevant to applied mathematics and science as a whole, perhaps more so than the open problems in any other area of mathematics, and this field seems poised for rapid development. It seems clear, however, that fresh methods must be employed.
- John Nash (1958)

 

[Auto-Didact]

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
- Henri Poincaré

 

[BillTre]

So is biological taxonomy.

 

[Klystron]

"Eureka!" (Greek: "εὕρηκα", "I have found [it]!").

-- attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse

 

[jbriggs444]

"The most exciting phrase in science is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny ...'

-- Isaac Asimov

 

[Auto-Didact]

Every mathematician believes that he is ahead of the others. The reason none state this belief in public is because they are intelligent people.
-- Kolmogorov

 

[Auto-Didact]

So is biological taxonomy.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Rutherford

 

[BillTre]

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Rutherford

 

[Auto-Didact]

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living.
- Henri Poincaré

 

[AlexCaledin]

" . . . there is a pleasure in recognizing old things from a new point of view."

- Richard Feynman, 1948 :

 

[DEvens]

“In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.”

― Richard Feynman