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

[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

 

[Auto-Didact]

Read Euler, read Euler. He is the master of us all.
- Laplace

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

• James Peebles
• Michel Mayor
• Didier Queloz

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019 was awarded "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos" with one half to James Peebles "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology", the other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star."

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/

 

[epenguin]

Not by a scientist but in line with themes here:

To formulate general ideas is to change saltpeter into gunpowder.Formuler des idées générales, c'est changer le salpêtre en poudre.—A. DE MUSSET, Confessions d'un Enfant du Siecle,

 

[Klystron]

"Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics. "

-- Eric Temple Bell author of Men of Mathematics.

 

[waternohitter]

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it. ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

[Andre]

...the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?

Freeman Dyson

(Foreword to GWPF report #18 Goklany, I.M. 2015, Carbon dioxide, The good news)

 

[ThatGuyIS]

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein

by definition it’s common for people to use the word logic versus common sense even those there’s an infinite amount of options to choose from through being irrational... While logic is a strict principle of choice(s)

 

[Auto-Didact]

Mathematics is too important to be abandoned to fanatic logicians.
- Benoit B. Mandelbrot

 

[sysprog]

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein

If you cain't fix it with duct tape, then you ain't usin' enough duct tape.

 

[Auto-Didact]

It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.
- Henri Poincaré