quotations about physics
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
ERNEST RUTHERFORD
attributed, Physics and the Human Body: Stories of Who Discovered What
Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.
WOODY ALLEN
attributed, The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist's Guide to the Neverending Universe
Physics is experience arranged in economical order.
ERNST MACH
attributed, The Basics of Physics
Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.
RIVKA GALCHEN
"Dream Machine", The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012
We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.
ROGER PENROSE
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
Those reductionists who try to reduce life to physics usually try to reduce it to primitive physics -- not to good physics. Good physics is broad enough to contain life, to encompass life in its description since good physics allows a vast field of possible descriptions. There is no reason why living beings should be compared to primitive machines which don't make use of feedback.
CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSACKER
Theoria to Theory
Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn't stand was this shrinking everything into ... hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
Privacy, in fact, was almost as desirable for physics as it was for sex.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Physics is the most fundamental of the sciences, undergirding astronomy, chemistry, geology, biology, and--absent some paradigm-shattering revelation--human thought and action. Its analytical methods and machines have plumbed the unknown and the inaccessible, from the submicroscopic confines of the atomic nucleus to the billowing expanse of the observable universe. Physics has superseded our biochemically mediated perceptions of the world, replacing qualitative impressions with highly precise quantitative models: We can't dive into the sun to see what's going on, yet we can accomplish as much with a physics-derived computer simulation.
ALAN HIRSHFELD
"Hitching a Ride on a Light Beam", Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2016
Most people think of "seeing" and "observing" directly with their senses. But for physicists, these words refer to much more indirect measurements involving a train of theoretical logic by which we can interpret what is "seen."
LISA RANDALL
New York Times, September 18, 2005
The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe--even a positivist one--remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
The Phenomenon of Man
The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece.
DAN BROWN
Angels & Demons
Some string theorists prefer to believe that string theory is too arcane to be understood by human beings, rather than consider the possibility that it might just be wrong.
LEE SMOLIN
The Trouble with Physics
It is impossible, and it has always been impossible, to grasp the meaning of what we nowadays call physics independently of its mathematical form.
JACOB KLEIN
Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
To what extent can physics be abridged for popular consumption before it loses its essential meaning? How apt are the metaphors that stand in for the overtly mathematical processes that govern the universe? Is physics sans equations the Mona Lisa with a Charlie Brown smile?
ALAN HIRSHFELD
"Hitching a Ride on a Light Beam", Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2016
And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities, but pointer-readings which we can observe, The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber.
ARTHUR STANLEY EDDINGTON
The Domain of Physical Science
Physics advances in two manners. Either physicists see something they don't understand and develop a new hypothesis to explain it, or they expand on existing hypotheses that are in good working order. Today many physicists are wasting time following a third way: trying to guess arbitrarily. This has never worked in the past and is not working now.
CARLO ROVELLI
"Think Big: Can Physicists Ever Prove the Multiverse Is Real?", Smithsonian, April 19, 2016
The idea that what we're doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results -- it's very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects. So what's going on? Here's how I think about it. I can talk to you about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with you, because you've had your own headaches. The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume it's relevantly similar to mine. That's an assumption that could be false, but that's the source of my communication, and that's the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science.
DONALD HOFFMAN
"The Case Against Reality", The Atlantic, April 25, 2016
A lot of fundamental physics is the solemn statement of the absurdly obvious. Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefor objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.
NIELS BOHR
"The Unity of Human Knowledge", October 1960