FridayJan 23, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about and.
Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the 'cat without a grin' and the 'grin without a cat' are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.
It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.
For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.
Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematize what it reveals. He arrives at two
It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.
Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.
I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709, 366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
Something unknown is doing we don't know what.
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