Quotes About Physics

The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.

Heat cannot of itself pass from a colder to a hotter body.

For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.

First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists

M]odern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word: they are forms, structures, or – in Plato's sense – Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.

cosmologists have come to the conclusion that known kinds of matter and energy constitute only about 4 per cent of the universe. The rest consists of dark matter and dark energy. The nature of 96 per cent of physical reality is literally obscure.8

Spallanzani was a genial, round-faced, baldheaded man who looked a bit like actor Wally Shawn. Born in northern Italy in 1729 to a lawyer and his well-connected wife, at the age of twenty he embarked on the study of law at the University of Bologna, where his cousin Laura Bassi was the first female professor of physics and mathematics in Europe.

Electrons move through reality. You're not going to be able to emulate everything the electrons are doing, in software.

Physics is geometric proof on steroids.

In order to live in accord with nature, it is necessary to know what nature is; and to this end a threefold division of philosophy is made—into Physics, dealing with the universe and its laws, the problems of divine government and teleology; Logic, which trains the mind to discern true from false; and Ethics, which applies the knowledge thus gained and tested to practical life.

The modern worldview yields a material understanding of reality. What is real is the space-time world of matter and energy. Reality is made up of tiny bits and pieces of "stuff," all of them interacting with each other in accord with "natural laws." The result is a picture of the universe as a closed system of cause and effect. Although this worldview has already been superseded in theoretical physics, it continues to operate powerfully in our minds.

ait enim declinare atomum sine causa; quo nihil turpius physico, quam fieri quicquam sine causa dicere, — et

At the subatomic level, you can't even say that matter exists. You can only say that it has a tendency to exist.' 'You're confusing Cordelia," I say. Cordelia has lit a cigarette and is looking out the window, where several squirrels are chasing one another around the lawn. She is paying no attention to any of this. Stephen considers Cordelia. "Cordelia has a tendency to exist," is what he says.

Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve; but no government-subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm.

In 1948 I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undecided between studies of chemistry and physics, but my first year convinced me that physics was more interesting to me.

The influence of modern physics goes beyond technology. It extends to the realm of thought and culture where it has led to a deep revision in man's conception of the universe and his relation to it

Time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.

After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.

I like physics. I think it is the best science out of all three of them, because generally it's more useful. You learn about speed and velocity and time, and that's all clever stuff.

The quantum is that embarrassing little piece of thread that always hangs from the sweater of space-time. Pull it and the whole thing unravels.

Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.

The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.

Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. Where did the totality of reality come from? Did time have a beginning?

our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up