Quotes About Physics

These examples both demonstrate that the laws of physics, notably Newton's laws, are time-reversible. They work just as well backwards in time as forwards, and there is no place in them for the second law of thermodynamics. The fundamental laws of physics do not distinguish between past and future.

The image that emerges from quantum physics is similar in some ways to the way that the illusion that air, or water is a continuous fluid emerges. Myriad tiny particles separated by tiny gaps feels to you like a smooth fluid. Myriad quantum states separated by tiny gaps feels to you like a smooth flow of time. Zeno was right. The arrow of time points, but it does not move. THE

There is no absolute truth at the quantum level

In economics, models are spoken of as being made of physics when in truth they are made of Lego. They have that degree of provisionality and tentativeness and, importantly, rebuildability. There's a permanent invitation to take them apart and put them together again in a form that works better.

Spooky," I whispered under my breath, and wondered if the last thing I ever said was going to be a not-very-funny physics joke.

In the answer to one of these ancient philosophical questions, it turns out that nobody's idea of green is the same as anybody else's idea of green, at least on a species-level-but at least the physics for comparing them all is pretty straightforward.

My eyes don't quite glaze over when he starts talking about eleven-dimensional reality.

perhaps,thought Felix,that's what magic is--physics with a different twist to it. my world just hasn't discovered the twist.

I hope it will not shock experimental physicists too much if I say that we do not accept their observations unless they are confirmed by theory.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

And every minute Newton didn't spend working on optics, physics, astronomy (including inventing the reflecting telescope), some harmless alchemy, and other sidebars of his mathematical discipline, he spent furtively studying the Bible and church history.

Not everyone, however, bought the formula. Traditional Platonists found themselves like MIT graduates being confronted by people who claim to have learned plasma physics taking an Internet class over the summer. They were furious about what was happening and fought back hard.

All around him were stacks of books in Arabic on mathematics, astronomy, astrology, physics, and philosophy by various Greek and Arabic authorities. They included many works by Aristotle that no one in western Europe had opened in six hundred years.

finishing his final work on mechanics and physics, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences in 1638, four years before his death. Down to the end, Galileo protested that he was a better Aristotelian than his opponents because he believed in avoiding fallacies in reasoning, and because he believed "it is not possible that sensible experience is contrary to truth.

The limitations of Aristotle's teachings were becoming apparent just decades after his death. It was only after scientists began rigorously applying his methods instead of his doctrines that astronomy and physics and ultimately biology would begin to turn themselves around.

If the laws of physics are not strictly causal the most that can be said is that the behaviour of the conscious brain is one of the possible behaviours of a mechanical brain. Precisely so; and the decision between the possible behaviours is what we call volition.

The revelation by modern physics of the void within the atom is more disturbing than the revelation by astronomy of the immense void of interstellar space.

In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics". The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions.

Relativity physics is especially interested in invariants, and it has discovered and named a few more. It is a common mistake to suppose that Einstein's theory of relativity asserts that everything is relative. Actually, it says: 'There are absolute things in the world but you must look deeply for them. The things that first present themselves to your notice are for the most part relative'.

The appearance of a four-dimensional world is due to Minkowski. Einstein showed the relativity of the familiar quantities of physics; Minkowski showed how to recover the absolute by going back to their four-dimensional origin and searching more deeply.

Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism.

Neither matter, nor energy, nor anything capable of being used as a signal can travel faster than the speed of light. This limitation of the speed signalling to 299,796 kilometres a second seems a rather arbitrary decree of Nature.

The speed of 299,796 kilometres a second, which occupies a unique position in every measure-system, is commonly referred to as the speed of light. But it is much more than that; it is the speed at which the mass of matter becomes infinite, lengths contract to zero, clocks stand still.

The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.