This should sort a few things out. All too often in physics familiarity is a substitute for understanding. ―Y. Choquet-Bruhat and C. DeWitt-Morette [CdW82] Yet progress and development depend upon the making of this contact with what is unfamiliar and unknown. ―F. M. Alexander Too many people develop a mania for assuming the role of one to ”show the way” without first developing the mania for gaining the knowledge and experience which would justify them in assuming the role. Too many people want to teach others that which they are not prepared to learn themselves; and hence we have a gradual increase in the numbers of the blind leading the blind. ―F. M. Alexander ...; sed ne res ipsa necessum intestinum habeat cunctis in rebus agendis et devicta quasi cogatur ferre patique, id facit exiguum clinamen principiorum nec regione loci certa nec tempore certo. TITI LVCRETI CARI DE RERVM NATVRA LIBER SECVNDVS vv. 289–293 Quanto poi a quello che l’intelletto, oltre ai sensi, possa apprendere, il discorso e la mente mia non si sa accomodare a concepirlo [l’Universo] n´e finito, n´e infinito. G. Galilei (a letter) To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man. ―William Shakespeare There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ―William Shakespearehakespeare Everything in the future is a wave, everything in the past is a particle. ―L. Bragg The reason Dick’s physics was so hard for ordinary people to grasp was that he did not use equations. The usual way theoretical physics was done since the time of Newton was to begin by writing down some equations and then to work hard calculating solutions of the equations... He had a physical picture of the way things happen, and the picture gave him the solution directly with a minimum of calculation. It was no wonder that people who had spent their lives solving equations were baffled by him. Their minds were analytical; his was pictorial. ―F. Dyson on R. Feynman [Ka93] I was sort of half-dreaming, like a kid would... that it would be funny if these funny pictures turned out to be useful, because the damned Physical Review would be full of these odd-looking things. And that turned out to be true. ―R. Feynman [Ka93] It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment...because the discrepancy may be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. ―P.A.M. Dirac [Ka93] The war against infinities was ended. There was no longer any reason to fear the higher approximations. The renormalization took care of all infinities and provided an unambiguous way to calculate with any desired accuracy any phenomenon resulting from the coupling of electrons with the electromagnetic field... It is like Hercules’ fight against Hydra, the manyheaded sea monster that grows a new head for every one cut off. But Hercules won the fight, and so did the physicists. V. Weisskopf [Ka93]
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 23:04:26 +0000
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