Reality Quotes (20)
L'analyse mathématique, n'est elle donc qu'un vain jeu d'esprit? Elle ne peut pas donner au physicien qu'un langage commode; n'est-ce pa là un médiocre service, dont on aurait pu se passer à la rigueur; et même n'est il pas à craindre que ce langage artificiel ne soit pas un voile interposé entre la réalité at l'oeil du physicien? Loin de là, sans ce langage, la pluspart des anaologies intimes des choses nous seraient demeurées à jamais inconnues; et nous aurions toujours ignoré l'harmonie interne du monde, qui est, nous le verrons, la seule véritable réalité objective.
So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn't that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist's eye? Far from that, without this language most of the initimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.
So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn't that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist's eye? Far from that, without this language most of the initimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.
La valeur de la science. In Anton Bovier, Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems (2006), 6.
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
'The Lie of the Truth'. (1938) translated by Phil Powrie (1989). In Carol A. Dingle, Memorable Quotations (2000), 61.
But when you come right down to it, the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.
Regarding the atomic bomb project.
Regarding the atomic bomb project.
From speech at Los Alamos (17 Oct 1945). Quoted in David C. Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century (2009), 214.
See also: | Atomic Bomb (36) | Control (11) | Enquiry (58) | Light (39) | Mankind (34) | Necessity (16) | Research (208) | Scientist (71)
By convention sweet is sweet, by convention bitter is bitter, by convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention colour is colour. But in reality there are atoms and the void. That is, the objects of sense are supposed to be real and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real.
Cited as from Sext. Emp. Math. VII. 135, in Charles Montague Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), 60.
See also: | Atom (85) | Bitter (3) | Cold (7) | Colour (11) | Convention (2) | Real (4) | Sense (32) | Truth (241) | Void (2)
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
Tropic of Cancer (1980), 2.
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time, like 'Rite of Spring' in Disney's Fantasia ... our internal devils may destroy and renew us through the technological overload we've invoked.
Interview in Heavy Metal (Apr 1971). Reprinted in Re/Search, No. 8/9 (1984).
Everything is becoming science fiction; From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century
'Fictions of Every Kind'. In Books and Bookmen (Feb 1971).
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Upon identifying the reason for the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and his demonstration using immersion in iced water to show that O-rings grow brittle when cold.
Upon identifying the reason for the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and his demonstration using immersion in iced water to show that O-rings grow brittle when cold.
Concluding remark in Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. In (Jan 1987). In James B. Simpson, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations (1988).
Genuine religion has its root deep down in the heart of humanity and in the reality of things. It is not surprising that by our methods we fail to grasp it: the actions of the Deity make no appeal to any special sense, only a universal appeal; and our methods are, as we know, incompetent to detect complete uniformity. There is a principle of Relativity here, and unless we encounter flaw or jar or change, nothing in us responds; we are deaf and blind therefore to the Immanent Grandeur, unless we have insight enough to recognise in the woven fabric of existence, flowing steadily from the loom in an infinite progress towards perfection, the ever-growing garment of a transcendent God.
Continuity: The Presidential Address to the British Association (1913), 92-93.
See also: | Existence (44) | Flaw (4) | God (121) | Humanity (9) | Loom (2) | Perfection (12) | Progress (117) | Relativity (19) | Religion (68) | Surprise (8) | Uniformity (7)
In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (2002), 316.
See also: | Statement (4)
My God all that reality!
Actor's remark a doctor's profession.
Reality is complicated. There is no justification for all of the hasty conclusions.
Reality is cruel. All of the naivete is going to be removed. Reality is always changing, and it is always unpredictable. All of the balance is going to be destroyed.
Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.
Lecture, Austrian UNESCO Commision (30 Mar 1953), in Atomenergie und Frieden: Lise Meitner und Otto Hahn (1953), 23-4. Trans. Ruth Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (1996), 375.
See also: | Accept (2) | Admiration (4) | Awe (4) | Joy (8) | Objectivity (3) | People (10) | Science (444) | Teach (10) | Truth (241) | Wonder (16)
Scientific reasoning is a kind of dialogue between the possible and the actual, between what might be and what is in fact the case.
Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (1969), 48.
The assumptions of population thinking are diametrically opposed to those of the typologist. The populationist stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world. What is true for the human species,–that no two individuals are alike, is equally true for all other species of animals and plants ... All organisms and organic phenomena are composed of unique features and can be described collectively only in statistical terms. Individuals, or any kind of organic entities, form populations of which we can determine the arithmetic mean and the statistics of variation. Averages are merely statistical abstractions, only the individuals of which the populations are composed have reality. The ultimate conclusions of the population thinker and of the typologist are precisely the opposite. For the typologist, the type (eidos) is real and the variation. an illusion, while for the populationist the type (average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real. No two ways of looking at nature could be more different.
Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology (1959), 2.
See also: | Abstraction (4) | Animal (57) | Assumption (3) | Characteristic (12) | Description (8) | Difference (25) | Illusion (6) | Individual (10) | Nature (243) | Opposition (7) | Organism (25) | Plant (38) | Population (18) | Species (49) | Thinking (56) | Type (2) | Unique (2) | Variation (14)
The dedicated physician is constantly striving for a balance between personal, human values [and] scientific realities and the inevitabilities of God's will.
'The Brotherhood of Healing', address to the National Conference of Christians and Jews (12 Feb 1958). In James Beasley Simpson, Contemporary Quotations (1964), 177.
See also: | Balance (5) | Dedicated (2) | God (121) | Human (37) | Inevitable (3) | Personal (2) | Physician (138) | Strive (3) | Value (10) | Will (5)
This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.
Refering to James Clerk Maxwell's contributions to physics.
Refering to James Clerk Maxwell's contributions to physics.
'Maxwell's Influence on the Development of the Conception of Physical Reality', James Clerk Maxwell: A Commemorative Volume 1831-1931 (1931), 71.
Untruth naturally afflicts historical information. There are various reasons that make this unavoidable. One of them is partisanship for opinions and schools... Another reason making untruth unavoidable in historical information is reliance upon transmitters... Another reason is unawareness of the purpose of an event ... Another reason is unfounded assumption as to the truth of a thing. ... Another reason is ignorance of how conditions conform with reality... Another reason is the fact that people as a rule approach great and high-ranking persons with praise and encomiums... Another reason making untruth unavoidable—and this one is more powerful than all the reasons previously mentioned—is ignorance of the nature of the various conditions arising in civilization. Every event (or phenomenon), whether (it comes into being in connection with some) essence or (as the result of an) action, must inevitably possess a nature peculiar to its essence as well as to the accidental conditions that may attach themselves to it.
The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 2nd edition (1967), Vol. 1, 71-2.
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
In Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature (2000), 427.
See also: | Assertion (3) | Complexity (18) | Contradiction (8) | Difference (25) | Facet (2) | Idea (83) | Reconcile (4) | Succession (8)
