Reality Quotes (8)

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.
La valeur de la science. In Anton Bovier, Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems (2006), 6.
See also:  |  Language (23)  |  Mathematics (139)  |  Physicist (13)

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 (2)

My God all that reality!
Anonymous
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.

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.
(Jan 1987). In James B. Simpson, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations (1988).
See also:  |  Disaster (6)  |  Experiment (138)  |  Nature (156)  |  Space Shuttle (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.
'Maxwell's Influence on the Development of the Conception of Physical Reality', James Clerk Maxwell: A Commemorative Volume 1831-1931 (1931), 71.
See also:  |  Electrodynamics (2)

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.
See also:  |  History (32)  |  Ignorance (37)  |  Truth (147)

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Original words on great scientific discoveries.
Darwin considers pros and cons of marriage.
James Clerk Maxwell's electric but poetic Valentine.
I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy. --Albert Einstein
I try to identify myself with the atoms...I ask what I would do if I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom. --Linus Pauling




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