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Nature Quotes

“As usual, nature's imagination far surpasses our own, as we have seen from the other theories which are subtle and deep.”

Nature Imagination Theory Subtle Usual Surpassing

Book:The Quotable Feynman

Source: The Quotable Feynman

“Someone is an ignoramus who would say that, 'Oh, we had three hurricanes this year. This proves that somehow the climate is warming.' The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and you're going to say that we had four hurricanes and so it proves a theory?”

Years Reality Earth Science Three Politics Nature Party History Four Generations Theory Prove Climate Billions Ideology Tea Free Speech Hurricanes Tea Party

Author:Rand Paul

“Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of order into incoherence; it, too, hangs together, makes sense, leaves no loose ends, and is never (but never) at a loss for explanation. In a state of bewilderment it may therefore bring comfort and relief.... give its subject a new and deeper understanding of his own condition and of the nature of his relationship to his fellow men. A mythical structure will be built up around him which makes sense and is believable-in, regardless of whether or not it is true.”

“Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.”

Nature Century Theory Simplicity Physics Subtle Strings 20th Century Equations Elegant Describing Generalities String Theory

Author:Edward Witten

“Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated "building blocks," but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object's interaction with the observer.”

“You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.”

Art Nature Theory Painter Flats Fine Arts Famous Artist Art And Artists Inspirational Nature Fine Artists Nature And Art

Author:Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.”

Trying May Has Beens Seems Science Lying Found Process Nature Realizing Produce Theory Evolution Simplicity Complicated Biology Mechanism Simplest Physicist Clutter

Author:Francis Crick

“My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?”

“Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.”

Humans Facts Literature Nature Human Nature Theory

Author:Edith Hamilton

“It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO; rather, we propose a maze of theories, and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT.”

May Science Nature Natural Theory Propose Inconsistent Mazes

Book:The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers

Source: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers

“The existence of these patterns [fractals] challenges us to study forms that Euclid leaves aside as being formless, to investigate the morphology of the amorphous. Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, and have increasingly chosen to flee from nature by devising theories unrelated to anything we can see or feel.”

Feels Form Science Nature Challenges Existence Study Theory Patterns Chosen Mathematician Euclid Fractals Devising Morphology

Author:Benoit Mandelbrot

“The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.”

Thinking Enough Science Sound Nature Building Theory Ought Accounts Structure Experiments Exploration Worthwhile Hypothesis Contradictory Precarious

Author:Georg C. Lichtenberg

“We may affirm of Mr. Buffon, that which has been said of the chemists of old; though he may have failed in attaining his principal aim, of establishing a theory, yet he has brought together such a multitude of facts relative to the history of the earth, and the nature of its fossil productions, that curiosity finds ample compensation, even while it feels the want of conviction.”

Source: A history of the earth and animated nature, with an intr. view of the animal kingdom tr. from the Fr. of baron Cuvier, notes [and] a life of the author by W. Irving

“We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.‎”

Science Nature Natural Theory

Book:An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

Source: An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

“When an investigator has developed a formula which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say 'Foiled again! I can find out no more about Nature along this line.'”

Ifs Giving Should May I Can Science Certain Nature Natural Lines Theory Satisfaction Range Formulas Representation Wiser Investigators

Author:Arthur Eddington

“The great revelation of the quantum theory was that features of discreteness were discovered in the Book of Nature, in a context in which anything other than continuity seemed to be absurd according to the views held until then.”

Book Science Nature Views Theory Discovery Absurd Features Revelations Quantum Continuity Quantum Theory

Book:What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches

Source: What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches