Trascendental quotes

Lee Smolin

Science is not about what’s true or may be true… Science is about what people with originally diverse viewpoints can be forced to believe by the weight of public evidence.

The most important thing that matters [in physics] is real results that make contact with experiments, it doesn’t matter how we get there...

Hendrik Lorentz

In a theory which has given results like these, there must certainly be a great deal of truth...

Immanuel Kant 

(1724-1804)

• Reason can only know what reason itself can produce. 

Karl Popper

(1902-1994)

• Scientific knowledge is nothing but the refinement of vulgar knowledge.

Newton a truly cartesian:

• Third letter from Newton to Bentley in 1692: "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter, without mutual contact, as it must do if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe 'innate gravity' to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.

(1642-1727)

• Letter from Newton to Robert Hooke dated 1676: "What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders of Giants."

• Letter from Newton to Henry Oldenburg (and later to Robert Boyle) in 1675:
• "Gravity is the result of a condensation causing a flow of ether with a corresponding thinning of the ether density associated with the increased velocity of flow."

Oliver Lodge: The Prophet

(1851-1940)

Newton, as was known, did not understand the nature of gravitation. We do not understand it now. Einstein's theory would not help us understand it. If Einstein's third prediction [gravitational redshift] were verified, Einstein's theory would dominate all higher physics and the next generation of mathematical physicists would have a terrible time. Such things as university courses for all practical purposes would be continued upon Galilean and Newtonian dynamics, but the Einstein school could not fail to interest, sooner or later, every intelligent man.

Einstein-Bohr debate

 Einstein: I am convinced that he (God) does not play dice!
 Bohr's reply: But how do you know what god is doing? Stop telling God what to do!











Lord Kelvin:

(1825-1907)

"In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."