As usual, nature’s imagination far surpasses our own, as we have seen from the other theories which are subtle and deep.
This is not very important what I’m doing. I’m just proving something.
From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.
You see, the chemists have a complicated way of counting: instead of saying “one, two, three, four, five protons”, they say, “hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron.”
I’m trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS.
All we know so far is what doesn’t work.
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.
Computer science is not as old as physics; it lags by a couple of hundred years. However, this does not mean that there is significantly less on the computer scientist’s plate than on the physicist’s: younger it may be, but it has had a far more intense upbringing!
It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.
Science is of value because it can produce something.
If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you have made a great discovery.
Although it is uncertain, it is necessary to make science useful. Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done; it is not good if it only tells you what just went on.
It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.
People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail.
Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.
There are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess.
You do not know anything until you have practiced.
If you don’t like it, go somewhere else, to another universe where the rules are simpler.
No man is rich who is unsatisfied, but who wants nothing possess his heart’s desire.