On Puzzles I: Nature’s Puzzles

“Most people think of science as a series of steps forged in concrete, but it’s not. It’s a puzzle, and not all of the pieces will ever be firmly in place. When you’re able to fit some of the together, to see an answer, it’s thrilling.” (Nora Roberts, “Homeport”, 1998)

"Each of nature's patterns is a puzzle, nearly always a deep one. Mathematics is brilliant at helping us to solve puzzles. It is a more or less systematic way of digging out the rules and structures that lie behind some observed pattern or regularity, and then using those rules and structures to explain what's going on." (Ian Stewart, "Nature's Numbers: The unreal reality of mathematics", 1995)

“Everything in nature is a puzzle until it finds its solution in man, who solves it in some way with God, and so completes the circle of creation. “ (Theodore T Munger, “The Appeal to Life”, 1891)

“The art of science is knowing which observations to ignore and which are the key to the puzzle.” (Edward W Kolb, “Blind Watchers of the Sky”, 1996)

“In her manifold opportunities Nature has thus helped man to polish the mirror of [man’s] mind, and the process continues. Nature still supplies us with abundance of brain-stretching theoretical puzzles and we eagerly tackle them; there are more worlds to conquer and we do not let the sword sleep in our hand; but how does it stand with feeling? Nature is beautiful, gladdening, awesome, mysterious, wonderful, as ever, but do we feel it as our forefathers did?” (Sir John A Thomson, “The System of Animate Nature”, 1920)

“Where chaos begins, classical science stops. […] The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrosities.” (James Gleick, “Chaos”, 1987)

“The sciences have started to swell. Their philosophical basis has never been very strong. Starting as modest probing operations to unravel the works of God in the world, to follow its traces in nature, they were driven gradually to ever more gigantic generalizations. Since the pieces of the giant puzzle never seemed to fit together perfectly, subsets of smaller, more homogeneous puzzles had to be constructed, in each of which the fit was better.” (Erwin Chargaff, “Voices in the Labyrinth”, 1975)

“It is an outcome of faith that nature - as she is perceptible to our five senses - takes the character of such a well formulated puzzle.” (Albert Einstein)

“Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.” (Maria Goeppert-Mayer)