"[All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to have a sufficient number of observations and a mathematics that is complex enough." (Nicolas de Condorcet)
"All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true." (Georg C Lichtenberg)
"All the effects of nature are only mathematical results of a small number of immutable laws." (Pierre Simon de Laplace)
"All the pictures which science draws of Nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational facts, are mathematical pictures." (Sir James Jeans)
"Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and hence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena." (Leonhard Euler)
"Among all of the mathematical disciplines the theory of differential equations is the most important […]. It furnishes the explanation of all those elementary manifestations of nature which involve time." (Sophus Lie)
"Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature." (Camille Paglia)
"But Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end." (Aristotle, "Generation of Animals")
"Engineering is the art or science of utilizing, directing or instructing others in the utilization of the principles, forces, properties and substances of nature in the production, manufacture, construction, operation and use of things [...] or of means, methods, machines, devices and structures [...]" (Alfred W Kiddle)
"Ever since the observation of nature has existed, it has held a vague notion of its ultimate goal as the composition of the colorful multiplicity of phenomena in a uniform system, where possible, in a single formula." (Max Planck)
"I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author." (Gottfried W Leibniz)
"I believe we can attach mathematically everything in nature and in the world of change." (Iambilichus)
"If nature leads to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty - to forms that no one has previously encountered - we cannot help thinking that they are true and that they revealed genuine features of Nature." (Werner K Heisenberg)
"If this seems complex, the reason is because Tao [nature] is both simple and complex. It is complex when we try to understand it, and simple when we allow ourselves to experience it." (Stanley Rosenthal)
"In the study of Nature conjecture must be entirely put aside, and vague hypothesis carefully guarded against. The study of Nature begins with facts, ascends to laws, and raises itself, as far as the limits of man’s intellect will permit, to the knowledge of causes, by the threefold means of observation, experiment and logical deduction." (Jean Baptiste-Andre Dumas)
"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)
"It is impossible to transcend the laws of nature. You can only determine that your understanding of nature has changed." (Nick Powers)
"it is the most widely accepted axiom in the natural science that Nature makes use of the fewest possible means" (Johannes Kepler)
"It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature." (Albert Einstein)
"Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means." (Heinrich Heine)
"Look deep, deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything." (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)
"Mathematics is a spirit of rationality. It is this spirit that challenges, simulates, invigorates and drives human minds to exercise themselves to the fullest. It is this spirit that seeks to influence decisively the physical, normal and social life of man, that seeks to answer the problems posed by our very existence, that strives to understand and control nature and that exerts itself to explore and establish the deepest and utmost implications of knowledge already obtained." (Morris Kline)
"Much of the history of science, like the history of religion, is a history of struggles driven by power and money. And yet, this is not the whole story. Genuine saints occasionally play an important role, both in religion and science. For many scientists, the reward for being a scientist is not the power and the money but the chance of catching a glimpse of the transcendent beauty of nature." (Freeman J Dyson)
"Natural Philosophy consists in discovering the frame and operations of Nature, and reducing them, as far as may be, to general Rules or Laws - establishing these rules by observations and experiments, and thence deducing the causes and effects of things." (Isaac Newton)
"Nature always acts in the mathematically shortest and best possible way." (Robert Grosseteste)
"Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring." (John Herschel)
"Nature considered rationally, that is to say, submitted to the process of thought, is a unity in diversity of phenomena; a harmony, blending together all created things, however dissimilar in form and attributes; one great whole animated by the breath of life." (Alexander von Humboldt)
"Nature imitates mathematics." (Gian-Carlo Rota)
"Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes." (Sir Issac Newton)
"Nature responds only to questions posed in mathematical language, because nature is the domain of measure and order." (Alexandre Koyré)
"Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop." (Chen Ning Yang)
"Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole; and thus, when she manifests herself in any part of that whole, the rest must serve as a basis for that particular manifestation, and the latter must have a relationship to the rest of the system." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"One might describe the mathematical quality in Nature by saying that the universe is so constituted that mathematics is a useful tool in its description. However, recent advances in physical science show that this statement of the case is too trivial. The connection between mathematics and the description of the universe goes far deeper than this, and one can get an appreciation of it only from a thorough examination of the various facts that make it up." (Paul A M Dirac)
"One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics." (Henri Poincare)
"Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas." (Albert Einstein)
"Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect." (Hermann Weyl)
"The closer we get to know the creatures around us, the clearer is the understanding we obtain of the chain of nature, and its harmony and system, according to which all things appear to have been created." (Carl Linnaeus)
"[…] the desire to understand nature has had on the development of mathematics the most important and happiest influence." (Henri Poincare)
"The equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle." (Edward Witten )
"The human understanding is of its own nature prone to abstractions and gives us a substance and reality to thing which are fleeting. But to resolve nature into abstractions is less to our purpose than to dissect her into parts." (Francis Bacon)
"The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God." (Euclid)
"The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics […]" (Galileo Galilei)
"The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency." (Herbert Read)
"The object of education is not only to produce a man who knows, but one who does; who makes his mark in the straggle of life and succeeds well in whatever he undertakes: who can solve the problems of nature and of humanity as they arise, and who, when he knows he is right, can boldly convince the world of the fact." (Henry A Rowland)
"The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what is in the preceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence which at a given instant knew all the forces acting in nature and the position of every object in the universe - if endowed with a brain sufficiently vast to make all necessary calculations - could describe with a single formula the motions of the largest astronomical bodies and those of the smallest atoms. To such an intelligence, nothing would be uncertain; the future, like the past, would be an open book." (Pierre-Simon Laplace)
"The profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical discoveries." (Joseph Fourier)
"The randomness which lies at the very foundations of pure mathematics of necessity permeates every human description of nature" (Joseph Ford)
"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp." (Henri Poincaré)
"The secret of nature is symmetry. When searching for new and more fundamental laws of nature, we should search for new symmetries." (David Gross)
"The simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made." (Ralph W Emerson)
"The way physics explains Nature is to speak in terms of the consequences of a few very basic equations." (Ekkehard Peik)
"The way to determine the secret workings of Nature is from analogous cases where one has caught her in act." (Georg C Lichtenberg)
"There is poetry in science and the cultivation of the imagination is an essential prerequisite to the successful investigation of nature." (Joseph Henry)
"We know many laws of nature and we hope and expect to discover more. Nobody can foresee the next such law that will be discovered. Nevertheless, there is a structure in laws of nature which we call the laws of invariance. This structure is so far-reaching in some cases that laws of nature were guessed on the basis of the postulate that they fit into the invariance structure." (Eugene P Wigner)
"What we can observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." (Werner Heisenberg)
"Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap. For example she could not produce a horse if it were not preceded by all the other animals on which she ascends to the horse’s structure as if on the rungs of a ladder. Thus every one thing exists for the sake of all things and all for the sake of one; for the one is of course the all as well. Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole; and thus, when she manifests herself in any part of that whole, the rest must serve as a basis for that particular manifestation, and the latter must have a relationship to the rest of the system." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (Tony Rothman)
"When the consequences of either assumption are the same, we should always assume that things are finite rather than infinite in number, since in things constituted by nature that which is infinite and that which is better ought, if possible, to be present rather than the reverse […]" (Aristotle)
"Whence is it that nature does nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?" (Sir Isaac Newton)
"Whether man is disposed to yield to nature or to oppose her, he cannot do without a correct understanding of her language." (Jean Rostand)
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