"Standing on our microscopic fragment of a grain of sand, we attempt to discover the nature and purpose of the universe which surrounds our home in space and time." (Sir James H Jeans, "The Mysterious Universe", 1930)
"The chain of cause and effect could be quantitatively verified only if the whole universe were considered as a single system - but then physics has vanished, and only a mathematical scheme remains. The partition of the world into observing and observed system prevents a sharp formulation of the law of cause and effect." (Werner K Heisenberg, "The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory", 1930)
"The stream of human knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm." (Sir James Jeans, "The Mysterious Universe", 1930)
"The distinguishing feature of modern scientific thought lies in the fact that it begins by discarding all a priori conceptions about the nature of reality - or about the ultimate nature of the universe - such as had characterized practically all Greek philosophy and all medieval thinking as well, and takes instead, as its starting point, well-authenticated, carefully tested experimental facts, no matter whether these facts seen at the moment to fit into any general philosophical scheme or not - that is, no matter whether they seem at the moment to be reasonable or not." (Robert A Millikan, "Professor Einstein at the California Institute of Technology", Science Vol. 73 (1893), 1931)
"A Weltanschauung [worldview] is an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis, which, accordingly, leaves no question unanswered and in which everything that interests us finds its fixed place [...] the worldview of science already departs noticeably from our definition. It is true that it too assumes the uniformity of the explanation of the universe; but it does so only as a programme, the fulfillment of which is relegated to the future." Sigmund Freud, "New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis", 1932)
"[…] the supreme task of the physicist is the discovery of the most general elementary laws from which the world-picture can be deduced logically. […] the fact that in science we have to be content with an incomplete picture of the physical universe is not due to the nature of the universe itself but rather to us." (Albert Einstein, [preface to Max Planck's "Where is Science Going?"] 1933)
"[...] our knowledge of the external world must always consist of numbers, and our picture of the universe - the synthesis of our knowledge - must necessarily be mathematical in form. All the concrete details of the picture, the apples, the pears and bananas, the ether and atoms and electrons, are mere clothing that we ourselves drape over our mathematical symbols - they do not belong to Nature, but to the parables by which we try to make Nature comprehensible." (Sir James H Jeans, "The New World-Picture of Modern Physics", Supplement to Nature, Vol. 134 (3384), 1934)
"[…] our knowledge of the external world must always consist of numbers, and our picture of the universe - the synthesis of our knowledge - must necessarily be mathematical in form." (Sir James H Jeans, "The New World-Picture of Modern Physics", Supplement to Nature Vol. 134 (3384), 1934)
"What is the inner secret of mathematical power? Briefly stated, it is that mathematics discloses the skeletal outlines of all closely articulated relational systems. For this purpose mathematics uses the language of pure logic with its score or so of symbolic words, which, in its important forms of expression, enables the mind to comprehend systems of relations otherwise completely beyond its power. These forms are creative discoveries which, once made, remain permanently at our disposal. By means of them the scientific imagination is enabled to penetrate ever more deeply into the rationale of the universe about us." (George D Birkhoff, "Mathematics: Quantity and Order", 1934)
"There is no certainty vouchsafed us in the vast testimony of Nature that the universe was designed for man, nor yet for any purpose, even the bleak purpose of symmetry. The courageous thinker must look the inimical aspects of his environment in the face, and accept the stern fact that the universe is hostile and deadly to him save for a very narrow zone where it permits him, for a few eons, to exist." (Donald C Peattie, "An Almanac for Moderns", 1935)
"We love to discover in the cosmos the geometrical forms that exist in the depths of our consciousness. The exactitude of the proportions of our monuments and the precision of our machines express a fundamental character of our mind. Geometry does not exist in the earthly world. It has originated in ourselves. The methods of nature are never so precise as those of man. We do not find in the universe the clearness and accuracy of our thought. We attempt, therefore, to abstract from the complexity of phenomena some simple systems whose components bear to one another certain relations susceptible of being described mathematically." (Alexis Carrel, "Man the Unknown", 1935)
"Let us now discuss the extent of the mathematical quality in Nature. According to the mechanistic scheme of physics or to its relativistic modification, one needs for the complete description of the universe not merely a complete system of equations of motion, but also a complete set of initial conditions, and it is only to the former of these that mathematical theories apply. The latter are considered to be not amenable to theoretical treatment and to be determinable only from observation." (Paul A M Dirac, "The Relation Between Mathematics And Physics", Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh", 1938-1939)
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