On Physicists II

"Our environment may and should mean something towards us which is not to be measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician." (Arthur S Eddington, "Science and the Unseen World", 1929)

"In every important advance the physicist finds that the fundamental laws are simplified more and more as experimental research advances. He is astonished to notice how sublime order emerges from what appeared to be chaos. And this cannot be traced back to the workings of his own mind but is due to a quality that is inherent in the world of perception." (Albert Einstein, 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)

"[...] the mathematical physicist [...] obtains much prestige from the physicists because they are impressed with the amount of mathematics he knows, and much prestige from the mathematicians, because they are impressed with the amount of physics he knows." (William F G Swann, "The Architecture of the Universe", 1934)

"[…] there is probably less difference between the positions of a mathematician and of a physicist than is generally supposed, [...] the mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. This may seem a paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the subject-matter usually described as 'real', but [...] [a physicist] is trying to correlate the incoherent body of crude fact confronting him with some definite and orderly scheme of abstract relations, the kind of scheme he can borrow only from mathematics." (Godfrey H Hardy, "A Mathematician's Apology", 1940)

"At the present time it is of course quite customary for physicists to trespass on chemical ground, for mathematicians to do excellent work in physics, and for physicists to develop new mathematical procedures […] Trespassing is one of the most successful techniques in science." (Wolfgang Köhler, "Dynamics in Psychology", 1940)

"Physicists who are trying to understand nature may work in many different fields and by many different methods; one may dig, one may sow, one may reap. But the final harvest will always be a sheaf of mathematical formulae. These will never describe nature itself, hut only our observations on nature. Our studies can never put us into contact with reality; we can never penetrate beyond the impressions that reality implants in our minds." (James H Jeans, "Physics and Philosophy", 1942)

"Although we can never devise a pictorial representation which shall be both true to nature and intelligible to our minds, we may still be able to make partial aspects of the truth comprehensible through pictorial representations or parables. As the whole truth does not admit of intelligible representation, every such pictorial representation or parable must fail somewhere. The physicist of the last generation was continually making pictorial representations and parables, and also making the mistake of treating the half-truths of pictorial representations and parables as literal truths." (James H Jeans, "Physics and Philosophy" 3rd Ed., 1943)

"In time they [physicists] hoped to devise a model which would reproduce all the phenomena of physics, and so make it possible to predict them all. […] To-day we not only have no perfect model, but we know that it is of no use to search for one - it could have no intelligible meaning for us. For we have found out that nature does not function in a way that can be made comprehensible to the human mind through models or pictures. […] Although we can never devise a pictorial representation which shall be both true to nature and intelligible to our minds, we may still be able to make partial aspects of the truth comprehensible through pictorial representations or parables. As the whole truth does not admit of intelligible representation, every such pictorial representation or parable must fail somewhere. The physicist of the last generation was continually making pictorial representations and parables, and also making the mistake of treating the half-truths of pictorial representations and parables as literal truths." (James H Jeans, "Physics and Philosophy" 3rd Ed., 1943)

"It is to be hoped that in the future more and more theoretical physicists will command a deep knowledge of mathematical principles; and also that mathematicians will no longer limit themselves so exclusively to the aesthetic development of mathematical abstractions." (George D Birkhoff, "Mathematical Nature of Physical Theories" American Scientific Vol. 31 (4), 1943)