"There seems to me to be something analogous to polarized intensity in the pure imaginary part; and to unpolarized energy (indifferent to direction) in the real part of a quaternion: and thus we have some slight glimpse of a future Calculus of Polarities. This is certainly very vague […]" (Sir William R Hamilton, "On Quaternions; or on a new System of Imaginaries in Algebra", 1844)
"The next grand extensions of mathematical physics will, in
all likelihood, be furnished by quaternions." (Peter G Tait, "Note on a
Quaternion Transformation", [communication read] 1863)
"Nothing can be more fatal to progress than a too confident reliance on mathematical symbols; for the student is only too apt to take the easier course, and consider the formula not the fact as the physical reality." (William T Kelvin & Peter G Tait, "Treatise on Natural Philosophy", 1867)
"From the earliest times man's apprehension of the causes and
connections of natural phenomena has been rendered uncertain and imperfect by
his wilfully ignoring the great fact that Natural Philosophy is an
experimental, and not an intuitive, science."
"It is very desirable to have a word to express the Availability for work of the heat in a given magazine; a term for that possession, the waste of which is called Dissipation. Unfortunately the excellent word Entropy, which Clausius has introduced in this connexion, is applied by him to the negative of the idea we most naturally wish to express. It would only confuse the student if we were to endeavour to invent another term for our purpose. But the necessity for some such term will be obvious from the beautiful examples which follow. And we take the liberty of using the term Entropy in this altered sense [...] The entropy of the universe tends continually to zero." (Peter G Tait, "Sketch Of Thermodynamics", 1868)
"There is nothing physical to be learned a priori. We have no
right whatever to ascertain a single physical truth without seeking for it
physically, unless it be a necessary consequence of other truths already
acquired by experiment, in which case mathematical reasoning is alone
requisite." (Peter G Tait, "Lectures on Some Recent Advances in Physical Science,
With a Special, Lecture on Force", 1876)
"There is a necessity for perfect definiteness of language in all truly Scientific work." (Peter G Tait, "On the Formula of Evolution", Nature, November 23, 1880)
"An exact or adequate conception of matter itself, could we obtain it, would almost certainly be something extremely unlike any conception of it which our senses and our reason will ever enable us to form. [...] The discovery of the ultimate nature of matter is probably beyond the range of human intelligence." (Peter G Tait, "Properties of Matter", 1890)
"To [the scientific man] the discovery of a new law of
nature, or even of a new experimental fact, or the invention of a novel
mathematical method, no matter who has been the first to reach it, is an event
of an order altogether different from, and higher than, those which are so
profusely chronicled in the newspapers." (Peter G Tait)
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