Michael A. Sherbon > Michael's Quotes

“The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the unsolved problems of modern physics.”
― Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy

“For [Wolfgang] Pauli the central problem of electrodynamics was the field concept and the existence of an elementary charge which is expressible by the fine-structure constant ... 1/137. This fundamental pure number had greatly fascinated Pauli, .... For Pauli the explanation of the number 137 was the test of a successful field theory, a test which no theory has passed up to now.”
― Charles P. Enz, Pauli Lectures on Physics: Volume 1, Electrodynamics

“There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres. ”
― Pythagoras

“Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?”
― Isaac Newton, Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light-Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730

“The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.”
― D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
― Werner Heisenberg

“If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms, I am referring to coherent systems of hypotheses, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are “true,” that they reveal a genuine feature of nature…. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.”
― Werner Heisenberg

“A synthesis embracing both rational understanding and the mystical experience of unity is the mythos, spoken or unspoken, or our present day and age.”
― Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy

“Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.”
― Sir Isaac Newton

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“From the point of view of logic, my report on 'Exclusion principle and quantum mechanics' has no conclusion. I believe that it will only be possible to write the conclusion if a theory will be established which will determine the value of the fine structure constant and will thus explain the atomistic structure of electricity, which is such an essential quality of all atomic sources of electric fields actually occurring in nature.”
― Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
― Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Volume 5, 1709–1713

“Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion]. ”
― H. P. Blavatsky

“The menu is not the meal.”
― Alan Watts

“The highest court is in the end one’s own conscience and conviction—that goes for you and for Einstein and every other physicist—and before any science there is first of all belief.”
― Max Planck, Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Our friend Dirac has a creed; and the main tenet of that creed is: There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.”
― Wolfgang Pauli

“If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.”
― Fritjof Capra

“He (Comings) has in the past performed successful energy-converting experiments, creating a ringing resonance by injecting certain frequencies into piezo-electric crystals. When the crystal was in resonance with the plenum of space, the power output rose significantly higher than the input. He concluded that, if allowed politically, such discoveries could guide humankind in building a completely clean energy infrastructure -- resonant technologies that allow us to live in harmony with the universal energy field and the Earth.”
― Jeane Manning, Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-Leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World

“Resonance is a real 'here today' phenomena that just hasn't been looked at very carefully, and that is because of the (nonsense) that physicists have been putting out about 'energy' for decades. Electronic resonance has been used in radio tuners since their inception, while in the field of electric power resonance is avoided like the plague." "My system is not 'of the future' but here on this earth with all of the world's present problems." McKie said his real-world solid-state electronic system could be understood today, if physicists were not teaching that it cannot be achieved.
"...When physicists decide to 'come clean' and say that they don't know it all, we'll all be a lot closer to the gleaming world that you are describing.”
― Jeane Manning, Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-Leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World

“In terms of the spaceship Earth, the wrong crew is in command, and it’s time for a mutiny. ”
― Jose Arguelles

“It would be most satisfactory if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality”
― Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy

“In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Even a good, inveterate atheist like physicist Richard Feynman once said of the fine structure constant, “All good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it…. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the ‘hand of God’ wrote that number, and we don’t know how He pushed His pencil.”
― Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.”
― Joseph Campbell