Josiah Willard Gibbs Quotes (11 quotes)

Josiah Willard Gibbs: 11 quotes12 likes

Famous Josiah Willard Gibbs Quotes

“A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane.”

Quoted in R. B. Lindsay, "On the Relation of Mathematics and Physics," Scientific Monthly 59, 456 (Dec. 1944)
Attributed

“The laws of thermodynamics, as empirically determined, express the approximate and probable behavior of systems of a great number of particles, or, more precisely, they express the laws of mechanics for such systems as they appear to beings who have not the fineness of perception to enable them to appreciate quantities of the order of magnitude of those which relate to single particles, and who cannot repeat their experiments often enough to obtain any but the most probable results.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

From the preface to Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics (1902), p. viii. Full book https://archive.org/details/elementaryprinc00gibbgoog

“The whole is simpler than its parts.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

Quoted by Irving Fisher in "The Applications of Mathematics to the Social Sciences," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 36, 225-243 (1930). Full article http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183493954 <br class="br">Attributed

“Mathematics is a language.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

At a Yale faculty meeting, during a discussion of language requirements in the undergraduate curriculum. Quoted in Muriel Rukeyser, Willard Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942), p. 280.
Attributed

“One of the principal objects of theoretical research is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in the greatest simplicity.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

From Gibbs's letter accepting the Rumford Medal (1881). Quoted in A. L. Mackay, Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (London, 1994).

“If I have had any success in mathematical physics, it is, I think, because I have been able to dodge mathematical difficulties.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

Quoted by C. S. Hastings in "Biographical Memoir of Josiah Willard Gibbs 1839-1903," National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, vol. VI (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1909), p. 390. Complete memoir http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/jgibbs.pdf <br class="br">Attributed

Josiah Willard Gibbs Quotes

“His true monument lies not on the shelves of libraries, but in the thoughts of men, and in the history of more than one science.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

From Gibbs's obituary for Rudolf Clausius (1889). See The Collected Works of J. Willard Gibbs, vol. 2 (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), p. 267. Complete volume http://www.archive.org/details/collectedworksj00longgoog

“Anyone having these desires will make these researches.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

About his own scientific work. Quoted in Muriel Rukeyser, Willard Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942), p. 431.
Attributed

“In all these papers we see a love of honest work, an aversion to shams, a caution in the enunciation of conclusions, a distrust of rash generalizations and speculations based on uncertain premises. He was never anxious to add one more guess on doubtful matters in the hope of hitting the truth, or what might pass as such for a time, but was always ready to take infinite pains in the most careful testing of every theory. With these qualities was united a modesty which forbade the pushing of his own claims and desired no reputation except the unsought tribute of competent judges.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

From Gibbs's obituary for Hubert Anson Newton (1897), in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/hubert-newton.pdf.

“We avoid the gravest difficulties when, giving up the attempt to frame hypotheses concerning the constitution of matter, we pursue statistical inquiries as a branch of rational mechanics.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

From the preface to Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics (1902), p. ix.

“I wish to know systems.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs

Quoted in Muriel Rukeyser, Willard Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942), p. 4.
Attributed