“The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six words: ‘God said, Let there be light’.”

—  James Jeans , book The Mysterious Universe

The Mysterious Universe (1930)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves…" by James Jeans?
James Jeans photo
James Jeans 54
British mathematician and astronomer 1877–1946

Related quotes

Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

“The physical "reality" is assumed to be the wave function of the whole universe itself.”

Hugh Everett (1930–1982) American physicist, author of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

in an early draft of his doctoral dissertation (1950s).

“Earthquakes radiate waves with periods of tenths of seconds to several minutes. Rocks behave like elastic solids at these frequencies. Elastic solids allow a variety of wave types and this makes the ground motion after an earthquake or explosion (called an event) quite complex. There are two basic types of elastic wave: one involving compression and rarefaction of the elastic material in the direction of propagation of the wave, and one involving no compression but shear of the elastic material perpendicular to its direction of propagation. These are called P and S waves respectively, for primary and secondary since the P wave travels fastest and arrives first.”

David Gubbins (1947) British university teacher

[Seismology and plate tectonics, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990, http://books.google.com/books?id=tZRxPzwoChIC&pg=PA4] (pp. 4–5)
Seismology and Plate Tectonics (1990)

Lawrence M. Krauss photo

“Now, since the time of Newton there had been a debate about whether light was a wave---that is, a traveling disturbance in some background medium---or a particle, which travels regardless of the presence of a background medium. The observation of Maxwell that electromagnetic waves must exist and that their speed was identical to that of light ended the debate: light was an electromagnetic wave.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book The Physics of Star Trek

The Physics of Star Trek, HarperPerennial edition (1996), p. 17.

Carver Mead photo

“The quantum world is a world of waves, not particles. So we have to think of electron waves and proton waves and so on. Matter is 'incoherent' when all its waves have a different wavelength, implying a different momentum. On the other hand, if you take a pure quantum system – the electrons in a superconducting magnet, or the atoms in a laser – they are all in phase with one another, and they demonstrate the wave nature of matter on a large scale. Then you can see quite visibly what matter is down at its heart.”

Carver Mead (1934) American computer scientist

"An Interview with Carver Mead", American Spectator, Sep/Oct2001, Vol. 34 Issue 7, p68.

Bertrand Russell photo

“There is a connected set of events (light-waves) travelling outward from a centre… there are some respects in which all events are alike, and others in which they differ… We must not think of a light-wave as a 'thing', but as a connected group of rhythmical events. The mathematical characteristics of such a group can be inferred by physics, but the intrinsic character of the component events cannot be inferred.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s

James Jeans photo

“We saw that radiation cannot suitably be pictured as particles when it is traveling through space. There is a corresponding property for electrons; these should not be pictured as waves so long as they are traveling through empty space.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Bob Dylan photo

“I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

“Earthquakes generate elastic waves when one block of material slides against another; the break between the two blocks being called a fault. Explosions generate elastic waves by an impulsive change in volume in the material. Small explosive charges are used in controlled-source seismic experiments in which the waves penetrate only a few kilometres into the earth.”

David Gubbins (1947) British university teacher

(p. 12)
Seismology and Plate Tectonics (1990)

Related topics