
“Atomic physics, was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century.”
Gustav Metzger: 'Destroy, and you create', 2012
Physics and Philosophy (1942)
“Atomic physics, was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century.”
Gustav Metzger: 'Destroy, and you create', 2012
"The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity" in Philosophical Magazine (September 1902)
“The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics.”
"Francis Ysidro Edgeworth", p. 286; Originally published in The Economic Journal, March 1926
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - John Maynard Keynes / Quotes / Essays In Biography (1933)
Essays In Biography (1933), Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
“PHYSICAL LAWS REST ON ATOMIC STATISTICS AND ARE THEREFORE ONLY APPROXIMATE”
What Is Life? (1944)
Context: What we call thought (1) is itself an orderly thing, and (2) can only be applied to material, i. e. to perceptions or experiences, which have a certain degree of orderliness. This has two consequences. First, a physical organization, to be in close correspondence with thought (as my brain is with my thought) must be a very well-ordered organization, and that means that the events that happen within it must obey strict physical laws, at least to a very high degree of accuracy. Secondly, the physical impressions made upon that physically well-organized system by other bodies from outside, obviously correspond to the perception and experience of the corresponding thought, forming its material, as I have called it. Therefore, the physical interactions between our system and others must, as a rule, themselves possess a certain degree of physical orderliness, that is to say, they too must obey strict physical laws to a certain degree of accuracy.
PHYSICAL LAWS REST ON ATOMIC STATISTICS AND ARE THEREFORE ONLY APPROXIMATE
"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=16m49s (16:50-17:23)
Context: The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.
“And then the Necromancers pulled out their sub-atomic machine guns.”
Source: Death Bringer
in Electromagnetic Traps for Charged and Neutral Particles, Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1989/paul-lecture.html, December 8, 1989.
Epilogue [footnote referenced E.T. Whittaker's Space and Spirit (1946)]
The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)