“Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means.”

— Augustin-Jean Fresnel

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Context: In choosing a theory, one should pay attention to simplicity in hypotheses only. Simplicity in computation can be of no weight in the balance of probabilities. Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to be proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.

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Augustin-Jean Fresnel4

French engineer and physicist 1788–1827

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