Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist
Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->
Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 1. Basic Elements, p. 5
Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist
Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam ISBN 0521371406
1920s
Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician
Source: 1980s, Notes on an epistemology for living things, 1981, p.258
Paul Dirac (1902–1984) theoretical physicist
The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature (1963)
Context: It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.
Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist
Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)
John C. Slater (1900–1976) American physicist
[John Clarke Slater, Nathaniel Herman Frank, Electromagnetism, Courier Dover Publications, 1969, 0486622630, 11]
Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time
Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 1
Context: Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.
Nathan Seiberg (1956) American physicist
[Where Is Fundamental Physics Headed? (public talk), 2014, https://www.sns.ias.edu/sites/default/files/Where%20is%20Fundamental%20Physics%20Heading%20Public.pdf]