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.
“With Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the fundamental role of experimental errors became a basic feature of physics.”
[Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, second edition, Academic Press, New York, 1962, 0-48643-918-6, 304]
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Léon Brillouin 4
French physicist 1889–1969Related quotes
[Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, second edition, Academic Press, New York, 1962, 0-48643-918-6, 308]
Mais en vertu de quel principe biologique fondamental, le plus grand nombre serait-il préservé de l’erreur?
L'Homme imaginant: essai de biologie politique (1970), p. 36
Source: Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2012, 2nd ed. 2015), Ch. 1: Historical Introduction
Source: Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic (1995), p. 1.
A Text-Book of Thermodynamics with Special Reference to Chemistry (1913)
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 441.