“Ours, according to Leibnitz, is the best of all possible worlds, and the laws of nature can therefore be described in terms of extremal principles. Thus, arising from corresponding variational problems, the differential equations of mechanics have invariance properties relative to certain groups of coordinate transformations.”

— Carl Ludwig Siegel

[Lectures on Celestial Mechanics, https://books.google.com/books?id=mZtrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1] (p. 1)

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Carl Ludwig Siegel 3

German mathematician 1896–1981

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“The minimum principle that unified the knowledge of light, gravitation, and electricity of Hamilton's time no longer suffices to relate these fundamental branches of physics. Within fifty years of its creation, the belief that Hamilton's principle would outlive all other physical laws of physics was shattered. Minimum principles have since been created for separate branches of physics… but these are not only restricted… but seem to be contrived…
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“It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there can be no offense.”

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Ibid. p. 53
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

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Carl Ludwig Siegel 3

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