
“Learning an imposed method seemed not in my nature”
Quote from his autobiography,Unfinished Journey”
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin
Part II, The Encyclopedists, section 4
The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)
“Learning an imposed method seemed not in my nature”
Quote from his autobiography,Unfinished Journey”
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin
“All that has by nature, with systematic method, been arranged in the universe, seems”
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)
Context: All that has by nature, with systematic method, been arranged in the universe, seems both in part and as a whole to have been determined and ordered in accordance with number, by the forethought and the mind of him that created all things; for the pattern was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of number preëxistent in the mind of the world-creating God, number conceptual only and immaterial in every way, but at the same time the true and the eternal essence, so that with reference to it, as to an artistic plan, should be created all these things: time, motion, the heavens, the stars, all sorts of revolutions.<!--Book I, Chapter VI
“The method of guessing the equation seems to be a pretty effective way of guessing new laws”
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Context: …Dirac discovered the correct laws for relativity quantum mechanics simply by guessing the equation. The method of guessing the equation seems to be a pretty effective way of guessing new laws. This shows again that mathematics is a deep way of expressing nature, and any attempt to express nature in philosophical principles, or in seat-of-the-pants mechanical feelings, is not an efficient way.
Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. IV: Natural Versus Supernatural
When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. ...When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought.
"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness," 1995
Source: "Overcoming resistance to change." 1948, p. 520
Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 73.