“The conclusion seems to be irresistible that such laws of nature as the principle of conservation of energy, the principle of conservation of momentum and the law of gravitation are necessary consequences of our modes of measurement. They are, in fact, elaborately disguised identities which could have been predicted a priori by a being of sufficiently powerful analytical insight who fully understood all that is implied in the way we measure space-time intervals.”

— Ernest Barnes

As quoted by Gerald James Whitrow, The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Ernest Barnes 9

English mathematician and clergyman 1874–1953

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“Matter… could be measured as a quantity and… its characteristic expression as a substance was the Law of Conservation of Matter… This, which has hitherto represented our knowledge of space and matter, and which was in many quarters claimed by philosophers as a priori knowledge, absolutely general and necessary, stands to-day a tottering structure.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Introduction
Space—Time—Matter (1952)
Context: The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. and certainty Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church... had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science "more geometrico". Matter... could be measured as a quantity and... its characteristic expression as a substance was the Law of Conservation of Matter... This, which has hitherto represented our knowledge of space and matter, and which was in many quarters claimed by philosophers as a priori knowledge, absolutely general and necessary, stands to-day a tottering structure.

“Each of the most basic physical laws that we know corresponds to some invariance, which in turn is equivalent to a collection of changes which form a symmetry group. …whilst leaving some underlying theme unchanged. …for example, the conservation of energy is equivalent to the invariance of the laws of motion with respect to translations backwards or forwards in time… the conservation of linear momentum is equivalent to the invariance of the laws of motion with respect to the position of your laboratory in space, and the conservation of angular momentum to an invariance with respect to directional orientation… discovery of conservation laws indicated that Nature possessed built-in sustaining principles which prevented the world from just ceasing to be. There were fewer roles for the Deity to play…”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

New Theories of Everything (2007)

“By laying down the relativity postulate from the outset, sufficient means have been created for deducing henceforth the complete series of Laws of Mechanics from the principle of conservation of energy (and statements concerning the form of the energy) alone.”

Hermann Minkowski The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies

The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies (1907)

“There is no conservative party left in Washington. Conservative thinkers and writers who were to be the watchdogs of orthodoxy have been as vigilant in policing party deviations from principle as was Cardinal Law in collaring the predator-priests of the Boston archdiocese.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
1790s

“Before a science can develop principles, it must possess concepts. Before a law of gravitation could be formulated, it was necessary to have the notions of “acceleration” and “weight.””

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 43.

“Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed.
But one can be converted into the other.”

Spider Robinson book Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

Source: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) "Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy"

“As we can not give a general definition of energy, the principle of the conservation of energy signifies simply that there is something which remains constant.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Comme nous ne pouvons pas donner de l'énergie une définition générale, le principe de la conservation de l'énergie signifie simplement qu'il y a quelque chose qui demeure constant.
Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 10: Is Science artificial?

“Intelligence and free will here come into play, and these mystic forces are outside the law of conservation of energy as understood by physicists.”

William Crookes (1832–1919) British chemist and physicist

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: The clock runs down. I lift the weight by exerting the proper amount of energy, and in this action the law of conservation of energy is strictly obeyed. But now I have the choice of either letting the weight fall free in a fraction of a second, or, constrained by the wheelwork, in twenty-four hours. I can do which I like, and whichever way I decide, no more energy is developed in the fall of the weight. I strike a match; I can use it to light a cigarette or to set fire to a house. I write a telegram; it may be simply to say I shall be late for dinner, or it may produce fluctuations on the stock exchange that will ruin thousands. In these cases the actual force required in striking the match or in writing the telegram is governed by the law or conservation of energy; but the vastly more momentous part, which determines the words I use or the material I ignite, is beyond such a law. It is probable that no expenditure of energy need be used in the determination of direction one way more than another. Intelligence and free will here come into play, and these mystic forces are outside the law of conservation of energy as understood by physicists.

“The science of chemistry rests on two well-established principles: the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

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