“Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future.”
The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature (1963)
Context: Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future. A good many people are working on the mathematical basis of quantum theory, trying to understand the theory better and to make it more powerful and more beautiful. If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Paul Dirac 23
theoretical physicist 1902–1984Related quotes
Richard Courant in: The Parsimonious Universe, Stefan Hildebrandt & Anthony Tromba, Springer-Verlag, 1996, page 148
“Only by a study of the development of mathematics can its contemporary significance be understood.”
100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)
Context: The professional mathematician can scarcely avoid specialization and needs to transcend his private interests and take a wide synoptic view of the whole landscape of contemporary mathematics. His scientific colleagues are continually seeking enlightenment on the relevance of mathematical abstractions. The undergraduate needs a guidebook to the topography of the immense and expanding world of mathematics. There seems to be only one way to satisfy these varied interests... a concise historical account of the main currents... Only by a study of the development of mathematics can its contemporary significance be understood.
Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)
Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 22, Quantum Computing, Putting qubits to work, p. 203
Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 3 : Manchester and Athens
Context: Fifty years ago Kurt Gödel... proved that the world of pure mathematics is inexhaustible. … I hope that the notion of a final statement of the laws of physics will prove as illusory as the notion of a formal decision process for all mathematics. If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed, I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination.
“all the standard equations of mathematical physics can be separated and solved in Kerr geometry.”
From Chandrasekhar's Nobel lecture, in his summary of his work on black holes; Republished in: D. G. Caldi, George D. Mostow (1989) Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium: Yale University, May 15-17, 1989 p. 230
Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s
Context: Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
“Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.”
quoted in Lawrence M. Krauss, Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed (1993), p. 27