“I knew my purpose well and clear: to show how Nature behaves without cluttering its beauty with abtruse mathematics.”
The Days of My Life : An Autobiography (1989), p. 212
Context: My first TV series on demonstrations in physics — titled Why Is It So? were now seen and heard over the land. The mail was massive. The academics were a special triumph for me. They charged me with being superficial and trivial. If I had done what they wanted my programs would be as dull as their classes! I knew my purpose well and clear: to show how Nature behaves without cluttering its beauty with abtruse mathematics. Why cloud the charm of a Chladni plate with a Bessel function?
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Julius Sumner Miller7
American physicist 1909–1987Related quotes
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist
Quote from 'Artists' Session at Studio 35', (1950); as cited in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics (1990), ed. Clifford Ross, p. 225 <!-- Abrams Publishers New York -->
1950s
Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) Armatian
As quoted in Fodor's New England (2008) by Debbie Harmsen, p. 194
Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)
“The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.”
Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017) Iranian mathematician
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/13/interview-maryam-mirzakhani-fields-medal-winner-mathematician
Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer
p 21, describing his father
Achieving The Impossible (2010)
“If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty”
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist
Conversation with Einstein, as quoted in Bittersweet Destiny: The Stormy Evolution of Human Behavior by Del Thiessen
Context: If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature... You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.
M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist
Variant translations: Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?
I can't keep from fooling around with our irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure knowingly to mix up two and three dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make fun of gravity.
1950's, On Being a Graphic Artist', 1953
Context: In my prints I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in a chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to. My subjects are also often playful. I cannot help mocking all our unwavering certainties. It is, for example, great fun deliberately to confuse two and three dimensions, the plane and space, or to poke fun at gravity. Are you sure that a floor cannot also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you walk up a staircase? Can you be definite that it is impossible to eat your cake and have it?
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)