
“Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.”
Kenneth Tynan, "Greta Garbo," Sight and Sound (April 1954), republished in Profiles (1990), p. 80
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.
“Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.”
Kenneth Tynan, "Greta Garbo," Sight and Sound (April 1954), republished in Profiles (1990), p. 80
Rejoinder when told that he couldn't talk about physics, because "nobody [at this table] knows anything about it."
Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake", p. 310.
Quoted in Handbook of Economic Growth (2005) by Philippe Aghion and Steven N. Durlauf.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)
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)
“In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.”
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 5, Harvard Years, p. 95
1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
In Interview with Professor Carlo Beenakker http://www.natuurkunde.nl/artikelen/view.do?supportId=822985. Interviewers: Ramy El-Dardiry and Roderick Knuiman (February 1, 2006).
“So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton’s equations, are reversible.”
volume I; lecture 46, "Ratchet and Pawl"; section 46-5, "Order and entropy"; p. 46-8
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
"Epistemology as information theory: From Leibniz to Omega." https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0506552 arXiv preprint math/0506552 (2005). p. 3
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)