Mechanics Quotes - page 14
Several conversations that Feynman and I had involved the remarkable abilities of other physicists. In one of these conversations, I remarked to Feynman that I was impressed by Stephen Hawking's ability to do path integration in his head. "Ahh, that's not so great", Feynman replied. "It's much more interesting to come up with the technique like I did, rather than to be able to do the mechanics in your head." Feynman wasn't being immodest, he was quite right. The true secret to genius is in creativity, not in technical mechanics.
Richard Feynman
The interest of research workers has frequently been focused on the phenomenon of regularly shaped crystals suddenly forming from a liquid, e.g. a supersaturated salt solution. According to the atomic theory the forming force in this process is to a certain extent the symmetry characteristic of the solution to Schrödinger's wave equation, and to that extent crystallization is explained by the atomic theory. Nevertheless this process retains a statistical and - one might almost say - historical element which cannot be further reduced: even when the state of the liquid is completely known before crystallization, the shape of the crystal is not determined by the laws of quantum mechanics. The formation of regular shapes is just far more probable than that of a shapeless lump. But the ultimate shape owes its genesis partly to an element of chance which in principle cannot be analysed further.
Werner Heisenberg
Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it-an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis-it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of this intelligence. Its discoveries in mechanics and geometry, added to that of universal gravity, have enabled it to comprehend in the same analytical expressions the past and future states of the system of the world.
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Laplace made many important discoveries in mathematical physics... Indeed, he was interested in anything that helped to interpret nature. He worked on hydrodynamics, the wave propagation of sound, and the tides. In the field of chemistry, his work on the liquid state of matter is classic. His studies of the tension in the surface layer of water, which accounts for the rise of liquids inside a capillary tube, and of the cohesive forces in liquids, are fundamental. Laplace and Lavoisier designed an ice calorimeter (1784) to measure heat and measured the specific heat of numerous substances; heat, to them, was still a special kind of matter. Most of Laplace's life was, however, devoted to celestial mechanics.
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Few people take the trouble of trying to find out what democracy really is. Yet this would be a great help, for it is our lawless and uncertain thoughts, it is the indefiniteness of our impressions, that fill darkness, whether mental or physical, with spectres and hobgoblins. Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.
James Russell Lowell
[F]ew intelligent observers are under any illusions that this type of symbolic half-measure on gun control would meaningfully cut into America's gun violence statistics. Meaningfully reducing gun violence in a nation with 300 million guns would probably require the type of confiscatory gun regulations enacted in Australia and some European countries. And the mechanics of enacting such policies could well contradict the vision for police and prison reform that has been gaining momentum on the left and right alike over the past year.
Adam Garfinkle
So much has already been accomplished for the workingman that I have hope, and great hope, of the future. The hours of labor have been shortened, and materially shortened, in many countries. There was a time when men worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. Now, generally, a day's work is not longer than ten hours, and the tendency is to still further decrease the hours. By comparing long periods of time, we more clearly perceive the advance that has been made. In 1860, the average amount earned by the laboring men, workmen, mechanics, per year, was about two hundred and eighty-five dollars. It is now about five hundred dollars, and a dollar to-day will purchase more of the necessaries of life, more food, clothing and fuel, than it would in 1860. These facts are full of hope for the future.
Robert G. Ingersoll
[W]hen you apply quantum mechanics to gravity, then even space itself can pop into existence from nothing. Space and time can spontaneously pop into existence... Whole universes can pop into existence and most of them will disappear in a time scale so short you wouldn't know about it. The ones that can survive for a long time have zero total energy...
Lawrence M. Krauss
If we consider further the manifold relations of this mathematical theory to civil uses and the technical arts, we shall recognize completely the extent of its applications. It is evident that it includes an entire series of distinct phenomena, and that the study of it cannot be omitted without losing a notable part of the science of nature.
The principles of the theory are derived, as are those of rational mechanics, from a very small number of primary facts, the causes of which are not considered by geometers, but which they admit as the results of common observations confirmed by all experiment.
Joseph Fourier
A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. The quintessential illustration of this jump in level is the way in which Newton's theory of mechanics explained Kepler's law of planetary motion. Basically, a law applies to observed phenomena in one domain (e.g., planetary bodies and their movements), while a theory is intended to unify phenomena in many domains. Thus, Newton's theory of mechanics explained not only Kepler's laws, but also Galileo's findings about the motion of balls rolling down an inclined plane, as well as the pattern of oceanic tides. Unlike laws, theories often postulate unobservable objects as part of their explanatory mechanism. So, for instance, Freud's theory of mind relies upon the unobservable ego, superego, and id, and in modern physics we have theories of elementary particles that postulate various types of quarks, all of which have yet to be observed.
Johannes Kepler
In mechanics Descartes can hardly be said to have advanced beyond Galileo. ...His statement of the first and second laws of motion was an improvement in form, but his third law is false in substance. The motions of bodies in their direct impact was imperfectly understood by Galileo, erroneously given by Descartes, and first correctly stated by Wren, Wallis, and Huygens.
René Descartes
I am the consummate scientist, Road-Storm. Science has suffered in having her name applied to mechanics, an ugly step-child of hers. Matter herself is a humiliation to the serious. We cannot make it vanish forever, but can make it seem to. For my purpose that is even better. All matter can be modified as long as it is kept subjective. Let us keep it so. ... Those who fail to understand my science may call it magic or hypnotism or deception. But it is only my projection of total subjectivity.
R. A. Lafferty
