Physicists From England

"s production was not without drama. ... ... The had promised to publish the work, but now pulled out, citing financial embarrassment. The year before the society had backed a costly flop called ', and they now suspected that the market for a book on mathematical principles would be less than clamorous. Halley, whose means were not great, paid for the book's publication out of his own pocket. Newton, as was his custom, contributed nothing. To make matters worse, Halley at this time had just accepted a position as the society's clerk, and he was informed that the society could no longer afford to provide him with a promised salary of £50 per annum. He was to be paid instead in copies of The History of Fishes."

"All the Elements agree, and nothing seems to contradict this my Opinion, besides the Inequality of the Periodick Revolutions: Which Inequality is not so great neither, as that it may not be owing to Physical Causes. For the Motion of Saturn is so disturbed by the rest of the Planets, especially Jupiter, that the Periodick Time of that Planet is uncertain for some whole Days together. How much more therefore will a Comet be subject to such like Errors, which rises almost Four times higher than Saturn, and whose Velocity, tho' encreased but a very little, would be sufficient to change its Orbit, from an Elliptical to a Parabolical one."

"I will add another thing which I also had from Dr. Bentley himself. Mr. Halley was then thought of for successor, to be in a mathematick professorship at Oxford; and bishop Stillingfleet was desired to recommend him at court; but hearing that he was a sceptick, and a banterer of religion, he scrupled to be concern'd; 'till his chaplain, Mr. Bentley, should talk with him about it; which he did. But Mr. Halley was so sincere in his infidelity, that he would not so much as pretend to believe the christian religion, tho' he thereby was likely to lose a professorship; which he did accordingly; and it was then given to Dr. Gregory: Yet was Mr. Halley afterwards chosen into the like professorship there, without any pretence to the belief of christianity. Nor was there any enquiry made about my successor Mr. Sandersons christianity, even when the university of Cambridge had just banished me for believing and examining it so throughly, that I hazarded all I had in the world for it."

"[I]n the Year 1456, in the Summer time, a Comet was seen passing Retrograde between the Earth and the Sun, much after the same Manner: Which, tho' no Body made Observations upon it, yet from its Period, and the Manner of its Transit, I cannot think different from those I have just now mention'd. Hence I dare venture to foretell, That it will return again in the Year 1758. And, if it should then return, we shall have no Reason to doubt but the rest must return too: Therefore Astronomers have a large Field to exercise themselves in for many Ages, before they will be able to know the Number of these many and great Bodies revolving about the common Center of the Sun; and reduce their Motions to certain Rules."

"I design to treat of all these Things in a larger Volume, and contribute my utmost for the Promotion of this Part of Astronomy, if it shall please God to continue my Life and Health."

"The principal Use therefore of this Table of the Elements of their Motions, and that which induced me to construct it, is, That whenever a new Comet shall appear, we may be able to know, by comparing together the Elements, whether it be any of those which has appear'd before, and consequently to determine its Period, and the Axis of its Orbit, and to foretell its Return. And, indeed, there are many Things which make me believe that the Comet which Apian observ'd in the Year 1531, was the same with that which Kepler and Longomontanus took Notice of and describ'd in the Year 1607, and which I my self have seen return, and observ'd in the Year 1682."

"In the mean time, those that desire to know how to construct Geometrically the Orb of a Comet, by Three accurate Observations given, may find it at the End of the Third Book of Sir Isaac Newtons Principles of Natural Philosophy, entituled De Systemate Mundi, in the Words of its renowned Inventor. Which have since been more fully explained by my very worthy Collegue Dr. Gregory, in his Learned Work of Astronomia Physica & Geometrica."

"In Theories of Everything... John Barrow argued that Gödel's incompleteness theorem undermines the very notion of a complete theory of nature. Gödel established that any moderately complex system of axioms inevitably raises questions that cannot be answered about the axioms. The implication is that any theory will always have loose ends. Barrow also pointed out that a unified theory of particle physics would not really be a theory of everything, but only a theory of all particles and forces. The theory would have little or nothing to say about phenomena that make our lives meaningful, such as love or beauty."

"Continual miniaturisation allows resources to be conserved, efficiency to be increased, pollution to be reduced, and the remarkable flexibilities of the quantum world to be tapped. Very advanced civilizations elsewhere in the universe may have been forced to follow the same technological path. Their nano-scale space probes, their atomic-scale machines and nano-computers, would be imperceptible to our coarse-grained surveys of the universe. ...This may be the low-impact evolutionary path you need to follow in order to survive into the far, far future."

"While we have no reason to expect that our position in the universe is special in every way, we would be equally misled were we to assume that it could not be special in any way."

"Location is not, as the estate agents say, everything. We must also consider our place in history."

"Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry and believed that the sphere was the most perfect of all shapes. Hence the universe must be spherical. ...An important feature of the spherical shape... was the fact that when a sphere rotates it does not cut into empty space where there is no matter and it leaves no empty space behind. ...A vacuum was impossible. It could no more exist than an infinite physical quantity. ...Circular motion was the most perfect and natural movement of all."

"Einstein showed us how to find all the possible universes that were consistent with the laws of physics and the character of gravity, how to reconstruct their pasts and predict their futures. But actually finding them was no easy task."

"Einstein had spent the previous thirty years showing how we could understand the behaviour of whole universes with simple maths. Gamow saw that those universes must have had a past that was unimaginably different to the present. What had stopped them both in their tracks was Gamow's suggestion that the laws of physics could describe something being created out of nothing."

"The Indian system of counting is probably the most successful intellectual innovation ever devised by human beings. It has been universally adopted. ...It is the nearest thing we have to a universal language."

"Einstein showed us that the Universe might contain a mysterious form of vacuum energy. ...Last year, two teams of astronomers used Earth's most powerful telescopes... to gather persuasive evidence for the reality of the cosmic vacuum energy. Its effects are dramatic. It is accelerating the expansion of the Universe."

"The Universe has imposed aspects of its structure upon us by the inevitability of the forces of Nature... In a world where adapters succeed, but non-adapters fail, one expects to find vestigial remnants... Many of these adaptations... give rise to a suite of curious byproducts, some of which have played a role in determining our aesthetic sense. We are products of a past world where sensitivities to certain things were a matter of life or death."

"The Indian religious traditions... accepted the concept of non-being on an equal footing with that of being. Like many other Eastern religions, the Indian culture regarded Nothing as a state from which one might have come and to which one might return.. Where Western religious traditions sought to flee from nothingness... a state of non-being was something to be actively sought by Buddhist and Hindus in order to achieve Nirvana: oneness with the Cosmos."

"Highly correlated brown and black noise patterns do not seem to have seem to have attractive counterparts in the visual arts. There, over-correlation is the order of the day, because it creates the same dramatic associations that we find in attractive natural scenery, or in the juxtaposition of symbols. Somehow, it is tediously predictable when cast in a one-dimensional medium, like sound."

"The Greek tradition was a complete contrast to that of the Far East. ...the Greeks placed logic at the pinnacle of human thinking. Their sceptical attitude towards the wielding of 'non-being' as some sort of 'something' that could be subject to logical development was exemplified by Parmenides' influential arguments against the concept of empty space. ...He maintained that you can only speak about what is: what is not cannot be thought of, and what cannot be thought of cannot be. ...more unexpected was the further conclusion that time, motion nor change could exist either."

"Just focusing on what exists now seems a bit exclusive. And if we include everything that has ever existed as part of the universe, why not include the future as well? This seems to leave us with the definition that the universe is everything that has ever existed, does exist, or will ever exist."

"If musical appreciation is a by-product of a more general pattern-processing propensity of the brain, then why are our senses heightened by pink noises? It is significant that the world around us is full of variations with 1/f spectra. Benoit Mandelbrot has pioneered the study of natural and computer-generated patterns that are scale-free. (He calls them fractals...) Mandelbrot draws attention to the fact that there is a pattern to the noise spectrum displayed by the human nervous system. At the extremities of the body... it tends to be of white-noise form; but, as one approaches closer to the central nervous system and the brain, these variations become 1/f-like. Our nervous system may act as a spectral filter to prevent the brain from being swamped with uninteresting white background noise about the world..."

"Ancient belief in a cosmos composed of spheres, producing music as angels guided them through the heavens, was still flourishing in Elizabethan times. ...There is a good deal more to Pythagorean musical theory than celestial harmony. Besides the music of the celestial spheres (musica mundana), two other varieties of music were distinguished: the sound of instruments...(musica instrumentalis), and the continuous unheard music that emanated from the human body (musica humana), which arises from a resonance between the body and the soul. ...In the medieval world, the status of music is revealed by its position within the Quadrivium—the fourfold curriculum—alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Medieval students... believed all forms of harmony to derive from a common source. Before Boethius' studies in the ninth century, the idea of musical harmony was not considered independently of wider matters of celestial or ethical harmony."

"The laws of Nature are based upon the existence of a pattern, linking one state of affairs to another; and where there is pattern, there is symmetry. Yet...the symmetries that the laws enshrine are broken in... outcomes. Suppose that we balance a needle on its point and then release it. The law of gravity, which governs its subsequent motion, is perfectly democratic. It has no preference for any particular direction in the Universe: it is symmetrical in this respect. Yet, when the needle falls, it must fall in a particular direction. The directional symmetry of the underlying law is broken, therefore... By the same token, the fallen needle hides the symmetry of the law... Such 'symmetry-breaking' governs much of what we see in the Universe... It allows a Universe governed by a small number of symmetrical laws to manifest an infinite diversity of complex, asymmetrical states. This is how the Universe can be at once, simple and complicated."

"There is a good deal more to nothing than meets the eye."

"A less inflexible picture of mathematics is one that focuses on the fact that it is an open-ended human activity. Inventionism is the belief that mathematics is nothing more than what mathematicians do. ...We invent mathematics; we do not discover it. ...The independent discovery of the same mathematical theorems by different mathematicians from totally different economic, cultural, and political backgrounds—often at widely separated times in history—argues against such a simple view. The inventionist could respond by pointing to the universality of human languages. ...One might expect that those aspects of this universal grammar that share features of logic, and hence counting, would also make counting appear instinctive. In fact, although simple counting... is fairly universal in ancient and primitive cultures, virtually none of them went on to carry out mathematical operations more sophisticated than counting. This suggests that these higher mathematical operations are not genetically programmed into the human brain... They are more likely to be by-products of multi-purpose pattern-recognition capabilities."

"The spooky ether was persistent. It took an Einstein to remove it from the Universe. ...Gradually, over the last twenty years, the vacuum has turned out to be more unusual, more fluid, less empty, and less intangible than even Einstein could have imagined. Its presence is felt on the very smallest and largest dimensions over which the forces of Nature act."

"Life, like science and art, is a theory about the world: a theory that in our case takes bodily form. By a succession of adaptations, most of which are favourable and none of which are lethal, living things have invested in particular expectations about the future course of their environments. If those theories are good enough, then life will prosper and multiply; but if they are outmoded by changing conditions, their embodiments will dwindle and perish."

"Everyone knows there are billions and billions of stars, and national debts conjure up similar astronomical numbers. Yet we have found a way to hide the zeros: 109 doesn't look as bad as 1,000,000,000."

"In the spring of 1845, William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, began observing with his great six-foot telescope... The Earl was excited by what he was the first human to see: spiral patterns of stars, seemingly swirling in great 'spiral convolutions' about the centre of the galaxy. ...No one could ever have seen the spiral pattern of stars in a galaxy unless they had looked through Rosse's telescope or seen his drawings. ...I believe that Van Gogh would have seen those drawings in the press following the publicity attracted by them, or in Flammarion's book... and gained his astronomical inspiration from them."

"Unfortunately, truth is neither a listable nor a decidable property; nor is the truth of a statement of arithmetic. The American logician John Myhill has used the term 'prospective' to characterize those attributes of the world that are neither listable nor decidable. They are properties that cannot be recognized by the application of some formula, made to conform to a rule, or generated by some computer program. They are characterized by incessant novelty that cannot be encompassed by any finite set of rules. 'Beauty', 'ugliness', 'truth', 'harmony', simplicity', and 'poetry' are names we give to some of the attributes of this sort. There is no way of listing all examples of beauty or ugliness, nor any procedure for saying whether or not something possesses either of those attributes, without redefining them in some more restrictive fashion that kills their prospective character."

"If one looks at the special problems that were the mainsprings of progress along the oldest and most persistent lines of human inquiry, then one finds Nothing, suitably disguised as something, never far from the centre of things."

"Copernicus' picture did more than picture the solar system correctly: it painted a new world picture."

"The physicist's concept of nothing—the vacuum... began as empty space—the void... turned into a stagnant ether through which all the motions of the Universe swam, vanished in Einstein's hands, then re-emerged in the twentieth-century quantum picture of how Nature works."

"Mathematics became an experimental subject. Individuals could follow previously intractable problems by simply watching what happened when they were programmed into a personal computer. ...The PC revolution has made science more visual and more immediate. ...by creating films of imaginary experiences of mathematical worlds. ...Words are no longer enough."

"The advent of small, inexpensive computers with superb graphics has changed the way many sciences are practiced, and the way that all sciences present the results of experiments and calculations."

"Scientific pictures are often not just about science. They may... have an undeniable aesthetic quality. They may even have been primarily works of art that possess a scientific message."

"There is no formula that can deliver all truth, all harmony, all simplicity. No Theory of Everything can ever provide total insight. For, to see through everything, would leave us seeing nothing at all."

"We have witnessed a revolution in the history of science. Not the sort of revolution that philosophers of science once believed in—they don't happen any more—but a revolution brought about by new tools, different ways of seeing, and novel ways of understanding. Nothing old needed to be overthrown to make way for the new. The future of science will be increasingly dominated by artificial images and simulations."

"Images and pictures... have played a key role in shaping our scientific picture of the world. ...Carefully constructed families of pictures can act as a calculus all their own. Like any successful systems of symbols, with an appropriate grammar they enlarge the number of things that we can do without consciously thinking."

"The abstractions of Einstein's curved space and time gave rise to analogies and pictures that played a new explanatory role. Space and time gave way to space-time, visible light was augmented by images across the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we realised that we could see back towards the apparent beginnings of time."

"The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to find thinkers who are comfortable with the idea that Nothing might be something."

"Our sensitivity to changes of pitch ... is underused in musical sound. Western music, in particular, is based on scales that use pitch changes that are at least twenty times bigger than the smallest changes that we could perceive. If we used our discriminatory power to full, we could generate an undulating sea of sound that displayed continuously changing frequency rather like the undersea sonic songs of dolphins and whales."

"If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one."

"It is not hard to see why the Eastern holistic perspective made scientific progress so difficult. It denies the intuition that one can study the parts of the world in isolation from the rest—that one can analyze the world..."

"Hundreds of years ago, natural theologians tried to impress their readers with stories of the wondrous symmetries of Nature; now we see that, ironically, it is the departures from those symmetries that makes life possible. It is upon the flaws of Nature, not the laws of Nature, that the possibility of our existence hinges. ...The laws and constants of Nature are features that enforce uniformity and simplicity, while initial conditions and symmetry breakings permit complexity and diversity."

"It is simplest to think of mathematics as the catalogue of all possible patterns. ...When viewed in this way, it is inevitable that the world is described by mathematics. ...In many ways the search for a Theory of Everything is a manifestation of a faith that this compression goes all the way down to the bedrock of reality..."

"The living world is not a marble palace. It is a higgledy-piggledy outcome of natural selection and the competition between many interacting factors. The outcome is often neither elegant nor symmetrical."

"The legacy of the great monotheistic religions is the expectation of a single over-arching explanation for the Universe. ...There is no logical reason why the Universe should not contain surds of arbitrary elements that do not relate to the rest."

"We say that the string is 'random' if there is no other representation of the string which is shorter than itself. But we will say that it is 'non-random' if there does exist such an abbreviated representation. ...In general, the shorter the possible representation... the less random... On this view we recognize science to be the search for algorithmic compressions."