But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.
Interpretation
Einstein's equations possess a beauty akin to music through their inherent harmony.
In this quote, Edward Witten draws a parallel between the aesthetic appeal of scientific equations and music, suggesting that those who deeply understand scientific concepts can appreciate their beauty just as one appreciates the beauty of art. This highlights a profound connection between science and creativity, indicating that there is an intrinsic harmony in mathematical truths that resonates with the same emotional profundity found in musical compositions.
In practice
During a lecture on physics, this quote can be used to illustrate the artistic side of scientific inquiry.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.
I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.
You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles.
Regardless of any deviations, it was clear I was supposed to end up in math and physics.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
It's an exaggeration to say that I came up with M-theory.
The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
Global warming is controversial, of course, but the controversy is mainly over whether human activity is driving it.
Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.
I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.