It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
Eugene WignerRead
The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the remarkable nature of human reasoning and its evolution through natural selection.
Eugene Wigner highlights the extraordinary talent of mathematicians and scientists who navigate the boundaries of logical reasoning. He marvels at how their ability to reason, which appears nearly flawless, could have evolved from a process like Darwinian natural selection, suggesting that it is a remarkable feat that they do not often fall into contradictions despite their bold explorations of thought.
In practice
During a lecture on the philosophical implications of mathematics, one might quote Wigner to emphasize the interplay of logic and creativity.
It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.
The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.
The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression.
The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.
Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.
The average ground temperature of the Earth is impossible to measure since most of the Earth is ocean...So this average ground temperature is a fiction.
I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.
Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.
Yet is it possible in terms of the motion of atoms to explain how men can invent an electric motor, or design and build a great cathedral? If such achievements represent anything more than the requirements of physical law, it means that science must investigate the additional controlling factors, whatever they may be, in order that the world of nature may be adequately understood.
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