Quotes by Murray Gell-Mann - Page 2

Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Chaos
Nonlinear
Phenomenon
Physics
Sensitive
Tiny
Vague
Condition
Indefinitely
Initial
Namely
Outcome
Copy Quote
One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Science
Adventure
Simplicity
Copy Quote
What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Running
Adaptive
Block
Book
Building Blocks
Matter
Particles
Universe
Everywhere
Blocks
Chain
Complex
Elementary
Entities
Fundamental
Relationships
System
Trace
Copy Quote
Modern language must be older than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe, in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier. I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Believe
Inspiration
Motivation
Copy Quote
Perhaps we see equations as simple because they are easily expressed in terms of mathematical notation already invented at an earlier stage of development of the science, and thus what appears to us as elegance of description really reflects the interconnectedness of Nature's laws at different levels.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Nature
Science
Expression
Simple
Copy Quote
All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics ... It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Believe
Confusing
Discipline
Copy Quote
For me, the study of these laws is inseparable from a love of Nature in all its manifestations. The beauty of the basic laws of natural science, as revealed in the study of particles and of the cosmos, is allied to the litheness of a merganser diving in a pure Swedish lake, or the grace of a dolphin leaving shining trails at night in the Gulf of California.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Nature
Science
Night
Copy Quote
Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Knowledge
Garden
Race
Copy Quote
The mathematics clearly called for a set of underlying elementary objects-at that time we needed three types of them-elementary objects that could be combined three at a time in different ways to make all the heavy particles we knew. ... I needed a name for them and called them quarks, after the taunting cry of the gulls, "Three quarks for Muster mark," from Finnegan's Wake by the Irish writer James Joyce.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Science
Names
Nomenclature
Copy Quote
Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the utility of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Effectiveness
Law
Reality
Copy Quote
My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Nature
Hard Work
Writing
Copy Quote
What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.
Murray Gell-Mann / Physicist
Beautiful
Math
Simple
Copy Quote

Related Physicist Authors

Zhores Alferov
Physicist
Saturday, Mar 15, 1930
Yuval Ne'eman
Physicist
Thursday, May 14, 1925
Wednesday, Apr 26, 2006
Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich
Physicist
Tuesday, Mar 03, 1914
Wednesday, Dec 02, 1987
Yakir Aharonov
Physicist
Sunday, Aug 28, 1932
Wubbo Ockels
Physicist
Thursday, Mar 28, 1946
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Wolfgang Pauli
Physicist
Wednesday, Apr 25, 1900
Monday, Dec 15, 1958
Wolfgang Paul
Physicist
Sunday, Aug 10, 1913
Tuesday, Dec 07, 1993
Wolfgang Ketterle
Physicist
Monday, Oct 21, 1957
Willis Lamb
Physicist
Saturday, Jul 12, 1913
Thursday, May 15, 2008
William Shockley
Physicist
Sunday, Feb 13, 1910
Saturday, Aug 12, 1989
William Rowan Hamilton
Physicist
Sunday, Aug 04, 1805
Saturday, Sep 02, 1865
William Lawrence Bragg
Physicist
Monday, Mar 31, 1890
Thursday, Jul 01, 1971
William Henry Bragg
Physicist
Wednesday, Jul 02, 1862
Tuesday, Mar 10, 1942
William Happer
Physicist
Thursday, Jul 27, 1939
William Daniel Phillips
Physicist
Friday, Nov 05, 1948

View All Physicist Quotes

Top Authors

Yogi Berra
Baseball Manager
Tuesday, May 12, 1925
Tuesday, Sep 22, 2015
Khalil Gibran
Poet
Saturday, Jan 06, 1883
Friday, Apr 10, 1931
John Keats
Poet
Saturday, Oct 31, 1795
Friday, Feb 23, 1821
John Muir
Author
Saturday, Apr 21, 1838
Thursday, Dec 24, 1914
Rodney Dangerfield
Comedian
Tuesday, Nov 22, 1921
Tuesday, Oct 05, 2004
Leonardo Da Vinci
Painter
Thursday, Apr 15, 1452
Friday, May 02, 1519
Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
Paulo Coelho
Lyricist
Sunday, Aug 24, 1947
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Barack Obama
44Th U.s. President
Friday, Aug 04, 1961
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Philosopher
Napoleon Hill
Author
Friday, Oct 26, 1883
Sunday, Nov 08, 1970
Mae West
Actress
Thursday, Aug 17, 1893
Saturday, Nov 22, 1980

View All Authors

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes - Page 2

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Physicist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Physicist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page