God Used Beautiful Mathematics In Creating The

The Physicist, In His Study Of Natural Phenomena, Has Two Methods Of Making Progress: (1) The Method Of Experiment And Observation, And (2) The Method Of Mathematical Reasoning. The Former Is Just The Collection Of Selected Data; The Latter Enables One To Infer Results About Experiments That Have Not Been Performed. There Is No Logical Reason Why The Second Method Should Be Possible At All, But One Has Found In Practice That It Does Work And Meets With Reasonable Success.

I Found The Best Ideas Usually Came, Not When One Was Actively Striving For Them, But When One Was In A More Relaxed State… I Used To Take Long Solitary Walks On Sundays, During Which I Tended To Review The Current Situation In A Leisurely Way. Such Occasions Often Proved Fruitful, Even Though (or Perhaps, Because) The Primary Purpose Of The Walk Was Relaxation And Not Research.

When [erwin Schrödinger] Went To The Solvay Conferences In Brussels, He Would Walk From The Station To The Hotel Where The Delegates Stayed, Carrying All His Luggage In A Rucksack And Looking So Like A Tramp That It Needed A Great Deal Of Argument At The Reception Desk Before He Could Claim A Room.

Renormalization Is Just A Stop-gap Procedure. There Must Be Some Fundamental Change In Our Ideas, Probably A Change Just As Fundamental As The Passage From Bohr's Orbit Theory To Quantum Mechanics. When You Get A Number Turning Out To Be Infinite Which Ought To Be Finite, You Should Admit That There Is Something Wrong With Your Equations, And Not Hope That You Can Get A Good Theory Just By Doctoring Up That Number.

A Book On The New Physics, If Not Purely Descriptive Of Experimental Work, Must Essentially Be Mathematical.