theoretical physicist, university teacher, physicist, philosopher
🔗 Read on Wikipedia1858  – 1947
The Theory of Relativity confers an absolute meaning on a magnitude which in classical theory has only a relative significance: the velocity of light. The velocity of light is to the Theory of Relativity as the elementary quantum of action is to the Quantum Theory: it is its absolute core.
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
Farsighted theologians are now working to mine the eternal metal from the teachings of Jesus and to forge it for all time.
We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
Again and again the imaginary plan on which one attempts to build up that order breaks down and then we must try another. This imaginative vision and faith in the ultimate success are indispensable. The pure rationalist has no place here.
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
But science sets out confidently on the endeavor finally to know the thing in itself, and even though we realize that this ideal goal can never be completely reached, still we struggle on towards it untiringly. And we know that at every step of the way each effort will be richly rewarded.
In other words, the fundamental principles and indispensable postulates of every genuinely productive science are not based on pure logic but rather on the metaphysical hypothesis — which no rules of logic can refute — that there exists an outer world which is entirely independent of ourselves. It is only through the immediate dictate of our consciousness that we know that this world exists. And that consciousness may to a certain degree be called a special sense.
The first and most important quality of all scientific ways of thinking must be the clear distinction between the outer object of observation and the subjective nature of the observer.
New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.
Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.
Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.
Natural science wants man to learn, religion wants him to act.
Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be: "On to God!"
The highest court is in the end one’s own conscience and conviction—that goes for you and for
Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.