Classical Mechanics Quotes & Sayings

A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist. — Karl Popper

It seems sensible to discard all hope of observing hitherto unobservable quantities, such as the position and period of the electron ... Instead it seems more reasonable to try to establish a theoretical quantum mechanics, analogous to classical mechanics, but in which only relations between observable quantities occur. — Werner Heisenberg

Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research. — Werner Heisenberg

Certainly we do not need quantum mechanics for macroscopic objects, which are well described by classical physics - this is the reason why quantum mechanics seems so foreign to our everyday existence. — Alain Aspect

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. — Max Planck

Perhaps the main basis for the claim that quantum mechanics is weird is the existence of what Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance'. These effects are not only 'spooky' but are also absolutely impossible to achieve within the framework of classical physics. However, if the conception of the physical world is changed from one made out of tiny rock-like entities to a holistic global informational structure that represents tendencies to real events to occur, and in which the choice of which potentiality will be actualized in various places is in the hands of human agents, there is no spookiness about the occurring transfers of information. The postulated global informational structure called the quantum state of the universe is the 'spook' that does the job. But it does so in a completely specified and understandable way, and this renders it basically non-spooky. — Paul Davies

It is impossible to deny that Christians and Muslims have a common agenda here: both faiths have at their heart the living image of a community raised up by God's call to reveal to the world what God's purpose is for humanity. — Rowan Williams

We should conceive of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. — Matthew Arnold

No one intuitively understands quantum mechanics because all of our experience involves a world of classical phenomena where, for example, a baseball thrown from pitcher to catcher seems to take just one path, the one described by Newton's laws of motion. Yet at a microscopic level, the universe behaves quite differently. — Lawrence M. Krauss

Classical mechanics gave us a deterministic view of the world. Quantum mechanics, conversely, gives us a probabilistic view instead. According to Newton, if you know the cause af an event, you can predict the outcome. According to M.Born, you can only predict how likely that outcome will be. — Leonid V. Azaroff

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005] — Steven Pinker

Evolution in quantum mechanics is deterministic as in classical mechanics except for the difference that as the system interacts with another system, its state function collapses. This dichotomy exists only for separated systems, in which one of them is being observed by the other. Given that the state of the entire universe is defined at the initial point, its evolution must be completely deterministic. Any seeming randomness now should merely be an amplification of the randomness in the initial state and the entropy at the origin should not change as the universe evolves. In other words, the physical universe governed by quantum laws has no place for the emergence of life. — Subhash Kak

Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a bore. — Bernard Cornwell

In experimental art, men are given the exact specifications of coming violence to their own psyches from their own counter-irritant or technology ... But the counter-irritant usually proves a greater plague than the initial irritant, like a drug habit. — Marshall McLuhan

Dictionaries, manuals, grammars, study guides and topic notes, classical authors and the entire book trade in de Viris, Quintus-Curtius, Sallust, and Livy peacefully crumbled to dust on the shelves of the old Hachette publishing house; but introductions to mathematics, textbooks on civil engineering, mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, courses in commerce, finance, industrial arts- whatever concerned the market tendencies of the day - sold by the millions of copies. — Jules Verne

A universe of classical particles is devoid of knowledge because the universe can only be itself and not a representation of something else. If the universe was only composed of classical particles, then there would only be physical properties but no meanings. The idea that we can have information about an object without becoming that object is central to all knowledge. — Ashish Dalela

Quantum mechanics broke the mold of the previous framework, classical mechanics, by establishing that the predictions of science are necessarily probabilistic. — Brian Greene

A still tongue keeps a wise head. — Barbara Ann Kipfer

Mr. Rockefeller is due to entertain munificently at breakfast, and make his pitch. My advice to one invited guest was: Order caviar, and then say No. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Thus it can be argued that quantum theory provides an opening for an idea of nature and of our role within it that is in general accord with certain religious concepts, but that, by contrast, is quite incompatible with the precepts of mechanistic deterministic classical physics. Thus the replacement of classical mechanics by quantum mechanics opens the door to religious possibilities that formerly were rationally excluded. — Paul Davies

While classical mechanics correctly predicts the behavior of large objects such as tennis balls, to predict the behavior of small objects such as electrons, we must use quantum mechanics. — Ivar Giaever

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People get a lot of confusion, because they keep trying to think of quantum mechanics as classical mechanics — Sidney Coleman

The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively. — Niels Bohr

Count not thyself to have found true peace, if thou hast felt no grief; nor that then all is well if thou hast no adversary; nor that this is perfect, if all things fall out according to thy desire. — Thomas A Kempis

Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the flat spear leaves. — Carl Sandburg

He (Tiberius) was wont to mock at the arts of physicians, and at those who, after thirty years of age, needed counsel as to what was good or bad for their bodies. — Tacitus

'Participant' is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the 'observer' of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can't be done, quantum mechanics says it ... May the universe in some sense be 'brought into being' by the participation of those who participate? — John Archibald Wheeler

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand? There is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am — Margaret Atwood

I am so busy loving life, I have no time to hate. — Debasish Mridha

I have an intuition, and usually my intuition is right. I have a feeling for whether a role will be good or bad for me, and I almost never make a mistake. — Anna Netrebko

There is a widespread belief about quantum mechanics, as also about relativity, that it is something that one is entitled to ignore for most ordinary philosophical and scientific purposes, since it only seriously applies at the micro level of reality; where 'micro' means something far smaller than would show up in any conventional microscope. What sits on top of this micro level, so the assumption runs, is a sufficiently good approximation of the old classical Newtonian picture to justify our continuing, as philosophers, to think about the world in essentially classical terms. I believe this to be a fundamental mistake. What I shall be arguing...is that the world is quantum-mechanical through and through; and that the classical picture of reality is, even at the microscopic level, deeply inadequate. — Stephen T. DeBerry

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on. — Irvin D. Yalom