This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
When an observation is made on any atomic system that has been prepared in a given way and is thus in a given state, the result will not in general be determinate, i.e. if the experiment is repeated several times under identical conditions several different results may be obtained. If the experiment is repeated a large number of times it will be found that each particular result will be obtained a definite fraction of the total number of times, so that one can say there is a definite probability of its being obtained any time that the experiment is performed. This probability the theory enables one to calculate.
Experiment | Observation | System | Time | Will |
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempt to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.
Principles | Theories |
I always say that it's much more powerful to be good than to be right. Why? Because good guides us in moving towards that which is good. Being right makes a deadlock, an enemy, and it sucks us down from expanding our perception. It also frightens the other person and makes the position more stubborn.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it.
Means |
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.
Beauty | God | Knowledge | Mathematics | Nature | Present | Beauty | God | Understand |
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future. A good many people are working on the mathematical basis of quantum theory, trying to understand the theory better and to make it more powerful and more beautiful. If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them.
Better | Future | Good | Hope | Mathematics | People | Right | Will | Learn | Understand |
If outer events bring him to a position where he can bear them no longer and force him to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of his dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace.
Dependence | Ego | Events | Feelings | Force | Position | Power |
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
Just because the results happen to be in agreement with observation does not prove that one's theory is correct.
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. Some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes made in passing from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. Someday a new quantum mechanics, a relativistic one, will be discovered, in which we will not have these infinities occurring at all. It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
We have to realize that a unified theory of the physical world simply does not exist. We have theories that work in restricted regions, we have purely formal attempts to condense them into a single formula, we have lots of unfounded claims (such as the claim that all of chemistry can be reduced to physics), phenomena that do not fit into the accepted framework are suppressed; in physics, which many scientists regard as the one really basic science, we have now at least three different point of view (relativity, dealing with the very large, quantum theory for an intermediate domain and various particle models for the very small) without a promise of conceptual (and not only formal) unification; perceptions are outside of the material universe (the mind-body problem is still unsolved) - from the very beginning the salesman of a universal truth cheated people into admissions instead of clearly arguing for their philosophy. And let us not forget that it was they and not the representatives of the traditions they attacked who introduced argument as the one and only universal arbiter. They praised argument - they constantly violated its principles.
Argument | Beginning | People | Phenomena | Promise | Regard | Theories | Truth | Universe | Work | World |
Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
There is no theory that is not a fragment, carefully prepared, of some autobiography.
It seems to me that the critic's task should be to help people see more in the work than they might see without him. That's a modest function, and you don't need a big theory for it.
Percy W. Bridgman, fully Percy Williams Bridgman
Every new theory as it arises believes in the flush of youth that it has the long sought goal; it sees no limits to its applicability, and believes that at last it is the fortunate theory to achieve the 'right' answer. This was true of electron theory—perhaps some readers will remember a book called The Electrical Theory of the Universe by de Tunzelman. It is true of general relativity theory with its belief that we can formulate a mathematical scheme that will extrapolate to all past and future time and the unfathomed depths of space. It has been true of wave mechanics, with its first enthusiastic claim a brief ten years ago that no problem had successfully resisted its attack provided the attack was properly made, and now the disillusionment of age when confronted by the problems of the proton and the neutron. When will we learn that logic, mathematics, physical theory, are all only inventions for formulating in compact and manageable form what we already know, like all inventions do not achieve complete success in accomplishing what they were designed to do, much less complete success in fields beyond the scope of the original design, and that our only justification for hoping to penetrate at all into the unknown with these inventions is our past experience that sometimes we have been fortunate enough to be able to push on a short distance by acquired momentum.
Age | Belief | Disillusionment | Enough | Experience | Future | Justification | Past | Problems | Success | Time | Universe | Will | Youth | Youth | Learn |
Percy W. Bridgman, fully Percy Williams Bridgman
By far the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about in physics by relativity and quantum theory lies not in such details as that meter sticks shorten when they move or that simultaneous position and momentum have no meaning, but in the insight that we had not been using our minds properly and that it is important to find out how to do so.
Important | Insight | Position | Revolution |
Percy W. Bridgman, fully Percy Williams Bridgman
We have here no esoteric theory of the ultimate nature of concepts, nor a philosophical championing of the primacy of the 'operation'. We have merely a pragmatic matter, namely that we have observed after much experience that if we want to do certain kinds of things with our concepts, our concepts had better be constructed in certain ways. In fact one can see that the situation here is no different from what we always find when we push our analysis to the limit; operations are not ultimately sharp or irreducible any more than any other sort of creature. We always run into a haze eventually, and all our concepts are describable only in spiralling approximation.
Better | Experience | Nature |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society - and especially in the economy - as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is creative destruction.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
A man should never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths. The man who always knows what people cannot do, but never sees what they can do, will undermine the spirit of the organisation. Of course, a manager should have a clear grasp of the limitations of his people, but he should see these as limitations on what they can do, and as a challenge to them to do better.
Challenge | Man | People | Position | Spirit | Vision | Will |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an executive if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.
Capacity | Knowledge | Organization | Position | Virtue | Virtue |