A Book On The New

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 Do Not See How A Man Can Work On The Frontiers Of Physics And Write Poetry At The Same Time. They Are In Opposition. In Science You Want To Say Something That Nobody Knew Before, In Words Which Everyone Can Understand. In Poetry You Are Bound To Say ... Something That Everyone Knows Already In Words That Nobody Can Understand. Commenting To Him About The Poetry J. Robert Oppenheimer Wrote.

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.

The Aim Of Science Is To Make Difficult Things Understandable In A Simpler Way; The Aim Of Poetry Is To State Simple Things In An Incomprehensible Way. The Two Are Incompatible.

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.