Why are the theories of physics so similar in their structure? There are a number of possibilities. The first is the limited imagination of physicist… - Richard Feynman
" "Why are the theories of physics so similar in their structure?
There are a number of possibilities. The first is the limited imagination of physicists: when we see a new phenomenon, we try to fit it into the framework we already have—until we have made enough experiments, we don't know that it doesn't work. So when some fool physicist gives a lecture at UCLA in 1983 and says, “This is the way it works, and look how wonderfully similar the theories are,” it's not because Nature is really similar; it's because the physicists have only been able to think of the same damn thing, over and over again.
Another possibility is that it is the same damn thing over and over again—that Nature has only one way of doing things, and She repeats her story from time to time.
A third possibility is that things look similar because they are aspects of the same thing—some larger picture underneath, from which things can be broken into parts that look different, like fingers on the same hand. Many physicists are working very hard trying to put together a grand picture that unifies everything into one super-duper model. It's a delightful game, but at present time none of the speculators agree with any of the other speculators as to what the grand picture is.
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About Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is known for the work he did in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world.
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Also Known As
Native Name:
Richard Phillips Feynman
Alternative Names:
Ofey
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Feynman
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Dick Feynman
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Richard P. Feynman
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Shorter versions of this quote
Why are all the theories of physics so similar in their structure?
There are a number of possibilities. The first is the limited imagination of physicists: when we see a new phenomenon we try to fit it into the framework we already have-until we have made enough experiments, we don't know that it doesn't work.
Another possibility is that it is the same damn thing over and over again-that Nature has only one way of doing things, and She repeats her story from time to time.
A third possibility is that things look similar because they are aspects of the same thing- some larger picture underneath, from which things can be broken into parts that look different, like fingers on the same hand. Many physicists are working very hard trying to put together a grand picture that unifies everything into one super-duper model. It's a delightful game, but at the present time none of the speculators agree with any of the other speculators as to what the grand picture is.
Additional quotes by Richard Feynman
So there are two aspects of an amplitude. An amplitude is a sort of two dimensional thing and therefor you can represent it... on a plane as an arrow. So an amplitude is a physical thing, which also is identical, we... make it very equal by using three lines [ ≡ ] instead of two [ = ], the same as these arrows that I've been talking about on a plane, and that's, by the way, for those that know mathematics, that can be equivalent to representing everything by s. You can do it algebraically, in other words, not just by drawing the arrows.AMPLITUDE ≡ ARROW ( ≡ COMPLEX NUMBERS)
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