The final truth about a phenomenon resides in the mathematical description of it; so long as there is no imperfection in this, our knowledge of the p… - James Hopwood Jeans

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The final truth about a phenomenon resides in the mathematical description of it; so long as there is no imperfection in this, our knowledge of the phenomenon is complete. We go beyond the mathematical formula at our own risk; we may find a model or a picture which helps us understand it, but we have no right to expect this, and our failure to find such a model or picture need not indicate that either our reasoning or our knowledge is at fault. The making of models or pictures to explain mathematical formulas and the phenomena they describe is not a step towards, but a step away from reality; it is like making a graven image of a spirit.

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About James Hopwood Jeans

Sir James Hopwood Jeans (11 September 1877 – 16 September 1946) was a British physicist, astronomer and mathematician.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: James Jeans Sir James Jeans Sir James Hopwood Jeans James H. Jeans James H Jeans J. H. Jeans J.H. Jeans J H Jeans
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Additional quotes by James Hopwood Jeans

The laws which governed the spontaneous jumps of the kangaroos were shown to be of the simplest; out of any number of kangaroos a certain proportion always jumped within a specified time, and nothing seemed to be able to change this number. Also, before the jumps took place, there was nothing in the world of phenomena to distinguish those kangaroos that were about to jump from those that were not... to help fill the quota demanded by the statistical law. As discontinuity marched into the world of phenomena through one door, causality walked out through another.

This fallacious result is not... a peculiarity of classical mechanics; it is given also by a very wide class of possible systems of mechanics. This being so, no minor modification of the classical mechanics can possibly put things right. Something far more drastic is needed; we are called upon to surrender either the continuity or the causality of classical mechanics, or else the possibility of representing changes by motions in time and space.

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