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Why This Site? … because science needs the joint effort of both bright and creative people … bright people are easily selected, creative people are hardly discovered …
My struggle, I realise, is committed to the problem raised by Max Planck in the letter of 23 May 1897 to his friend and colleague Leo Grätz: ” … Zermelo geht aber weiter, u. das halte ich für unrichtig; er meint, der zweite Hauptsatz, als Naturgesetz, sei überhaupt unverträglich mit jeder mechanistischen Naturauffassung. Denn die Sache ändert sich wesentlich, wenn man von diskreten Massenpunkten (wie den Molekülen in der Gastheorie) zu continuierlicher Materie übergeht. Ich glaube u. hoffe sogar, dass sich auf diesen Wege eine streng mechanische Deutung des zweiten Hauptsatzes finden lassen wird; aber diese Sache ist offenbar sehr schwierig and verlangt Zeit.”
“Physics, as we know, is not as ideal a playground for formalisms as mathematics for the very reason that the criterion of logical consistency alone is not sufficient for a physical theory. Apart from being logically consistent a physical formalism should offer a unique and unambiguous picture of a field of physical experience, which means that it should give a reasonably objective and quantitatively fitting description of a class of physical phenomena.” (E.J. Post Formal Structure of Electromagnetics Dover New York 1997 p. 1)
“Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.” (B. Russell Mysticism and Logic Allen & Unwin London 1917 p. 75)
“Derjenige, welcher einen neuen Standpunkt zu erwerben hat, kann denselben natürlich nicht von vornherein so sicher innehaben, wie jene, welche diesen Standpunkt mühelos von ihm übernehmen” ( E. Mach Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historisch-kritisch dargestellt Brockhaus Leipzig 4 Auf. 1901 s. 259)
Pragmatism at Cambridge! “We have seen that the viscous stress is generated solely by deformation of the fluid and is independent of the local vorticity. It is therefore surprising, at first sight, to find that the net viscous force on unit volume is proportional to a spatial derivative of the vorticity. The explanation is wholly a matter of kinematics, and lies in the vector identity …” [...] ”Nothing has yet been said about the way in which the Bernoulli constant H varies from one streamline to another in steady isentropic flow; nor could we expect to be able to make general statements since the value of H for each streamline must depend on how the flow was established.” (G.K. Batchelor An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics CUP Cambridge 1967 p. 148 and 159).
Physics: a mathematical science? “As creators of the new physics have proposed increasingly abstract descriptions of nature, the testability of their theoretical constructs has markedly declined. While the current problems are not different in kind from those characterizing other eras in the evolution of physics, they do appear to be substantially different in degree from past experience. This situation, exacerbated by an incongruously strong confidence in the standard paradigms of particle physics and cosmology, is a cause for concern.” (Abstract from R.L. Oldershaw The new physics – Physical or mathematical science? Am. J. Phys., Dec. 1988, Vol. 56, Issue 12, pp. 1075-1081)
” … neither seeking nor avoiding mathematical exercitations, we enter on special problems solely with a view to possible usefulness for physical science …” (Kelvin – Tait Treatise on Natural Philosophy – Part 2, CUP, Cambridge 1912 p. 5)
