🚀 go-pugleaf

Quoting from Paul Arthur Schilpp's translation of A. Einstein's autobiography:

"Even when I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes 
and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my 
consciousness with considerable vitality.  Moreover, I soon discovered the 
cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered 
up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today.  By the mere 
existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. 
Moreover, it was possible to satisfy the stomach by such participation, but 
not man in so far as he is a thinking and feeling being. 

"A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises 
is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended 
is its area of applicability.

"It [thermodynamics] is the only physical theory of universal content 
concerning which I am convinced that, within the framework of the 
applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown....

[discussing the origins of special relativity in his search for a universal 
priciple as basic as that behind thermodynamics] "After ten years of 
reflection such a principle resulted from a paradox upon which I had 
already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the 
velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam 
as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic field at rest.  However, there 
appears to be no such thing, whether on the basis of experience or 
according to Maxwell's equations. 

"Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought 
independently of its being observed.

"It is my opinion that the contemporary quantum theory by means of certain 
definitely laid down basic concepts, which on the whole have been taken 
over from classical mechanics, constitutes an optimum formulation of the 
connections.  I believe, however, that this theory offers no useful point 
of departure for future development.

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)