Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

206CHAPTER 47. GOD AS MATHEMATICIANOR MATHEMATICIAN AS GOD
• I believe the geometric proportion served the creator as an idea when
He introduced the continuous generation of similar objects from similar
objects. (Kepler)
• I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature
abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent
use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections
of its Author. (Leibniz)
• God created everything by number, weight and measure. (Newton)
• The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena
of nature to the laws of mathematics. (Newton)
• All the pictures which science now draws of nature and which alone
seem capable of according with observational fact are mathematical pictures
... From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect
of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. (Jeans)
• An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God.
(Ramanujan)
• God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the devil exists since
we cannot prove the consistency. (Morris Kline)
• Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and
our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for
politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation
stands forever. (Einstein)
• But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense,
therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients
dreamed. (Einstein)
• God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. (Dirac)
• The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry
groups. (Weyl)
• The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics to
the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we
neither understand nor deserve. (Wigner)