Murray Gell-Mann Quotes - Page 2

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• Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities, sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Order, Denial, Superstitions

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• In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object; that's how we measure it

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Facts, Behavior, Quantum

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• One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Adventure, Science, Simplicity

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• The persistence of erroneous beliefs exacerbates the widespread anachronistic failure to recognize the urgent problems that face humanity on this planet.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Faith, Persistence, Humanity

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• But when researchers at Bell Labs discovered that static tends to come from particular places in the sky, the whole field of radio astronomy opened up.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Sky, Labs, Fields

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• While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Writing, Done, Facts

  "The Quark and the Jaguar". Book by Murray Gell-Mann, 1994.

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• Perhaps we see equations as simple because they are easily expressed in terms of mathematical notation already invented at an earlier stage of development of the science, and thus what appears to us as elegance of description really reflects the interconnectedness of Nature's laws at different levels.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Nature, Science, Simple

  Murray Gell-Mann's speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1969.

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• My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Nature, Hard Work, Writing

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• Hugh Everett's work has been described by many people in terms of many worlds, the idea being that every one of the various alternative histories, branching histories, is assigned some sort of reality.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Reality, Swag, Ideas

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• The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often

  Murray Gell-Mann

  World, Chaos, Quantum

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• Modern language must be older than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe, in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier. I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Motivation, Believe, Inspiration

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• In our work, we are always between Scylla and Charybdis; we may fail to abstract enough, and miss important physics, or we may abstract too much and end up with fictitious objects in our models turning into real monsters that devour us.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Real, Missing, Important

  Murray Gell-Mann, Harald Fritzsch (2010). “Murray Gell-Mann: Selected Papers”, p.239, World Scientific

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• We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Games, Curiosity, Usual

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1969.

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• Bush is a nice fellow who gives very good parties. I just wish someone would find him a better job than running the country.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Running, Country, Jobs

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• I have been interested in phenomena involving complexity, diversity and evolution since I was a young boy.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Boys, Diversity, Evolution

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• Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Special, Far Away, Equipment

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• But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Views, Subjectivity, Kind

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• As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Humble, Honor, Proud

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• I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Predictions, Results, Sonnet

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1969.

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• When you think you're listening to several conversations at once, they tell me, you may really simply be time sharing - that is, listening a little bit to this one, a little bit to that one

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Thinking, Listening, May

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• You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Stars, Study, Astronomers

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• If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Giving, Fundamentals, Way

  "THE SIMPLE AND THE COMPLEX Part I: THE QUANTUM AND THE QUASI-CLASSICAL with MURRAY GELL-MANN, Ph.D". Interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, www.intuitionnetwork.org.

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• I think also of my colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands, and feel that in some measure I am here as a representative of our small, informal, international fraternity.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Thinking, Land, Fraternity

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• So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Individuality, Needs, Individualism

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• I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Details, Physics, Particle Physics

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