“There is always another way . . . “

Some good quotes from the physicist Richard Feynman today at wood s lot. I especially liked this one:

If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain… In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

Curious to see what else Feynman might have said about the limits to knowledge, I followed the link to his Nobel lecture and found this:

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature. A thing like the inverse square law is just right to be represented by the solution of Poisson’s equation, which, therefore, is a very different way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what it means, that nature chooses these curious forms, but maybe that is a way of defining simplicity. Perhaps a thing is simple if you can describe it fully in several different ways without immediately knowing that you are describing the same thing.

I’ll go along with that! The question, though, is whether this “simplicity” lies in nature itself, or merely in the mind of the observer?

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