Hermann Weyl - Nature Quotes

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The scene of action of reality is not a three-dimensional Euclidean space but rather a four-dimensional world, in which space and time are linked together indissolubly. However deep the chasm may be that separates the intuitive nature of space from that of time in our experience, nothing of this qualitative difference enters into the objective world which physics endeavors to crystallize out of direct experience. It is a four-dimensional continuum, which is neither "time" nor "space". Only the consciousness that passes on in one portion of this world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it and passes behind it as history, that is, as a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space.

Hermann Weyl
It seems clear that [set theory] violates against the essence of the continuum, which, by its very nature, cannot at all be battered into a single set of elements. Not the relationship of an element to a set, but of a part to a whole ought to be taken as a basis for the analysis of a continuum.

Hermann Weyl
It is the nature of a real thing to be inexhaustible in content; we can get an ever deeper insight into this content by the continual addition of new experiences, partly in apparent contradiction, by bringing them into harmony with one another. In this interpretation, things of the real world are approximate ideas. From this arises the empirical character of all our knowledge of reality.

Hermann Weyl
Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect.

Hermann Weyl
Allow me to express now, once and for all, my deep respect for the work of the experimenter and for his fight to wring significant facts from an inflexible Nature, who says so distinctly "No" and so indistinctly "Yes" to our theories.

Hermann Weyl
Once and for all I wish to record my unbounded admiration for the work of the experimenter in his struggle to wrest interpretable facts from an unyielding Nature who knows so well how to meet our theories with a decisive No — or with an inaudible Yes.

Hermann Weyl
The truth as we see it today is this: The laws of nature do not determine uniquely the one world that actually exists.

Hermann Weyl
Mathematics has been called the science of the infinite. Indeed, the mathematician invents finite constructions by which questions are decided that by their very nature refer to the infinite. This is his glory.

Hermann Weyl