Max Planck - Nature Quotes

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Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

Max Planck
There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls

Max Planck
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

Max Planck
This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?

Max Planck
The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.

Max Planck
Compared with immeasurably rich, ever young Nature, advanced as man may be in scientific knowledge and insight, he must forever remain the wondering child and must constantly be prepared for new surprises.

Max Planck
In all cases, the quantum hypothesis has given rise to the idea, that in Nature, changes occur which are not continuous, but of an explosive nature.

Max Planck
Nature prefers the more probable states to the less probable because in nature processes take place in the direction of greater probability. Heat goes from a body at higher temperature to a body at lower temperature because the state of equal temperature distribution is more probable than a state of unequal temperature distribution.

Max Planck
Nature prefers more probable to less probable states... Heat flows from a body of high temperature to a body of lower temperature, because the state of equal temperature is more probable than a state of unequal distribution of temperature.

Max Planck
Physic, it may be urged, is solely concerned with the objects and events of inanimate nature, while a general philosophy, if it is to be at all satisfactory, must embrace the whole of physical and intellectual life and must deal with questions of the soul, including the highest problems of ethics.

Max Planck
Ever since the observation of nature has existed, it has held a vague notion of its ultimate goal as the composition of the colorful multiplicity of phenomena in a uniform system, where possible, in a single formula.

Max Planck
Is there something in the nature of man, some inner realm, that science cannot touch?.Or to speak more concretely, is there a point at which the causal line of thought ceases and beyond which science cannot go?

Max Planck
If one wishes to obtain a definite answer from Nature one must attack the question from a more general and less selfish point of view.

Max Planck
It goes without saying that the laws of nature are in themselves independent of the properties of the instruments with which they are measured. Therefore in every observation of natural phenomena we must remember the principle that the reliability of the measuring apparatus must always play an important role.

Max Planck