Léon Brillouin quotes

Léon Brillouin was a French physicist renowned for his contributions to quantum mechanics and solid-state physics. His work introduced concepts such as the Brillouin zone, which became fundamental in understanding the behavior of electrons in crystals. He also made significant advances in information theory and wave propagation. Here are 4 of his quotes:

Both the uncertainty principle and the negentropy principle of information make Laplace's scheme [of exact determinism] completely unrealistic. The problem is an artificial one; it belongs to imaginative poetry, not to experimental science.

Léon Brillouin

We completely ignore the human value of the information. A selection of 100 letters is given a certain information value, and we do not investigate whether it makes sense in English, and, if so, whether the meaning of the sentence is of any practical importance. According to our definition, a set of 100 letters selected at random (according to the rules of Table 1.1), a sentence of 100 letters from a newspaper, a piece of Shakespeare or a theorem of Einstein are given exactly the same informational value.

Léon Brillouin

The laws of classical mechanics represent a mathematical idealization and should not be assumed to correspond to the real laws of nature. ... We now have to realize that errors are inevitable (..) a discovery that makes strict determinism impossible.

Léon Brillouin