As result a new kind of theory to be applied on a class of motions ... these geometric motions are that which acquire different parts of a system of bodies, without neither perturb themselves nor the other and consequently these motions do not depend of the action or reaction among the bodies, but only upon the conditions of their connections, and thus being determined only by geometry and not dependent of the rules of dynamics.
Lazare CarnotRelated topics
action different dynamics geometry kind nor reaction result thus parts RulesRelated quotes
Confronted with such a variety most philosophers try to establish one approach to the exclusion of all others. As far as they are concerned there can only be one true way- and they want to find it. Thus normative philosophers argue that knowledge is a result of the application of certain rules, they propose rules which in their opinion constitute knowledge and reject what clashes with them.
Paul Karl Feyerabend
...an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell...-the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.
Mark Twain
Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.
William Blackstone
The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present-and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past-or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.
Tony Judt
Elegance requires that the number of defining equations be small. Five is better than ten, and one is better than five. On this score, one might facetiously say that String Theory is the ultimate epitome of elegance. With all the years that String Theory has been studied, no one has found even a single defining equation! The number at present count is zero. We know neither what the fundamental equations of the theory are nor even if it has any.
Leonard Susskind