James Jeans

Professions :

Born :

September 11, 1877

Died :

September 16, 1946

The essential fact is that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational facts, are mathematical pictures.

nature science facts

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

jeans mind reality

We have already considered with disfavour the possibility of the universe having been planned by a biologist or an engineer; from the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.

creation god science

The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we must describe as a mathematical thinker.

mathematical thinker want

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.[make the best of what is necessary...if you can't have what you love, love what you have...as there are lovable or at least positive aspects in everything, because anything could be worse]

lovable detours gratitude

...to many it is not knowledge but the quest for knowledge that gives greater interest to thought-to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

giving science knowledge

Science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.

jeans science knowledge

In real science a hypothesis can never be proved true...A science which confines itself to correlating phenomena can never learn anything about the reality underlying the phenomena, while a science which goes further than this and introduces hypotheses about reality, can never acquire certain knowledge of a positive kind about reality; in whatever way we proceed, this is forever denied us.

real forever way

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive. by James Jeans

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

carpe-diem anticipation life

Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.

space stars science

Kant, discussing the various modes of perception by which the human mind apprehends nature, concluded that it is specially prone to see nature through mathematical spectacles. Just as a man wearing blue spectacles would see only a blue world, so Kant thought that, with our mental bias, we tend to see only a mathematical world.

nature men science

In this model, the sun is a very tiny speck of dust indeed-a speck less than a three-thousandth of an inch in diameter ... Think of the sun as something less than a speck of dust in a vast city, of the earth as less than a millionth part of such a speck of dust, and we have perhaps as vivid a picture as the mind can really grasp of the relation of our home in space to the rest of the universe.

home science thinking

The plain fact is that there are no conclusions. If we must state a conclusion, it would be that many of the former conclusions of the nineteenth-century science on philosophical questions are once again in the melting-pot.

philosophical science facts

The human race, whose intelligence dates back only a single tick of the astronomical clock, could hardly hope to understand so soon what it all means.

intelligent science mean

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesse... by James Jeans

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

atoms life science

The motion of the stars over our heads is as much an illusion as that of the cows, trees and churches that flash past the windows of our train.

stars science past

One must stand stiller than still. On reverse time travel. by James Jeans

One must stand stiller than still. On reverse time travel.

reverse time-travel science

All discussion of the ultimate nature of things must necessarily be barren unless we have some extraneous standards against which to compare them.

barren standards science

Humanity is at the very beginning of its existence-a new-born babe, with all the unexplored potentialities of babyhood; and until the last few moments its interest has been centred, absolutely and exclusively, on its cradle and feeding bottle.

bottles humanity science

...nature seems very conversant with the rules of pure mathematics, as our own mathematicians have formulated them in their studies, out of their own inner consciousness and without drawing to any appreciable extent on their experience of the outer world.

drawing nature science

Gabriel Lippmann

Burton Richter

Bruno Rossi

Bruce Maccabee

Brian Cox

Allan McLeod Cormack