Murray Gell-Mann Quotes

All models are false but some models are useful

...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.

All models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind.

The science behind Interstellar is interesting, because some of it is absolutely real astrophysics and orbital mechanics, some of it is theoretical physics, and some of it is completely Hollywood. When a science fiction movie is based on plausible science, it's really good.

As you know, a theory in physics is not useful unless it is able to predict underlined effects which we would otherwise expect.

Until now, physical theories have been regarded as merely models with approximately describe the reality of nature. As the models improve, so the fit between theory and reality gets closer. Some physicists are now claiming that supergravity is the reality, that the model and the real world are in mathematically perfect accord.

I thought I wanted to be a physicist in high school until I learned that there was much more math than philosophy in it. I assumed I would just sit around all day and think.

String theory is 21 st century physics that fell accidentally into the 20th century.

Remember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle.

The abstract kills, the concrete saves.

Simplicity and beauty are the signs not of truth but of a well-constructed approximate model of a limited domain of phenomena.

The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.

General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between the highly generalized constructions of pure mathematics and the specific theories of the specialized disciplines. Mathematics attempts to organize highly general relationships into a coherent system, a system however which does not have any necessary connections with the "real" world around us. It studies all thinkable relationships abstracted from any concrete situation or body of empirical knowledge.

There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.

The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology.

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.

Modern science is under no obligation to satisfy the expectations of your five senses.

In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from the recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world and the decision to concentrate on these similarities and to ignore, for the time being, their differences.

To make abstractions hold in reality is to destroy reality.

One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.

It is almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.

Metaphysics is a cobweb that the mind weaves around things.

Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.