3 Quotes & Sayings By Gerald Holton

Gerald Holton is an American physicist and science historian. He is currently the Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Director of Science and Education at Harvard University. Holton's research interests include: the history of science, the history of physics, and the history of education. His best-known book is Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler, Bacon and the Conquest of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1985), which received the 1986 National Science Foundation Outstanding Book Award in Science and Technology Read more

Holton has also contributed to the popularization of science through his books The March of Folly (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988; revised edition, New York: Citadel Press, 1992; paperback edition, New York: New American Library, 1989), Theories Of Everything (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982 ), The Discovery Of Global Warming (Cambridge U. Press, 2007) , Climate Shift (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) , Global Warming And Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011) . He has written numerous articles for magazines including Discover Magazine , Scientific American , Scientific American Mind , Science Digest , Physics Today , Technology Review , Physics World , International Journal Of Modern Physics B , Journal Of The History Of Ideas , Historical Studies In Education And Culture .

1
The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century. Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity. We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology. Gerald Holton
2
The power of the deductive network produced in physics has been illustrated in a delightful article by Victor F. Weisskopf. He begins by taking the magnitudes of six physical constants known by measurement: the mass of the proton, the mass and electric charge of the electron, the light velocity, Newton's gravitational constant, and the quantum of action of Planck. He adds three of four fundamental laws (e.g., de Broglie's relations connecting particle momentum and particle energy with the wavelength and frequency, and the Pauli exclusion principle), and shows that one can then derive a host of different, apparently quite unconnected, facts that happen to be known to us by observation separately .. . Gerald Holton