langreiter.com plain, simple: 2003-02-08-tension

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2003-02-08-tension

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 7941 days AGO

"If we look back on the history of the exact sciences, it can perhaps be asserted that the correct representation of natural phenomena has evolved from this very tension between [...] two opposing views. Pure mathematical speculation becomes unfruitful because from playing with the wealth of possible forms it no longer finds its way back to the small number of forms according to which nature is actually constructed. And pure empiricism becomes unfruitful because it eventually bogs down in endless tabulation without inner connection. Only from the tension, the interplay between the wealth of facts and the mathematical forms that may possibly be appropriate to them, can decisive advances spring."
— Werner Heisenberg, "The meaning of beauty in the exact sciences.", Munich, 1970, as cited in Trenchard More, "The Nested Rectangular Array as a Model of Data", Proceedings of the Array Programming Languages Conference (APL'79), 1979