(NASA public domain image)
If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are “true,” that they reveal a genuine feature of nature. . . . You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.
1932 Nobel physics laureate Werner Heisenberg, in a conversation with Albert Einstein. Quoted in Del Thiessen, Bittersweet Destiny: The Stormy Evolution of Human Behavior.
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