Frases de Josiah Willard Gibbs

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
At a Yale faculty meeting, during a discussion of language requirements in the undergraduate curriculum. Quoted in Muriel Rukeyser, Willard Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942), p. 280.

„If I have had any success in mathematical physics, it is, I think, because I have been able to dodge mathematical difficulties.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
Quoted by C. S. Hastings in "Biographical Memoir of Josiah Willard Gibbs 1839-1903," National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, vol. VI (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1909), p. 390.

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„A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
Quoted in R. B. Lindsay, "On the Relation of Mathematics and Physics," Scientific Monthly 59, 456 (Dec. 1944)

„I wish to know systems.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
Quoted in Muriel Rukeyser, Willard Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942), p. 4.

„The whole is simpler than its parts.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
Quoted by Irving Fisher in "The Applications of Mathematics to the Social Sciences," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 36, 225-243 (1930).

„Anyone having these desires will make these researches.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
About his own scientific work. Quoted in Muriel Rukeyser, Willard Gibbs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942), p. 431.

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„In all these papers we see a love of honest work, an aversion to shams, a caution in the enunciation of conclusions, a distrust of rash generalizations and speculations based on uncertain premises. He was never anxious to add one more guess on doubtful matters in the hope of hitting the truth, or what might pass as such for a time, but was always ready to take infinite pains in the most careful testing of every theory. With these qualities was united a modesty which forbade the pushing of his own claims and desired no reputation except the unsought tribute of competent judges.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
From Gibbs's obituary for Hubert Anson Newton (1897), in the [http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/hubert-newton.pdf Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences].

„We avoid the gravest difficulties when, giving up the attempt to frame hypotheses concerning the constitution of matter, we pursue statistical inquiries as a branch of rational mechanics.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
From the preface to Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics (1902), p. ix.

„The laws of thermodynamics, as empirically determined, express the approximate and probable behavior of systems of a great number of particles, or, more precisely, they express the laws of mechanics for such systems as they appear to beings who have not the fineness of perception to enable them to appreciate quantities of the order of magnitude of those which relate to single particles, and who cannot repeat their experiments often enough to obtain any but the most probable results.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
From the preface to Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics (1902), p. viii.

„One of the principal objects of theoretical research is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in the greatest simplicity.“

— Josiah Willard Gibbs
From Gibbs's letter accepting the Rumford Medal (1881). Quoted in A. L. Mackay, Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (London, 1994).