Quote#Science & Reason
Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science,…
Quote byWilliam Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin · 1825–1907
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: In a letter addressed to George Stokes dated December 20, 1857, as quoted in Fluid Mechanics in the Next Century (1996), by Mohamed Gad-el-Hak and Mihir Sen..
English (original)
Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics.
— William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
More from William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation”. I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from …
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and …
Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.
Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.