Abstract
Creativity in theoretical physics is illustrated by breakthroughs ranging from the creation of the calculus by Newton to the invention of the neutrino by Pauli. The natural language of science is mathematics. Sometimes, physicists must expand this language, and usually, they take clues from it and its severe constraints.
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Notes
- 1.
Ptolemy is an exception that proves the rule. His remarkably accurate tables for planetary motion were a tour-de-force of curve fitting. His rules of motion simply dictated using layers of circular motion, epicycles. His epicycles must be routinely updated, and each new solar system requires its own precisely tuned epicycles. It might seem universal if you only know about circles but it is not.
- 2.
This was really a rediscovery, as it was even known by some Greeks.
- 3.
It took Newton several years to define the center of mass, a precise definition for the point displayed in Fig. 5.1.
- 4.
Until they do. Eventually, we get to the details.
- 5.
Very few universal constants are known to twenty significant figures.
- 6.
Unless we look.
- 7.
This is drastically oversimplified.
- 8.
This last part became so difficult that physics divided into theoretical and experimental physics.
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Perry, R.J. (2015). Creativity in Theoretical Physics. In: Charyton, C. (eds) Creativity and Innovation Among Science and Art. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6624-5_5
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