I put 5 quotes here due to the event of death of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, certainly he would understand their meaning in a much deeper sense than I ever could. Unfortunately he can no longer explain what connections he could find during his intensive studies of both physics as well as philosophy. He held professorships for both, which today is almost impossible to achieve if you are a young scientist. When you deepdive into physics (you can do so even by Wikipedia), it is difficult to understand the importance celebrities today claim on their so called “work”, that is so negligible compared to the brilliance of thinking of people like Heisenberg, Bohr or Weizsäcker. I appreciate a lot the culture of thinking they were attached to. Mind work that was so intense is so much different of the managerial tasks one faces today, where you loose yourself in stupid tasks to complete and do not focus on the real questions. In the daily routine who takes the time to think so thoroughly than people like Weizsäcker? That is something to remember when you think of the life of von Weizsäcker.
On Mathematics:
– Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater. Albert Einstein
– Jede Wissenschaft bedarf der Mathematik, die Mathematik bedarf keiner. Jakob I. Bernoulli
– Das Wesen der Mathematik liegt in ihrer Freiheit. Georg Cantor
– Erstaunlich und entzückend ist die Macht zwingender Beweise, und so sind allein die mathematischen geartet. Galileo Galilei
– Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. Bertrand Russell