Ortts #936

- the ultimate goal of physics . . . . figuring out the mathematical question from which all the answers flow -

 “It is not always so that theories which are equivalent are equally good, because one of them may be more suitable than the other for future developments.”

     -- Paul Dirac (1902-1984), about 1978

. . . when there are many possible descriptions of a physical situation—all making equivalent predictions, yet all wildly different in premise—one will turn out to be preferable, because it extends to an underlying reality, seeming to account for more of the universe at once. . . . this branching, interconnected web of mathematical languages, each with its own associated picture of the world, is what needs to be understood.
 

all, from this truly remarkable article