Regardless of any deviations, it was clear I was supposed to end up in math and physics.
Interpretation
The quote highlights a strong sense of purpose and destiny in a person's journey toward studying mathematics and physics.
In this quote, Edward Witten expresses a conviction that despite any changes or detours he may have taken in life, his path ultimately led him to the fields of mathematics and physics. It underscores the idea that some individuals have a predestined calling that guides them toward their true passions and talents, suggesting that our life paths may be influenced by an intrinsic purpose.
In practice
A graduation speech to inspire students to pursue their passions.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.
But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.
I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.
You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
It's an exaggeration to say that I came up with M-theory.
Rising carbon price is essential to 'decarbonize' the economy - to remove the nation towards the era beyond fossil fuels.
I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.
The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time.
Those who say that climate change doesn't exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS.
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