Sublime

There is no Newtonian law of markets; they are all ephemeral relationships in a sea of noise and the only way you can do that and capture non-linearity and complexity is with a system that is rich enough to be able to contain all the models, so a universal approximator—that’s what neural nets are—and allows you to do that.

The central insight of Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, is that science is not a collection of verifiable propositions; rather, it is a set of theories that, at best, can be wholly falsified.

Meriwether did not himself possess a first-rate mathematical mind. Instead, he recruited the top academic talent. No finance professor was more respected than Robert C. Merton. Merton had consulted for Salomon Brothers, so Meriwether already knew him. He agreed to come on board. Meriwether’s other great coup was recruiting Myron Scholes. As

Feynman was a theoretical physicist par excellence. Newton had been both experimentalist and theorist in equal measure. Einstein was quite simply contemptuous of experiment, preferring to put his faith in pure thought. Feynman was driven to develop a deep theoretical understanding of nature, but he always remained close to the real and often grubby

Prigogine realized that although Boltzmann’s theory was correct, it did not apply to what we observe on Earth because our planet is an out-of-equilibrium pocket inside a larger system—the universe—that is moving toward equilibrium.

Bohr était capable de consacrer des heures à discuter le détail de leurs hypothèses, avec un mélange unique de perspicacité philosophique, de bienveillance et de rigueur. Précis, voire maniaque, il ne tolérait aucune approximation dans l'interprétation des expériences ; mais, non plus, aucune idée neuve ne lui paraissait a priori folle, aucun

The answer derives from the fact that what is good for groups is not always good for the individuals comprising them. For example, both multicellular organisms and social insect colonies are functionally specialized and hierarchically organized collectives that are highly successful in maintaining and transmitting accumulated knowledge, in the form