Gibbs Theory Quotes

In the last generation, this country produced one of the most eminent men of science in the whole world. His name was quite unknown among us while he lived, and it is still unknown. Yet I may say without too great exaggeration that when I heard it mentioned in a professional assembly in the Netherlands two years ago, everybody got down under the table and touched their foreheads to the floor. His name was Josiah Willard Gibbs.

As a footnote to the above, I would like to say that I am getting very tired of literary authorities, on both the stage and the screen, who advise young writers to deal only with those subjects that happen to be familiar to them personally. It is quite true that this theory probably produced "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," but the chances are it would have ruled out "Hamlet.

The combination of Bayes and Markov Chain Monte Carlo has been called "arguably the most powerful mechanism ever created for processing data and knowledge." Almost instantaneously MCMC and Gibbs sampling changed statisticians' entire method of attacking problems. In the words of Thomas Kuhn, it was a paradigm shift. MCMC solved real problems, used computer algorithms instead of theorems, and led statisticians and scientists into a worked where "exact" meant "simulated" and repetitive computer operations replaced mathematical equations. It was a quantum leap in statistics.

And perhaps most important… “Is there a men’s room anywhere nearby?” I asked. “I really have to pee.” This would be the first time I experienced what is generally referred to in spy school as “Hogarth’s theory of fear-based urination”: The amount of danger you are in is directly proportional to your need to pee.

This irrelevance of molecular arrangements for macroscopic results has given rise to the tendency to confine physics and chemistry to the study of homogeneous systems as well as homogeneous classes. In statistical mechanics a great deal of labor is in fact spent on showing that homogeneous systems and homogeneous classes are closely related and to a considerable extent interchangeable concepts of theoretical analysis (Gibbs theory). Naturally, this is not an accident. The methods of physics and chemistry are ideally suited for dealing with homogeneous classes with their interchangeable components. But experience shows that the objects of biology are radically inhomogeneous both as systems (structurally) and as classes (generically). Therefore, the method of biology and, consequently, its results will differ widely from the method and results of physical science.

This line of approach originated in Maxwell’s kinetic theory of gases which led to the profound works of Boltzmann and of Gibbs.

Gibbs’ introduction of probability into physics occurred well before there was an adequate theory of the sort of probability he needed. But for all these gaps it is, I am convinced, Gibbs rather than Einstein or Heisenberg or Planck to whom we must attribute the first great revolution of twentieth century physics. This revolution has had the effect that physics now no longer claims to deal with what will always happen, but rather with what will happen with an overwhelming probability. At the beginning in Gibbs’ own work this contingent attitude was superimposed on a Newtonian base in which the elements whose probability was to be discussed were systems obeying all of the Newtonian laws.

Instead, there had already been an active conspiracy theory claiming that shape-shifting reptilian aliens from the planet Flumbo were secretly taking the place of normal human beings. The Flumbonians had been accused of being behind everything from crashing the stock market to rigging the Super Bowl to ruining the last season of Game of Thrones.

While there was a general consensus that I was now America’s public enemy number one, there was considerable debate about who I was working for. Each channel had a coterie of experts discussing this, and every last one of them had a different conclusion, all of which were wrong. Within fifteen minutes, I was accused of being connected to six different extremist terrorist groups, twelve hostile foreign governments, and three crackpot conspiracy theories, one of which involved the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and NASA. Even the “experts” who suspected I was acting alone couldn’t agree on why. My attempted assassination was blamed on everything from video games to Facebook to a misguided crush on the president’s daughter.

Christian theism, to those who believe it, commends itself as fact, not theory, by the sheer multiplicity of its bearings. Were it a speculation, it would surely face a single field of enquiry: it would assign the cause of the world, or the principle of duty, or the aim of existence, or the means of spiritual regeneration. If an equal light falls from a single source in all these directions at once, that source must seem to have the richness of a reality, rather than the abstract poverty of an idea.

According to string theory in quantum mechanics the core of energy and matter on a subatomic level is a vibrating, string-like filament that is identical in all energy and matter.

then found a coffee shop that finally allowed Mike to go to the water closet. The rest of us all went too, as per Hogarth’s Theory of Fear-Based Urination.

It dawned on me I'd never considered the possibility she didn't talk to people because she was weird as hell, but that was my new working theory.

allowed Mike to go to the water closet. The rest of us all went too, as per Hogarth’s Theory of Fear-Based Urination.