I’ve always had a guilty feeling about disliking statistics. When I came to graduate school in physics I almost didn’t take a course in statistical mechanics, a beautiful subject eventually taught to me in a class by T. D. Lee that turned out to be one of the best courses I ever took. I was put off by adjective ‘statistical’, which I misunderstood and therefore scorned. I believed in mechanics; I wanted explanations and I thought statistical mechanics would dodge them.

I was wrong. Statistical mechanics explains the properties of macroscopic matter from averaging over the microscopic properties of its constituents, and, vice versa, deduces the qualities of the microscopic constituents from macroscopic behavior.

Nevertheless, I want causal explanations. Physics models have a metaphor beneath them: Dirac’s sea, Schrodinger’s wave function, Newton’s forces, Maxwell’s waves …

Always look for an explanation. Looking for patterns, explanations, laws, meaning and relationships in all fields — that’s science and art, and interesting.