"It is astonishing how many natural laws can be expressed as minimizing principles. Just the fact that heavy liquids sink to the bottom is a consequence of minimizing their potential energy. And when you sit on a chair or lie on a bed, the springs adjust themselves so that their energy is minimized.

I am convinced that plants and people also develop in accordance with minimization principles; perhaps civilization itself is based on a law of least action. The discovery of such laws is the fundamental step in passing from observations to explanations, and there must be some still to be found in the social sciences and in biology"

Linear Algebra and its Applications
Gilbert Strang
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