In a contribution to the American Journal of Physics, one of David Griffiths’ former students recalled a remark that Griffiths once made during a lecture, in which he supposedly claimed that physics is but a recipe for calculating numbers that describe reality.

David Griffiths, asked by the journal whether he indeed felt that way, responded:

Whoever this David Griffiths may be, I disagree with him. Physics can and should tell a story—a story that helps us “understand” how the universe works. Is this story true? Well, it’s certainly not the whole truth at this stage; it evolves, and maybe it’s not even converging to a unique “truth.” But what we’re looking for is much more interesting than a bunch of numbers (or recipes for computing them).

I, for one, do not care for the “shut up and calculate”-school of modern physics. It’s very difficult to build an intuition for physics problems based on calculations alone, and it starts to verge on the impractical if you cannot reason your way around a problem without a calculator or Mathematica kernel at hand. Indeed, what makes Griffiths’ books and papers so appreciated is that he doesn’t shy away from using the theorems and equations to tell a story.