Research Notes·Oct 21, 2025·6 min read
Sacred Equations
A short note on the equations physicists treat like relics — and what they teach a builder about compression.
There is a small set of equations that physicists carry with them the way old sailors carried charts. F=ma. E=mc². The Schrödinger equation. They compress centuries of observation into a line.
The engineer’s version of a sacred equation is a well-named function. It compresses a system into a name you can hold in your head. If your codebase has none, you don’t yet understand what you’re building.
Compression is the deepest form of understanding.