Quotes from Steven Weinberg

Fine Structure Constant: Fundamental numerical constant of atomic physics and quantum electrodynamics, defined as the square of the charge of the electron divided by the product of Planck's constant and the speed of light.

There is no principle, built into the laws of nature, that says that theoretical physicists have to be happy.

The proper measure of a philosophical system or a scientific theory is not the degree to which it anticipated modern thought, but its degree of success in treating the philosophical and scientific problems of its own day.

known as the anthropic principle, ehich states that the laws of nature should allow the existence of intelligent beings that can ask about the laws of nature.

I want to show how difficult was the discovery of modern science, how far from obvious are its practices and standards.

This also serves as a warning, that science may not yet be in its final form.

The distinction between mathematics and science is pretty well settled. It remains mysterious to us why mathematics that is invented for reasons having nothing to do with nature often turns out to be useful in physical theories. In a famous article,8 the physicist Eugene Wigner has written of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

Some for the Glories of the World, and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

What is surely impossible is that a theoretical physicist, given unlimited computing power, should deduce from the laws of physics that a certain complex structure is aware of its own existence.

I don't at all mean to say that the early Greeks decided to write poetically in order to avoid the need to validate their theories. They felt no such need. Today we test our speculations about nature by using proposed theories to draw more or less precise conclusions that can be tested by observation. This did not occur to the early Greeks, or to many of their successors, for a very simple reason: they had never seen it done.

Unfortunately, string theory has not yet led to any predictions that can be tested experimentally, and as a result theorists (at least most of us) are keeping an open mind as to whether the theory actually applies to the real world. It is this insistence on verification that we most miss in all the poetic students of nature, from Thales to Plato.

From past experience, it seems that at my rate of writing it takes about a decade to produce enough new essays for assembly in a collection. I hope nevertheless that this will not be my last collection. But given actuarial realities, perhaps this would be a good time for me to add a word of thanks to readers who over many years have put up with my polemics and explanations, and have thereby given me a precious contact with the world beyond physics.

Con todas sus imperfecciones, la ciencia moderna es una técnica que se amolda lo suficiente a la naturaleza como para funcionar: una práctica que nos permite aprender cosas fiables acerca del mundo. En este sentido, se trata de una técnica que esperaba a que la gente la descubriera.

La religion est une insulte à la dignité humaine. Que ce soit avec ou sans elle, il y aura toujours des gens bien qui font de bonnes choses, et des mauvais qui font de mauvaises choses. Mais pour que des gens bien agissent mal, il faut la religion.

La ciencia es acumulativa; cada nueva teoría incorpora las teorías anteriores válidas como aproximaciones, e incluso explica por qué esas aproximaciones funcionan, caso de que así sea.

Physicists are more opportunistic, demanding only enough precision and certainty to give them a good chance of avoiding serious mistakes. In the preface of my own treatise on the quantum theory of fields, I admit that "there are parts of this book that will bring tears to the eyes of the mathematically inclined reader.

The familiar Mercator projection used in maps of the earth gives a good idea of distances and directions near the equator, but produces horrible dostortions near the poles, with Greenland swelling to many times its actual size. In the same way, it is one sign of being in a gravitational field that there is no one freely falling frame of reference in which gravitational and inertial effects cancel everywhere.

intelligent design" ideology being promoted today is not science—it is rather the abdication of science.

we think that all the forces of nature become united at something like the Planck energy, a million billion times larger than the highest energy reached in today's accelerators.

A modern university dean might feel that this danger was a just punishment for Galileo's evasion of teaching duties. But

Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians gods with gray eyes and red hair

La diferencia fundamental entre la ciencia de Aristarco y la nuestra no son los errores de sus observaciones. Algunos errores esporádicos graves siguen afectando a la observación astronómica y la física experimental[...]. La verdadera diferencia entre Aristarco y los astrónomos y físicos de la actualidad no es que los datos de sus observaciones fueran erróneos, sino que jamás los puso en duda, y ni siquiera reconoció que pudieran ser imperfectos.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians