Quotes About Science

Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories.

Equações são mais importantes para mim, pois a política existe para o presente, ao passo que uma equação existe para a eternidade.

Parece que en la naturaleza hay un cierto nivel de aleatoriedad o incertidumbre, que no se puede eliminar por muy buenas que sean las teorías. Eso se puede resumir en el Principio de Incertidumbre, formulado en 1927 por el científico alemán Werner Heisenberg.

Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.

In fact, according to quantum physics, each particle has some probability of being found anywhere in the universe.

it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.

was generally thought that all knowledge of the world could be obtained through direct observation

In modern science laws of nature are usually phrased in mathematics. They can be either exact or approximate, but they must have been observed to hold without exception—if not universally, then at least under a stipulated set of conditions. For

There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is made of cheese do not contribute to the present state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn't.

If time travel were possible we'd be inundated with tourist from the future.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.

One could define God as the embodiment of the laws of nature.

To understand the universe at the deepest level, we need to know not only how the universe behaves, but why. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why this particular set of laws and not some other?" "This is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. We shall attempt to answer it in this book. Unlike the answer given in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ours won't be simply "42.

The microwave background indicated that the universe had had a hot, dense stage in the past.

What most of these authors don't seem to have realized is that if you can travel faster than light, the theory of relativity implies you can also travel back in time, as the following limerick says: There was a young lady of Wight Who travelled much faster than light. She departed one day, In a relative way, And arrived on the previous night.

Visible light has a wavelength of between only forty and eighty millionths of a centimeter. Even shorter wavelengths are known as ultraviolet, X rays, and gamma rays. Maxwell's theory predicted that radio or light waves should travel at a certain fixed speed.

We also have some evidence that there is a much larger black hole, with a mass of about a hundred thousand times that of the sun, at the center of our galaxy.

In effect, God was confined to the areas that nineteenth-century science did not understand.

In 1992 the Roman Catholic Church finally acknowledged that it had been wrong to condemn Galileo.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.) There

The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe

Sin embargo, si descubrimos una teoría completa, debería en su momento ser comprensible en sus líneas generales por todos, no solo por unos pocos científicos. Entonces todos seremos capaces de tomar parte en la discusión de por qué el universo existe. Si encontramos la respuesta a ello, sería el triunfo definitivo de la razón humana, pues entonces conoceríamos la mente de Dios.

These laws may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it.

As Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft (a former post-doc of mine) remarked: I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.