« on: October 18, 2006, 01:27:50 PM »
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is quite another.
If one way's better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
In a randomly infinite Universe, any event occuring here and now with infinite probability must be occuring simultaneously at an infinite number of other sites in the Universe. It is hard to evaluate this idea any further, but one thing is certain: if it is true then it is certainly not original!
No longer can we be satisfied with a life where the heart has its reasons which reason cannot know. Our hearts must know the world of reason, and reason must be guided by an informed heart.
Although gravity is by far the weakest force of nature, its insidious and cumulative action serves to determine the ultimate fate not only of individual astronomical objects but of the entire cosmos. The same remorseless attraction that crushes a star operates on a much grander scale on the universe as a whole.
Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times are not so much the causes of the different success of their labors, as the peculiar nature of their means and artificial resources in their possession.
Energy is the only life...as Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy
We do not know how the scientists of the next century will define energy or in what strange jargon they will discuss it. But no matter what language the physicists use they will not come into contradiction with Blake. Energy will remain in some sense the lord and giver of life, a reality transcending our mathematical descriptions. Its nature lies at the heart of the mystery of our existence as animate beings in an inanimate universe.
To act intelligently in human affairs is only possible if an attempt is made to understand the thoughts, motives, and apprehensions of one's opponent so fully that one can see the world through his eyes.
The universe consists of only atoms and the void: all else is opinion and illusion.
There are only two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
As children we all possess a natural uninhibited curiosity, a hunger for explanation, which seems to die slowly as we age - suppressed, I suppose, by the high value we place on conformity and by the need not to appear ignorant. It betokens a conviction that somehow science is innately incomprehensible. It precludes reaching deeper, thereby denying the profound truth that understanding enriches experience, that explanation vastly enhances the beauty of the natural world in the eye of the beholder.
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those of us brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
If each of us can be helped by science to live a hundred years, what will it profit us if our hates and fears, our loneliness and our remorse will nor permit us to enjoy them? What use is an extra year or two to the man who "kills" what time he has?
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
All problems are finally scientific problems.
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.
It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.
Think, for a moment, of a cheetah, a sleek, beautiful animal, one of the fastest on earth, which roams freely on the savannas of Africa. In its natural habitat, it is a magnificent animal, almost a work of art, unsurpassed in speed or grace by any other animal. Now, think of a cheetah that has been captured and thrown into a miserable cage in a zoo. It has lost its origianl grace and beauty, and is put on display for our amusement. We see only the broken spirit of the cheetah in the cage, not its original power and elegance. The cheetah can be compared to the laws of physics, which are beautiful in their natural setting. The natural habitat of the laws of physics is a higher-dimensional space-time. However, we can only measure the laws of physics when they have been broken and placed on display in a cage, which is our three-dimensional laboratory. We only see the cheetah when its grace and beauty have been stripped away.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2006, 02:37:26 PM by Unbeliever »
Logged
"Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods....I don't believe in God. I believe in man - his strength, his possibilities, his reason."
Gherman Titov, Soviet cosmonaut, in The Seattle Daily Times, May 7, 1962
God Not FoundI looked for God in my family - I didn't find Him.
I looked for God in my culture - I didn't find Him.
I looked for God in science - I found I didn't need Him.
