Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.
BRIAN GREENECosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it’s no wonder. We’re storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?
More Brian Greene Quotes
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String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner.
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There’s no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.
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The absolute worst thing that you ever can do, in my opinion, in bringing science to the general public, is be condescending or judgmental. It is so opposite to the way science needs to be brought forth.
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Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.
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…things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to notice.
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If someone wants to place the word ‘God’ on those collections of words, it’s OK with me.
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Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you’ve built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.
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In quantum mechanics there is A causing B. The equations do not stand outside that usual paradigm of physics. The real issue is that the kinds of things you predict in quantum mechanics are different from the kinds of things you predict using general relativity.
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It’s hard to teach passionately about something that you don’t have a passion for.
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Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
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Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human.
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I love it when real science finds a home in a fictional setting, where you take some real core idea of science and weave it through a fictional narrative in order to bring it to life, the way stories can. That’s my favorite thing.
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I was holding [my four-year-old daughter] and I said, ‘Sophia, I love you more than anything in the universe.’ And she turned to me and said, ‘Daddy, universe or multiverse?’
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I’d say many features of string theory don’t mesh with what we observe in everyday life.
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I like to think that Einstein would look at string theory’s journey and smile, enjoying the theory’s remarkable geometrical features while feeling kinship with fellow travelers on the long and winding road toward unification.
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We do not know whether there are extra dimensions or multiverse. Let’s go forward with the possible ideas that come out of the mathematics. It’s hard for us to imagine a universe that would have no time at all.
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You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high entropy state.
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I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.
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Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.
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The strings of string theory are vibrating the particles, vibrating the forces of nature into existence, those vibrations are sort of like musical notes. So string theory, if it’s correct, would be playing out the score of the universe.
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So many galaxies, so many planets out there in the universe circling so many stars… it just feels like there’s a very good chance that there is another Earth-like planet out there that is able to support some kind of life similar to what we’re familiar with.
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Evidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercury’s orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newton’s mathematics predicted. In 1915,
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The real question is whether all your pondering and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That’s what it all comes down to.
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A watch worn by a particle of light would not tick at all. Light realizes the dreams of Ponce de Leon and the cosmetics industry: it doesn’t age.
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Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules… Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
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Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding.
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