Top Quotes
"Human beings have a wholly unique gift in use of language, and that is that they talk to themselves."
"And the world is, therefore, pretty well divided into people who would like to think that our analysis of nature is a personal and highly imaginative creation and those who would like to think that we are simply discovering what is there."
"I believe that every event in the world is connected to every other event."
"...while the universe is totally connected, we cannot extricate ourselves from our own finiteness. And, therefore, we do this decoding by a highly imaginative, creative piece of guesswork. But we finish with something which is only a gigantic metaphor for that part of the universe which we are decoding."
"Nature is not a gigantic formalizable system. In order to formalize it, we have to make some assumptions which cut out some parts. We then lose the total connectivity. And what we get is a superb metaphor, but it is not a system which can embrace the whole of nature."
"Science is an attempt to represent the known world as a closed system with perfect formalism. Scientific discovery is a constant maverick process of breaking out at the ends of the system and opening it up again and then hastily closing it after you have done your particular piece of work."
"Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors."
"...scientists never discuss ends, they only discuss means, the steps by which you get from today's knowledge to tomorrow's knowledge."
Top Insights
1. We can't get rid of our own finiteness and thus, won't be able to reach perfect knowledge of the reality of the universe. Nevertheless, we are able to make more connections of it and that expands our ability to imagine and get closer to the structure of reality.
2. Some people spend their life working on a theory of how the world works and sometimes they are successful. Some are not. Still, the one who succeeds doesn't know for how long since new knowledge and connections are always happening and you only need one of them to refute your lifetime's work. But this shouldn't be a disincentive to create and add value (Corollary: this also applies to the other areas of life such as business, relationships, sports, etc.).
"Human beings have a wholly unique gift in use of language, and that is that they talk to themselves."
"And the world is, therefore, pretty well divided into people who would like to think that our analysis of nature is a personal and highly imaginative creation and those who would like to think that we are simply discovering what is there."
"I believe that every event in the world is connected to every other event."
"...while the universe is totally connected, we cannot extricate ourselves from our own finiteness. And, therefore, we do this decoding by a highly imaginative, creative piece of guesswork. But we finish with something which is only a gigantic metaphor for that part of the universe which we are decoding."
"Nature is not a gigantic formalizable system. In order to formalize it, we have to make some assumptions which cut out some parts. We then lose the total connectivity. And what we get is a superb metaphor, but it is not a system which can embrace the whole of nature."
"Science is an attempt to represent the known world as a closed system with perfect formalism. Scientific discovery is a constant maverick process of breaking out at the ends of the system and opening it up again and then hastily closing it after you have done your particular piece of work."
"Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors."
"...scientists never discuss ends, they only discuss means, the steps by which you get from today's knowledge to tomorrow's knowledge."
Top Insights
1. We can't get rid of our own finiteness and thus, won't be able to reach perfect knowledge of the reality of the universe. Nevertheless, we are able to make more connections of it and that expands our ability to imagine and get closer to the structure of reality.
2. Some people spend their life working on a theory of how the world works and sometimes they are successful. Some are not. Still, the one who succeeds doesn't know for how long since new knowledge and connections are always happening and you only need one of them to refute your lifetime's work. But this shouldn't be a disincentive to create and add value (Corollary: this also applies to the other areas of life such as business, relationships, sports, etc.).