Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

.....[O]ur understanding of the world around us comes from the merest echoes of reality—the photons of light that bombard the eye, the vibrations in the air that strike the ear, the floating molecules that rush into the nostrils.
..........— Colin Blakemore, British neurobiologist, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and University of Warwick, and formerly Chief Executive of the British Medical Research Council (MRC). From "The Mind Machine," a 13-part series on BBC television. The Oxford Book Of Modern Science Writing, edited by Richard Dawkins.

[WT Sharpe]

.....The apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics in fact disappear once we realize that elemental processes do not distinguish between past and future or cause and effect. Experiments that seem to require superluminal connections when viewed in our familiar time direction are perfectly subluminal when the arrow of time is reversed.
.....While this violates our common intuitions, those intuitions are based on our experiences in a world of many particles where phenomena that are fundamentally statistic nevertheless behave very predictably. The arrows of time and causality are not elementary. Rather, they are heuristic principles we have invented to conveniently describe the macroscopic world of our experiences In our lives, time flows one way, for all practical purposes. While it is technically possible for the atoms in your body to assume a more youthful configuration, the chances are far greater that you will age with the rest of us. By consensus, we define the arrow of time to be the direction in which we all are observed to age. At the quantum scale, however, no such consensus can be formed as particles interact without regard for an arrow of time.
..........— Victor J. Stenger. "Has Science Found the Path to the Ultimate?" Free Inquiry (Summer 1996).

[kennyc]

Cool, one of our Colorado residents.

[WT Sharpe]

.....All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
..........— Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910), Russian writer, philosopher and social activist. Anna Karenina (1875–1877), Pt. I, ch. 1.


.....O, what a tangled web we weave,
.....When first we practise to deceive!
..........— Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), Scottish historical novelist and poet. Marmion (first published in 1808), Canto VI. Stanza 17.

[BenG]

"Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."
— Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by BenG

"Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."
— Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)

I love that. He's full of interesting tidbits like that!

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by BenG

"Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."
— Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)

Yeah .... but every night it's a rerun ... of the same birth!
Aren't there any new episodes yet?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Yeah .... but every night it's a rerun ... of the same birth!
Aren't there any new episodes yet?

Watch it Chicken!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by BenG

"Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."
— Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)

Karma worthy!

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Yeah .... but every night it's a rerun ... of the same birth!
Aren't there any new episodes yet?

Be careful what you wish for!

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....The apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics in fact disappear once we realize that elemental processes do not distinguish between past and future or cause and effect. Experiments that seem to require superluminal connections when viewed in our familiar time direction are perfectly subluminal when the arrow of time is reversed.
.....While this violates our common intuitions, those intuitions are based on our experiences in a world of many particles where phenomena that are fundamentally statistic nevertheless behave very predictably. The arrows of time and causality are not elementary. Rather, they are heuristic principles we have invented to conveniently describe the macroscopic world of our experiences In our lives, time flows one way, for all practical purposes. While it is technically possible for the atoms in your body to assume a more youthful configuration, the chances are far greater that you will age with the rest of us. By consensus, we define the arrow of time to be the direction in which we all are observed to age. At the quantum scale, however, no such consensus can be formed as particles interact without regard for an arrow of time.
..........— Victor J. Stenger. "Has Science Found the Path to the Ultimate?" Free Inquiry (Summer 1996).

I'm trying to read a magazine that explains just that. But I have to be careful to read only a few pages at a time, otherwise my head will explode!

[WT Sharpe]

.....I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.
..........— Bertrand Russell (Lord Russell) (1872-1970), British mathematician, logician, and philosopher. Letter to W. W. Norton, Publisher (27 Jan 1931). The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914-1944 (1968), Vol. 2, 200. Found at http://www.todayinsci.com/R/Russell_...Quotations.htm.


.....Mendacem memorem esse oportet
.....A liar should have a good memory.
..........— Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) (ca. 35 – ca. 95 CE), Iberian-born Roman rhetorician. De Institutione Oratoria (ca. 95 CE), Book IV, 2, line 91.

Wow, I spent at least a couple of hours over the last two days reading this entire thread. Many thought provoking quotations.

I would like to contribute a couple right at the moment of my thoughts. These first two are from my just finishing reading American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. In that book this exchange between Robert Oppenheimer and Harry Truman is related (taking place after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki):

Oppenheimer: “I feel that I have blood on my hands.”

Truman: “Well go wipe them.”

I had actually read a similar account in the book Brotherhood of the Bomb by Gregg Herken (only in this case the conversation supposedly was between Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves):

Oppenheimer: “I feel that I have blood on my hands.”

Groves: “Well go wash them.”

I do not know what account is the true one. What I find interesting is how well it captures both the strengths and weaknesses of both types of men.

This all made me think of something from The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis:

“The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent, and identical: both green, both beautiful. Take care, Adam! Take care! Take care!”

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

...This all made me think of something from The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis....

Too bad there doesn't seem to be a Kindle edition. I've never read the book, but saw the movie years ago and thought it was wonderful. It was quite speculative, but as I recall, not to the extent that it exceeded the bounds of possibility.

[Joonbug1]

Nice quotes!

[WT Sharpe]

.....The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.
..........— Joseph Brodsky [Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky] (1940 – 1996), Russian-American poet, 1987 Nobel Prize winner (Literature), Poet Laureate of the United States (1991 – 1992). Commencement Address, Williams College, 1984. Source: Quoteland.com.