God does not play dice with the universe.
-Albert Einstein
Tag: Science
“Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show…
“Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show ‘tendencies to exist’, and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show ‘tendencies to occur’.”
―Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics
The problem however eventually became evident to make…
The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning—to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Science may provide the most useful way to…
Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Instead of always emphasizing what we actually know…
Instead of always emphasizing what we actually know in science, it would be enormously fruitful to focus on what we do not know. For it is here that the wonders lie. To know is the domain that is safe, where risk taking is no longer necessary. To dwell in it forever is not only to never advance, it is also to promote a deceptive and false view of ourselves as knowing more than we do, of being more powerful that we really are.
-Lewis Thomas, Former President of Sloane Kettering Cancer Institute