Lee Smolin
Lee Smolin
Lee Smolinis an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
CountryUnited States of America
world surprise structure
Surprise is inherent in the structure of the world.
simplicity domain wells
Simplicity and beauty are the signs not of truth but of a well-constructed approximate model of a limited domain of phenomena.
problem good-science
Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them.
notebook real numbers
The page of my notebook was filled with many messy integrals, but all of a sudden I saw emerge a formula for counting. I had begun to calculate a quantity on the assumption that the result was a real number, but found instead that, in certain units, all the possible answers would be integers. This meant that areas and volumes cannot take any value, but come in multiples of fixed units.
effectiveness words-of-wisdom world
But in spite of the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics, I have never heard of a good a prioriargument that the world must be organised to mathematical principles.
giving words-of-wisdom revolution
The revolution which began with the creation of quantum theory and relativity theory can only be finished with their unification into a single theory that can give us a single, comprehensive picture of nature.
successful law space
A successful unification of quantum theory and relativity would necessarily be a theory of the universe as a whole. It would tell us, as Aristotle and Newton did before, what space and time are, what the cosmos is, what things are made of, and what kind of laws those things obey. Such a theory will bring about a radical shift - a revolution - in our understanding of what nature is. It must also have wide repercussions, and will likely bring about, or contribute to, a shift in our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the rest of the universe.
knows
We know no more than we did in 1975 - and that's not good
universe
There is nothing outside the universe
sports bridges earthquakes
On the way, I shared the backseat of Feyerabend's little sports car with the inflatable raft he kept there in case an 8-point earthquake came while he was on the Bay Bridge.
possibility organize universe
One possibility is: God is nothing but the power of the universe to organize itself.
beings creating holds human hypothesis nature truth whose
When we human beings hypothesize that a law of nature holds - even temporarily or situationally - we are creating an idea, but we are also making a hypothesis about how nature behaves, whose truth or usefulness has nothing to do with what we know or believe.
determines future human
How we think about the future and the past determines everything about how we think about our situation as human beings.
fastest moves science
Science moves fastest when there's plenty of debate and controversy.