History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.

John D. Barrow

Categorized in : Thinking People Doubt

There was no "before" the beginning of our universe, because once... by John D. Barrow

There was no "before" the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.

universe once-upon-a-time

Once upon a time when there was no time. by John D. Barrow

Once upon a time when there was no time.

once-upon-a-time time

All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is"... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol-all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics.

spiritual god littles

What cannot be known is more revealing than what can. by John D. Barrow

What cannot be known is more revealing than what can.

mathematics revealing science

Some things are as they are regardless of what they were. by John D. Barrow

Some things are as they are regardless of what they were.

One would normally define a "religion" as a system of ideas that contain statements that cannot be logically or observationally demonstrated... Gödels theorem not only demonstrates that meathematics is a religion, but shows that mathematics is the only religion that proves itself to be one!

prove-it mathematics ideas

There is no reason that the universe should be designed for our c... by John D. Barrow

There is no reason that the universe should be designed for our convenience.

convenience should reason

We are just strings of quarks living in a suburb of the local den... by John D. Barrow

We are just strings of quarks living in a suburb of the local density maximum of the universe.

quarks density strings

If all the stars and galaxies in the universe today were smoothed out into a uniform sea of atoms, there would only be about one atom in every cubic meter of space.

space stars sea

There are only certain intervals of time when life of any sort is possible in an expanding universe and we can practise astronomy only during that habitable time interval in cosmic history.

expanding-universe astronomy certain

We can predict the present without having to know everything abou... by John D. Barrow

We can predict the present without having to know everything about the past.

foresight knows past

We can never know the origins of the universe. The deepest secrets are the ones that keep themselves.

universe secret knows

When we try to observe things that are very small, the act of observation itself will significantly disturb the state we are seeking to measure.

observation states trying

Once upon a time there was no Time. by John D. Barrow

Once upon a time there was no Time.

once-upon-a-time

Apparently, a great deal of dark, unseen material exists, whose gravitational pull is responsible for the motions of the stars and galaxies that we see.

unseen stars dark