The universe has a much greater imagination than we do, which is why the real story of the universe is far more interesting than any of the fairy tales we have invented to describe it.
Feynman once said, 'Science is imagination in a straitjacket.' It is ironic that in the case of quantum mechanics, the people without the straitjackets are generally the nuts.
The root cause of the looming energy problem - and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health - is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them.
Whatever the evolutionary basis of religion, the xenophobia it now generates is clearly maladaptive.
A snowflake is another beautifully ordered example of what simple, natural meteorological processes can produce. Stars form by gravity, collapsing into spherically ordered structures that can remain in this form only if they release tremendous heat energy into the environment.
Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking, than learning how to critically think. And therefore, what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers but questions.
It is, after all, impossible in the modern world to shield everyone from nonsense and stupidity.
The Bible is full of dubious scientific impossibilities, from Jonah living inside a whale, to the sun standing still in the sky for Joshua.
For a man with an impressive educational C.V., Ben Carson makes a lot of intellectual missteps.
Imagining living in a universe without purpose may prepare us to better face reality head on. I cannot see that this is such a bad thing.
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
We should teach kids how to question. Now having said that, of course, to be a productive adult, there are certain skills that are required - reading, writing, and, in the old-fashioned days, we used to say arithmetic. Now we say mathematics.
We should provide the meaning of the universe in the meaning of our own lives. So I think science doesn't necessarily have to get in the way of kind of spiritual fulfillment.
Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them.
I can't prove that God doesn't exist, but I'd much rather live in a universe without one.
Parents, of course, have concerns and 'say,' but they don't have the right to shield their children from knowledge. That is not a right, any more than they have the right to shield their children from healthcare or medicine.
I am in favor of saying, 'Okay, let's get teams of educators and experts in certain disciplines to say, 'What are the basic things that we think are an essential part of an early education for people?'' Put them together and create, as well as possible, a set of goals and tools to learn those things.
Symmetry does mean something different for physicists than for members of the public. It means that an object or a theory does not change when you make some transformation - either rotating or moving it or doing something to the equations.
The biggest conceptual change over the last 100 years in the way physicists think about the world is symmetry.
I have always felt that, aside from research that violates universal human mores, when it comes to technological applications, that which can be done will be done.
