#scienc

‎In modern physics, there is no such thing as "nothing." Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy. ↗

— Richard Morris

#matter-and-anti-matter #particle-physics #philosophy #physics #quantum-physics

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#brain #conjecture #consciousness #darwinism #evolution

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#science

In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I an now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on, Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of though, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point. ↗

— Werner Heisenberg

#science #life

Wonder is what sets us apart from other life forms. No other species wonders about the meaning of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves. ↗

— Herbert Boyer

#life

Life is a sewer and we are all but swimmers within it. Smart people do the backstroke. (In other words you gotta have a giggle.) ↗

— Stephen B. Pearl

#medical #political #science-fiction #thriller #life

without being sure of something, we can not begin to think about everything elses ↗

— Kathryn Schulz

#social-sciences #science

The past and the future are not a collection of instants shared by all space, but a collection of events that correspond to a possible relation of causal order with the present event. ↗

— Felix Alba-Juez

#science #science

doubt is a skill. credulity ,by contrast, appears to be something very like an instinct ↗

— Kathryn Schulz

#social-science #science

It would be most satisfactory if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality ↗

— Wolfgang Pauli

#science