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Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.

Brian Greene

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Brian Greene
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 9
Actor
Author
Physicist
Professor
Theoretical Physicist
Writer
New York City
New York
Brian Randolph Greene
Later
Mechanic
Law
Predict
Framework
Use
Quantum
Tell
Hence
Things
Physics
Discovery
Calculate
Laws
Mechanics

More quotes by Brian Greene

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The beauty of string theory is the metaphor kind of really comes very close to the reality. The strings of string theory are vibrating the particles, vibrating the forces of nature into existence, those vibrations are sort of like musical notes. So string theory, if it's correct, would be playing out the score of the universe.
Brian Greene
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In my own research when I'm working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing if I'm solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I'm constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind's-eye picture.
Brian Greene
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Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
Brian Greene
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Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.
Brian Greene
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When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level
Brian Greene
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I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.
Brian Greene
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Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding.
Brian Greene
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Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.
Brian Greene
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I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.
Brian Greene
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The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you'll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you'll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.
Brian Greene
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The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.
Brian Greene
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I wouldn't say that The Fabric of the Cosmos is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.
Brian Greene
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I think it's too fast to say that all sci-fi ultimately winds up having some place in science. On the other hand, imaginative minds working outside of science as storytellers certainly have come upon ideas that, with the passing decades, have either materialized of come close to materializing.
Brian Greene
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Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.
Brian Greene
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So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.
Brian Greene
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I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.
Brian Greene
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But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”5
Brian Greene
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For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.
Brian Greene
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Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.
Brian Greene
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The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.
Brian Greene