Quote

What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.

Murray Gell-Mann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Murray Gell-Mann
Age: 89 †
Born: 1929
Born: September 15
Died: 2019
Died: May 24
Non-Fiction Writer
Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
Downtown Manhattan
System
Complex
Blocks
Universe
Fundamental
Trace
Running
Block
Particles
Book
Fundamentals
Chain
Quarks
Matter
Relationships
Entity
Jaguars
Trying
Everywhere
Ties
Adaptive
Way
Building
Chains
Entities
Like
Particular
Complexes
Elementary

More quotes by Murray Gell-Mann

Image
Modern language must be older than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe, in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier. I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Perhaps we see equations as simple because they are easily expressed in terms of mathematical notation already invented at an earlier stage of development of the science, and thus what appears to us as elegance of description really reflects the interconnectedness of Nature's laws at different levels.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object that's how we measure it
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Bush is a nice fellow who gives very good parties. I just wish someone would find him a better job than running the country.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities, sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
But when researchers at Bell Labs discovered that static tends to come from particular places in the sky, the whole field of radio astronomy opened up.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
I would recommend that skeptics devote even more effort than they do now to understanding the reasons why so many people want or need to believe.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
I think also of my colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands, and feel that in some measure I am here as a representative of our small, informal, international fraternity.
Murray Gell-Mann
Image
What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.
Murray Gell-Mann