Quote

Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws,' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.

Paul Davies

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Davies
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: April 22
Cosmologist
Physicist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Paul Charles William Davies
Must
Term
Fundamentals
Always
Law
Accounts
Science
Accepted
Brute
Facts
Laws
Attempted
Nature
Limits
Textbooks
Stills
Ultimate
Brutes
Still
Terms
Account
Find
Maybe
Fundamental

More quotes by Paul Davies

Image
It's always good in science to say Well how do you know that? and Are you really sure? and Could there be an exceptional case?
Paul Davies
Image
The thing about lucid dreams is that it's not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics - you can do magic.
Paul Davies
Image
The secret of our success on planet Earth is space. Lots of it. Our solar system is a tiny island of activity in an ocean of emptiness.
Paul Davies
Image
Until now, physical theories have been regarded as merely models with approximately describe the reality of nature. As the models improve, so the fit between theory and reality gets closer. Some physicists are now claiming that supergravity is the reality, that the model and the real world are in mathematically perfect accord.
Paul Davies
Image
Searching for alternative life on Earth might seem misconceived, because there is excellent evidence that every kind of life so far studied evolved from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago. Yet most of the life that exists on Earth has never been properly classified.
Paul Davies
Image
Scientists have no agreed theory of the origin of life - plenty of scenarios, conjectures and just-so stories, but nothing with solid experimental support.
Paul Davies
Image
The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose.
Paul Davies
Image
The secret of life does not lie in its chemical basis . . . Life succeeds precisely because it evades chemical imperatives.
Paul Davies
Image
There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. . . It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe. . . The impression of design is overwhelming.
Paul Davies
Image
For millennia mankind has believed that nothing can come out of nothing. Today we can argue that everything has come out of nothing. Nobody has to pay for the universe. It is the ultimate free lunch.
Paul Davies
Image
Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide.
Paul Davies
Image
If we do discover more than one type of life on Earth, we can be fairly certain that the universe is teeming with it, for it would be inconceivable that life started twice here but never on all the other earth-like planets.
Paul Davies
Image
I think if we're going to send messages to the stars then it needs a great deal of thought that it's something that should involve the entire not only scientific community, but the entire world community. We need to think very carefully indeed.
Paul Davies
Image
When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.
Paul Davies
Image
The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology.
Paul Davies
Image
Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview. ..even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.
Paul Davies
Image
Perhaps the best motivation for going to Mars is political. It is obvious that no single nation currently has either the will or the resources to do it alone, but a consortium of nations and space agencies could achieve it within 20 years.
Paul Davies
Image
If you get a drill and drill down 5km beneath the ground, it's teeming with life - millions of tiny living fossils. They resemble the earliest life forms and suggest that life started under the Ground. The bible talks of Eden as a sunny parkland with white fluffy clouds, but it probably ascended from the region that we now associate with Hell.
Paul Davies
Image
The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.
Paul Davies
Image
Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.
Paul Davies