Paul Davies Quotes

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

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Quotes to Explore

• 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
  • Cases
  • Exceptional

• The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Universe
  • Purpose
  • Design

• Wheeler hopes that we can discover, within the context of physics, a principle that will enable the universe to come into existence "of its own accord." In his search for such a theory, he remarks: "No guiding principle would seem more powerful than the requirement that it should provide the universe with a way to come into being." Wheeler likened this 'self-causing' universe to a self-excited circuit in electronics.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Science
  • Universe
  • Powerful

• Most research into life's murky origin has been carried out by chemists. They've tried a variety of approaches in their attempts to recreate the first steps on the road to life, but little progress has been made. Perhaps that is no surprise, given life's stupendous complexity.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Progress
  • Surprise
  • Approach

• We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?

  

  Paul Davies
  • Society
  • Science
  • Community

• The origin of life is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Life
  • Mystery
  • Outstanding

• In time, a Martian colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-colonized from Mars.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Home
  • War
  • Earth

• Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it as a brute fact....I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Believe
  • Together
  • Drama

• Clearly, some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable, but it fails to capture the public's imagination. What does get people excited is the prospect of a mission to Mars.

  

  Paul Davies
  • People
  • Earth
  • Imagination

• Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less menacing.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Dream
  • Understanding
  • Cancer

• We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.

  

  Paul Davies
  • World
  • Law
  • Accepted

• Science is about explaining the world, and religion is about interpreting it. There shouldn't be any conflict.

  

  Paul Davies
  • World
  • Spring
  • Conflict

• 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
  • Universe
  • Mankind
  • Ultimate

• The development of artificial intelligence may well imply that man will relinquish his intellectual supremacy in favor of thinking machines. With oceans of time available for future innovation, there seems to be no reason why machines cannot achieve and surpass anything of which the human brain is capable.

  

  Paul Davies

• General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Force
  • Structure
  • Bases

• Cancer is such a ruthless adversary because it behaves as if it has its own fiendishly cunning agenda.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Cancer
  • Behave
  • Agendas

• The universe contains vastly more order than Earth-life could ever demand. All those distant galaxies, irrelevant for our existence, seem as equally well ordered as our own.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Earth
  • Universe
  • Existence

• What we want is another sample of life, which is not on our tree of life at all. All life that we've studied so far on Earth belongs to the same tree. We share genes with mushrooms and oak trees and fish and bacteria that live in volcanic vents and so on that it's all the same life descended from a common origin. What we want is a second tree of life. We want alien life, alien not necessarily in the sense of having come from space, but alien in the sense of belonging to a different tree altogether. That is what we're looking for, "life 2.0."

  

  Paul Davies
  • Different
  • Earth
  • Tree

• 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
  • World
  • Real
  • Nature

• The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer.

  

  Paul Davies
  • World
  • Nature
  • Science

• The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked.

  

  Paul Davies
  • Facts
  • Example
  • Scientist

• 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
  • Cancer
  • Disease
  • Numbers

• 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
  • Revolution
  • Birth
  • Physics

• 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
  • Mind
  • Everyday
  • Lying