“Grosseteste influenced Roger Bacon's ideas about mathematics and Nature. Bacon wrote hundreds of pages on the subject and, indeed, no historical figure has ever appeared more preoccupied with the question than he. He believed that mathematical knowledge was innate to… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“Aristotle's later view of the relationship between mathematics and Nature could not have been more different. He wanted to rescue physical science from the mathematical stranglehold that Plato had placed upon it. He believed there to exist three completely autonomous… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“One of Nature's deep secrets is the fact that the outcomes of the laws of Nature do not have to possess the same symmetries… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“The effect of the 'time becomes space' proposal is that there is no definite moment or point of creation. In more conventional quantum mechanical… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“Humans are distinguished further by the highly effective way in which they have pooled the individual intelligence of single individuals to produce a collective… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
We can predict the present without having to know everything about the past. — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is"... and so we… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“If the deep logic of what determines the value of the fine-structure constant also played a significant role in our understanding of all the… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“Each of us is a complicated assymetrical outcome of the laws of electromagnetism and gravity.” — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“Impressed by the success of high-level mathematics in the formulation of the general theory of relativity in 1915, we find that Einstein's life-long quest… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who died in 1965, wrote of how the mere thought of the infinite led him to contemplate suicide: “A necessity… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“As we look way back into the first instants of the Big Bang, we find the quantum world that we described in Chapter 3.… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“The inclusion of just one contradiction (like 0 = 1) in an axiomatic system allows any statement about the objects in the system to… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“Life as we know, and partially understand it, is a classical example of what can occur when a sufficient level of complexity is attained.… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
“There is no formula that can deliver all truth, all harmony, all simplicity. No Theory of Everything can ever provide total insight. For, to… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history… — John D. Barrow Copy Share Image
