Heinz R. Pagels > Quotes

“Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the young but never the actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.”
― Heinz R. Pagels

“Nature knows nothing of imperfection; imperfection is a human perception of nature. Inasmuch as we are part of nature we are also perfect; it is our humanity that is imperfect. And, ironically, because of our capacity for imperfection and error we are free beings—a freedom that no stone or animal can enjoy. Without the possibility of error and real indeterminacy implied by the quantum theory, human liberty is meaningless. The God that plays dice has set us free.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“The most important questions of life are, for the most part, really only problems of probability. —MARQUIS DE LAPLACE       A”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“Gravity is the curvature of space.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“The final story of randomness—utter chaos—has not yet been told to us by the mathematicians. It seems remarkable that something so fundamental for probability theory has not been defined and even more remarkable that we can go so far in mathematics lacking a definition. By simply assuming randomness exists, mathematicians assign elementary probabilities to events, and that is their starting point. But they have not captured chaos and looked it in the eye.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“Physicists, irrespective of their belief, may invoke God when they feel issues of principle are at stake because the God of the physicists is cosmic order.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“Uncertainty and Complementarity It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature. —NIELS BOHR       DETERMINISM—THE”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“A real magician makes no claim to violate physical laws; he only appears to do so. However, when pseudoscientists make claims to discover dramatic new phenomena, going beyond current physical theory, like telepathy or mental metal bending, then, like children, we must insist on seeing how the trick is done or as adults sit back and enjoy the entertainment.” As”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“When one cannot think of how to do things better one simply makes things bigger. The construction of the great pyramids in Egypt marked the end of the Old Kingdom. Bigger and bigger cathedrals and temples were built when the faithful became secure and comfortable. Dinosaurs, too, were an evolutionary dead end: the huge reptiles were replaced by small, energy-efficient mammals.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. —OSCAR WILDE       WE”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“Randomness It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge. —MARQUIS DE LAPLACE       A”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“It seems as if the relativity of time poses a paradox—for how can both the passenger on the train and the person on the platform both see each other’s watches slow down? What happens if now these people meet and compare the time; whose watch has really slowed down? To emphasize this paradox (often called the twin paradox), imagine twins who each set their watches before one of them gets on the train. The train speeds up to nearly the speed of light—at which point each twin will see the other’s watch running slower—and then the train slows down and returns to the station. Which twin is older? From the point of view of the twin on the platform, the one on the train has made a round-trip journey, while for the twin on the train, the twin on the platform is the one who has made the round trip.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“What quantum reality is, is the reality marketplace. The house of a God that plays dice has many rooms. We can live in only one room at a time, but it is the whole house that is reality.” He”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“Without the possibility of error and real indeterminacy implied by the quantum theory, human liberty is meaningless.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature

“The visible world is neither matter nor spirit but the invisible organization of energy.”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code

“The theory of general relativity implies the existence of gravity waves, undulations of the curvature of space that propagate at the speed of light across any distance. It would be exciting to detect actual gravity waves, but most of the means of generating gravity waves from catastrophic cosmic events like stars exploding or colliding will generate gravity waves too weak to detect here on earth. One potential source of gravity waves could be black holes consuming stars at the core of our galaxy. Maybe, in a few decades, if there are strong enough gravity waves, we will detect them. Recently”
― Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code