Michael Brooks > Quotes

“There are reasons to doubt that what we call the laws of physics necessarily apply everywhere in the universe—or that they were applicable to every time in its history.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“Every advance [in Science] will most likely tell us as much about ourselves as it will about the universe we inhabit. We are all collections of chemicals made in the cataclysmic explosions of stars; we are stardust, or nuclear waste, depending on your perspective.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“Once that resigned acceptance of a discovery comes, we forget that there was once such a kerfuffle. We act as if this truth were always with us, that it is self-evident. We forget the decades of persecution someone endured in order to shepherd us to the view we would now die to defend. And so we become comfortable – so comfortable that we will wantonly persecute the man or woman who comes to disturb our peaceful state.”
― Michael Brooks, At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise

“The definitive study of the herd instincts of astronomers has yet to be written, Fernie said, but there are times when we resemble nothing so much as a herd of antelope, heads down in tight formation, thundering with firm determination in a particular direction across the plain. At a given signal from the leader we whirl about, and, with equally firm determination, thunder off in quite a different direction, still in tight parallel formation.
(quoting an observation made by astronomer J. Donal Fernie)”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“We are pouring huge amounts of energy into the biological effort to understand where life came from, how it arose on planet Earth, because it matters to us; it is, perhaps our deepest question. Really, it boils down to this: Are we special? The best summation has been attributed to the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke: "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not," he said. "In either case the idea is quite staggering." Clarke is right. If we are alone, that's extraordinary. If we are not , that's even better. Were we to discover that we are one of many life-forms on a planet that is one of many inhabited worlds, we would have a new perspective on being human - on being alive, even. And if we discover that some of that life beyond Earth is intelligent, a whole new vista of possible human experience opens up before us.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“Studies show that neurotic and psychiatric disorders are more common among those who attempt to keep conscious control of life and suppress its unwelcome quirks. Sanity, paradoxically, may lie in accepting that you are not in control.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“In other words the effect of good friends is roughly similar to giving up smoking or making a significant cut to your intake of alcohol. A 2012 study, which followed 2,000 US citizens aged fifty and above, found that being chronically lonely was associated with being almost twice as likely to die over the period of the study. The”
― Michael Brooks, At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise

“As noted, there’s nothing wrong with the DTP vaccine per se. However, studies that have been going on for more than two decades show that, when it is administered after other vaccines, such as BCG or measles vaccine, the combination can be deadly. But only if you’re a girl.”
― Michael Brooks, At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise

“Be ruthless with systems; be kind to people.”
― Michael Brooks

“The third oddity was the surface on which Lawrence was doing his own succussion. It was a huge, black leather-bound King James Bible. Having done three raps on the Bible, his fist clenched around a vial containing a homeopathic remedy made from amethyst, Lawrence looked up. His face said, "I wish you hadn't seen that".
"You don't have to use a Bible," he assured me.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“Sometimes, the idea that science is a neutral, careful, bias-avoiding discipline has a bad day.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“Societies that used oral traditions are underrepresented in our story of how mathematics has always been woven into the fabric of any civilization.

Take the Akan people of West Africa, for instance. In precolonial times they operated a sophisticated mathematical system for weighing gold used in trade. It worked in two strands. Once was for working with the Arab and Portuguese systems of weights. The other corresponded to Dutch and English measures.

The researchers who finally pieced together its workings from artifacts held in museums held around the world suggest that it was so breathtakingly complex that it should be given UNESCO world heritage status.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilisation

“Skeptics might argue that pharmaceutical companies will fight anything that casts their products in a dubious light - especially if it results in people using lower doses across the board - but the truth is that, for many drug companies, reliable information on the placebo effect can't come soon enough. To pass muster, a drug must outperform placebo. But a 2001 study of antidepressant drug trials showed that while drug efficacy is rising, placebo rates are rising faster. It's almost ironic; the factors behind this are many and varied, but a significant contributor is our society's knowledge of - and belief in - the power of medicines. The pharmaceutical industry's palpable success means that unless something radical happens, it could soon be, like the Red Queen, running to stand still.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“The central contradiction in Peterson’s message is that he both uncritically celebrates capitalist “free markets” and sounds the alarm at the destructive toll those markets inevitably take on relationships and communities. Our message, however, must reject Peterson’s traditionalist and pseudo-libertarian worldview in favor of a vision in which everyone has the economic freedom—as in, freedom from economics—to pursue their own preferred vision of the good life. Want to have a traditional family and take your seven kids to a traditional church? Go for it. Want to live in a tri-sexual compound and practice Wiccanism? Do that. Where Peterson wants to “enforce” monogamy, socialists like me want to give everyone the freedom to make more meaningful choices in their lives by creating a world in which financial stress doesn’t make it difficult to maintain relationships, people who want to start families can, and we aren’t all too overworked, overstressed, and socially atomized to go out and meet people in the first place (or too afraid of indigency that we stay in toxic relationships).”
― Michael Brooks

“Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician,’ he once said. ‘The devil says: I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“Then there is the “intelligent” signal from outer space that has defied explanation for thirty years; the enigma of our sense of free will despite all scientific evidence to the contrary; the spacecraft that are being pushed off course by an unknown force; the trouble we have explaining the origin of both sex and death using our best biological theories … the list goes on.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“When you start to think about it, you realize that fractions are cruel.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilisation

“At heart, statistics is always about making judgment calls. It is the science of educated guesses, if you like. It looks like maths, it smells like maths, but there's none of the perfect certainty we associate with maths.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilisation

“To make this idea work alongside Einstein's relativity, De Poi had to introduce the idea of extra dimensions. If a wave carried a particle's energy and momentum through physical space, it would involve movement faster than the speed of light, and relativity forbids this.

So De Poi sets things up so that it is a phase wave rather than a matter wave. Here, believe it or not, the wave is an undulating complex number that oscillates in an abstract dimension.

That might sound mad to you already. But it gets worse.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilisation

“Tens of thousands of people had been killed while protesting, among other things, high taxes (what else?).”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“The story of optics and perspective goes back to a giant among geometers: Euclid. Around 300 bc, this Greek scholar wrote the seminal textbook on mathematics. It was called Elements, and remained the bestselling text — apart from the Bible — for more than 1,000 years.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“...we had bypassed Romeo and Juliet and gone straight to Macbeth.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“These triangular tricks and tables were such an essential part of a mariner’s toolkit that they became quite a money-spinner for the educational entrepreneur, who would set up a school for sailors or produce a textbook. The truly savvy teachers would do both — requiring every student to purchase a copy of their book.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“The moral of this story is clear: triangles, at least the right-angled ones, are a matter of life and death.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“Ellis was intrigued by the possibility of security created by just one party to the secret and thought there must be a way to create a similar technology for transferring data. One summer's evening he went to sleep and, as he said later, "It was done in my head overnight." Being a good spy, he didn't write it down at home. He just hoped he would remember it.

And he did. In July 1969 Ellis's report hit the desk of GCHQ's chief mathematician Shaun Wiley. Wiley's response gives an insight into the 'glass half empty' mindset of an intelligence chief. "Unfortunately," he said. "I can't see anything wrong with this.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“According to legend, Thales was so shocked by this insight that he sacrificed an ox to the gods in gratitude for the revelation.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

“But for all the colour of his character, his reputation was earned and maintained through his genius. There is a lovely story published in a 1965 issue of Life magazine that suggests just how highly respected he was.

Henry Ford's fledgling car manufacturing company was once having trouble with one of the generators that powered the production line. They called Steinmetz in to consult on the problem and he solved it by lying down in the room where the generator was housed. For two days and nights he listened to its operation, scribbling calculations on a notepad.

Eventually he got up, climbed up on the giant machine, and marked a point on the side with a chalk cross. He descended and told the engineers to replace sixteen of the generator's wire coils, the ones behind his chalk mark. They did what they were told, turned the generator back on, and discovered to their utter astonishment that it now worked perfectly.

That story alone would be alone would be enough, but it gets better. From their headquarters in Schenectady, New York, General Electric sent forth a $10,000 dollar invoice for Steinmetz's services. Ford queried the astronomical sum, asking for a breakdown of the costs. Steinmetz replied personally. His itemized bill said, "Making chalk mark on generator: $1.00. Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.00"

Apparently the bill was paid without further delay.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilisation

“These coupling certainly do not fit with the mainstream idea that genes, or at least organisms, are hell-bent on reproducing themselves. They do fit, however, with the idea of a social role for sex, and they fit with the idea that sexual reproduction is a spandrel, a by-product of some other phenomenon. If Roughgarden is on to something, she believes it could have cultural as well as scientific implications. The orthodoxy of biology has corroded our culture like battery acid, she says, In general, we play out the roles prescribed for us by that culture - aggressive male and coy female - because deviation from its "norm" results in emotional and physical violence, bigotry, personal guilt, and criminalized behaviors. If biology has been getting it wrong though, the new orthodoxy could trigger an infusion of tolerance; perhaps the anomalous prevalence of sexual reproduction will end up having deeper repercussions outside of science than within it.”
― Michael Brooks, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

“Within a few hundred years, the Hindu-Arabic figures, including the ultimately irresistible zero, had taken over the world.”
― Michael Brooks, The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization