I went to the woods...

A beautiful article describing some questions behind (or sometimes in front of) the scientists. Here are some of my favorite quotations:

"He pondered it for a while, and then confessed that he was now deeply confused about why things happen and needed to think more about it. Exactly so." This is something way too many people skip over way too easily.

"...my father-in-law remarked that economics had been terrific until they made it into a science." His father-in-law is a wise man.

"Seeing our understanding of nature as a mathematical construction has fundamentally different implications from seeing it as an empirical synthesis. One view identifies us as masters of the universe; the other identifies the universe as masters of us."

"The search for new things always looks like a lost cause until one makes a discovery. If it were obvious what was there, one would not have to look for it." Which is strikingly similar to Cap. Picard's response to Data (and yes, I know that I'm a nerd) "...things are only impossible until they're not."

posted by Nick 2/10/2005 09:23:00 AM