Simone Weil Quotes
In this world we live in a mixture of time and eternity. Hell would be pure time.
Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. Translated by Emma Craufurd, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952, p. 26.
This is a fascinating quotation. During Augustine’s time and for hundreds of years thereafter, this was accepted as obvious truth and taught by the church. When rationality permeated the Enlightenment and science flourished, this view was realized to be clearly faulty—that time started with the creation of the universe by whatever means. However, in the 21st century, new understandings of the Big Bang together with the Einstein revelation of space-time as an entity, caused many scientists to think that it just might be possible that time began with the Big Bang, and Augustine might have been right after all, though for a different set of reasons. This is another example of a difference between the scientist and the political, philosophical or religious ideologue. To the later, truth is eternal. To the scientist all truth is ephemeral and changes as our perceptions, tools, calculations, and understandings improve.
Simone Adolphine Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. The mathematician André Weil was her brother.
