Cosmic Structure Quotes

In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns.

Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

Accordingly, since nothing prevents the earth from moving, I suggest that we should now consider also whether several motions suit it, so that it can be regarded as one of the planets. For, it is not the center of all the revolutions.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things-from subatomic particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole.

The universe contains vastly more order than Earth-life could ever demand. All those distant galaxies, irrelevant for our existence, seem as equally well ordered as our own.

It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.

I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence - as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

I've had experiences in my life that leave no doubt in my mind about the fact that God exists. I'm quite willing to debate people who don't think so because I want them to explain to me how did our solar system get so organized and how is the universe so complex and yet well-organized that we can predict 70 years hence when a comet is coming?

Universe consists of frozen light.

String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.

Science, with its experiments and logic, tries to understand the order or structure of the universe. Religion, with its theological inspiration and reflection, tries to understand the purpose or meaning of the universe. These two are cross-related. Purpose implies structure, and structure ought somehow to be interpretable in terms of purpose.

The shape of the heaven is of necessity spherical; for that is the shape most appropriate to its substance and also by nature primary.

Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the anxioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.

While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day

The centre of the system of the world is immovable.

Mathematics is the Life of the Gods.

And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything.

The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.

What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.

We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.

Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things.

The mathematics of quantum mechanics very accurately describes how our universe works. And it tells us our reality is continually branching into different possibilities, just like a coral.

The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image.

We are just strings of quarks living in a suburb of the local density maximum of the universe.