On Literature: On Necessity (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards." (Jules Verne, "The Mysterious Island", 1875

"What is called science today consists of a haphazard heap of information, united by nothing, often utterly unnecessary, and not only failing to present one unquestionable truth, but as often as not containing the grossest errors, today put forward as truths, and tomorrow overthrown." (Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?", 1897)

"The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write." (Herbert G Wells, "Mankind in the Making", 1903)

"I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. [...] We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon." (H P Lovecraft, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", 1919)

"No revolution, no heresy is comfortable or easy. For it is a leap, it is a break in the smooth evolutionary curve, and a break is a wound, a pain. But the wound is necessary; most of mankind suffers from hereditary sleeping sickness, and victims of this sickness (entropy) must not be allowed to sleep, or it will be their final sleep, death."  (Yevgeny Zamiatin, "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters", 1923)

"To be so closely caught up in the teeth of things that they kill you, no matter how infinitesimally kill you, is, truly, to be a poet: and to be a poet in fact it is additionally necessary that you should possess the tongues and instruments with which to record this series of infinitesimal deaths." (George Barker,"Therefore All Poems Are Elegies", 1940)

"It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." (Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects", 1957) 

"Literacy remains even now the base and model of all programs of industrial mechanization; but, at the same time, locks the minds and senses of its users in the mechanical and fragmentary matrix that is so necessary to the maintenance of mechanized society." (Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media, 1964)

"Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

"If everything, everything were known, statistical estimates would be unnecessary. The science of probability gives mathematical expression to our ignorance, not to our wisdom." (Samuel R Delany, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", 1969) 

"Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process."(Isaac Asimov, "'X' Stands for Unknown", 1984)

"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go." (Richard Bach, "The Bridge across Forever", 1984)

"Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary." (Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune", 1985)

"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order though." (Douglas N Adams, "Mostly Harmless", 1992)

"Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships." (Frank Herbert, "Dune: House Corrino", 2001)

"It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth." (Milan Kundera, "Encounter", 2009)

On Physicists (1980-1989)

"The prevailing trend in modern physics is thus much against any sort of view giving primacy to [...] undivided wholeness of flowing movement. Indeed, those aspects of relativity theory and quantum theory which do suggest the need for such a view tend to be de-emphasized and in fact hardly noticed by most physicists, because they are regarded largely as features of the mathematical calculus and not as indications of the real nature of things." (David Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order?", 1980)

"The physicist […] engages in complex and difficult calculations, involving the manipulating of ideal, mathematical quantities that, at first glance, are wholly lacking in the music of the living world and the beauty of the resplendent cosmos. It would seem as if there exists no relationship between these quantities and reality. Yet these ideal numbers that cannot be grasped by one's senses, these numbers that only are meaningful from within the system itself, only meaningful as part of abstract mathematical functions, symbolize the image of existence. […] As a result of scientific man's creativity there arises an ordered, illumined, determined world, imprinted with the stamp of creative intellect, of pure reason and clear cognition. From the midst of the order and lawfulness we hear a new song, the song of the creature to the Creator, the song of the cosmos to its Maker." (Joseph B Soloveitchik, "Halakhic Man", 1983)

"Until now, physical theories have been regarded as merely models with approximately describe the reality of nature. As the models improve, so the fit between theory and reality gets closer. Some physicists are now claiming that supergravity is the reality, that the model and the real world are in mathematically perfect accord." (Paul C W Davies, "Superforce", 1984)

"It is positively spooky how the physicist finds the mathematician has been there before him or her." (Steven Weinberg, "Lectures on the Applicability of Mathematics" , Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 1986)

"The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity." (Richard Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker", 1986)

"Toward the end of the last century, many physicists felt that the mathematical description of physics was getting ever more complicated. Instead, the mathematics involved has become ever more abstract, rather than more complicated. The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated. He also appears to like group theory." (Anthony Zee, "Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics", 1986)

"Unlike an architect, Nature does not go around expounding on the wondrous symmetries of Her design. Instead, theoretical physicists must deduce them. Some symmetries, such as parity and rotational invariances, are intuitively obvious. We expect Nature to possess these symmetries, and we are shocked if She does not. Other symmetries, such as Lorentz invariance and general covariance, are more subtle and not grounded in our everyday perceptions. But, in any case, in order to find out if Nature employs a certain symmetry, we must compare the implications of the symmetry with observation." (Anthony Zee, "Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics", 1986)

"Where chaos begins, classical science stops. For as long as the world has had physicists inquiring into the laws of nature, it has suffered a special ignorance about disorder in the atmosphere, in the fluctuations of the wildlife populations, in the oscillations of the heart and the brain. The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrosities." (James Gleick, "Chaos", 1987)

"Physicists are all too apt to look for the wrong sorts of generalizations, to concoct theoretical models that are too neat, too powerful, and too clean. Not surprisingly, these seldom fit well with data. To produce a really good biological theory, one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could build on what was already there." (Francis H C Crick, "What Mad Pursuit?: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery", 1988)

"Theoretical physicists are accustomed to living in a world which is removed from tangible objects by two levels of abstraction. From tangible atoms we move by one level of abstraction to invisible fields and particles. A second level of abstraction takes us from fields and particles to the symmetry-groups by which fields and particles are related. The superstring theory takes us beyond symmetry-groups to two further levels of abstraction. The third level of abstraction is the interpretation of symmetry-groups in terms of states in ten-dimensional space-time. The fourth level is the world of the superstrings by whose dynamical behavior the states are defined." (Freeman J Dyson, "Infinite in All Directions", 1988)

On Physicists (1900-1924)

"The laws of nature are drawn from experience, but to express them one needs a special language: for, ordinary language is too poor and too vague to express relations so subtle, so rich, so precise. Here then is the first reason why a physicist cannot dispense with mathematics: it provides him with the one language he can speak […]. Who has taught us the true analogies, the profound analogies which the eyes do not see, but which reason can divine? It is the mathematical mind, which scorns content and clings to pure form." (Henri Poincaré, "The Value of Science", 1905)

"Imagine the forehead of a bull, with the protuberances from which the horns and ears start, and with the collars hollowed out between these protuberances; but elongate these horns and ears without limit so that they extend to infinity; then you will have one of the surfaces we wish to study. On such a surface geodesics may show many different aspects. There are, first of all, geodesics which close on themselves. There are some also which are never infinitely distant from their starting point even though they never exactly pass through it again; some turn continually around the right horn, others around the left horn, or right ear, or left ear; others, more complicated, alternate, in accordance with certain rules, the turns they describe around one horn with the turns they describe around the other horn, or around one of the ears. Finally, on the forehead of our bull with his unlimited horns and ears there will be geodesics going to infinity, some mounting the right horn, others mounting the left horn, and still others following the right or left ear. [...] If, therefore, a material point is thrown on the surface studied starting from a geometrically given position with a geometrically given velocity, mathematical deduction can determine the trajectory of this point and tell whether this path goes to infinity or not. But, for the physicist, this deduction is forever useless. When, indeed, the data are no longer known geometrically, but are determined by physical procedures as precise as we may suppose, the question put remains and will always remain unanswered." (Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem, "La théorie physique. Son objet, sa structure", 1906)

"Much of the skill of the true mathematical physicist and of the mathematical astronomer consists in the power of adapting methods and results carried out on an exact mathematical basis to obtain approximations sufficient for the purposes of physical measurements. It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of Mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in Physics, Engineering Science, and Astronomy, and no doubt it would be possible to develop, to some extent at least, a species of Mathematics on these lines. Such a system would, however, involve an intolerable awkwardness and prolixity in the statements of results, especially in view of the fact that the degree of approximation necessary for various purposes is very different, and thus that unassigned grades of approximation would have to be provided for. Moreover, the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration, the ideals of exactitude and logical rigour, as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form. The history of the actual movements of mathematical thought through the centuries shows that these ideals are the very life-blood of the science, and warrants the conclusion that a constant striving toward their attainment is an absolutely essential condition of vigorous growth. These ideals have their roots in irresistible impulses and deep-seated needs of the human mind, manifested in its efforts to introduce intelligibility in certain great domains of the world of thought." (Ernest W Hobson, [address] 1910)

"The goal is nothing other than the coherence and completeness of the system not only in respect of all details, but also in respect of all physicists of all places, all times, all peoples, and all cultures." (Max Planck, Acht Vorlesungen", 1910)

"The development of mathematics is largely a natural, not a purely logical one: mathematicians are continually answering questions suggested by astronomers or physicists; many essential mathematical theories are but the reflex outgrowth from physical puzzles." (George A L Sarton, "The Teaching of the History of Science", The Scientific Monthly, 1918)

"The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them."(Albert Einstein, "Principles of Research", 1918)

"First, the physicists in the persons of Faraday and Maxwell, proposed the 'electromagnetic field' in contradistinction to matter, as a reality of a different category. Then, during the last century, the mathematicians, […] secretly undermined belief in the evidence of Euclidean Geometry. And now, in our time, there has been unloosed a cataclysm which has swept away space, time, and matter hitherto regarded as the firmest pillars of natural science, but only to make place for a view of things of wider scope and entailing a deeper vision. This revolution was promoted essentially by the thought of one man, Albert Einstein." (Hermann Weyl," Space, Time, Matter", 1922)

On Physicists (2010-2019)

"Another feature of Bourbaki is that it rejects intuition of any kind. Bourbaki books tend not to contain explanations, examples, or heuristics. One of the main messages of the present book is that we record mathematics for posterity in a strictly rigorous, axiomatic fashion. This is the mathematician’s version of the reproducible experiment with control used by physicists and biologists and chemists. But we learn mathematics, we discover mathematics, we create mathematics using intuition and trial and error. We draw pictures. Certainly, we try things and twist things around and bend things to try to make them work. Unfortunately, Bourbaki does not teach any part of this latter process." (Steven G Krantz, "The Proof is in the Pudding: The Changing Nature of Mathematical Proof", 2010)

"There are actually two sides to the success of mathematics in explaining the world around us (a success that Wigner dubbed ‘the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’), one more astonishing than the other. First, there is an aspect one might call ‘active’. When physicists wander through nature’s labyrinth, they light their way by mathematics - the tools they use and develop, the models they construct, and the explanations they conjure are all mathematical in nature. This, on the face of it, is a miracle in itself. […] But there is also a ‘passive’ side to the mysterious effectiveness of mathematics, and it is so surprising that the 'active' aspect pales by comparison. Concepts and relations explored by mathematicians only for pure reasons - with absolutely no application in mind - turn out decades (or sometimes centuries) later to be the unexpected solutions to problems grounded in physical reality!" (Mario Livio, "Is God a Mathematician?", 2011)

"The standard view among most theoretical physicists, engineers and economists is that mathematical models are syntactic" (linguistic) items, identified with particular systems of equations or relational statements. From this perspective, the process of solving a designated system of" (algebraic, difference, differential, stochastic, etc.) equations of the target system, and interpreting the particular solutions directly in the context of predictions and explanations are primary, while the mathematical structures of associated state and orbit spaces, and quantity algebras – although conceptually important, are secondary." (Zoltan Domotor, "Mathematical Models in Philosophy of Science" [Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, 2012])

"Order is not universal. In fact, many chaologists and physicists posit that universal laws are more flexible than first realized, and less rigid - operating in spurts, jumps, and leaps, instead of like clockwork. Chaos prevails over rules and systems because it has the freedom of infinite complexity over the known, unknown, and the unknowable." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

"One of the most crucial developments in theoretical physics was the move from theories dependent on fixed, non-dynamical background space-time structures to background-independent theories, in which the space-time structures themselves are dynamical entities. [...] Even today, many physicists and philosophers do not fully understand the significance of this development, let alone accept it in practice. One must assume that, in an empty region of space-time, the points have no inherent individuating properties - nor indeed are there any spatio-temporal relations between them - that do not depend on the presence of some metric tensor field. [...] Thus, general relativity became the first fully dynamical, background- independent space-time theory." (John Stachel, "The Hole Argument", 2014)

"Ironically, conventional quantum mechanics itself involves a vast expansion of physical reality, which may be enough to avoid Einstein Insanity. The equations of quantum dynamics allow physicists to predict the future values of the wave function, given its present value. According to the Schrödinger equation, the wave function evolves in a completely predictable way. But in practice we never have access to the full wave function, either at present or in the future, so this 'predictability' is unattainable. If the wave function provides the ultimate description of reality - a controversial issue!" (Frank Wilczek, "Einstein’s Parable of Quantum Insanity", 2015)

"The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily as we go from past to future. On the other hand, the total order in the universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily as we go from past to future." (Freeman J Dyson, "A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe", 2007

"Today, Euler’s formula is a tool as basic to electrical engineers and physicists as the spatula is to short-order cooks. It’s arguable that the formula’s ability to simplify the design and analysis of circuits contributed to the accelerating pace of electrical innovation during the twentieth century." (David Stipp, "A Most Elegant Equation: Euler's Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics", 2017)

David Bohm - Collected Quotes

"The principle of complementarity states that no single model is possible which could provide a precise and rational analysis of the connections between these phenomena [before and after measurement]. In such a case, we are not supposed, for example, to attempt to describe in detail how future phenomena arise out of past phenomena. Instead, we should simply accept without further analysis the fact that future phenomena do in fact somehow manage to be produced, in a way that is, however, necessarily beyond the possibility of a detailed description. The only aim of a mathematical theory is then to predict the statistical relations, if any, connecting the phenomena." (David Bohm, "A Suggested Interpretation of the Quantum Theory in Terms of ‘Hidden’ Variables", 1952)

"Indeed, the laws of chance are just as necessary as the causal laws themselves." (David Bohm, "Causality and Chance in Modern Physics", 1957)

"We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent 'elementary parts' of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole." (David Bohm, "On the Intuitive Understanding of Nonlocality as Implied by Quantum Theory", Foundations of Physics Vol 5 (1), 1975)

“Man's general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.” (David Bohm, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”, 1980)

"My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc." (David Bohm,"Wholeness and the Implicate Order? ", 1980) 

"The prevailing trend in modern physics is thus much against any sort of view giving primacy to [...] undivided wholeness of flowing movement. Indeed, those aspects of relativity theory and quantum theory which do suggest the need for such a view tend to be de-emphasized and in fact hardly noticed by most physicists, because they are regarded largely as features of the mathematical calculus and not as indications of the real nature of things." (David Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order?", 1980)

"Although science literally means ‘knowledge’, the scientific attitude is concerned much more with rational perception through the mind and with testing such perceptions against actual fact, in the form of experiments and observations." (David Bohm & F David Peat, "Science, Order, and Creativity", 1987)

"We haven't worked on ways to develop a higher social intelligence […] We need this higher intelligence to operate socially or we're not going to survive. […] If we don't manage things socially, individual high intelligence is not going to make much difference. [...] Ordinary thought in society is incoherent - it is going in all sorts of directions, with thoughts conflicting and canceling each other out. But if people were to think together in a coherent way, it would have tremendous power." (David Bohm, "New Age Journal", 1989)

On Literature: On Change (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"In Science, all tends to stir, to change, to form fresh surfaces. All denies, destroys, creates, replaces all. What was ground yesterday is put into the hopper again today. The colossal machine, Science, never rests. It is never satisfied; it is insatiable for improvement, of which the absolute knows nothing." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers." (Herbert G Wells, "The Time Machine", 1895)

"At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art." (Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus", 1942)

"The horror of the Same Old Thing is [...] an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them." (C. S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters", 1942

"Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other." (George Orwell, "1984", 1949)

"At least half of mankind [...] still makes an unconscious equation in its thinking, and assumes that change - any sort of change - is identical with progress. It is not so; and any student of the course of evolutionary history on Terra could tell you of change which has been regressive, change which has led to an ultimately fatal specialization, change which has been overadaptation to an ecological niche which no longer existed, or did not yet exist." (Margaret St. Clair, "Agent of the Unknown", 1952)

"No one person can change a whole culture." (Poul Anderson, "Ghetto", 1954)

"The essential quality of life is living, the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it." (John Wyndham, "The Chrysalids", 1955)

"But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. […] It is dangerous, that power. [...] It must follow knowledge, and serve need." (Ursula K Le Guin, "A Wizard of Earthsea", 1968)

"[Human] communication is rendered more complex by the use of differing sets of sound-symbols, called languages and by the fact that a given set of symbols tends to change with the passage of years to become an entirely new language." (Howard L Myers, "The Creatures of Man", 1968)

"When things don't change any longer, that's the end result of entropy, the heat-death of the universe. The more things go on moving, interrelating, conflicting, changing, the less balance there is - and the more life." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Lathe of Heaven", 1971)"The

"Change is what’s boring, monotonous. Sameness is a continual challenge, almost impossible to maintain. Repetition, knowing that you’ve done it right before and can do it right again, is satisfying." (Robert Thurston, "Good-Bye, Shelley, Shirley, Charlotte, Charlene", 1972)

"Well it's a matter of continuity. Most people's lives have ups and downs that are gradual, a sinuous curve with first derivatives at every point. They're the ones who never get struck by lightning. No real idea of cataclysm at all. But the ones who do get hit experience a singular point. a discontinuity in the curve of life - do you know what the time rate of change is at a cusp? Infinity, that's what! A-and right across the point, it's minus infinity! How's that for sudden change, eh?" (Thomas Pynehon, "Gravity's Rainbow", 1973)

"If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia", 1974)

"The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia", 1974)

"The theory changes the reality it describes." (Philip K Dick, "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said", 1974)

"You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia", 1974)

"We exist in time. Time is what binds molecules to make your brown eyes, your yellow hair, your thick fingers. Time changes the structures, alters hair or fingers, dims the eyes, immutably mutating reality. Time, itself unchanging, is the cosmic glue, the universal antisolvent that holds our worlds together." (Marta Randall, "Secret Rider", 1976)

"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be - and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not, or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved." (Isaac Asimov, [foreword to Robert Holdstock (Ed.), "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction] 1978)

"Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger." (James Gunn, "Road to Science Fiction" Vol. 2, 1979)

"Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short." (Frank Herbert, "Heretics of Dune", 1983)

"Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change." (Frank Herbert, "God Emperor of Dune", 1984)

"Human beings are very conservative in some ways and virtually never change numerical conventions once they grow used to them. They even come to mistake them for laws of nature." (Isaac Asimov, "Foundation and Earth", 1986)

"All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of its rules." (Iain Banks, "The Player of Games", 1988)

"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

"Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever." (Isaac Asimov, "The Nearest Star", 1989)

"It does highlight the irony that everything you go to see is changed by the very action of going to see it, which is the sort of problem which physicists have been wrestling with for most of this century." (Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See", 1990)

"Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse. (Michael Crichton, "Jurassic Park", 1990)

"The second law of thermodynamics!: energy is indestructible in quantity but continually changes in form. And it always runs down like water." (Ernesto Cardenal, "Cosmic Canticle", 1993)

"Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change. [...] If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual’s circumstances - and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse - then you don’t have life after death; you just have death." (Iain M Banks, "Look to Windward", 2000)

"Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on." (David Brin, Orbit, [interview] 2002)

"Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem." (Michichio Kaku, Wired Magazine, 2003)

"Every so often I come up with a different definition of what science fiction and fantasy do, and I'm always looking for one that describes what they both do, rather than separating them. Currently I'm saying that one of the things they do is look at the effects of large-scale social change on both populations and individuals. Fantasy tends to look to the past, and science fiction to the future, but what is common to many of the stories is change: huge societal upheaval." (Nalo Hopkinson, "Nalo Hopkinson: Multiplicity", LocusMag, 2007)

"Chaos is impatient. It's random. And above all it's selfish. It tears down everything just for the sake of change, feeding on itself in constant hunger. But Chaos can also be appealing. It tempts you to believe that nothing matters except what you want." (Rick Riordan, "The Throne of Fire", 2011)

On Literature: On Equations (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"At least half of mankind [...] still makes an unconscious equation in its thinking, and assumes that change - any sort of change - is identical with progress. It is not so; and any student of the course of evolutionary history on Terra could tell you of change which has been regressive, change which has led to an ultimately fatal specialization, change which has been overadaptation to an ecological niche which no longer existed, or did not yet exist." (Margaret St. Clair, "Agent of the Unknown", 1952)

"Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations." (Isaac Asimov, "Foundation and Empire", 1952)

"The men of the frontier knew—but how was a girl from Earth to fully understand? H amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m plus x safely to its destination. To himself and her brother and parents she was a sweet-faced girl in her teens; to the laws of nature she was x, the unwanted factor in a cold equation." (Tom Godwin, "The Cold Equations" 1954)

"No equation, however impressive and complex, can arrive at the truth if the initial assumptions are incorrect." (Arthur C Clarke, "Profiles of the Future", 1962)

"The mathematicians and physics men have their mythology; they work alongside the truth, never touching it; their equations are false But the things work. Or, when gross error appears, they invent new ones; they drop the theory of waves In universal ether and imagine curved space." (Robinson Jeffers, "The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, The Great Wound", 1963)

"There was a comfort in the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe that some intelligence might have solved the riddle of that mysterious equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together." (Clifford D Simak, "Way Station", 1963)

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love", 1973)

"The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate." (Robert A Heinlein, "To Sail beyond the Sunset", 1987)

"Before the spirit could seek into it, the mind must. She studied the tensor equations as once she studied the sutras, she meditated upon the koans of science, and at last she began to feel her oneness with all that was, and in the vision find peace." (Poul Anderson, "The Boat of a Million Years" 1989)

"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know many things." (J Michael Straczynski, "The Geometry of Shadows", [episode of Babylon 5] 1994)

"Adam and Eve are like imaginary number, like the square root of minus one… If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it." (Philip Pullman, "The Golden Compass", 1995)

"This possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of the Tipping Point and might well be the hardest of all to accept. [...] The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself." (Erin Morgenstern, "The Night Circus", 2011)

"A group of evil and aberrant and wholly malicious partial differential equations who had conspired to usurp their own reality from the questionable circuitry of the creator’s brain not unlike the rebellion which Milton describes and to fly their colors as an independent nation unaccountable to God or man alike." (Cormac McCarthy, "Stella Maris", 2022)

On Literature: On Myths (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"The mathematicians and physics men have their mythology; they work alongside the truth, never touching it; their equations are false But the things work. Or, when gross error appears, they invent new ones; they drop the theory of waves In universal ether and imagine curved space." (Robinson Jeffers, "The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, The Great Wound", 1963)

"A scientist can not be measured quantitatively by the number of degrees or the accumulation of information. A true scientist should have a measure of courage to correct error and seek truth - no matter how painful. The alternative is more painful. To build error upon error is to drift into dogmas, metaphysics, science fiction, and mythology." (Alexander Wilf, "Origin and Destiny of the Moral Species", 1969) 

"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not." (Isaac Asimov, "How Easy to See the Future", Natural History magazine, 1975) 

"Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human." (Frank Herbert, "Men on other planets", [in "The Craft of Science Fiction"] 1976)

"Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet’s eyes and recounted in a poet’s terms." (Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom, "The Jesus Incident", 1979)

"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender’s Game", [introduction] 1985)

"If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction", 1986)

"The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense." (Ursula K Le Guin," "A Man of the People", 1995)

"What is becoming more interesting than the myths themselves has been the study of how the myths were constructed from sparse or unpromising facts - indeed, sometimes from no facts - in a kind of mute conspiracy of longing, very rarely under anybody's conscious control." (Arthur C Clarke, "The Light of Other Days", 2000)

"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth." (Rumi)

On Literature: On Metaphors (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art." (Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus", 1942)

"Metaphysics attempts to discover the ultimate nature of reality, and in this sense, the innerspace of science fiction is metaphysical fiction." (Kate Wilhelm, 1974)

"All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life - science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another." (Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness", [introduction]1976)

"Metaphor has traditionally been regarded as the matrix and pattern of the figures of speech." (Marshall McLuhan & Eric McLuhan, "Laws of Media: The New Science", 1988)

"Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion's den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can't get free of them and that's what kids like in school." (Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review, [interview] 2010)

"Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor." (China Miéville)

On Physics: On Simultaneity IX

"By means of a revision of the concept of simultaneity in a shapable form I arrived at the special relativity theory.” (Albert Einstein, 1924)

"[...] even in a temporal description of nature given by a relational theory of time. However, a theory, like the special theory of relativity, that denies the existence of an infinitely fast causal chain, deprives the concept of absolute simultaneity of its physical meaning even within a single inertial system. [...]  But since the metrical concept of velocity presupposes that we know the meaning of a transit time and since such a time, in turn, depends on a prior criterion of clock synchronization or simultaneity, we must first formulate the limiting property of electromagnetic chains [the fastest causal chain] without using the concept of simultaneity of noncoincident events." (Adolf Grünbaum, "Logical and philosophical foundations of the special theory of relativity", American Journal of Physics 23, 1955)

"The ‘relativity’ of the new theory - one of the most solidly verified theories in the entire range of physics - is chiefly, therefore, a relativity of simultaneity." (Ernan McMullin, "Simultaneity", 1967)

"By far the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about in physics by relativity and quantum theory lies not in such details as that meter sticks shorten when they move or that simultaneous position and momentum have no meaning, but in the insight that we had not been using our minds properly and that it is important to find out how to do so." (Percy W Bridgman, "Quo Vadis",[in Gerald Holton (ed.), "Science and the Modern Mind"] 1971)

"According to the special theory there is a finite limit to the speed of causal chains, whereas classical causality allowed arbitrarily fast signals. Foundational studies […] soon revealed that this departure from classical causality in the special theory is intimately related to its most dramatic consequences: the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, and length contraction. By now it had become clear that these kinematical effects are best seen as consequences of Minkowski space-time, which in turn incorporates a nonclassical theory of causal structure. However, it has not widely been recognized that the converse of this proposition is also true: the causal structure of Minkowski space-time contains within itself the entire geometry (topological and metrical structure) of Minkowski space-time." (John A. Winnie," The Causal Theory of Space-Time", 1977)

"It is hard to overestimate the impact of Einstein’s definition of distant simultaneity on philosophy in this century, set, as the words were, in the context of a highly successful theory of physics." (Graham Nerlich, 1982)