"Mathematics and beauty are the foundation stones of the universe. No one who has studied the forces of nature can doubt that the world about us is a manifestation of something very, very clever indeed." (Paul C W Davies, "The Forces of Nature", 1979)
"The basis of this theory is that in nature there is an inherent uncertainty or unpredictability that manifests itself only on an atomic scale. For example, the position of a subatomic particle such as an electron may not be a well-defined concept at all; it should be envisaged as jiggling around in a random sort of a way. Energy, too, becomes a slightly nebulous concept, subject to capricious and unpredictable changes." (Paul C W Davies, "The Edge of Infinity: Where the Universe Came from and How It Will End", 1981)
"Whether mathematical simplicity is God’s affair or our, the fact remains that this feature more than any other remains the mainspring of progress in the physical sciences." (Paul C W Davies, "The Edge of Infinity", 1981)
"The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe" (Paul C W Davies, 1984)
"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)
"That the universe has organized its own self-awareness - is for me powerful evidence that there is 'something going on' behind it all. The impression of design is overwhelming. Science may explain all the processes whereby the universe evolves its own destiny, but that still leaves room for there to be a meaning behind existence." (Paul C W Davies, "The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries In Nature's Creative Ability To Order Universe", 1987)
"When it comes to very highly organized systems, such as a living cell, the task of modeling by approximation to simple, continuous and smoothly varying quantities is hopeless. It is for this reason that attempts by sociologists and economists to imitate physicists and describe their subject matter by simple mathematical equations is rarely convincing." (Paul C W Davies, "The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe", 1987)
"The belief that the underlying order of the world can be expressed in mathematical form lies at the very heart of science. So deep does this belief run that a branch of science is considered not to be properly understood until it can be cast in mathematics." (Paul C W Davies, "The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World", 1992)
"The scientific quest is a journey into the unknown." (Paul C W Davies, "The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World", 1992)
"The belief that the underlying order of the world can be expressed in mathematical form lies at the very heart of science. So deep does this belief run that a branch of science is considered not to be properly understood until it can be cast in mathematics." (Paul C W Davies, "The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World", 1992)
"The scientific quest is a journey into the unknown." (Paul C W Davies, "The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World", 1992)
"It suggests to me that consciousness and our ability to do mathematics are no mere accident, no trivial detail, no insignificant by-product of evolution that is piggy-backing on some other mundane property. It points to what I like to call the cosmic connection, the existence of a really deep relationship between minds that can do mathematics and the underlying laws of nature that produce them. We have a closed system of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can encode [...] the very laws of physics that gave rise to it." (Paul Davies, "Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life", 1995)
"Underpinning everything [...] are the laws of physics. These remarkably ingenious laws are able to permit matter to self-organize to the point where consciousness emerges in the cosmos - mind from matter - and the most striking product of the human mind is mathematics. This is the baffling thing. Mathematics is [...] produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs. [...] at the opposite end of spectrum of complexity from the human brain. [...] a product of the most complex system we know in nature, the human brain, finds a consonance with the underlying, simplest and most fundamental level, the basic building blocks that make up the world." (Paul C W Davies, "Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life", 1995)
"Maybe it is not complexity per se that is significant, but organized complexity." (Paul Davies, "The Origin of Life", 2003)
"The laws of nature are rigged not only in favor of complexity, or just in favor of life, but also in favor of mind. To put it dramatically, it implies that mind is written into the laws of nature in a fundamental way." (Paul C W Davies, "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life", 1999)
"The laws of nature are rigged not only in favor of complexity, or just in favor of life, but also in favor of mind. To put it dramatically, it implies that mind is written into the laws of nature in a fundamental way." (Paul C W Davies, "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life", 1999)
"Physicists have been drawn to elegant mathematical relationships that bind the subject together with economy and style, melding disparate qualities in subtle and harmonious ways. But this is to import a new factor into the argument - questions of aesthetics and taste. We are then on shaky ground indeed. It may be that M theory looks beautiful to its creators, but ugly to N theorists, who think that their theory is the most elegant. But then the O theorists disagree with both groups [...]" (Paul C W Davies, "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)
"Disorder is a collective property of large assemblages; it makes no sense to say a single molecule is disordered or random. Thermodynamic quantities like entropy and heat energy are defined by reference to enormous numbers of particles - for example, molecules of gas careering about - and averaging across them without considering the details of individual particles. (Such averaging is sometimes called a ‘coarse-grained view’.) Thus, the temperature of a gas is related to the average energy of motion of the gas molecules. The point is that whenever one takes an average some information is thrown away, that is, we accept some ignorance. The average height of a Londoner tells us nothing about the height of a specific person. Likewise, the temperature of a gas tells us nothing about the speed of a specific molecule. In a nutshell: information is about what you know, and entropy is about what you don’t know." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"Gödel shattered the ancient dream that cast-iron logical reasoning would always produce irrefutable truth. His result is arguably the highest product of the human intellect. All other discoveries about the world of physical things or the world of reason tell us something we didn’t know before. Gödel’s theorem tells us that the world of mathematics embeds inexhaustible novelty; even an unbounded intellect, a god, can never know everything. It is the ultimate statement of open-endedness." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"Information makes a difference in the world. We might say it has ‘causal power’. The challenge to science is to figure out how to couple abstract information to the concrete world of physical objects." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"It would be wrong of me to give the impression that information flow in biology is restricted to gene regulatory networks. Unfortunately, the additional complexity of some other networks makes them even harder to model computationally, especially as the simple version of 0s and 1s (off and on) mostly won’t do. On top of that, the number of components skyrockets when it comes to more finely tuned functions like metabolism. The general point remains: biology will ‘stand out’ from random complexity in the manner of its information patterning and processing, and though complex, the software account of life will still be vastly simpler than the underlying molecular systems that support it, as it is for electronic circuits." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"Living organisms are not just bags of information: they are computers. It follows that a full understanding of life will come only from unravelling its computational mechanisms. And that requires an excursion into the esoteric but fascinating foundations of logic, mathematics and computing." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"[...] living organisms manifest deep new physical principles, and that we are on the threshold of uncovering and harnessing those principles. What is different this time, and why it has taken so many decades to discover the real secret of life, is that the new physics is not simply a matter of an additional type of force - a 'life force' - but something altogether more subtle, something that interweaves matter and information, wholes and parts, simplicity and complexity." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"Network theory confirms the view that information can take on 'a life of its own'. In the yeast network my colleagues found that 40 per cent of node pairs that are correlated via information transfer are not in fact physically connected; there is no direct chemical interaction. Conversely, about 35 per cent of node pairs transfer no information between them even though they are causally connected via a 'chemical wire' (edge). Patterns of information traversing the system may appear to be flowing down the 'wires' (along the edges of the graph) even when they are not. For some reason, 'correlation without causation' seems to be amplified in the biological case relative to random networks." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"One of the hallmarks of life is its limitless exuberance: its open-ended variety and complexity. If life represents something truly fundamental and extraordinary, then this quality of unconstrained possibility is surely key." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"Patterns of information flow can literally take on a life of their own, surging through cells, swirling around brains and networking across ecosystems and societies, displaying their own systematic dynamics. It is from this rich and complex ferment of information that the concept of agency emerges, with its links to consciousness, free will and other vexing puzzles. It is here, in the way living systems arrange information into organized patterns, that the distinctive order of life emerges from the chaos of the molecular realm." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"The concept of integrated information is clearest when applied to networks. Imagine a black box with input and output terminals. Inside are some electronics, such as a network with logic elements (AND, OR, and so on) wired together. Viewed from the outside, it will usually not be possible to deduce the circuit layout simply by examining the cause–effect relationship between inputs and outputs, because functionally equivalent black boxes can be built from very different circuits. But if the box is opened, it’s a different story. Suppose you use a pair of cutters to sever some wires in the network. Now rerun the system with all manner of inputs. If a few snips dramatically alter the outputs, the circuit can be described as highly integrated, whereas in a circuit with low integration the effect of some snips may make no difference at all." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"The flip side of reductionism is emergence - the recognition that new qualities and principles may emerge at higher levels of complexity that can themselves be relatively simple and grasped without knowing much about the levels below. Emergence has acquired something of a mystical air but in truth it has always played a role in science." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"[...] the Game of Life, in which a few simple rules executed repeatedly can generate a surprising degree of complexity. Recall that the game treats squares, or pixels, as simply on or off (filled or blank) and the update rules are given in terms of the state of the nearest neighbours. The theory of networks is closely analogous. An electrical network, for example, consists of a collection of switches with wires connecting them. Switches can be on or off, and simple rules determine whether a given switch is flipped, according to the signals coming down the wires from the neighbouring switches. The whole network, which is easy to model on a computer, can be put in a specific starting state and then updated step by step, just like a cellular automaton. The ensuing patterns of activity depend both on the wiring diagram (the topology of the network) and the starting state. The theory of networks can be developed quite generally as a mathematical exercise: the switches are called ‘nodes’ and the wires are called ‘edges’. From very simple network rules, rich and complex activity can follow." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"The story of life is really two narratives tightly interwoven. One concerns complex chemistry, a rich and elaborate network of reactions. The other is about information, not merely passively stored in genes but coursing through organisms and permeating biological matter to bestow a unique form of order. Life is thus an amalgam of two restlessly shifting patterns, chemical and informational. These patterns are not independent but are coupled together to form a system of cooperation and coordination that shuffles bits of information in a finely choreographed ballet." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
"Whatever the minimal complexity for life may be, there is no doubt that even the simplest known life form is already stupendously complex. Indeed, life’s complexity is so daunting that it is tempting to give up trying to understand it in physical terms." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
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