On Universe (1960-1969)

"It is of our very nature to see the universe as a place that we can talk about. In particular, you will remember, the brain tends to compute by organizing all of its input into certain general patterns. It is natural for us, therefore, to try to make these grand abstractions, to seek for one formula, one model, one God, around which we can organize all our communication and the whole business of living." (John Z Young, "Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain", 1960)

"Science is usually understood to depict a universe of strict order and lawfulness, of rigorous economy - one whose currency is energy, convertible against a service charge into a growing common pool called entropy." (Paul A Weiss,"Organic Form: Scientific and Aesthetic Aspects", 1960)

"If the universe is a mingling of probability clouds spread through a cosmic eternity of space-time, how is there as much order, persistence, and coherent transformation as there is?" (Lancelot L Whyte, "Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960", 1961)

"Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe - in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself." (Robert A Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land", 1961)

"One thinks one’s something unique and wonderful at the center of the universe. But in fact one’s merely a slight delay in the ongoing march of entropy." (Aldous Huxley, "Island", 1962)

"A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data. God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe." (Paul Dirac, Scientific American, 1963)

"It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better." (Paul Dirac, "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature", 1963)

"Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool." (R A J Phillips, "A Day in the Life of Kelvin Throop", Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact, Vol. 73 No. 5, 1964)

"A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses." (Harvey Brooks, "Scientific Concepts and Cultural Change", 1965)

"All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

"Specific procedures of universe-maintenance become necessary when the symbolic universe has become a problem. As long as this is not the case, the symbolic universe is self-maintaining, that is, self-legitimating by the sheer facticity of its objective existence in the society in question." (Peter L Berger, "The Social Construction of Reality", 1966)

"The most natural way to give an independence proof is to establish a model with the required properties. This is not the only way to proceed since one can attempt to deal directly and analyze the structure of proofs. However, such an approach to set theoretic questions is unnatural since all our intuition come from our belief in the natural, almost physical model of the mathematical universe." (Paul J Cohen, "Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis", 1966)

"[…] mathematics is not portraying laws inherent in the design of the universe but is merely providing man-made schemes or models which we can use to deduce conclusions about our world only to the extent that the model is a good idealization." (Morris Kline, "Mathematics for the Nonmathematician", 1967)

"We must accept, I think, that there is an inherent limitation in the structure of science that prevents a scientific theory from ever giving us an adequate total explanation of the universe. Always, there is a base in nature (or, correspondingly, a set of assumptions in theory) which cannot be explained by reference to some yet more fundamental property. This feature of science has been commented on by many writers in the philosophy of science; and, certainly the limitation is a point of difference between science and those religious or metaphysical systems in which there is an attempt to present a doctrine that gives answers for all ultimate questions." (Richard Schlegel, "Completeness in Science", 1967)