Lee Smolin: Trending quotes (page 2)

“We detect light and particles that have traveled billions of light years on their way across the universe to us. During the billions of years of travel, very small effects due to quantum gravity can be amplified to the point that we can detect them.”

Lee Smolin

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Way , Travel , Light , Universe

“The relational picture of space and time has implications that are as radical as those of natural selection, not only for science but for our perspective on who we are and how we came to exist in this evolving universe of relations.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Nature , Universe , Science , Time

“Relativity and… quantum… remain incomplete…. the main reason each is incomplete is the existence of the other. The mind calls for a third theory to unify all of physics, and for a simple reason. Nature is… "unified." …interconnected, in that everything interacts with everything else.”

Lee Smolin

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (2007)

Nature

“Spacetime… turns out to be discrete, described by a structure called spin foam.”

Lee Smolin

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“We have known since the middle of the nineteenth century that the world is not composed only of particles. …the world is also composed of fields. …General relativity is a theory of… the gravitational field. …Because there are three sets of field lines, the gravitational field defines a network of relationships having to do with how the… lines link with one another. …This is why we call relativity a relational theory.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

World

“The first principle of cosmology must be 'There is nothing outside the universe'. This is not to exclude religion or mysticism… But if it is knowledge that we desire… we need to seek answers to questions about the things we can see… only things that exist in the universe.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Religion , Question , Knowledge , Universe

“One of the evident facts about the world is the stability of empty space-time. In classical general relativity we can explain this as a consequence of the positive energy theorem… the positive energy theorem must extend in some suitable form to any viable quantum theory of gravity.”

Lee Smolin

"Positive energy in quantum gravity" arXiv (Jun 10, 2014)

World , Time

“Thinking in time is not relativism but a form of relationalism… the truest description of something consists of specifying its relationships to other parts of the system it is part of.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Thinking , Time , Parting

“The landscape problem and the problem of background independence are closely linked. The latter is the only route the former has to experimental confirmation.”

Lee Smolin

"A perspective on the landscape problem" arXiv (Feb 15, 2012)

Problem

“Having begun my life in science searching for the equation beyond time, I now believe that the deepest secret of the universe is that its essence rests in how it unfolds moment by moment in time.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Life , Secret , Search , Universe

“We show that some known classical results have particularly simple derivations within the Ashtekar formalism. These include Witten's positive energy theorem…”

Lee Smolin

"Positive energy in quantum gravity" arXiv (Jun 10, 2014)

“We seem to have an ingrained idea that if something is valuable, it exists outside of time.”

Lee Smolin

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Idea , Time

“I was joined by Carlo Rovelli, and we were able to make a full-fledged quantum theory of gravity… This became loop quantum gravity.”

Lee Smolin

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“Many of us believed in the possibility of a principled explanation for the laws of nature. We hoped to discover a short list of principles, which could be realized in a unique theory, which would retrodict the standard model and uniquely predict the physics to be discovered beyond it. The shocking implication of the results of Strominger reported in 1986 was that it was not to be, at least within the confines of string theory. …String theory offered more, however… It offered the promise of a setting in which the different perturbative string theories are realized as expansions around solutions of a still more fundamental theory. …That more fundamental theory would have to be background independent…”

Lee Smolin

"A perspective on the landscape problem" arXiv (Feb 15, 2012)

Law , Hope , Nature

“There is no time apart from change. There is no such thing as a clock outside the network of changing relationships. …one can only compare how fast one thing is happening with the rate of some other process.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Change , Time

“From the beginning of physics, there have been those who imagined they would be the last generation to face the unknown. Physics has always seemed to its practitioners to be almost complete. This complacency is shattered only during revolutions, when honest people are forced to admit that they don't know the basics.”

Lee Smolin

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (2007)

People , Imagination

“Special pleading that the standards of science should be lessened to admit explanations with no falsifiable consequences, in order to keep alive a bold speculative idea, should be strongly resisted. …ultimately science is not interested in what might be true, it is interested only in what can be convincingly demonstrated by deductions from observational evidence.”

Lee Smolin

"A perspective on the landscape problem" arXiv (Feb 15, 2012)

Idea , Science

“There is no meaning to space that is independent of the relationships among real things of the world. …Space is nothing apart from the things that exist. …If we take out all the words we are not left with an empty sentence, we are left with nothing.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

World

“There is a smallest unit of space. Its minimum value is given by the cube of the Planck length… If you take a volume of space and measure it to a very fine precision… It has to fall into some discrete series of numbers, just like the energy of an electron in an atom. …we can calculate the discrete areas and volumes from the theory.”

Lee Smolin

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“The geometry of space changes when things in the universe change their relationships to one another.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

Universe , Change