“Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.”
Interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)
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Stephen Hawking122
British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942–2018Related quotes
Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist
Lecture at Yale University, "Chemical Achievement and Hope for the Future." (October 1947) Published in Science in Progress. Sixth Series. Ed. George A. Baitsell. 100-21, (1949).
1940s-1960s
Context: Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences – and we cannot predict what they will be. Science will go on — whether we are pessimistic, or are optimistic, as I am. I know that great, interesting, and valuable discoveries can be made and will be made… But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe — and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.
“Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning.”
Stephen Hawking book Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays
Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer
"The Letters of the Dead"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Could Have (1972)
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
"When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf", Free Inquiry (1998)
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy (1883–1947) French philosopher
Human Destiny, 1947, p. 33
Commenting on Charles-Eugene Guye's calculation that the odds against the random formation of a particular protein molecule would be about 1 in 10 to the 243rd.
Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer
Quote in his article 'Elementarism', as cited in De Stijl – Van Doesburg Issue, January 1932, pp. 17–19
1926 – 1931
Arno Allan Penzias (1933) American physicist
http://www.unm.edu/~hdelaney/cosmoquotes.html, Arno Penzias, quoted by Walter Bradley in "The Designed 'Just-so' Universe", 1999.
Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman
Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)