Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), "The Edge of Forever" [Episode 10]
Context: But we don't yet know whether the Universe is open or closed. More than that, there are a few astronomers who doubt that the redshift of distant galaxies is due to the doppler effect, who are skeptical of the expanding Universe and the Big Bang. Perhaps our descendants will regard our present ignorance with as much sympathy as we feel to the ancients for not knowing the Earth went around the Sun. If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding Universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the Universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly somehow created, how did that happen? In many cultures, the customary answer is that a God or Gods created the Universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step, and conclude that the Universe always existed? That there's no need for a creation, it was always here. These are not easy questions. Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
“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.”
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Lee Smolin 52
American cosmologist 1955Related quotes
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 19–20
Address at the Convocation of the University of Manitoba, October 28, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)
During 1964 budget debate, he called for the establishment of a university in Fiji.
Beautiful Minds (2010)
Context: I have this sense that we need to picture cosmology, the evolution of the universe in a whole new way. I'm probably not one that can achieve this new thinking but somebody will and I feel at the moment we're kind of waiting for it to happen. A bit like a pregnant pause. A bit like what happens when there's a snowfall, first snowfall of the year, when everything goes quiet and kind of waits. I feel we are in that kind of phase.
Annie Besant Quotes
The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)