“Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality.”
As quoted by Paul Davies, Other Worlds (1980)
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John Archibald Wheeler 16
American physicist 1911–2008Related quotes
"The Right of Things to Come", presentation for the Science Fiction Research Association (1978), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction
Source: Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don't Control You
“I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future.”
Preface to Humane Biology Projects (1961) by the Animal Welfare Institute
Context: I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 33
as quoted by James Glanz, in Leonard Mandel, 73, Revealer Of Light's Weirdness, Is Dead http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/nyregion/leonard-mandel-73-revealer-of-light-s-weirdness-is-dead.html?sec=&spon=, New York Times (Tuesday, February 13, 2001)
