Space-time Quotes - page 2
![At the beginning of time the laws of Nature were probably very different from what they are now. Thus we should consider the laws of Nature as continually changing with the epoch, instead of as holding uniformly throughout space-time. This idea was first put forward by Milne, who worked it out on... assumptions... not very satisfying... we should expect them also to depend on position in space, in order to preserve the beautiful idea of the theory of relativity [that] there is fundamental similarity between space and time. (Paul Dirac)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/43/paul-dirac-beautiful-beginning-446443.webp)
How it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems. Everything there is to be thought about it, in his opinion, has already been done in early childhood. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done.
Albert Einstein
According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but "organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multi-dimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum." I'll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I'm going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces.
Edward Abbey
Whether in number theory, or space-time cosmology, Gödel's method was to advance the formalization of the system under consideration and then test it to destruction upon the ‘strange loops' it generated (paradoxes of self-reference and time-travel). In each case, the system was shown to permit cases that it could not consistently absorb, opening it to an interminable process of revision, or technical improvement. It thus defined dynamic intelligence, or the logic of evolutionary imperfection, with an adequacy that was both sufficient and necessarily inconclusive. What it did not do was trash the very possibility of arithmetic, mathematical logic, or cosmic history - except insofar as these were falsely identified with idols of finality or closure.
Nick Land
The conclusion seems to be irresistible that such laws of nature as the principle of conservation of energy, the principle of conservation of momentum and the law of gravitation are necessary consequences of our modes of measurement. They are, in fact, elaborately disguised identities which could have been predicted a priori by a being of sufficiently powerful analytical insight who fully understood all that is implied in the way we measure space-time intervals.
Ernest Barnes
The sequence of different positions of the same particle at different times forms a one-dimensional continuum in the four-dimensional space-time, which is called the world-line of the particle. All that physical experiments or observations can teach us refers to intersections of world-lines of different material particles, light-pulsations, etc., and how the course of the world-line is between these points of intersection is entirely irrelevant and outside the domain of physics. The system of intersecting world-lines can thus be twisted about at will, so long as no points of intersection are destroyed or created, and their order is not changed. It follows that the equations expressing the physical laws must be invariant for arbitrary transformations.
Willem de Sitter
Supergravity theories generically contain non-compact global symmetry groups. The general rule is that the scalar fields of the theory in question parametrize a symmetric space. Thus, if the non-compact symmetry group is G, and its maximal compact subgroup is H, the scalar fields map the space-time into the symmetric space G/H, and the number of scalar fields is dim G – dim H. The first supergravity example of this type to be found, N = 4 supergravity is one of the most interesting. In this case there are two scalar fields and the symmetric space is SL(2,R)/SO(2).
John Henry Schwarz
It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self - not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep - the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike.
H. P. Lovecraft
Western Christians have imagined that, at the end of the day, God is going to throw the present space-time universe into a trashcan and we'll be sitting on clouds playing harps. The ultimate future that we're promised is much more interesting than that. It's new heavens and a new Earth with new bodies to live in.
N.T. Wright
In classical Newtonian physics there was a clear understanding of 'what reality is'. Indeed in this classical view, reality at a certain time is the collection of all what is actual at this time, and this is contained in 'the present'. Often it is stated that three dimensional space and one dimensional time have been substituted by four dimensional space-time in relativity theory, and as a consequence the classical concept of reality, as that what is 'present', cannot be retained. Is reality then the four dimensional manifold of relativity theory? And if so, what is then the meaning of 'change in time'?
Diederik Aerts
Why is space-time doomed? There are many reasons, among which: In string theory we can change the dimension of space-time by changing the strength of the string force. Thus, the so-called II-A string theory, which semi-classically describes closed strings moving in ten-dimensional flat space for very weak coupling is dual for strong coupling to a theory, called M-theory, that at low energies is described by eleven-dimensional supergravity. By increasing the string coupling we can grow an extra dimension. How can the spatial continuum be fundamental if the number of spatial dimensions can be so changed?
David Gross
The brain is the only kind of object capable of understanding that the cosmos is even there, or why there are infinitely many prime numbers, or that apples fall because of the curvature of space-time, or that obeying its own inborn instincts can be morally wrong, or that it itself exists.
David Deutsch
A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.
Timothy Leary
Maybe it was a music box.
Scott shouldn't have felt depressed. The gadgetry would have given Einstein a headache and driven Steinmetz raving mad. The trouble was, of course, that the box had not yet completely entered the space-time continuum where Scott existed and therefore it could not be opened. At any rate, not till Scott used a convenient rock to hammer the helical nonhelix into a more convenient position.
He hammered it, in fact, from its contact point with the fourth dimension, releasing the space-time torsion it had been maintaining. There was a brittle snap. the box jarred slightly, and lay motionless, no longer only partially in existence. Scott opened it easily now.
Lewis Padgett