If we had the fundamental laws of nature tomorrow, we still wouldn't understand consciousness. We wouldn't even understand turbulence.
Interpretation
Understanding consciousness and turbulence is a challenge even with knowledge of fundamental laws of nature.
Steven Weinberg highlights the complexity of consciousness and turbulence in this quote, suggesting that simply knowing the fundamental laws of nature does not equate to understanding these intricate phenomena. Both consciousness and turbulence are multifaceted challenges that require more than just foundational scientific principles; they demand deeper exploration and insight into the complexities of existence and physical systems.
In practice
In a lecture on quantum physics, to illustrate the limitations of scientific understanding.
It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.
[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century.
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.
When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt.
The cross pollination of disciplines is fundamental to truly revolutionary advances in our culture.
The Soyuz craft weighs tons, and you're lying on the floor of it on your back. But the Russians do tell you, remember, before you land, stop talking so you don't bite your tongue off.
It is always noteworthy that all those who seriously study this science [the theory of numbers] conceive a sort of passion for it.
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