Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly, chaotic and complicated. But if it's like that, then I want out.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of disillusionment with nature's complexity and disorder, expressing a desire to escape from it.
Steven Weinberg's quote highlights a philosophical perspective on the nature of the universe, suggesting that if reality is as chaotic and ugly as perceived, one would prefer to not be part of it. It emphasizes a struggle with accepting the inherent flaws and complexities of existence, indicating a longing for simplicity or beauty amidst a chaotic world.
In practice
This quote could be used in a debate about the value of nature versus urban life.
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?
.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.
I like to think_x000D_ (it has to be!)_x000D_ of a cybernetic ecology_x000D_ where we are free of our labors_x000D_ and joined back to nature,_x000D_ returned to our mammal_x000D_ brothers and sisters,_x000D_ and all watched over_x000D_ by machines of loving grace.
A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.
The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
spring is super in the supermarkets and the strawberries prance and glow never mind that they're all kinda tart and tasteless as strawberries go meanwhile wild things are not for sale anymore than they are for show so i'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty it takes more than eyes to know
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
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