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?
I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon.
Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again, with an even more devastating force.
As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can".
The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.
This time of year, I live and breathe the beach. My cheeks feel raw with the wind throwing sand against them. My thighs sting from the friction of the saddle. My arms ache from holding up two thousand pounds of horse. I have forgotten what it is like to be warm and what a full nightβs sleep feels like and what my name sounds like spoken instead of shouted across yards of sand. I am so, so alive.
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.
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