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?
Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden-in all the places.
As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated.
Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn, Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn.
I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very strong thing.
Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
Meditate, oft. Separate thyself for a season from the cares of the world. Get close to nature and learn from the lowliest of that which manifests in nature, in the earth; in the birds, in the trees, in the grass, in the flowers, in the bees; that the life of each is a manifesting, is a song of glory to its Maker. And do thou likewise!
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