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?
Every living person and thing responds to beauty. We all thirst for it. We receive strength and renewal by seeing stirring and satisfying sites.
I have made my home among the mountain gorillas.
Dangerous climate change... It's important not to be alarmist but it is very important to be alarmed
The day, water, sun, moon, night - I do not have to purchase these things with money.
The simple fact is that the world is not paying for the services the forests provide. At the moment, they are worth more dead than alive-for soya, for beef, for palm oil and for logging, feeding the demand from other countries. ... I think we need to be clear that the drivers of rainforest destruction do not originate in the rainforest nations, but in the more developed countries which, unwittingly or not, have caused climate change.
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
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