We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
Stephen HawkingRead
Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a 'crank.'
Interpretation
The quote reflects how innovative ideas can be dismissed by mainstream science, and the fear of ridicule can silence exploration.
In this quote, Stephen Hawking expresses the challenges faced by scientists who explore unconventional ideas, such as time travel. It highlights how groundbreaking concepts can be seen as taboo or 'heretical' within the scientific community, and the fear of being considered eccentric or a 'crank' can deter open discussion and experimentation in these areas of thought.
In practice
During a lecture on futuristic technologies, I shared a quote by Stephen Hawking to discuss the boundaries of scientific acceptance.
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.
I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.
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.
In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.
It is seen that both matter and radiation possess a remarkable duality of character, as they sometimes exhibit the properties of waves, at other times those of particles. Now, it is obvious that a thing cannot be a form of wave motion and composed of particles at the same time - the two concepts are too different.
That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable. Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion due to our ignorance. This is encouraging, for, if the world in which we live were as complicated as some of our friends would have us believe we might well despair that biology could ever become an exact science.
Science is the topography of ignorance.
Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.
I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
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