Heinz Pagels Quotes

• The visible world is the invisible organization of energy.

  Heinz Pagels

  Science, Organization, Religion

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.348, Courier Corporation

  49 Copy quote

• Science is not the enemy of humanity but one of the deepest expressions of the human desire to realize that vision of infinite knowledge. Science shows us that the visible world is neither matter nor spirit; the visible world is the invisible organization of energy.

  Heinz Pagels

  Science, Expression, Organization

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.348, Courier Corporation

  17 Copy quote

• The great unexplored frontier is complexity ... I am convinced that the nations and people that master the new science of Complexity will become the economic, cultural, and political superpowers of the next century.

  Heinz Pagels

  People, Political, Next

  16 Copy quote

• Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge involves their meaning. What we want is knowledge, but what we get is information.

  Heinz Pagels

  Numbers, Want, Information

  4 Copy quote

• I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

  Heinz Pagels

  Commitment, Science, Reason

  Heinz R. Pagels (1988). “The dreams of reason: the computer and the rise of the sciences of complexity”, Simon & Schuster

  67 Copy quote

• A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one's own. But with this appropriation comes the realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our grand illusion.

  Heinz Pagels

  Religious, Writing, Science

  1988 The Dreams of Reason.

  27 Copy quote

• The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

  Heinz Pagels

  People, Simplicity, Progress

  7 Copy quote

• Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

  Heinz Pagels

  Science, Helping, Moral

  22 Copy quote

• As I continued to fall into the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

  Heinz Pagels

  Stars, Fall, Dark

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.349, Courier Corporation

  8 Copy quote

• What is the universe? Is it a great 3D movie in which we are the unwilling actors? Is it a cosmic joke, a giant computer, a work of art by a Supreme Being or simply an experiment? The problem in trying to understand the universe is that we have nothing to compare it to.

  Heinz Pagels

  Art, Trying, Giants

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.343, Courier Corporation

  11 Copy quote

• We surely stand at the threshold of a great adventure of the human spiritó a new synthesis of knowledge, a potential integration of art and science, a deeper grasp of human psychology, a deepening of the symbolic representations of our existence and feelings as given in religion and culture, the formation of an international order based on cooperation and nonviolent competition. It seems not too much to hope for these things.

  Heinz Pagels

  Art, Adventure, Order

  8 Copy quote

• Theoretical and experimental physicists are now studying nothing at all-the vacuum. But that nothingness contains all of being.

  Heinz Pagels

  Science, Vacuums, Study

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.279, Courier Corporation

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• The words are strung together, with their own special grammar-the laws of quantum theory-to form sentences, which are molecules. Soon we have books, entire libraries, made out of molecular "sentences." The universe is like a library in which the words are atoms. Just look at what has been written with these hundred words! Our own bodies are books in that library, specified by the organization of molecules-but the universe and literature are organizations of identical, interchangeable objects; they are information systems.

  Heinz Pagels

  Book, Science, Law

  7 Copy quote

• Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people.

  Heinz Pagels

  Philosophy, Views, People

  8 Copy quote

• There was emptiness more profound than the void between the stars, for which there was no here and there and before and after, and yet out of that void the entire plenum of existence sprang forth.

  Heinz Pagels

  Stars, Profound, Here And There

  20 Copy quote

• Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.

  Heinz Pagels

  Science, Land, Exploration

  Heinz R. Pagels (1988). “The dreams of reason: the computer and the rise of the sciences of complexity”, Simon & Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Our capacity for fulfillment can come only through faith and feelings. But our capacity for survival must come from reason and knowledge.

  Heinz Pagels

  Feelings, Survival, Reason

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.347, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• Possession of a program with unique analytic capabilities puts a scientist in as much of a priveleged position to make new discoveries as the possession of a powerful telescope.

  Heinz Pagels

  Powerful, Unique, Discovery

  Heinz R. Pagels (1988). “The dreams of reason: the computer and the rise of the sciences of complexity”, Simon & Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Science shows us what exists but not what to do about it.

  Heinz Pagels

  Realism, Shows

  1988 The Dreams of Reason.

  4 Copy quote

• The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.

  Heinz Pagels

  Machines, World, Clock

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.85, Courier Corporation

  26 Copy quote

• Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.

  Heinz Pagels

  Stars, Animal, Secret

  "Perfect symmetry: the search for the beginning of time".

  4 Copy quote

• While we can prove that almost all numbers in the continuum are random, we cannot prove that any specific number is indeed random.

  Heinz Pagels

  Numbers, Prove, Continuum

  Heinz R. Pagels (1988). “The dreams of reason: the computer and the rise of the sciences of complexity”, Simon & Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• It is unlikely that we will ever see a star being born. Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young, but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event. Stars are born inside thick clouds of dust and gas in the spiral arms of the galaxy, so thick that visible light cannot penetrate them.

  Heinz Pagels

  Stars, Science, Animal

  Heinz R. Pagels (1985). “Perfect symmetry: the search for the beginning of time”, Simon & Schuster

  10 Copy quote

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