Quotes from The Big Picture — Sean M. Carroll
born 1966 United States
← All quotes by Sean M. Carroll
5 quotes
Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to happen for reasons—and also reasons why that’s not a bedrock principle.
The Big Picture (2016)
The “reasons” and “causes” why things happen, in other words, aren’t fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged.
The Big Picture (2016)
Meaning in life can’t be reduced to simplistic mottos. In some number of years I will be dead; some memory of my time here on Earth may linger, but I won’t be around to savor it.
The Big Picture (2016)
What we’re seeing is a manifestation of the layered nature of our descriptions of reality. At the deepest level we currently know about, the basic notions are things like “spacetime,” “quantum fields,” “equations of motion,” and “interactions.” No causes, whether material, formal, efficient, or final. But there are levels on top of that, where the vocabulary changes.
The Big Picture (2016)
The momentary or Laplacian nature of physical evolution doesn’t have much relevance for the choices we face in our everyday lives. For poetic naturalism, the situation is clear. There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now.
The Big Picture (2016)