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I find no reason to reverse the standard assumption of physics... what we experience can be explained by the assumption of an external world governed by law.

— Julian Barbour Bit from It (2011)

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More quotes by Julian Barbour

Information theory would never have got off the ground if structured things—configurations—did not exist.

Bit from It (2011)

Ontological primacy should not be given to information but to things, as has always been the standpoint of realists.

Bit from It (2011)

Thus, even now, three and a half centuries after Galileo... it is still remarkably difficult to say categorically whether the earth moves...

Shannon-type message sources could not exist if the universe were not subject to laws of nature and far from thermal equilibrium.

Bit from It (2011)

There is one metalaw of science: it cannot exist without structured things. Structured variety is the ground of being. That is what gives content to both science and life.

Bit from It (2011)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Julian Barbour (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.