Sublime

Essas histórias têm nos ajudado a evitar sentimentos de insignificância.

the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington’s memorable explanation of how the universe works: “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”

What makes this universe interesting is that although the fundamental “physics” of this universe is simple, the “chemistry” can be complicated. That is, composite objects exist on different scales. At the smallest scale, the fundamental physics tells us that there are just live and dead squares. On a larger scale, there are gliders, blinkers, and s

This paradox of comprehension was articulated explicitly by a great physicist of an earlier age: “Sir Isaac Newton, when asked what he thought of the infatuations of the people, answered that he could calculate the motions of erratic bodies, but not the madness of a multitude” (quoted from The Church of England Quarterly Review, 1850).

La donnée est la matière première de l’information, qui elle-même va nourrir la connaissance. Plus on parvient à isoler quelque chose, à regarder l’infiniment petit, mieux on peut comprendre. C’est pour cela que les physiciens passent des mois à observer le boson de Higgs dans l’accélérateur de particules du CERN – ce boson est, à ce jour, l’entité