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in 1948, Warren Weaver provided a definition of complexity. And he said on the one hand, you have simplicity physics, classical physics. On the other hand, you have disordered complexity, like a gas, you know, completely chaotic.

And in the middle, you have organized complexity that balances order and disorder, randomness and regularity. And that

“He fought against the problems from which others fled. He loved discovering the relations between multiple aspects of nature, but what drove his search was joy, the pleasure an artist feels, the vertigo of the visionary capable of discerning the threads that weave the fabric of the future,”

Benjamin Labatut • When We Cease to Understand the World

In June 1983, Alexander Grothendieck sits down to write the preface to a mathematical manuscript called Pursuing Stacks . He is concerned by what he sees as a tacit disdain for the more “feminine side” of mathematics (which is related to what I’m calling the solitary creative state) in favor of the “hammer and chisel” of the finished theorem. By... See more

Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born

We must choose between hiding away in empty truths or accepting the radical uncertainty of our knowledge—remaining, like the Earth, suspended in a void.

Carlo Rovelli • Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

Physicists come off looking particularly bad. After attending a Stephen Hawking lecture about fantastical ideas like wormholes and superstrings and “mini-superspace,” Horgan concludes that Hawking is “less a truth seeker than an artist, an illusionist, a cosmic joker” whose work “can keep us awestruck. But it is not science.”

Adam Mastroianni • Science Will Only End Once We've Licked All the Objects in the Universe

For all these people, taking their own position seriously as an explanation of the world would lead them directly to realism and Galilean rationality.

David Deutsch • The Fabric of Reality

The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy – but the ones that contain the deepest explanations. The fabric of reality does not consist only of reductionist ingredients like space, time and subatomic particles, but

David Deutsch • The Fabric of Reality

Wilczek then takes this idea to another level: Can beauty be not just a byproduct of science, but a fundamental principle of how the world works? In other words, can physicists use it to guide themselves to new insights, the way they use mathematical intuition, experimentation and other things? Wilczek believes they can—and they have.

Gabriel Popkin • The Universe According to Frank Wilczek - John Templeton Foundation

The laws of physics tell us that the very building blocks of what we see as solid matter are, in fact, insubstantial points of energy. These are aggregated together by the act of observation into an indistinct holographic image – analogous to a three-dimensional holographic picture before it is illuminated by laser light. In this case, the

Sublime

Benjamin Labatut • When We Cease to Understand the World

Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born

Carlo Rovelli • Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

Adam Mastroianni • Science Will Only End Once We've Licked All the Objects in the Universe

David Deutsch • The Fabric of Reality

David Deutsch • The Fabric of Reality

Gabriel Popkin • The Universe According to Frank Wilczek - John Templeton Foundation

Anthony Peake • Listening to Your Secret Self: The ‘Daemon’ Spirit Who Guides Our Lives