John D. Barrow

"The laws of Nature are based upon the existence of a pattern, linking one state of affairs to another; and where there is pattern, there is symmetry. Yet...the symmetries that the laws enshrine are br…"

"Einstein showed us how to find all the possible universes that were consistent with the laws of physics and the character of gravity, how to reconstruct their pasts and predict their futures. But actu…"

"...logical contradictions will inevitably arise and the laws of the simulations will appear to break down now and again. The inhabitants of the simulation—especially the simulated scientists—will occa…"

"The legacy of the great monotheistic religions is the expectation of a single over-arching explanation for the Universe. ...There is no logical reason why the Universe should not contain surds of arbi…"

"The secret of how galaxies came into being may well be fathomed by the study of the most elementary particles of matter in particle detectors buried deep underground; the identity of those elementary …"

"Assuming the simulators, or at least the early generations of them, have a very advanced knowledge of the laws of Nature, it's likely that they would still have incomplete knowledge of them. ...gradua…"

"Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry…"

"Scanning the past millennia of human achievement reveals just how much has been achieved during the last three hundred years since Newton set in motion the effective mathematization of Nature. We foun…"