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Steven Weinberg Biography

Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.

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Steven Weinberg Quotes

If language is to be of any use to us, then we ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and 'god' historically has not meant the laws of nature.

Atheism, Law, Laws, Meant, Preserve, Religion

You know, our fundamentalist friends dislike the teaching of evolution in schools because of the effect they feel it has on our view of our own special importance, while liberals insist that scientific and spiritual matters can be kept in separate compartments. On this point, I tend to agree with the fundamentalists, though I come to opposite conclusions about teaching evolution because I am convinced it's true.

Compartments, Matters, School, Spiritual, Teaching, Though

How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

Like, Philosophical, Philosophy, Science, Steady, Theories

Sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.

Beautiful, Nature, Necessary, Seems, Sometimes, Strictly

[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.

Atheist, Good, Religion, Religious, Thing

Our job in physics is to see things simply, to understand a great many complicated phenomena in a unified way, in terms of a few simple principles.

Jobs, Physics, Science, See, Simple, Simply

Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.

Alas, Country, Ideas, Islamic, Placed, Twelfth

It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.

Important, Mass, People, Religion, Sorts, Structure

Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own.

Atheism, Aware, Humanity, Purpose, Suggests, Universe

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

Atheism, Comprehensible, Pointless, Religion, Seems, Universe

It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.

Condition, Extinction, Future, Heat, Science, Unspeakably

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Education, Gives, Life, Money, Things, Understand

In science we don't have prophets. We have heroes, but not prophets.

Hero, Heroes, Prophet, Prophets, Science

Rational argument can be defeated by refusing to argue rationally.

Arguing, Argument, Defeated, Rational, Science

It is positively spooky how the physicist finds the mathematician has been there before him or her.

Mathematician, Physicist, Positively, Spooky

If history is any guide at all, it seems to me to suggest that there is a final theory. In this century we have seen a convergence of the arrows of explanation, like the convergence of meridians toward the North Pole.

Arrows, Century, Convergence, History, Science

It does not matter whether you win or lose, what matters is whether I win or lose!

Funny, Lose, Matter, What Matters, Win, Winning

The more comprehensible the universe becomes the more pointless it seems.

Becomes, Comprehensible, Pointless, Seems, Universe

Science should be taught not in order to support religion and not in order to destroy religion. Science should be taught simply ignoring religion.

Atheism, Destroy, Ignoring, Order, Support, Taught

The more we refine our understanding of God to make the concept plausible, the more it seems pointless.

God, Plausible, Pointless, Refine, Seems, Understanding

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