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P.C.W. Davies
(22 Apr 1946 - )
English-Australian physicist and writer whose research interests are in theoretical physics (quantum field theory), cosmology and astrobiology. His over twenty books include God and the New Physics (1983) and About Time (1995).
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Science Quotes by P.C.W. Davies (9 quotes)
… the rules of clockwork might apply to familiar objects such as snookerballs, but when it comes to atoms, the rules are those of roulette.
— P.C.W. Davies
In God and the New Physics (1984), 102.
[W]e might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?
— P.C.W. Davies
In Are We Alone?(1995), 48.
A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing in the big crunch, its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory.
— P.C.W. Davies
In The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe (1994, 2008), 123.
Although gravity is by far the weakest force of nature, its insidious and cumulative action serves to determine the ultimate fate not only of individual astronomical objects but of the entire cosmos. The same remorseless attraction that crushes a star operates on a much grander scale on the universe as a whole.
— P.C.W. Davies
In The Last Three Minutes (1994).
Many billions of years will elapse before the smallest, youngest stars complete their nuclear burning and into white dwarfs. But with slow, agonizing finality perpetual night will surely fall.
— P.C.W. Davies
In The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe (1994, 2008), 50.
The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world—the hardware—plays the role of a gigantic computer.
— P.C.W. Davies
'Laying Down the Laws', New Scientist. In Clifford A. Pickover, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them (2008), 183.
The universe contains vastly more order than Earth-life could ever demand. All those distant galaxies, irrelevant for our existence, seem as equally well ordered as our own.
— P.C.W. Davies
As quoted in Eugene F. Mallove, The Quickening Universe: Cosmic Evolution and Human Destiny (1987), 61.
Until now, physical theories have been regarded as merely models with approximately describe the reality of nature. As the models improve, so the fit between theory and reality gets closer. Some physicists are now claiming that supergravity is the reality, that the model and the real world are in mathematically perfect accord.
— P.C.W. Davies
Superforce (1984, 1985), 149.
Wheeler hopes that we can discover, within the context of physics, a principle that will enable the universe to come into existence “of its own accord.” In his search for such a theory, he remarks: “No guiding principle would seem more powerful than the requirement that it should provide the universe with a way to come into being.” Wheeler likened this 'self-causing' universe to a self-excited circuit in electronics.
— P.C.W. Davies
In God and the New Physics (1984), 39. Wheeler quotation footnoted 'From the Black Hole', in H. Woolf (Ed.),Some Strangeness in the Proportion (1980).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
