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Sir Roger Penrose
(8 Aug 1931 - )
British mathematician and theoretical physicist who in the 1960s calculated many of the basic features of black holes.
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Science Quotes by Sir Roger Penrose (5 quotes)
At the beginning of this debate Stephen [Hawking] said that he thinks that he is a positivist, whereas I am a Platonist. I am happy with him being a positivist, but I think that the crucial point here is, rather, that I am a realist. Also, if one compares this debate with the famous debate of Bohr and Einstein, some seventy years ago, I should think that Stephen plays the role of Bohr, whereas I play Einstein's role! For Einstein argued that there should exist something like a real world, not necessarily represented by a wave function, whereas Bohr stressed that the wave function doesn't describe a 'real' microworld but only 'knowledge' that is useful for making predictions.
— Sir Roger Penrose
Debate at the Isaac Newton Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University (1994), transcribed in Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (1996), 134-135.
Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.
— Sir Roger Penrose
from The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (1989, 2002), 580.
General Relativity is at least very close to the truth.
— Sir Roger Penrose
…...
I do not believe that a real understanding of the nature of elementary particles can ever be achieved without a simultaneous deeper understanding of the nature of spacetime itself.
— Sir Roger Penrose
From 'Structure of Spacetime', in Cécile DeWitt-Morette and John Archibald Wheeler (eds.), Battelles Rencontres: Lectures in Mathematics and Physics (1968), 122.
With thought comprising a non-computational element, computers can never do what we human beings can.
— Sir Roger Penrose
In The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (1989). As quoted in Stan Franklin, Artificial Minds (1997), 99.
Quotes by others about Sir Roger Penrose (1)
They say that every formula halves the sales of a popular science book. This is rubbish–if it was true, then The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose would have sold one-eighth of a copy, whereas its actual sales were in the hundreds of thousands.
With co-author Jack Cohen. In Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, Chap. 2, 'Squash Court Science', The Science of Discworld (1999), 21, footnote. Pratchett wrote the fantasy story told in the odd-numbered chapters. Following each, relevant real science is provided by his co-authors, Stewart and Cohen, in the even-numbered chapters (such as Chap. 2), but which of the two wrote which lines, is not designated.
See also:
- 8 Aug - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Penrose's birth.
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) -- 
