Julian Barbour Quotes

Shannon-type message sources could not exist if the universe were not subject to laws of nature and far from .

Greek astronomers observed intricate motions of the sun, moon, and planets on the two-dimensional sky. They explained them—saved the appearances—by positing simple regular motions... in three dimensions. The success... [was] brought to a triumphant conclusion by Kepler...

If you could freeze the camera now and... show me as I am, and all the atoms... and... the whole universe... like a snapshot, the would be... a NOW.

[W]hat we call yesterday is self-contained and has its experience of being yesterday, and today has memories of yesterday; and therefor I say that it's later... but each is completely self-contained, and there's no reason why you should put one... here, and another one there...

[T]ime is really an illusion... and motion too... [T]hey are not really there in the external world. They are put into the world by us, in the way we interpret it, and by our brains...

Information theory would never have got off the ground if structured things—configurations—did not exist.

(quote at 14:08 of 1:54:14)

There is one metalaw of science: it cannot exist without structured things. d variety is the ground of being. That is what gives content to both science and life.

and variety are central to my critique of 'it from bit'. For we can only talk meaningfully about a thing, including a '', if it has distinguishing attributes. The way that they are knit together, as in the taste, shape and colour of an apple, defines the structure of the thing.

[S]tability of solids, the fossils and rocks... exist... essentially unchanged. ...[T]he configuration carries intrinsic semantic information... different intelligent beings can in principle deduce the law or process.. Support for this is is the independent discovery of evolution by natural selection by Wallis and Darwin.

Probabilities without things are... nothings.

Einstein... revealed... extraordinary things... [H]is space and time seem to be knit together in a way you can't pull them apart... [S]omeone moving relative to me at any speed would... divide space and time in different ways... [T]he huge excitement about simultaneity meant that the... issue of duration has... been forgotten...

Poincaré clearly posed these two problems and... seven years later... independently... Einstein and Poincaré... solved... the problem of defining definition at spatially separated points...

It is a mistake to believe that the digits 0 and 1, being abstract, represent the immaterial. Quite... the contrary... they stand for something quintessentially concrete.

Consider the example of a time capsule... geologists... establish[ed] detailed correlations between the structure of fossils and rocks... They concluded... an immense , vastly longer than the bible-deduced... 6000 years. They explained... a long process... in accordance with... laws of nature. They discovered ... and... present evidence for it extends today... to all branches of science, especially cosmology and genetics.