Paul Davies Quotes

All this prompts the question of why, from the infinite rage of possible values that Nature could have selected for the fundamental constants, and from the infinite variety of initial conditions that could have characterized the primeval universe, the actual values and conditions conspire to produce the particular range of special features that we observe. For clearly the universe is a very special place: exceedingly uniform on a large scale, yet not so precisely uniform that galaxies could not form; extremely low entropy per proton, and hence cool enough for chemistry to happen; almost zero cosmic propulsion and an expansion rate tuned to that energy content to unbelievable accuracy; values for the strengths of its forces that permit nuclei to exist, yet do not burn up all the cosmic hydrogen, and many more apparent accidents of fortune.

The thing that separates life from non-life is information.

The scientific quest is a journey into the unknown.

Seventy-five years ago Erwin Schrödinger published... ... the key point... was whether life can be explained by physics. ...Schrödinger ...said "We must be prepared to find a new kind of physical law prevailing..."

[I]f you have a Maxwell demon or something like a Szilard engine in , could you use it, as Maxwell envisaged, to use information to extract energy from De Sitter space and... do... useful work? ...[Perhaps] only if you can create a region of the De Sitter space that is screened out from that horizon... from that thermal nature. If you put a reflective barrier around the demon, you then have De Sitter space, but with the horizon screened out. ...[T]hat's a problem I'm working on now ...

What is remarkable is that human beings are actually able to carry out this code-breaking operation, that the human mind has the necessary intellectual equipment for us to "unlock the secrets of nature"...

In each and every one of us lies a message. It is inscribed in an ancient code, its beginnings lost in the mists of time. Decrypted, the message contains instructions on how to make a human being. Nobody wrote the message; nobody invented the code. They came into existence spontaneously. Their designer was Mother Nature herself, working only within the scope of her immutable laws and capitalizing on the vagaries of chance.The message isn't written in ink or type, but in atoms, strung together in an elaborately arranged sequence to form DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is the most extraordinary molecule on Earth.

Perhaps the most exquisite example of information in biology... During embryogenesis there's the most meticulous choreography of organized information, so all the right bits end up in the right place, at the right time. ...[T]he power of information to sculpt [living] physical forms.

[A]nts... have... collective decision-making... a labyrinth of [network] information exchange... which can profoundly affect the outcome of the colony. We see it... in bird flocking.

Science, it is usually believed, helps us to build a picture of objective reality – the world 'out there'. With the advent of the quantum theory, that very reality appears to have crumbled, to be replaced by something so revolutionary and bizarre that its consequences have not yet been properly faced.

The brain is the medium of expression of the human mind. Similarly the entire physical universe would be the medium of expression of the mind of a natural God.

I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate.

[I]nformation pervades biology. Your DNA is chock full of encrypted information, and the encryption is really important. But s don't act in isolation. They couple together to form networks, sometimes of great complexity, and information swirls around these networks. It can be stored.... processed... and it can have knock-on effects... beyond individual cells. Even bacteria can signal each other chemically... electrically and mechanically, and so, through physical forces, can exchange information and engage in cooperative behavior, like in s.

[T]he demon... is transferring heat from a colder region to a warmer region in apparent defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. ...[A] refrigerator... costs energy to run... but the demon is operating using information instead... The demon... runs without any energy expenditure.

[A] is a set of instructions for ribosome to make a protein. If you look at the DNA sequence that codes for a gene, there's nothing that can tell you, at the sequence level, that if you look at a particular , that this is a bit of functional or coding or contextual information, and it's not just junk.