joan’s Reviews > A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes > Status Update

laplace’s universe of determinism felt comforting, safe even. so when i learned about the randomness of quantum mechanics in middle school, it was a bit disorienting, realizing that we can’t fully control and understand everything around us. it made me question our place in the cosmos. do we still have a role to play in shaping our reality, or are we mere spectators in a universe that plays by its own rules?

oh how i love this—this notion that there isn’t an absolute, “true” time that rules the universe, but rather a personal / subjective perception of time shaped by our relative motion through the universe. einstein’s so real for that

’The Aristotelian tradition also held that one could work out all the laws that govern the universe by pure thought: it was not necessary to check by observation.’

everything i learn about this man is against my will. first, his defense of slavery, and now this… the way it’s so easy to be taken seriously as a man. if a woman did this “source: my mind” nonsense she’s ridiculous

’It was generally accepted that either the universe had existed forever in an unchanging state, or that it had been created at a finite time in the past more or less as we observe it today. In part this may have been due to people’s tendency to believe in eternal truths, as well as the comfort they found in the thought that even though they may grow old and die, the universe is eternal and unchanging.’>