The Island of Knowledge Quotes

“As the island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance –the boundary between the known and the unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination but to more questions and mysteries.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“The map of what we call reality is an ever-shifting mosaic of ideas.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“Unless you are intellectually numb, you can’t escape the allure of the quantum, the tantalizing possibility that we are immersed in mystery, forever bound within the shores of the Island of Knowledge. Unless you are intellectually numb, you can’t escape the awe-inspiring feeling that the essence of reality is unknowable.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“It’s what we don’t know that matters.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“If large portions of the world remain unseen or inaccessible to us, we must consider the meaning of the word “reality” with great care.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“The current leading candidates for dark matter are particles predicted to exist from supersymmetric theories, extensions of current particle physics that include a new symmetry of Nature. The reader may recognize the “super” in supersymmetry from superstring theory, a candidate theory for unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics. As of the winter of 2014, no evidence for supersymmetry had been found, despite decades of intense search and the enthusiastic support of many physicists. At this point, it is unclear and somewhat doubtful that supersymmetry is realized in Nature.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“Healthy science needs a combination of humility and hope: humility to accept the extent of our ignorance and hope that new discoveries will illuminate the current darkness. However, when we are at the edge of knowledge and data is not forthcoming, well-grounded speculation is the only strategy at our disposal. Without imagination science stagnates.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“What is the stuff that makes everything that is?” they asked. That this remains the defining question of modern particle physics serves to show that the value of a great question is that it keeps generating answers that, in turn, keep changing as our methods of inquiry change.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“how we try to make sense of the world and of our place in it—it should be obvious that our approach is fundamentally limited in scope. This realization should open doors, not close them, since it makes the search for knowledge an open-ended pursuit, an endless romance with the unknown.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

“Lucretius wrote in The Nature of Things:        Especially since this world is the product of Nature,        the happenstance        Of the seeds of things colliding into each other by pure chance        In every possible way, no aim in view, at random, blind,        Till sooner or later certain atoms suddenly combined        So that they lay the warp to weave the cloth of mighty things:        Of earth, of sea, of sky, of all species of living beings.”
― Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning