We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?
Paul DaviesThrough my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it as a brute fact....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.
Paul DaviesThe temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.
Paul DaviesThe universe contains vastly more order than Earth-life could ever demand. All those distant galaxies, irrelevant for our existence, seem as equally well ordered as our own.
Paul DaviesThe laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose.
Paul DaviesThe secret of life does not lie in its chemical basis . . . Life succeeds precisely because it evades chemical imperatives.
Paul DaviesWheeler hopes that we can discover, within the context of physics, a principle that will enable the universe to come into existence "of its own accord." In his search for such a theory, he remarks: "No guiding principle would seem more powerful than the requirement that it should provide the universe with a way to come into being." Wheeler likened this 'self-causing' universe to a self-excited circuit in electronics.
Paul Davies