Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.

Science shows us what exists but not what to do about it.

What is the universe? Is it a great 3D movie in which we are the unwilling actors? Is it a cosmic joke, a giant computer, a work of art by a Supreme Being or simply an experiment? The problem in trying to understand the universe is that we have nothing to compare it to.

Theoretical and experimental physicists are now studying nothing at all-the vacuum. But that nothingness contains all of being.

It is unlikely that we will ever see a star being born. Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young, but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event. Stars are born inside thick clouds of dust and gas in the spiral arms of the galaxy, so thick that visible light cannot penetrate them.

The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.

Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.