Surprise is inherent in the structure of the world.

Just like an ordinary guitar string, a fundamental string can vibrate in different modes. And it is these different modes of vibration of the string that are understood in string theory as being the different elementary particles.

Surprise is inherent in the structure of the world.

We know no more than we did in 1975 - and that's not good

Simplicity and beauty are the signs not of truth but of a well-constructed approximate model of a limited domain of phenomena.

But in spite of the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics, I have never heard of a good a prioriargument that the world must be organised to mathematical principles.

It can no longer be maintained that the properties of any one thing in the universe are independent of the existence or non-existence of everything else. It is, at last, no longer sensible to speak of a universe with only one thing in it.