As a child it was clear to me that in some sense math was in the world around us. I became fascinated by what this means. When you look at the shape of the sun and the moon, they're circles, so every time you see a circular thing, there's pi embedded in it.
Margaret WertheimWave particle duality is a core feature of our world. Or rather, we should say, it is a core feature of our mathematical descriptions of our world. But what is critical to note here is that, however ambiguous our images, the universe itself remains whole and is manifestly not fracturing into schizophrenic shards. It is this tantalizing wholeness and the thing itself that drives physicists onward like an eternally beckoning light that seems so teasingly near. It is always out of reach.
Margaret WertheimComputers are very powerful tools, but in the simulated world of the computer, everything has to be calculated.
Margaret WertheimWhen you're in a room with twenty people who've all got the True Theory of the universe, it's difficult to know what to do. And the paradox is that so much important science is now being done by huge teams. With Higgs boson, for example, it's estimated there were around ten thousand scientists and engineers involved in building the machines that made this discovery possible.
Margaret WertheimScience is not just for an elite few. Science's vision of the universe is becoming increasingly inaccessible. That doesn't mean it's wrong. On some levels, general relativity is right, because we have to take its calculations into account to produce accurate GPS systems. Instrumentally, it's correct to something like twenty decimal places. But epistemologically and psychologically, it is not available to most of our population.
Margaret Wertheim