[T]he real world out there … must exist independently of us.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt quotes
View All Authors View SourcesWe need a theory about what makes up space, a background-independent theory.
— Lee Smolin (2007)
p. 239
More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time.
— Lee Smolin (2007)
p. 256
[I]n both quantum theory and general relativity, we encounter predictions of physically sensible quantities becoming infinite.
— Lee Smolin (2006)
p. 5
SU(5) is the most elegant way imaginable of unifying quarks with leptons, and it leads to a codification of the properties of the standard model in simple terms. Even after twenty-five years I still find it stunning that SU(5) doesn’t work.
— Lee Smolin (1996)
p. 65
In this way, time is represented as if it were another dimension of space. Motion is frozen, and a whole history of constant motion and change is presented to us as something static and unchanging. If I had to guess (and guessing is what I do for a living), this is the scene of the crime.
— Lee Smolin (2006)
p. 257
… the greatest heroes in the history of science…. No one in human history has ever guessed correctly about such a large expansion of the known world.
— Lee Smolin (2006)
p. xvii
[S]upersymmetric string theories are deeply elegant objects.
— Lee Smolin (2006)
p. 112
… in loop quantum gravity appeared to contradict Einstein’s special theory. … [T]hat possibility was too scary to contemplate, and after struggling with this, I dropped the whole line of research.
— Lee Smolin (2007)
p. 229