Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson
Freeman John Dyson FRSis an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. He is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, a Visitor of Ralston College, and a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
crazy discovery innovation
Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.
moving discovery years
The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward.
discovery heat thanks
Thanks to the discoveries of astronomers in the twentieth century, we now know that the heat death is a myth. The heat death can never happen, and there is no paradox.
discovery firsts size
Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.
bit close crash flying
Politically speaking, of course, they have to keep flying it a bit longer. Hopefully, it will close down before they crash it again.
certainly lives people risking
It was people risking their lives to do something that hadn't been done before. That's certainly something good.
hard program turn welfare
It's a welfare program for the industry, so it's hard to turn off.
becomes beyond god mind passed scale
God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
book writing people
Mostly I'm just writing books for the public, and so I try to describe for the public what the choices are, what they might have to expect in the future and so by warning people ahead of time maybe you have an effect.
fun latin thinking
I grew up in England and we spent most of the time on Latin and Greek and very little on science, and I think that was good because it meant we didn't get turned off. It was... Science was something we did for fun and not because we had to.
war brave-new-world thinking
I think the fact that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and talked about anthrax bombs probably helped because at least we... people had the understanding before the war began that's something we didn't want to get into.
eye thinking hands
I think it's much better to have your eyes open, but on the other hand, of course it can do harm if you tell people look, there's all these terrible things you can do and then some idiot may go ahead and do it.
war mean winning
Science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly. I mean World War I was a horrible war and it was mostly the fault of science, so that was in a way a very bad time for science, but on the other hand we were winning all these Nobel Prizes.
book writing thinking
Some things go better than you expected, other things go worse, so I'm... I think the only sensible thing is just to wait and see and what I'm doing when I'm writing books - I'm not doing science so much anymore.