Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly, chaotic and complicated. But if it's like that, then I want out.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of disillusionment with nature's complexity and disorder, expressing a desire to escape from it.
Steven Weinberg's quote highlights a philosophical perspective on the nature of the universe, suggesting that if reality is as chaotic and ugly as perceived, one would prefer to not be part of it. It emphasizes a struggle with accepting the inherent flaws and complexities of existence, indicating a longing for simplicity or beauty amidst a chaotic world.
In practice
This quote could be used in a debate about the value of nature versus urban life.
It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.
[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it.
The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.
The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
Resource efficiency is the wrong metric. We should use nature as the measure, using nature's wisdom as a template for our economic systems.
Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
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