Nobel Prize in Physics, Steven Weinberg, Interview

you're out the more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless in your elaborate the little wonder well that's not the last sentence in the book if you look at the book then there's another paragraph that follows that that explains what I meant of what perhaps I didn't explain it very well I meant what I meant and that's that statement is that there is no point to be discovered in nature itself nature there is no cosmic plan for us we are not actors in a drama that has been written for with us playing the starring role there is there are laws we are discovering those laws but they're impersonal they're cold we are the result of billions of years of accidents we that have led to us governed by laws of nature that have no care for us i but then after it's saying that I went on and say said that if there is no point in in nature we can make a point for ourselves we can find things to cherish that we value we can love each other we can create things that are beautiful and also one of the things that some of us find to give point to our lives is to learn about nature it's not an entirely happy view of human life I think it's a a tragic view but that's not new to physicists a tragic view of life has been expressed by so many poets that we are here without purpose trying to identify something to care about even when we find the final laws of nature we won't know that why those are the correct laws of nature but although for example Shakespeare very often expresses a tragic view of life golden girl lads and girls all must like chimney sweepers come to dust our tragedy is a little different from his from the heroes of Shakespeare's plays for Lear and a fellow the tragedy is in Shakespeare's script and what I like to say is that our tragedy is that there is no script oh we don't know it well we don't know it and I could be wrong about this of course I'm not certain about anything but the more and more we understand about nature we find no sign of a script written for us and we have to write the script ourselves where if we're in the position of actors in a tragic drama it's a drama we're improvising as we go along

Channel: Nobel Prize

Views: 21,230

Rating: 4.8796992 out of 5

Keywords: Nobel, Prize, in, Physics, 1979, Steven, Weinberg, Winner

Id: x2cBYRIXG5A

Length: 3min 18sec (198 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 28 2008