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John Archibald Wheeler
20 quotes
“Space tells matter how to move Matter tells space how to curve”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gravitation (1973), Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, page 5, right-hand margin. See below (in Geons, Black Holes, ...) for a 2000 quote attributable individually to Wheeler, where he appears to attribute pre-2000 use of a si…
“Of all heroes, Spinoza was Einstein's greatest. No one expressed more strongly than he a belief in the harmony, the beauty, and most of all the ultimate comprehensibility of nature.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Albert Einstein" in Biographical Memoirs (1980) Vol. 51, National Academy of Sciences.
Also quoted by: Baruch Spinoza
“Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality'.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Paul Davies, Other Worlds (1980)
“It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when — in a decade, a century, or a millennium — we grasp it, we will all say to each other, "Oh, how could it have been otherwise!”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links" in Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information (1990), ed. Wojciech H. Zurek. Archive text available via Santa Fe Institute Press.
“Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than “time.” Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence, to close on itself our quartet of questions, is a task for the future.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hermann Weyl and the Unity of Knowledge", American Scientist (July-August 1986) Vol. 74, pp. 366-375. Reprinted in At Home in the Universe (1993), p. 171.
“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by author John Horgan in "The New Challenges," in Scientific American (1992), Vol. 267, Num. 6, page 20. https://www-jstor-org.proxy.library.cornell.edu/stable/24939319?seq=1
“There are many modes of thinking about the world around us and our place in it. I like to consider all the angles from which we might gain perspective on our amazing universe and the nature of existence.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We will first understand how simple the universe is when we realize how strange it is.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Dennis Overbye in "A Solstice of the Soul," New York Times, Dec. 20, 2024
“The best way to learn something is to have to teach it.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we think of as smooth simple space is really a wiggly business.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For all our everyday experience, the geometry of space is smooth and flat. But as we examine it more closely, it must show oscillations. And still more closely, it must show foam, a foam-like structure. And that means that down at the very smallest distances, this idea of before and after really lose their meaning.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wheeler's succinct summary of Einstein's theory of general relativity, in Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (2000), p. 235.
“Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that doesn’t really make much difference to the running of the huge machine, but rather that there is a much more intimate tie between man and the universe than we heretofore suspected…The physical world is in some deep sense tied to the human being.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Ken Wilber in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (2001) Shambhala, .
“We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what's happening in the distant past why should we need more?”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Anthropic Universe" (Feb 18, 2006) Australia's Science Show, with Martin Redfern moderating excerpts from several scientists, including Wheeler. Audio recording and transcript available. See also same show at WayBac…
“The question is—what is the question?”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War (2008), chapter 13
“Therefore we can afford many mistakes in the search. The main thing is to make them as fast as possible.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In reference to understanding the nature of quantum measurement, as quoted by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and Wojciech H. Zurek. "John Wheeler, relativity, and quantum information." Physics Today 62, no. 4 (April …
“I had the good fortune of having my first and only heart attack last January ... I call it good fortune because it taught me that there's a limited amount of time left and I better concentrate on one thing: How come existence? How come the quantum? Maybe those questions sound too philosophical, but maybe philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in foreword to (Jitatmananda 1986). Jitatmananda, Swami. Modern Physics and Vedanta. Mumbai: Paras Prints,1986.
“If I had to confess, under torture, right now, what I think the simple idea is, I would say it's that we ourselves generate the world; the world is self-generated. But it may well be absolutely wrong.”
John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source