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Piergiorgio Odifreddi
81 quotes
“Leopardi once said that children can find everything in nothing, but adults cannot find anything in everything. Depending on how you look at them, paradoxes are either fragments of nothingness in which you can find everything, or visions of everything in which you can find nothing.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In essence, his (of Erwin Schrödinger) teaching can therefore be traced back to the linguistic observation that a certain noun has no plural: more specifically, that as long as there are two cultures, there will be no Culture, but only half-cultures.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(About Giordano Bruno) He argued that there were infinite worlds, that the Solar System was just one example of a system in which life could exist, and that throughout the universe there were infinite other such systems, in which there were probably infinite other beings, living species, that possessed intelligence. Naturally, this gave rise to major theological problems.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We delude ourselves into thinking we will experience a miracle in Lourdes, even though, over 150 years, the Virgin Mary has officially granted only 65 miracles to 100 million pilgrims. On average, this figure is less than one in a million, far lower than the rate of spontaneous cancer remissions, which is around one in ten thousand. Not to mention that, as Émile Zola observed, among the votive offerings, you see many crutches but no wooden legs.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only on a macroscopic scale that time always moves from the past to the future. At the microscopic level, however, particles of matter can reverse their path and travel from the future to the past, becoming antiparticles. Therefore, particles that coincide with their antiparticles, such as the photons that make up light, must be stationary in time. Moreover, the annihilation that occurs when a particle encounters its antiparticle is merely the outward manifestation of matter, i.e., the change in direction of a particle on its journey through time.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this point, I wanted to find out what other people thought of Zichichi [...]. I discovered that for years he had been ridiculed by his colleagues and by reviewers, and that he was a real 'embarrassment' to science. In other words, he was a useful man for securing funding, thanks to his connections with political and religious power, but someone to be ashamed of from an intellectual point of view. It's more or less like the 'untouchables' in ancient India, who did jobs that were considered unworthy and unclean, and whose very shadow was contaminating.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we consider that people once knew which angels pulled the planets or which deities caused floods, we can say that today, God has been relegated to the beginnings of the universe, and it is no coincidence that the Pope spoke about this.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a kind of inferiority complex: today, science is so powerful that people want explanations for everything, and religion finds itself in a strange position. We are witnessing the rebirth of a form of religiosity that probably annoys Benedict XVI a great deal. The Church has now lost the body of truth it claimed to possess.”
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“Art and mathematics are simply two sides of the same lithography.”
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“Mathematicians discover more things in the heavens of mathematics than philosophers dream of on Earth.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I had to convince someone not to believe, I would tell them to read the Bible… but to read it carefully.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I haven't read the whole Bible; I've read the first five books, what's known as the Pentateuch. Then I read a bit of Joshua and Judges, about the birth of the Jewish state...After that, it becomes political history that might be of interest to historians or others, but it's not relevant from a religious point of view. I skipped ahead and read the Gospels, right up to the Book of Revelation. However, I realised that it was more of a book for psychoanalysts than for logicians, so I left it to others to interpret.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want to make it clear that I am certainly not anti-Semitic: as a scientist, I cannot believe in race. However, anti-Zionism is a different matter, as Noam Chomsky, my mentor, says. The project of the Jewish state is based on the principle that Palestine was given to Israel by God. Interviewer: Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was a secularist Odifreddi: It doesn't matter; the result is that today Israel is a fascist state.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't have your cake and eat it too – that is, you can't embrace a faith for the blessed poor in spirit and at the same time claim not to be one of them.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To say that God is personified, and above all to say that God has become incarnate, reveals a truly limited understanding of the vastness and diversity of nature. It is clearly an anthropocentric view, and a parochial one in the literal sense, to say that God, if He exists, is like me. Moreover, there is no reason to believe this, because if humans were such a highly evolved animal species, so deserving of respect and attention, one might believe it, but one only has to look around to be proved wrong. Honestly, if I were a believer, I would consider these statements blasphemous.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Galileo Galilei was the greatest writer in Italian literature: that's not me saying it, it's Italo Calvino.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know what philosophers are like – their schools are like comets: a bright head followed by a tail of debris.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all atheists when it comes to almost all religions. [...] Some people, like me, are atheists with regard to all religions, and some people are atheists with regard to all religions except one.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, are based on sacred books aimed at illiterate communities of shepherds.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, Christianity is anachronistic.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pope Francis is an outstanding publicist; he sells his product incredibly well. With him, you shouldn't expect changes to the product, but to the advertising. In terms of doctrine, Bergoglio says next to nothing; he simply changes the way it is communicated. He gives the public what the public wants.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Through Hollywood, we have been led to believe that the cowboys were the good guys, not the Native Americans , who were victims of a massacre of 18 million people: three times the scale of the Holocaust. Nuremberg was a similar piece of propaganda. That's it. He never denied the gas chambers; he was never a denier.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] All too often, people who write about science in the newspapers have no idea what they are writing about and probably don't even have the means to tell the difference between a credible, important study and one that isn't. In the newspapers, science is covered more from the perspective of gossip than from the perspective of genuine knowledge. It has to sell, not be understood.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Italy, there has never been a ruling political class that was atheist; perhaps the most secular figure was Bettino Craxi, although it was he who reinstated the Concordat with the Church.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(About Pope Francis) He is portrayed as a progressive, sometimes almost as a communist, even though just a few decades ago, in his home country, he was seen as [...] a reactionary. So why does he seem like a revolutionary now? Just because he says that priests can decide for themselves whether to give Communion to the divorced? In reality, when it comes to the wider problems within Catholicism, starting with the paedophilia scandals, it doesn't seem to me that he's doing anything particularly enlightened.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What does the Vatican offer in response to requests from the faithful whose marriages have failed? It is not simply accepting the fact that love and marriage are not eternal and last only as long as they last: in other words, it is not approving divorce. Instead, it offers the absurd charade of a declaration of nullity: in other words, a blindfolded refusal to acknowledge what has happened, and a childish pretence that nothing ever existed.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One might wonder what kind of guidance or agenda could ever come from someone who writes and claims that dinosaurs did not disappear sixty million years ago, but just a few thousand years ago, or that species were created by the Creator to be unchanging. And one might wonder how long it will be before voters in general, and scientists in particular, have nothing to say, forced to endure with shame such a vice-president of the National Research Council as [Roberto De Mattei].”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] Unlike all other values, the values of science are almost completely absent from video content in general, and from RAI programmes in particular. That is, when they are not downright mocked and insulted: for example, on Voyager, a programme that screams for revenge, as well as compensation and a level playing field!”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In these times of dishonourable and disgraced grown-up babies, an honourable and respected athlete like Pietro Mennea makes us reflect on a fact that is often forgotten: that in physical activity, as in intellectual activity, excellence is achieved 10% through inspiration, but 90% through hard work. There are no 'natural' champions or geniuses: there are gifted individuals who 'artificially' put in a lot of effort to make the most of their talents.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading the proceedings of his conference, or speaking with Professor De Mattei, as I had the dubious honour of being able to do on 20 November 2009 in Chiasso, is a disconcerting experience: in contrast to his refined and courteous manner, his statements are, in fact, a veritable compendium of the most crude and presumptuous misinformation about Darwin and Darwinism in particular, and about science in general.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(About Saddam Hussein) [...] Whatever crimes he may have committed, he had ultimately redeemed himself by romantically taking on the role of David against Goliath and futilely resisting the invasion and conquest of his country by the Great Satan and its allies.”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is divided in two, and everyone chooses which side to be on. On the one hand, there are the penitents with bowed heads: like Galileo Galilei , who agreed to recant on his knees before the Inquisition, or René Descartes, who chose not to publish his treatise [...]. On the other side are the unrepentant, who hold their heads high: like Giordano Bruno, who was gagged on the stake to prevent him from continuing to blaspheme to the end, or Baruch Spinoza, who was cursed and excommunicated from the Jewish community.”
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“After all, if Maecenas were alive today, he would no longer fund poets and writers, but science communicators and popularisers: in other words, the heirs of the god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, whose role was precisely to build a bridge between Olympus and Earth. So where does Olympus reside today, if not in the centres of study and research, where it is no longer the thunderbolts and storms of ancient mythology that are forged, but the materials and machines of modern technology?”
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“The rejection of evolutionism and the glorification of race and family are the tenets of the anti-scientist faith. These tenets fuel the religious and political fanaticism of Churches and Leagues around the world, because cultural differences are more important than biological variability, at least for those who care more about the society they have built than about the world created by nature. For others, sharing 100% of their DNA with certain 'humans' is more embarrassing than sharing 98% of it with chimpanzees.”
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“If logic and mathematics were to replace religion and astrology in schools and on television, the world would gradually become a more sensible place, and life more worth living. Therefore, let each of us make our own contribution, big or small, to make this happen, for the greater glory of the human spirit. (La logica come igiene mentale, Logica)”
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“The debate between reason and faith is therefore not an academic philosophical question, but a choice of civilisation: siding with Russell or with Padre Pio means contributing either to the march towards the digital age or to a return to the Dark Ages. Let us make our choice now, so that we do not have to complain later. And may God help us, especially if He doesn't exist. (Paradossi del 16 giugno, Logica)”
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“Those who are spiritually healthy do not need religion. (p. 15; 2008)”
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More specifically, although Hawking and Penrose demonstrated in 1970 that the field equations of general relativity , together with certain natural additional assumptions, imply the existence of a Big Bang, both believe that their result is merely proof of the inadequacy of general relativity and of the need to integrate it with quantum mechanics. (p. 50; 2008)”
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“If Taoism is perhaps the most coherent and comprehensive expression of the view that the ultimate essence of the universe lies simultaneously in nothingness and in everything, then this view is a more or less explicit constant of the entire Eastern religious and philosophical outlook. (p. 55; 2008)”
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“The only criticism that can be levelled at Parmenides today, although a substantial one, is that he confused syntax with semantics and did not understand what he had demonstrated: not the self-contradictory nature of non-being as an entity, but the incoherence of existence as a predicate. However, we should not be too harsh on Parmenides, even though his ontological misunderstanding of non-being had the unfortunate effect of preventing the development of a Western conception of zero in mathematics and of the void in physics for almost two millennia. (pp. 56–57; 2008)”
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“In physics, the most obvious manifestation of nothingness is empty space , a concept introduced in the East by Taoism. In the Tao Te Ching (XI), it is stated that the usefulness of things, from vessels to dwellings, lies not in the things themselves, but in the empty spaces they enclose. [...] In many Eastern classics, emptiness is unanimously considered both the ultimate principle of reality and the ultimate goal of wisdom: in the Hindu Chandogya Upanishad, we read that 'Brahman is emptiness'. (p. 62; 2008)”
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“In general relativity, matter is a hole in a solid: more precisely, a discontinuity in the gravitational field. Indeed, in places where matter is present, the field becomes infinite and therefore ceases to exist. (p. 64; 2008)”
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“It is precisely in this area that modern physics has achieved one of its most subtle and surprising results. Indeed, as we shall see shortly when we discuss Bell's theorem, it has succeeded in demonstrating, in a simple and conclusive manner, that the naive view held by the average Westerner of the world as a collection of distinct, concrete and independent objects is definitively wrong. (p. 69; 2008)”
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“Complementarity is Bohr's great philosophical contribution to the philosophy of science. He saw it as the expression of a deeper level of truth, [...] The links between this way of thinking and Taoist philosophy are clear, and not coincidental. So much so that, when he was awarded the Order of the Elephant in 1947, Bohr chose the tai chi diagram – the black and white circle representing the complementarity of yin and yang – as his heraldic coat of arms, and the motto Contraria sunt complementa. (p. 75; 2008)”
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“Indeed, how can we believe claims that we cannot understand? And how, for example, can we understand what Jung calls "the scandal of the Marian dogma", namely the claim that the Virgin Mary's body was assumed into heaven? As far as we can understand, no 'body' can travel faster than light: should we perhaps assume that the Virgin Mary is at most 1,950 light-years away from us, conclude that 'heaven' is somewhere in our galaxy, and try to locate it using a telescope? (p. 82; 2008)”
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“Bohm's vision is therefore truly a scientific formulation of the religious and philosophical mysticism from which we started, in which we find the complementary and fundamental roles of nothingness and everything, transformed into the modern physical versions of the vacuum and non-locality. (p. 84; 2008)”
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“Schrödinger's conclusions are certainly surprising for the contemporary Western mindset. However, he explicitly pointed out that, as we now know, Hindus had already reached these conclusions, starting with the Upanishads, and expressed them through the coincidence of the subjective, personal atman and the objective, all-encompassing brahman, and in the motto aham brahma asmi, 'I am brahman'. (p. 104; 2008)”
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“Quantum physics has created the right conditions for change, finding itself in perfect harmony with James' views. The collapse of the wave function exhibits the same characteristics of choice and determination of reality that are attributed to consciousness. (p. 107; 2008)”
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“Therefore, although the pre-Critical Kant does not yet recognise the flaw in the cosmological proof, he does already identify a problem: who can guarantee that the necessary being is indeed God? In other words, 'the task is not to prove that God is something that exists, but to prove that something that exists is God'. (p. 152; 2008)”
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“For Bruno, therefore, the universe is infinite, but of a lower order than God: he thus anticipates the distinction between infinities discovered by Georg Cantor in 1874, to which we will return later. (p. 160; 2008)”
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