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121 " AN ANSWER TO OUR QUESTIONPlaces of worship embody the aspirations of their architects, and the communities they represent, to ideal beauty. Their chosen means of expression feature color, geometry, and symmetry. Consider, in particular. the magnificent plate HH. Here the local geometry of the ambient surfaces and the local patterns of their color change as our gaze surveys them. It is a vibrant embodiment of anamorphy and anachromy-the very themes that our unveiling of Nature's deep design finds embodied at Nature's core.Does the world embody beautiful ideas? There is our answer, before our eyes: Yes.Color and geometry, symmetry, anachromy, and anamorphy, as ends in themselves, are only one branch of artistic beauty. Islam's injunction against representational art played an important part in bringing these forms of beauty to the fore, as did the physical constraint of structural stability (we need columns to support the weight of ceilings, and the arches and domes to distribute tension). Depictions of human faces, bodies, emotions, landscapes, historic scenes, and the like, when they are allowed, are far more common subjects for art than those austere beauties.The world does not, in its deep design, embody all forms of beauty, nor the ones that people without special study, or very unusual taste, find most appealing. But the world does, in its deep design, embody some forms of beauty that have been highly prized for their own sake, and have been intuitively associated with the divine. "
― Frank Wilczek , A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design
122 " What motivated Newton to suspect that something like the Zeroth law had to be true was not painstaking experiments but, rather, powerful intuition, derived from his religion, about how the world is built. Newton had no doubt about God's existence, and he saw his task in science as revealing God's method of governing the physical world. "
― Frank Wilczek , The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces
123 " Atoms are held together by electric forces. There is electrical attraction between the positively charged atomic nucleus and the negatively charged electrons. Let's imagine that we could turn off the electric forces. There would still be gravitational attraction. How tightly could gravity hold the nucleus and electrons together? How big would a gravitationally bound atom be? As big as a flea? No. A mouse? No. A skyscraper? No, keep going. Earth? Not even close. An atom held together by gravity would have a hundred times the radius of the visible Universe. "
124 " In human manufacturing, use of interchangeable parts was a revolutionary innovation, and hard work to achieve. How did Nature achieve it? How could uniformity, if achieved by careful adjustment, stand up to the ravages of time? And if the building blocks are supremely stable, and resistant to change, how did they arise in the first place?Maxwell was alert to , and intrigued by, this issue, seeing in it evidence of benevolent Creation. As he put it:'Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built-the foundation stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn.They continue this day as they were created-perfect in number and measure and weight, and form the innefaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials which heaven and earth consist. "
125 " The ultimate sense-enhancing device is a searching mind. "
126 " For universal gravity encourages the accumulation of matter, and very large accumulations of mass produce enough central pressure to ignite nuclear burning, making a star. "
127 " The yin-yang sign is an appropriate symbol for complementarity, and was adopted as such by Niels Bohr. Its two aspects are equal, but different; each contains, and is contained within, the other. Perhaps not coincidentally, Niels Bohr was very happily married.Once recognized, complimentarity is a wisdom we rediscover, and confirm, both in the physical world and beyond. It is a wisdom I embrace, and recommend to you. "
