The Hollow Universe

1) "We have all heard of computer-men who would lead us to believe that they are on the way to constructing machines as truly capable of mathematical thinking as any man has ever been, with the implication that we shall have to change our mind about the nature of man as characterized by reason."

2) "So you see, once the symbols have been agreed upon, the operations thenceforth involved are obviously mechanical; the machines are in some measure more reliable than a human computer. And if you object that the machines can't read their own numbers, you will have to admit at least that they can store them away, and eventually recover them. For it is a simple matter to construct a machine which, without knowing in the least what it is doing, 'tells' us what it has accomplished, what it has recorded, and what it will next perform. And the basic condition for all this is simply that 1 + 1 = 1 + 1, or 2 for short. If 2 were something radically new and distinct from 1 + 1, even the most refined electronic contrivance would fail us."

3) "That I am a swarm of sparsely scattered electric charges, rushing headlong in nearly empty space, the combined bulk of the swarm less than a billionth of myself, does not in the least distress me as a substance."

4) "Now, that which divides time but is not time is called the instant. And it is at this instant, and only at this instant, that Mr. Smith actually exists. His time is composed of past and future, that is, of non-existents, while he himself clings to the indivisible of time which is forever passing away. In other words, in that element of time at which Mr. Smith actually exists, there is no room for anything to move, no time for an event, no time for anything whatever; and this instant of his, moreover, is always slipping away, like the point at which the rolling sphere touches the flat surface. Non-existence, then, is as essential to time as it is to movement."

5) "Suppose we did precipitate that transformation of all matter into pure radiation, that 'stupendous broadcast' which was Arthur Eddington's version of a possible end of the world, why call it a catastrophe? Upheavals in the universe are an everyday occurrence. Life thrives on them. On our little planet, is anyone troubled by the fact that the sun is in continuous explosion? And any loss incurred may not be irremediable since, according to some people, when thermodynamic equilibrium is reached, the universal process of degradation will sweep into reverse, so that eventually the whole farce will be acted out again. And an almighty farce it has been and would be a second time, if it is a world where the distinctions between living and non-living, between rational and irrational, are to be rejected as evidence only of man's basic vanity, and even of his unfeeling cruelty towards what Turing calls 'the rest of creation'; where man is accused of 'brutality' because he cares more for the living than for the lifeless, and for man than for beast; a farce to which no words will ever do justice, if machines are brought to prove that rationality, the 'specific difference' of the human being, finds its proper home at last in its opposite."