4 Quotes by Henning Genz

But for all practical purposes the formation of ice breaks the continuous symmetries of water non-deterministically. This non-deterministic symmetry breaking is called spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Can a cat vanish, but not its grin? Can structure exist without matter? This may be possible in the abstract interpretation of Plato and Plotinus; in a concrete sense, it is impossible. Structured matter can be interpreted as an excitation of unstructured matter, just as the cat with the grin may be seen as an excitation of the nongrinning cat.

The universe is but one immense unit; it cannot be separated into spatial domains that are totally empty and others that are completely filled with matter. Matter and space can be distinguished from each other, but where we draw the blurred line between them is largely a matter of taste.

Any space that distinguishes directions and accelerations cannot be “empty”, in Aristotle’s meaning.