Space and time emerge from the laws rather than providing an arena in which things happen.

These two discoveries, of relativity and of the quantum, each required us to break definitively with Newtonian physics. However, in spite of great progress over the century, they remain incomplete. Each has defects that point to a deeper theory. But the main reason each is incomplete is the existence of the other.

Without having navigated waters shallow enough for us to see bottom, we’ll be easy prey to mystifiers who want to sell us radical metaphysical fantasies in the guise of science.

The search for the meaning of temperature and entropy of matter led to the discovery of atoms. The search for the meaning of the temperature and entropy of radiation led to the discovery of quanta. In just the same way, the search for the meaning of the temperature and entropy of a black hole is now leading to the discovery of the atomic structure of space and time.

We know no more than we did in 1975 – and that’s not good.

Good ideas are not taken seriously enough when they come from people of low status in the academic world; conversely, the ideas of high-status people are often taken too seriously.

Whatever is happening on very small scales near the horizon of the black hole will be enlarged by the effect whereby the wavelengths of light are stretched as the light climbs up to us. This means that jf we can observe light coming from very close to the horizon of a black hole, we may be able to see the quantum structure of space itself.

To understand what we mean when we say that space is discrete, we must put our minds completely into the relational way of thinking, and really try to see and feel the world around us as nothing but a network of evolving relationships. These relationships are not among things situated in space – they are among the events that make up the history of the world. The relationships define the space, not the other way around.

On the way, I shared the backseat of Feyerabend’s little sports car with the inflatable raft he kept there in case an 8-point earthquake came while he was on the Bay Bridge.

Science is not about what’s true or what might be true, science is about what people with originally diverse viewpoints can be forced to believe by the weight of public evidence.