“General relativity is certainly a very beautiful theory, but how does one judge the elegance of physical theories generally?”
RP
“There are two other words I do not understand — awareness and intelligence. Well, why am I talking about things when I do not know what they really mean? It is probably because I am a mathematician an...”
Roger Penrose
“Some years ago, I wrote a book called The Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calcu...”
Roger Penrose
“Moreover, the complete details of the complication of the structure of Mandelbrot's set cannot really be fully comprehended by anyone of us, nor can it be fully revealed by any computer. It would seem...”
Roger Penrose
“I have been arguing that such 'God-given' mathematical ideas should have some kind of timeless existence, independent of our earthly selves.”
Roger Penrose
“Gödel's theorem shows that this point of view is not really a tenable one in a fundamental philosophy of mathematics. The notion of mathematical truth goes beyond the whole concept of formalism. There...”
Roger Penrose