Ether
Follow the guidance of those who drew closer to the ether.
A collection of fragments from minds that reached toward the hidden structure of nature, matter, light and the unseen — preserved here as they were recorded, not as modern maxims.
“In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned.”
Nicolaus Copernicus · De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Book I, Ch. 10
“Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written.”
Galileo Galilei · Il Saggiatore, 1623
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.
Carl Sagan · Cosmos, 1980
“The universe is then one, infinite, immobile… It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobile.”
Giordano Bruno · Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1588
“Nature never breaks her own laws.”
Leonardo da Vinci · Notebooks
“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.”
Leonardo da Vinci · Notebooks
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Werner Heisenberg · Physics and Philosophy, 1958
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
Richard Feynman · The Character of Physical Law, 1965
“It from bit” — every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself, derives its function and its very existence from the answers to yes-or-no questions.
John Archibald Wheeler · Information, Physics, Quantum, 1990
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
Max Planck
Where Is Science Going?, 1932
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Isaac Newton
As reported in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations and Characters of Books and Men — a preserved account, not a passage from Newton’s own published work.
We are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
Stephen Hawking · A Brief History of Time, 1988
“My brain is only a receiver. In the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
Nikola Tesla
Attributed; preserved through secondary report rather than a verified primary source.
Legion Record III
Further fragments will be gathered here as the Legion grows.