Skip to content

Sign up for a small monthly payment and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD

Make a one-time donation and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD

Home
About Us
Recommended Reading
Magazine Archives
Support 3QD
Log In
Search for:

Alan Lightman: Is the Universe an Accident?

Posted on Friday, Apr 25, 2014 6:42AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Tagged video, youtube

Post navigation

The Hamid Mir case: ‘In Pakistan, they used to censor journalists – now they shoot us’

It Wasn’t Just a European War: WWI in Arabia

The Curated Links at 3QD *

The usual curated links to articles elsewhere are no longer on the front page. They are on the “Recommended Reading” page which can be accessed by clicking the menu item of that name, just under the main 3QD banner. Try it and see.

Receive 3QD Posts by Email

Please fill out the form below to get our email with all the posts from the previous 24 hours, which is sent out a bit after midnight (NY City time) each day. This is completely free of charge for everyone.

	Name:
	Your email address:*

Please enter all required fields Correct invalid entries

Follow 3QD on Social Media

What People Say About 3QD

"I'm a big admirer of 3 Quarks Daily!"

—William Dalrymple, award winning historian and travel writer, as well as distinguished broadcaster, critic, art historian, foreign correspondent and founder and co-director of Asia's largest literary festival.

“From my perspective as an early modernist, what you’re undertaking is akin to the heroic labors of Renaissance compositors, who would (like you) read widely and excerpt and synthesize vast amounts of knowledge for others. A real service to the republic of letters.”

—Scott Newstok, Professor of English, Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, Rhodes College, and author of How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education.

"I look at your site every day. It's where the two cultures meet."

—Suketu Mehta, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Maximum City, winner of the O. Henry Prize, and frequent contributor to various newspapers and magazines.

"I've recommended your site to a number of friends and colleagues who've bemoaned the dearth of sites with any literary/scientific muscularity. Keep up the wonderful work."

—John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University, and bestselling author of Innumeracy

3 Quarks Daily is an essential stop for any serious reader on the Web."

—Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.

"3 Quarks Daily is first rate."

—Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Chair in Philosophy and Director of the South Asian Institute at Columbia University.

"3 Quarks Daily is a warm and often amusing home for intellectuals and other wags."

—Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer.

"3 Quarks is a daily must-read for intellectuals of all stripes. It is perhaps even smarter and better and more comprehensive than Arts & Letters Daily, the de facto gold standard of the smart set on the internet."

—Laura Claridge, former Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, and author of Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, and Norman Rockwell: A Life.

"I have placed 3 Quarks Daily at the head of my list of web bookmarks."

—Richard Dawkins, previously Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

"Thanks for 3 Quarks Daily which has been very high on my reading list for several years now!"

—Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He is also co-founder, with Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn, of a project to establish a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

Recent Comments on 3QD

3QD Design History and Credits

The original site was designed by S. Abbas Raza in 2004 but soon completely redesigned by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis in 2006. The next major revision was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde in 2013. And this current version 5.0 has been designed and deployed by Dumky de Wilde in collaboration with S. Abbas Raza.

3 Quarks Daily

3 Quarks Daily started in 2004 with the idea of creating a curated retreat for everything intellectual on the web. No clickbait, no fake news, not just entertainment, but depth and breadth —something increasingly hard to find on the internet today. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation.