[Megan]

Karl Rahner, the noted Christian theologian, once remarked that “the Christian of tomorrow will be a mystic, or not a Christian at all.”

One might also say,

The scientist of tomorrow will be a mystic, or not a scientist at all.

From M.I.T.'s Technology Review:

Technology Review: In your new book, you are admirably explicit: you write, "The Universe is indistinguishable from a quantum computer." How can that be true?

Seth Lloyd: I know it sounds crazy. I feel apologetic when I say it. And people who have reviewed the book take it as a metaphor. But it's factually the case. We couldn't build quantum computers unless the universe were quantum and computing. We can build such machines because the universe is storing and processing information in the quantum realm. When we build quantum computers, we're hijacking that underlying computation in order to make it do things we want: little and/or/not calculations. We're hacking into the universe. ...

Technology Review: And why does the universe tend to complexity?

Seth Lloyd: This notion of the universe as a giant quantum computer gets you something new and important that you don't get from the ordinary laws of physics. If you look back 13.8 billion years to the beginning of the universe, the Initial State was extremely simple, only requiring a few bits to describe.

But I see on your table an intricate, very beautiful orchid -- where the heck did all that complex information come from? The laws of physics are silent on this issue. They have no explanation. They do not encode some yearning for complexity.

Technology Review: Q&A: Seth Lloyd