"… For more than a thousand years it was thought that the heavens obeyed a different physics than pertains here on Earth. With the scientific renaissance that culminated in Isaac Newton’s work it became clear that, on the contrary, the same natural laws rule the earth and the sky. The cosmos came to be viewed as a marvel, events following from causes like the tickings of brass cogs. The realm of the inexplicable—where dwell the gods of those dazzled by the unexplained—was thereafter relegated to the first moment of time, when the universe somehow blossomed into being. Then quantum chance reared its indeterminate face, as a creative agency that authored the first phenomena of cosmic time. So we are obliged to consider that even the largest systems are ruled by quantum precepts that govern nature on the smallest scales, and that the origin of the universe may itself have been a cosmic flux."