How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Agreed. This is a party, after all. Thing is, your husband has gone after some big fish here. His tachyon experiment takes Einstein's ideas a step further, in a way. The discovery of particles traveling faster than light means those two moving observers won't agree about which event came first, either. That is, the sense of time gets scrambled." (5.52)
We generally think of change as existing in linear time. First there was A, then something happened, and now we have B. But opening time up to exist in the timescape kind of throws all that into question. If A and B both exist at the same time in the timescape, can we really say that things can change? We have a feeling our brains are going to be as scrambled as our sense of time soon.
Quote #2
The move from New York had severed his connection to all that mumbo jumbo of dietary laws and Talmudic truths. Penny told him he didn't seem very Jewish to her, but he knew she was simply ignorant. The WASPland she'd grown up in had taught her none of the small giveaway clues. (8.53)
Gordon finds himself stuck between his NYC and Southern California selves here. On the one hand, he is no longer a practicing member of Judaism, but on the other hand, he still views Penny and her worldview as WASP—that is, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Quote #3
"Do we? How do we know this isn't the result of the experiment we're about to do? That is, if Renfrew hadn't existed and thought of this idea, maybe we'd be worse off. The problem with causal loops is that our notion of time doesn't accept them. But think of that stuck switch again." (9.209)
Renfrew's experiment brings up all sorts of questions regarding change and time, but this is a particularly interesting one. Is it possible the world of 1998 is precisely the result of Renfrew's experiment, even from before Renfrew came up with the idea? That is, is change impossible because the script has already been written? Deep.
Quote #4
[Renfrew] stepped back from the tilting walls, squinted, and saw that the lines of his home were askew. You put down the money on a place, he reflected, and you get a maze of jambs and beams and cornices, all pushed slightly out of true by history. A bit of settling in that corner, a diagonal misaimed there. (10.2)
Time changes Renfrew's house, but notice that Renfrew hasn't noticed the changes while they are happening. That's how subtle the changes are—the only way he can adequately view them was to build shelves with mathematical, geometric precision and notice disconnects between his building and the house. Is the novel suggesting that only math and science can reveal true change to us?
Quote #5
[Gordon] smiled wanly as the thought struck him that he had now joined the legion of the genuinely transplanted; California was now here, other people were from there. New York was more a different idea than a different place. (13.1)
If change is dependent upon the observer, then it must also depend upon where that observer is doing his or her observing. As such, concepts like change and truth will vary depending on where you consider here versus there.
Quote #6
"Not that simple," Gordon said, shaking his head. But to himself he had to grudgingly admit that there was some truth to what she said. Assign symbols, making the x's and y's and z's the unknowns, then rearrange. Made-to-order thinking. They were all used to it and maybe it hid some elements of the problem, if you weren't careful. Dyson, for all his wisdom, could be dead wrong, simply because of habits of mind. (19.90)
Change is important in the novel because it is the only way for humanity to progress. On the large scale, change is required to fix the ecological disasters in the year 1998, but on the small scale, change is necessary so that humans can progress at their various enterprises. By changing how he thinks about scientific development, Gordon takes steps toward a world-changing scientific discovery.
Quote #7
New ideas and new people were coming into the La Jolla of Chandler's day. The same Kennedy who had pushed the Test Ban and killed Orion was also federalizing the Alabama National Guard, to stop George Wallace from using them against the desegregation program. Medgar Evers had been killed just a few months before. There was a feeling running through the country now, that things had to change. (28.167)
Quote #8
"Look, like I said, I was down here to get some magazines. Mr. Aiken is doin' this special two-day extra-credit project in our college level physics course, the PST one. It was on the stuff in this magazine, Senior Scholastic. Mr. Aiken, he had me come down here to get 'em for this class this afternoon. There was somethin' about y'know this ah, signal from the future an'—" (44.60)
Ultimately, the novel suggests that change is possible. Sure, it does so in a rather heavy-handed way by rewriting history and saving JFK, but the take away point is that the world is made a better place by the search for scientific knowledge. Notice that it wasn't just Gordon's search either—Bob Hayes, the man who stops Oswald, does so while seeking out scientific knowledge, too.
Quote #9
Causality's leaden hand would win out. The soothing human world of flowing time would go on, a Sphinx yielding none of her secrets. An infinite series of grandfathers would live out their lives safe from Renfrew. (45.22)
Well, at least a world is made better. Unfortunately for Renfrew, he won't get to experience that change because it doesn't take place in his world. What can we say? You can't win them all.
Quote #10
When a loop was set up, the universe split into two new universes. If the loop was of the simple killing-your-grandfather type, then there would result one universe where the grandfather lived and the grandson disappeared. The grandson reappeared in a second universe, having traveled back in time, where he shot his grandfather and lived out his life, passing through the years where were forever altered by his act. No one in either universe thought the world was paradoxical. (46.51)
Gordon imagines this as a possible answer for why his timeline can no longer communicate with Renfrew's. It nicely explains how the change is possible and how the novel's plot avoids the paradox, but it leaves several questions, too. How does the universe split? How do these universes exist in relation to each other? As always with scientific discovery, there are more questions waiting.