In his book The First Three Minutes, particle physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg wrote, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. ... The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts a human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

Physicists are often confronted by the apparent meaninglessness of the universe, or at least the lack of any meaning that can be discerned by science. In this context, Weinberg argued that science itself gave meaning to one's life. In an interview with PBS, Weinberg would add, "There is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art."