For a physicist or a mathematician, the most symmetrical object you could think about would be a sphere, because it looks identical no matter what you do to it, however you rotate it in any given direction.

God is an awesome mathematician and physicist.

Symmetry does mean something different for physicists than for members of the public. It means that an object or a theory does not change when you make some transformation - either rotating or moving it or doing something to the equations.

The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.

There are areas of philosophy that are important, but I think of them as being subsumed by other fields. In the case of descriptive philosophy, you have literature or logic, which, in my view, is really mathematics.

We need to walk into the future, no matter how unnerving, with open eyes if society is to keep pace with technology.