Maturity entails a readiness, painful and wrenching though it may be, to look squarely into the long dark places, into the fearsome shadows.
The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.
In human history there a precious few whose memory we revere because they knowingly sacrificed themselves for others. For each of them, there are multitudes who did nothing.
The Earth was in darkness except for a patchwork and sprinkle of light, the plucky attempt of humans to compensate for the opacity of the Earth when their hemisphere was averted from the Sun.
In science we may start with experimental results, data, observations, measurements, ‘facts’. We invent, if we can, a rich array of possible explanations and systematically confront each explanation with the facts.
Life is profligate, blind at this level unconcerned with notions of justice. It can afford to waste multitudes.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.
It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.
When enough fiction is written and enough scientific hypotheses are proposed, sooner or later there will be accidental concordances.
La pseudociencia colma necesidades emocionales poderosas que la ciencia suele dejar insatisfechas.
Pseudoscience speaks to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled.
Could my fondness for materials have something to do with the fact the I am made chiefly of them?
Einstein’s prohibition against travelling faster than light may clash with our common sense, but, on this question, why should we trust common sense? Why should our experience at 10 kilometers-an-hour constrain the laws of nature at 300,000 kilomters per second? Relativity does set limits on what humans can ultimately do, but the universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
MacLean has shown that the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. Despite occasional welcome exceptions, this seems to me to characterize a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior.
Things had been falling down since the beginning of time.
She consented to rote memorization, but knew that it was at best the hollow shell of an education. She did the minimum work necessary to do well in her courses, and pursued other matters.
Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can put independent and even rebellious ideas in the heads of their subjects.
Humans everywhere share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos provides the largest possible context.
Humans are good, she knew, at discerning subtle patterns that are really there, but equally so at imagining them when they are altogether absent.
Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?