Apart from a thin film of life at the very surface of the Earth, an occasional intrepid spacecraft, and some radio static, our impact on the Universe is nil. It knows nothing of us.
We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy. And if we are a speck in the immensity of space, we also occupy an instant in the expanse of ages.
In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak?
We tend not to be especially critical when presented with evidence that seems to confirm our prejudices.
I believe in Spinoza’s God, who revealed himself in the harmony of all being, not in the God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men” – a more subtle religious view embraced by.
Prejudice means literally pre-judgment, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning.
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.
We sometimes hear of things that can travel faster than light. Something called ‘the speed of thought’ is occasionally proffered. This is an exceptionally silly notion especially since the speed of impulses through the neutrons in our brain is about the same as the speed of a donkey cart.
We will know which stars to visit. Our descendants will then skim the light years, the children of Thales and Aristarchus, Leonardo and Einstein.
With an ambassador, you’re supposed to put your best foot forward, and we’ve been sending mainly crap to space for forty years.
From the point of view of a mayfly, human beings are stolid, boring, almost entirely immovable, offering hardly a hint that they ever do anything. From the point of view of a star, a human being is a tiny flash, one of billions of brief lives flickering tenuously on the surface of a strangely cold, anomalously solid, exotically remote sphere of silicate and iron.
And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind.
Lashley also reported no apparent change in the general behavior of a rat when significant fractions – say 10 percent – of its brain were removed. But no one asked the rat of its opinion.
Science is an ongoing process. It never ends. There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved, after which all the scientists can retire. And because this is so, the world is far more interesting, both for the scientists and for the millions of people in every nation who, while not professional scientists, are deeply interested in the methods and findings of science.
The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything – new ideas and established wisdom.
The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability.
As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It’s a big universe, of course, so He, She, or It, could be profitably employed in many places. But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that’s no longer God’s realm.
It is precisely our plasticity, our long childhood, that prevents a slavish adherence to genetically programmed behavior in human beings more than in any other species.
They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.
Had Jupiter been several dozen times more massive, the matter in its interior would have undergone thermonuclear reactions, and Jupiter would have begun to shine by its own light. The largest planet is a star that failed.