Lost somewhere between the eternity of time and immensity of space is our tiny planetary home.
Whether we believe in God depends very much on what we mean by God.
We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs, when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture and built cities and set out to subdue the Earth.
Science requires us to be freed of gross superstition and gross injustice both. Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove. It is no surprise that political revolutions, scepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together.
We will die and we fear death. This fear is worldwide and transcultural. It probably has significant survival value. Those who wish to postpone or avoid death can improve the world, reduce its perils, make children who will live after us, and create great works by which they will be remembered.
We are set irrevocably, I believe, on a path what will take us to the stars – unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed, we destroy ourselves first.
Thus, an inhibition center developed below what in humans is the temporal lobe, to turn off much of the functioning of the reptilian brain; and an activation center evolved in the pons to turn on the R-complex, but harmlessly, during sleep.
The ancient Aztec and the ancient Greek words for “God” are nearly the same. Is this evidence of some contact or commonality between the two civilizations, or should we expect occasional such coincidences between two wholly unrelated languages merely by chance? Or could, as Plato thought in the Cratylus, certain words be built into us from birth?
It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction.
The left hemisphere seems to feel quite defensive-in a strange way insecure-about the right hemisphere; and, if this is so, verbal criticism of intuitive thinking becomes suspect on the ground of motive. Unfortunately, there is every reason to think that the right hemisphere has comparable misgivings -expressed nonverbally, of course- about the left.
In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. And it is just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain the ability-lost, according to Josephus, since Eden-to communicate with the animals.
Skepticism must be a component of the explorer’s toolkit, or we will lose our way. There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.
Every generation worries that educational standards are decaying. One of the oldest short essays in human history, dating from Sumer some 4,000 years ago, laments that the young are disastrously more ignorant than the generation immediately preceding.
How can you tell when someone is only imagining?
Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined.
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. GEORGE WASHINGTON, address to Congress, January 8, 1790.
La causa de la miseria humana evitable no suele ser tanto la estupidez como la ignorancia, particularmente la ignorancia de nosotros mismos.
Isolation, even if incomplete, breeds diversity.
Wisdom lies in understanding our limitations. ‘For Man is a giddy thing,’ teaches William Shakespeare.
Intuitive: The word conveys, I think, a diffuse annoyance at our inability to understand how we come by such knowledge.