The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers.
But they also laughed at Bozo the clown. The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. And what if all of you are wrong? You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. The method of science is tried and true. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.
If you know a more specific citation, please contact Webmaster. The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science. Science quotes on: Finding 32 Importance Scientific Method The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.
We are made of starstuff. The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. The verbatim quote is also on this page. The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics.
The problem does not lend itself to full experimental verification—at least not more than once. The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental insights. The truth may be puzzling.
It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. Cleverly designed experiments are the key. The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril.
The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out. The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong.
Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. Quoted in Donald R. I know of a world with a million moons. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions.
There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it. Opening paragraph, in 'Introduction' Planetary Exploration , There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us.
So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton. There is another approach to the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFO origins. This assessment depends on a large number of factors about which we know little, and a few about which we know literally nothing.
I want to make some crude numerical estimate of the probability that we are frequently visited by extraterrestrial beings. Now, there is a range of hypotheses that can be examined in such a way. Let me give a simple example: Consider the Santa Claus hypothesis, which maintains that, in a period of eight hours or so on December of each year, an outsized elf visits one hundred million homes in the United States.
This is an interesting and widely discussed hypothesis. Some strong emotions ride on it, and it is argued that at least it does no harm. We can do some calculations. Suppose that the elf in question spends one second per house. With a hundred million houses he has to spend three years just filling stockings.
I have assumed he spends no time at all in going from house to house. Even with relativistic reindeer, the time spent in a hundred million houses is three years and not eight hours. This is an example of hypothesis-testing independent of reindeer propulsion mechanisms or debates on the origins of elves.
We examine the hypothesis itself, making very straightforward assumptions, and derive a result inconsistent with the hypothesis by many orders of magnitude. We would then suggest that the hypothesis is untenable. We can make a similar examination, but with greater uncertainty, of the extraterrestrial hypothesis that holds that a wide range of UFOs viewed on the planet Earth are space vehicles from planets of other stars.
There is much about which even experts are ignorant; this will probably always be the case. Science quotes on: Always 7 Expert 67 Ignorant 90 Will Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs.
Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? No other human institution comes close. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition.
They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
A judicious mix is what we need. From Carl Sagan's narration on a promotional video for the television series Cosmos. We are like the inhabitants of an isolated valley in New Guinea who communicate with societies in neighboring valleys quite different societies, I might add by runner and by drum.
When asked how a very advanced society will communicate, they might guess by an extremely rapid runner or by an improbably large drum. They might not guess a technology beyond their ken. And yet, all the while, a vast international cable and radio traffic passes over them, around them, and through them We will listen for the interstellar drums, but we will miss the interstellar cables. We are likely to receive our first messages from the drummers of the neighboring galactic valleys - from civilizations only somewhat in our future.
The civilizations vastly more advanced than we, will be, for a long time, remote both in distance and in accessibility. At a future time of vigorous interstellar radio traffic, the very advanced civilizations may be, for us, still insubstantial legends. Science quotes on: Species Starstuff 5. We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.
Collected and cited in Tom Head ed. We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. Quoted and cited in Tom Head ed. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.
This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? Wherever possible, scientists experiment. Which experiments suggest themselves often depends on which theories currently prevail.
Scientists are intent of testing those theories to the breaking point. They do not trust what is intuitively obvious. That the Earth is flat was once obvious. That heavy bodies fall faster than light ones was once obvious. That bloodsucking leeches cure most diseases was once obvious. That some people are naturally and by divine decree slaves was once obvious. That there is such a place as the center of the Universe, and that the Earth sits in that exalted spot was once obvious.
That there is an absolute standard of rest was once obvious. The truth may be puzzling or counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held beliefs. Experiment is how we get a handle on it. While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales. Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
On Charlie Rose website. Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.
Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.
They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way. Share this quote:. Like Quote. Recommend to friends. To see what your friends thought of this quote, please sign up!
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