Cosmic Perspective – “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius”
There are more than 100 billion galaxies scattered throughout the visible universe….Small galaxies have fewer than a billion stars. Large galaxies have more than a trillion.
Abraham Lincoln — “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery… of new and useful things.”
There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
Douglas Adams
“Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe.
We should not say I am an Athenian or I am a Roman but I am a citizen of the Universe. ”
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Albert Einstein
Earth is home. Evolution connects us all. Death comes to all. On this blue Planet we the human species are united by our common habitation, our common origin and our common mortality.
The actual is greater than the superficial and the certainty of death can be a driving force for solidarity and not a suppressed anxiety that drives us towards division and despair. The uncertainty of life and the certainty of death unite all of us who come to this existence on this blue planet.
“Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars. We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth.
We are one species.
We are star stuff harvesting star light.”
Carl Sagan
“Asia and Europe: tiny corners of the Cosmos. Every sea: a mere drop. Mount Athos: a lump of dirt. The present moment is the smallest point in all eternity. All is microscopic, changeable, disappearing. All things come from that faraway place, either originating directly from that governing part which is common to all, or else following from it as consequences. So even the gaping jaws of the lion, deadly poison, and all harmful things like thorns or an oozing bog are products of that awesome and noble source. Do not imagine these things to be alien to that which you revere, but turn your Reason to the source of all things.”
— Marcus Aurelius
Our brains are limited. It may take a posthuman species to work out the big questions.
“Einstein averred that “the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible”. He was right to be astonished. Our minds evolved to cope with life on the African savannah, but can comprehend a great deal about the counterintuitive microworld of atoms, and about the vastness of the cosmos.
Indeed, Einstein would have been specially gratified at how our cosmic horizons have expanded. Our Sun is one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is itself one of many billion of galaxies in range of our telescopes. And there is firm evidence that these all emerged from a hot dense “beginning” nearly 14 billion years ago. (…)
Science is a global culture. Its universality is specially compelling in my own subject of astronomy. The dark night sky is an inheritance we’ve shared with all humanity, throughout history. All have gazed up in wonder at the same vault of heaven, but interpreted it in diverse ways.
It’s a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the panorama offered by modern cosmology and Darwinian evolution — the chain of emergent complexity leading from some still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars and planets. And how, on our planet, life emerged and evolved into a biosphere containing creatures with brains able to ponder their origins. This common understanding should transcend all national differences — and all faiths too.
As science’s frontiers expand, their periphery lengthens; new questions come into focus. But a fundamental issue then arises: are there some questions that will for ever flummox us? Are there intrinsic limits to our understanding?
Sir Martin Rees
Duration : 0:4:17
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Over the past 15 years, many U.S. and Canadian college campuses have asked famed pioneer of the Supercomputer and Internet, Philip Emeagwali, to speak on Africa Night, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and during Black History Month.
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