Receiving the National Medal of Science is the thrill of a lifetime, but good science does not happen in isolation.
Sandra FaberRead
One lesson astronomy tells us is that we're a tiny mote in a hostile void, and help is too far away.
Interpretation
This quote highlights our smallness in the vast universe and the loneliness that can come from it.
Sandra Faber's quote underscores the humbling perspective that astronomy provides, illustrating how humans are merely insignificant specks in the vast cosmos. It also conveys a sense of isolation, suggesting that the universe can feel unfriendly, and the search for help or connection may seem distant and unreachable.
In practice
During a lecture on astrophysics, this quote can be used to emphasize our place in the universe.
Receiving the National Medal of Science is the thrill of a lifetime, but good science does not happen in isolation.
If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.
The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our ideas are gradually brought into conformity with the facts by the painful process of selection,-for intuition runs equally into truth and into error, and can settle nothing if not controlled by experience,-we gain vastly in our command over our environment. This is the fundamental value of natural science
We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.
Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.
Medicine is a science which hath been (as we have said) more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced: the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, but small addition. It considereth causes of diseases, with the occasions or impulsions; the diseases themselves, with the accidents; and the cures, with the preservation.
In the history of physics, there have been three great revolutions in thought that first seemed absurd yet proved to be true. The first proposed that the earth, instead of being stationary, was moving around at a great and variable speed in a universe that is much bigger than it appears to our immediate perception. That proposal, I believe, was first made by Aristarchos two millenia ago ... Remarkably enough, the name Aristarchos in Greek means best beginning.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.