People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the significance of geography and meteorology, presenting them as intriguing subjects rather than mere earth sciences.
Terry Pratchett humorously defends geography and meteorology against common misconceptions that they are less legitimate sciences. He illustrates that geography is essentially a slower form of physics and highlights the complexities and unpredictability of meteorology, suggesting that seasons are not just times but actual places that change, inviting us to appreciate the intricacies of nature in a more profound way.
In practice
This quote can be referenced in a classroom setting to emphasize the importance of earth sciences.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
I'm not cruel, sir, I won't shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted.
Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject.
Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male which excels the female.
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
Global warming is controversial, of course, but the controversy is mainly over whether human activity is driving it.
For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.