But let us remember that we are dealing with infinities and indivisibles both of which transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the limitations of human understanding when it comes to both vastness and minuteness in nature.
Galileo Galilei's quote highlights the challenges faced by humans in comprehending concepts of infinity and indivisibility. He suggests that the enormity of the universe and the intricacies of the smallest particles are beyond our finite capacities to fully grasp, emphasizing the awe and complexity of the natural world.
In practice
During a science lecture discussing the universe's scale, this quote can illustrate the vastness of cosmological phenomena.
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
That sculpture is more admirable than painting for the reason that it contains relief and painting does not is completely false. ... Rather, how much more admirable the painting must be considered, if having no relief at all, it appears to have as much as sculpture!
Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child.
Anyone who can contemplate quantum mechanics without getting dizzy hasn't understood it.
I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule; and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel like a big molecule!
During my time in orbit, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained my heart. Every day, I was exposed to ten times the radiation of a person on Earth, which will increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.
And now the announcement of Watson and Crick about DNA. This is for me the real proof of the existence of God.
The primitive fight-or-flight regions of our mammalian brains react to immediate danger. We instinctively run from an avalanche but the gradual retreat of a glacier, the portent of the far greater danger of rising temperatures and rising oceans, just doesn't get through to us in the same way.
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