A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation.
All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.
Around the time that humans settled down and began doing large-scale agriculture, some cultures created the notion that storms, floods, lightning, disease, and even our own mortality were forms of punishment meted out by an angry god in the sky.
Carl played a leading role in every single one of NASA's missions of exploration from the beginning of the space age until his death in December 1996.
Carl took on the military-industrial complex. He campaigned around the world for an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction. To him it was a perversion of science.
During the 1980's we were arrested three times at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site while protesting US underground nuclear testing.
For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature.
I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.
I teach in a community college and every day am witness to the abysmal ignorance of basic scientific principles.
I've been thinking about the distorted view of science that prevails in our culture. I've been wondering about this, because our civilization is completely dependent on science and high technology, yet most of us are alienated from science.
In 1974, I first met Carl. I was 25 years old. I am 51 now.
Let the people who deplore scientism demonstrate another methodology that delivers the goods the way that science does.
My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.
People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say that's completely opposite of the truth.
This planet seems to be in such sorry shape. And I can't ever think about the rest of the universe without coming back home and thinking what the implications for life here would be if we were to really have some definitive proof of extraterrestrial life.
Very often you encounter in our society a kind of resentment and a fear of science.
Well, I actually grew up in the sixties. I feel very lucky, actually, that that was my slice of time that I was dealt. Let's remember that the real motivation in the sixties, and even in the fifties, was the Cold War.
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