the metaphysicist has no laboratory. - Carl Sagan

with rare exceptions (chiefly the social insects), mammals and birds are the only organisms to devote substantial attention to the care of their young; an evolutionary development that, through the long period of plasticity which it permits, takes advantage of the large information-processing capability of the mammalian and primate brains. Love seems to be an invention of the mammals.

A ciência não é só compatível com a espiritualidade; é uma profunda fonte de espiritualidade. Quando reconhecemos nosso lugar na imensidão de anos-luz e no transcorrer das eras, quando compreendemos a complexidade, a beleza e a sutileza da vida, então o sentimento sublime, misto de júbilo e humildade, é certamente espiritual. Como também são espirituais as nossas emoções diante da grande arte, música ou literatura, ou de atos de coragem altruísta exemplar como os de Mahatma Gandhi ou Martin Luther King. A noção de que a ciência e a espiritualidade são de alguma maneira mutuamente exclusivas presta um desserviço a ambas.

the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can’t manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data “highways,” abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer. How can we affect national policy — or even make intelligent decisions in our own lives — if we don’t grasp the underlying issues?