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No physicist started out impatient with common-sense notions, eager to replace them with some mathematical abstraction that could be understood only … - Carl Sagan
" "No physicist started out impatient with common-sense notions, eager to replace them with some mathematical abstraction that could be understood only by rarified theoretical physics. Instead, they began, as we all do, with comfortable, standard, common-sense notions. The trouble is that Nature does not comply. If we no longer insist on our notions of how Nature ought to behave, but instead stand before Nature with an open and receptive mind, we find that common sense often doesn't work. Why not? Because our notions, both hereditary and learned, of how Nature works were forged in the millions of years our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. In this case common sense is a faithless guide because no hunter-gatherer's life ever depended on understanding time-variable electric and magnetic fields. There were no evolutionary penalties for ignorance of Maxwell's equations. In our time it's different.
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About Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect. He testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect will change the earth's climate system.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
Carl Edward Sagan
Alternative Names:
Sagan
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Carl E. Sagan
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Carl E Sagan
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C. E. Sagan
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C.E. Sagan
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C E Sagan
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C. Sagan
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C Sagan
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Sagan C
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Sagan C.
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Sagan C. E.
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Sagan CE
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Shorter versions of this quote
If we no longer insist on our notions of how Nature ought to behave, but instead stand before Nature with an open and receptive mind, we find that common sense often doesn't work. Why not? Because our notions, both hereditary and learned, of how Nature works were forged in the millions of years our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. In this case common sense is a faithless guide because no hunter-gatherer's life ever depended on understanding time-variable electric and magnetic fields. There were no evolutionary penalties for ignorance of Maxwell's equations. In our time it's different.
Additional quotes by Carl Sagan
Тези, които търсят власт на всяка цена, забелязват обществената слабост — някакъв страх, който могат да яхнат, и така да стигнат до високите постове. Това може да са етнически различия — както е в този случай — или може би различно количество меланин в кожата; някоя различна философия или религия; а защо не употребата на наркотици, проявите на насилие, икономическата криза, молитвата в училище или поругаването (английският глагол desecrate означава буквално „правя несвещен“) на националното знаме.
Какъвто и да е проблемът, бързото решение е да се премахнат част от свободите в Декларацията за правата на гражданите. Да, през 1942 г. американците от японски произход бяха защитени от Декларацията за правата, но ние все пак ги затворихме — в крайна сметка се водеше война. Да, има конституционни забрани срещу безпричинните обиски и арести, но водим война срещу наркотиците, а престъпността излиза от контрол. Да, има свобода на словото, но нали не искаме тук да се мотаят чужди автори и да проповядват чужди идеологии? Претекстът се променя всяка година, но резултатът е същият: концентриране на повече власт в по-малко ръце и потискане на различните мнения — дори и когато опитът ясно показва рисковете от подобни действия.
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We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universe and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor.
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