But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one day venture to the stars. - Carl Sagan

"Galileo, Kopernik için helyosantrik (Dünya'nın Güneş'in çevresinde döndüğü gerçeği) varsayımının "onaylayıcısı ve canlandırıcısı" deyimini kullanır. Yoksa onu bu keşfin sahibi kılmaz. Aristarkhos'un dönemiyle Kopernik'in dönemi arasında geçen 1800 yıl boyunca gezegenlerin doğru olarak dizilişini bilen çıkmadı. Oysa MÖ 280 yılında doğru olarak açıklanmıştı. Aristarkhos'un ortaya attığı fikir, çağdaşlarını çileden çıkardı. Anaksagoras'a, Bruno'ya ve Galileo'ya karşı yükselen seslerin benzerleri Aristarkhos'a karşı da yükseldi ve dinsizlikle suçlanması istendi. Aristarkhos ve Kopernik'e karşı gösterilen direniş, Güneş'in yerküre çevresinde dödüğü görüşü günlük yaşamımızda halen de sürmektedir. Hâlâ Güneş'in "doğduğundan" Güneş'in "battığından" söz ederiz. Aristarkhos'un helyosantrizm fikrini ortaya attığından bu yana 2200 yıl geçti ve kullandığımız dil hâlâ yerküremizin dönmediği yolundadır."

As children, we fear the dark. Anything might be out. here. The unknown troubles us. Ironically, it is our fate to live in the dark. This unexpected finding of science is only about three centuries old. Head out from the Earth in any direction you choose, and — after an initial flash of blue and a longer wait while the Sun fades — you are surrounded by blackness, punctuated only here and there by the faint and distant stars. Even after we are grown, the darkness retains its power to frighten us. And so there are those who say we should not inquire too closely into who else might be living in that darkness. Better not to know, they say. There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Of this immense multitude, could it be that our humdrum Sun is the only one with an inhabited planet? Maybe. Maybe the origin of life or intelligence is exceedingly improbable. Or maybe civilizations arise all the time, but wipe themselves out as soon as they are able. Or, here and there, peppered across space, orbiting other suns, maybe there are worlds something like our own, on which other beings gaze up and wonder as we do about who else lives in the dark…Life is a comparative rarity. You can survey dozens of worlds and find that on only one of them does life arise and evolve and persist… If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage — or to the advantage of the human species… In our time we’ve crossed the Solar System and sent four ships to the stars… But we continue to search for inhabitants. We can’t help it. Life looks for life.

The astonishing fact is that similar mathematics applies so well to planets and to clocks. It needn’t have been this way. We didn’t impose it on the Universe. That’s the way the Universe is. If this is reductionism, so be it.