Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. I… - Carl Sagan

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos.

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe.

Indeed, much of Newton’s intellectual development can be attributed to this tension between rationalism and mysticism. At the Stourbridge Fair in 1663, at age twenty, he purchased a book on astrology, ‘out of a curiosity to see what there was in it.’ He read it until he came to an illustration which he could not understand, because he was ignorant of trigonometry. So he purchased a book on trigonometry but soon found himself unable to follow the geometrical arguments. So he found a copy of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, and began to read. Two years later he invented the differential calculus.

What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and — especially important — to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follow from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true,

Do you believe in UFOs?” I’m always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not of evidence. I’m almost never asked, “How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?” I