I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.
Interpretation
Human beings struggle with logical thinking, which is not inherently natural to us.
In this quote, Neil Degrasse Tyson expresses his belief that logical thinking does not come easily to humans. He suggests that if it were a natural skill, difficult subjects like mathematics would not present such a challenge for most people, and the development of structured scientific inquiry would not have taken thousands of years. This illustrates the complexity of human cognition and the challenges of learning and understanding systematic reasoning.
In practice
During a lecture on philosophy, this quote could be used to highlight the challenges of logical reasoning.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.
What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.
She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.
Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up.
Christians, in particular, realize that their responsibility within creation and their duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith.
For 6,000 years, these rules have been unquestionably right. And yet we break them every day. People feel that something is wrong in life. There is some kind of atmosphere that makes people now turn to other values. They want to contemplate the basic questions of life, and that is probably the real reason for wanting to tell these stories.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.