Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Carl SaganRead
We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save.
Interpretation
Understanding our planet is crucial for its preservation.
This quote by Carl Sagan emphasizes the importance of comprehending Earth's complex systems and challenges when it comes to environmental conservation. Without a solid grasp of our planet's workings, our efforts to save it may be misguided or ineffective.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of environmental education.
Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
For me, the level at which natural selection causes the phenomenon of adaptation is the level of the replicator - the gene.
Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.
If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.
The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world.
We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.
If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
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