If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence.
Interpretation
Man's creations, like cannonballs, are a testament to human ingenuity, while the stars and planets signify the larger forces of nature.
This quote by Jules Verne highlights the contrast between the natural universe, created by Providence, and the artificial objects crafted by humanity. It suggests that while the cosmos is a product of divine creation, human beings have utilized their intellect and creativity to design technology and weaponry, illustrating both our potential and our flaws.
In practice
In a speech about technological advancement, one might say, 'If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence' to illustrate human innovation.
Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world.
It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.
Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word 'impossible' is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.
However strong, however imposing a ship may appear, it is not 'disgraced' because it flies before the tempest. A commander ought always to remember that a man's life is worth more than the mere satisfaction of his own pride. In any case, to be obstinate is blameable, and to be wilful is dangerous.
The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.
The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
I'd like to see what fraction of things that chemists have figured out we could actually teach nature to do. Then we really could replace chemical factories with bacteria.
On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
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