O P E N your mind

Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.

There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”

— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as the Candle in The Dark (via skaterboytae)

5 months ago · 34,732 notes · Source · Reblogged from thescienceofreality

thescienceofreality:

waltgracelives:

Carl Sagan’s license plate reads PHOBOS.

I am contemplating devoting my life to resurrecting human beings and Carl Sagan will be the first, for cosmos’ sake.

The cosmos would be pleased.

10 months ago · 59 notes · Source · Reblogged from thescienceofreality

bouncingdodecahedrons:

“These are some of the things hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. It has the sound of epic myth, but it’s simply a description of the evolution of the cosmos as revealed by science in our time. And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears, and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins. Star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and, perhaps, throughout the cosmos. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

11 months ago · 1,076 notes · Source · Reblogged from mentalalchemy