I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars.
|
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the turtle standing on' 'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the little old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
|
A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.
|
I would like to suggest that the history of science is the history of an enlarging understanding of the universe, its evolution, its history, and its structure. We have engaged the universe at the very limits of our capacity. We have explored the world of the microcosm and the world of the macrocosm. We have found at both extremes incredible complexity. The universe, beginning from an unimaginably hot and dense singularity, evolved through a series of stages, each producing the condition necessary for the succeeding stage. Our sun, our solar system, our planet, our own beings are all late stages of this evolving universe. The insights of cosmology and theoretical astronomy have served to tie us ever more tightly into the emerging story of the universe itself. The history of the universe is our history. We emerged from the same vast processes that created galaxies and suns and stars and planets. We are all of us recycled stardust.
|
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
|
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
|
Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
|
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain's race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.
|
Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any regi...
|
Before a war, military science seems a real science, like astronomy. After a war it seems more like astrology.
|
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
|
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother.
|
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
|
For a long time then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe's spheres. I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world. For this reason I undertook the task of rereading the works of all the philosophers which I could obtain to learn whether anyone had ever proposed other motions of the universe's spheres than those expounded by the teachers of astronomy in the schools. And in fact I found in Cicero that Hicetas supposed the earth to move. Later I also discovered in Plutarch that certain others were of this opinion. . . . Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.
|
When I heard the learn
|
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy but after a war it seems more like astrology.
|
Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.
|
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.
|
Adam inquires concerning celestial motions, is doubtfully answered, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knowledge.
|
These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.
|
Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.
|
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
|
But my most favourite pursuit, after my daily exertions at the Foundry, was Astronomy. There were frequently clear nights when the glorious objects in the Heavens were seen in most attractive beauty and brilliancy.
|
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
|
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another
|