Science Reserves The Highest Reward For Those

This Planet Seems To Be In Such Sorry Shape. And I Can't Ever Think About The Rest Of The Universe Without Coming Back Home And Thinking What The Implications For Life Here Would Be If We Were To Really Have Some Definitive Proof Of Extraterrestrial Life.

Knowing A Deep Thing Well, Which Is What Science Asks Of Its Practitioners, Is An Empowerment That Is Very Profound. It's A Liberation.

In The 1970s, I Think That There Was Probably A Higher Degree Of Respect For Science, Of Hope About The Future, And The Future-oriented Vision.

Contrary To The Fantasies Of The Fundamentalists, There Was No Deathbed Conversion, No Last Minute Refuge Taken In A Comforting Vision Of A Heaven Or An Afterlife. For Carl, What Mattered Most Was What Was True, Not Merely What Would Make Us Feel Better. Even At This Moment When Anyone Would Be Forgiven For Turning Away From The Reality Of Our Situation, Carl Was Unflinching. As We Looked Deeply Into Each Other's Eyes, It Was With A Shared Conviction That Our Wondrous Life Together Was Ending Forever.

I Remember That One Time Carl Sagan Was Giving A Talk, And He Spelled Out, In A Kind Of Withering Succession, These Great Theories Of Demotion That Science Has Dealt Us, All Of The Ways In Which Science Is Telling Us We Are Not Who We Would Like To Believe We Are. At The End Of It, A Young Man Came Up To Him And He Said: "what Do You Give Us In Return? Now That You've Taken Everything From Us? What Meaning Is Left, If Everything That I've Been Taught Since I Was A Child Turns Out To Be Untrue?" Carl Looked At Him And Said, Do Something Meaningful.