Monday, May 27, 2013

The world (and universe) is not about us... and that's exciting!

Neil deGrasse Tyson counters the depression that some people have associated with learning how insignificant we are (both as individuals as well as humans in general) when faced with the cosmos.



I've never understood the reasoning that underlay much of the arguments of heresy that accompanied the findings of Copernicus and Galileo, just as I've never understood the depression that some (not small number of people) assert they feel when their religious beliefs are assaulted by scientific understandings of how the physical universe actually works. As a kid, I was also of a mind of, "Woah, that's exciting that we are so small in this vast universe!" instead of picturing that it was a special creation made all for us by this or that religion's god(s).

The fact that we are one infinitesimally small collection of species on a relatively small planet circling and average-sized star toward the distant edge of an average sized galaxy shouldn't be depressing, just like the inability to grow wings and fly shouldn't be depressing. It's the existence we live, and we should be excited about the potentials that are there.

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