Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
I Want to Know
I don't want to believe. I want to know.
Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it's too late?
There is no other species on the Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.