(I’m sure I know Brian Cox, but I’m damned if I can remember how or why…)
The talk itself isn’t particularly convincing, but! The three quotes he uses! I’ve dug them up:
When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic.
Alexander Fleming (inventor of penicillin)
Cox uses this quote to combat the idea that we ‘know enough’ about the universe. The same thing has been said throughout history. It’s bullshit.
Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume our views of science are ultimate, that there no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.
Sir Humphry Davy (Michael Faraday was famously his protege)
Aaaand… an excerpt of the epic Carl Sagan quote (I can’t believe I’ve never heard this one before, considering he’s a hero of mine):
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan, on the Pale Blue Dot (Full quote here)
Now that’s what we call ‘putting it into perspective’.
Abi
Jun 7, 2010
Imagine if we’d gone for that last quote this week. I think I’ll need a bigger leg and you might have had to call autoglass…
sebastian
Jun 7, 2010
Darn, this one didn’t import from Posterous very well… gonna have to play with it a bit!
I think my leg is probably long enough for that quote…
Charissa
Jun 8, 2010
I watched Cosmos today because of this post. :). 52 weeks was a very good one too. I try so hard with the children to point out beauty wherever we are, even though we live near an office park so it’s not inherently nice to look at. I don’t want my kids to cause the cascade of crap.
sebastian
Jun 9, 2010
You watched the ENTIRE series of Cosmos in one day…?! You hero!
I’m sure your kids will be fine, or at least much better than most
I’m pretty bad — my mum (still) points out everything. Now I point out everything to my friends… I even point out things to my mum!
charissa
Jun 9, 2010
Haha, not the whole series, just the second episode. But I know what I’m doing on my next day off.
I’m so glad to have Netflix and it’s instant streaming so I can see whenever I want.
I have a knack for pointing out things that aren’t considered traditionally beautiful. There are some palm trees next to a local fast food place and cut all the fronds down to the stalk so I said “Hey, look, those bushes look like a penis!” Now every time we drive past it my 4 year old says “Penis bush, penis bush!!”