A couple of my favorite quotes!

Both of these quotes are from Carl Sagan in his book, Cosmos. I find them insightful, thought provoking, almost poetically worded, and they touch on both science and religion, all of which were characteristic of Sagan:

“I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules but with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.” (page 105)

“Many people were scandalized—some still are—at both ideas, evolution and natural selection. Our ancestors looked at the elegance of life on Earth, at how appropriate the structures of organisms are to their functions, and saw evidence for a Great Designer. The simplest one-celled organism is a far more complex machine than the finest pocket watch. And yet pocket watches do not spontaneously self-assemble, or evolve, in slow stages, on their own, from say, grandfather clocks. A watch implies a watchmaker. There seemed to be no way in which atoms and molecules could somehow fall together to create organisms of such awesome complexity and subtle functioning as grace every region of the Earth. That each living thing was specially designed, that one species did not become another, were notions perfectly consistent with what our ancestors with their limited historical records knew about life. The idea that every organism was meticulously constructed by a Great Designer provided a significance and order to nature and an importance to human beings that we crave still. A designer is a natural, appealing and altogether human explanation of the biological world. But, as Darwin and Wallace showed, there is another way, equally appealing, equally human, and far more compelling: natural selection, which makes the music of life more beautiful as the aeons pass.

The fossil record could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them [as in the “flood”], and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament).” (page 29)

Carl Sagan

Cosmos

Random House

What do we really mean by "life?"

I was having a conversation last night with a few friends at work and the subject of what constitutes something "being alive" came up. There was a discussion of the paranormal, but what really riveted our attention was talking about the subatomic realm of particles. The question raised but unanswered was, "Are particles alive?"

When NASA sent the Rovers Spirit and Opportunity to Mars, the primary goal was to find any evidence of the one element that is responsible for life as we know it on Earth, water. That search proved fruitful and I think it is now fact that while water may not exist on Mars now, remnants of the existence of water have been found proving at least that water used to exist on Mars. The question of water (life) on Mars was of course part of a bigger question about life elsewhere in the entire universe. But maybe we have already found more life in the universe and we just don't realize it.

At the quantum level, the smallest unit seems to be the particle; a particle is smaller than an atom. The word quantum means "the least quantity of evidence," which is consistent with the size of a particle. An underlying and mysterious principle of quantum physics is that the observer seems to affect the outcome of an experiment. At the normal level of physics the outcome of an observed phenomenon doesn't seem to be affected by our observation. A given experiment can be repeated many, many times and the same result occurs. Not so at the quantum level, or smallest level of physics. In experiments with particles, the particle(s) will behave one way with a given experiment, but when the experiment is repeated continually and exactly the particle(s) behave differently each time, and seemingly at random. Scientists simply don't understand why particles behave this way. One logical question that arises is, "Do the particles know that they are being observed and purposely change their behavior to confuse the observer?" The next questions of course are, "If so, how do they know?" And, "If they do know, does that mean that particles are actually intelligent?" And, "If they are intelligent, does that mean that particles are alive?"


If the answer turns out to be that particles have intelligence and are, in fact, alive, then perhaps we have made a preliminary discovery that there is indeed intelligent life abundant in the universe. It's just not quite the kind of life that we were expecting!

My science hero, Carl Sagan!

I had forgotten until recently how many books by Carl Sagan I have enjoyed. But I have been rereading and rediscovering Sagan's genius in The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God. This was edited posthumously by his widow, Ann Druyan, in 2006. It is a superbly written book and typical Sagan in its richness of detailed insight, imagination, fact, poetic prose, clever wit, and penetrating perspicacity. His perceptions on the origins of belief systems and the question of the existence of God are masterfully and perceptively presented. I read a quote by science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, who said that Sagan knew more about the universe than he did. And on the back of this book is a quote by Kurt Vonnegut. It reads, "Find here a major fraction of this stunningly valuable legacy left to all of us by a great human being. I miss him so." Amen to that!