Comments on: BOUNTIFUL WORLD

By: Andrew Carolus

Andrew Carolus — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:01:23 +0000

Jerry,
Great post and very topical—just a few days ago the NY Times ran a story on the 52 year experience that just proved Einstein’s Theory of Relativity http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/space/05gravity.html. With time, energy and (in this case) a lot of money; many of the mysteries of the universe are being unravelled. That said, I think it’s comforting to know that we’ll never know everything and with every discovery there come new questions. I always thought our desire to ask “WHY” and search for answers is what makes us a unique species.

By: Gerry

Gerry — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:19:00 +0000

When I ask Google I end up with more answers than I would have thought possible and more questions than I had when I started, but that’s just me. Secretly I suspect Wikipedia of being the source of Dark Matter, yet I cannot leave it alone any more than I can leave a bag of chocolate chips intact.

When I was little everyone in my family believed with touching faith that if we found it in a book in a library, it was true. None of us believes that anymore, which is a sort of progress. I vote for healthy skepticism as one of our saving graces, right up there with imagination and the ability to rally in a crisis. I wonder, though, whether the frog in a pot of barely simmering water thinks of itself as in a crisis situation or a spa?

By: Jerry Dennis

Jerry Dennis — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:10:02 +0000

Thanks, P.J. I agree with you about imagination. And after further consideration, I’d drop curiosity even further down the list and suggest that our second most admirable quality is the way we rally in crises.

By: Pamela Grath

Pamela Grath — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:34:37 +0000

As a species, we are probably about as curious as we ever were. I would give a different answer to our most admirable quality, though. Curiosity is part of it, but the bigger answer (this, of course, is my opinion!) is imagination. It is imagination that drives the curiosity. It is also imagination that allows us to perform the thought experiment of putting ourselves in another person’s place, which is the basis for ethics. With curiosity alone, we might devise all manner of inhumane and dastardly experiments; moral imagination along with scientific curiosity requires us sometimes to limit the insatiable reach of curiosity’s probe. At least, this is true for most human beings. Sometimes I wonder about science.