Eric Chaisson Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.

Eric Chaisson
Researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society.

Eric Chaisson
At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe.

Eric Chaisson
The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures.

Eric Chaisson
Though we might like to think so, humankind is not at any special, unique or privileged location in the gargantuan, perhaps infinite, Universe.

Eric Chaisson
Let's first ask, what is life? And immediately we are stumped.

Eric Chaisson
Science is agnostic when it comes to god; not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly; just agnostic.

Eric Chaisson
Silently and majestically, galaxies twirl in the faraway tracts of the Universe — vast pinwheels of energy, matter, and perhaps life — imparting a feeling simultaneously for the immensity of the Universe and for the mediocrity of our position in it.

Eric Chaisson
Without a brainy seat of consciousness and its inherent awareness of self and environment, galaxies would twirl and stars would shine, but no one or thing could comprehend the majesty of the reality that is nature.

Eric Chaisson
To the cosmologist, planets are hardly relevant, stars only point sources of hydrogen consumption, and galaxies mere details in the much broader context of all space.

Eric Chaisson
Exploring the whole universe requires large thoughts. There are no larger thoughts than cosmological ones.

Eric Chaisson
If we are examples of anything in the cosmos, it is probably of magnificent mediocrity.

Eric Chaisson
Put bluntly yet magnanimously, the scenario of cosmic evolution grants us unparalled "big thinking," from which may well emerge the global ethics and planetary citizenship likely needed if our species is to remain part of that same cosmic evolutionary scenario.

Eric Chaisson