The Wonder is All Around You
Memes from scientists about the beauty and wonder all around us.
Folksonomies: enlightenment science manifesto wonder
Memes
30 DEC 2013
Science Can Never Weary the Mind
Unlike religion, Science can never weary the mind: the dreary monotony of the former is a perfect contrast to the life-inspiring power of the latter. Every step you take in Science, stimulates you to further pursuit. The vast volume of nature, that book of books, that only revelation worthy the attention of man, is always open to the Man of Science; and in this book the child can find a language that shall be intelligible, and adapted to his youthful capacity. He can read here without stupify...
1 
The sense of wonder and awe can only lead to the pursuit of more wonder and awe.
23 JUN 2013
Why You Lose Weight While You Sleep
Here's a simple question: Why do you weigh more when you go to sleep than when you wake up? Because you do... You can check this yourself. Somehow, while doing absolutely nothing all night but sleep, you will wake up lighter.
[...]
All night long, every time you breathe out, a bunch of carbon atoms, formerly inside your body, leave your insides and take off into the night air. You breathe in oxygen, O2. You breathe out carbon dioxide, (two oxygen atoms with a carbon atom attached), so there...
2 Over the course of the night, through respiration, you lose a pound of weight to the carbon atoms in Carbon Dioxide.
23 JUN 2013
An Elegant Complex Description of Fire
The atoms like each other to different degrees. Oxygen, for instance in the air, would like to be next to carbon, and if they get near to each other, they snap together. If they’re not too close though, they repel and they go apart, so they don’t know that they could snap together. It’s just as if you had a ball, it was trying to climb a hill and there was a hole it could go into, like a volcano hole, a deep one. It’s rolling along, it doesn’t go down in the deep hole, because if it starts to...From Richard Feynman, making the process of burning wood seem wondrous.
20 JUN 2012
Science Inspires a Love of Life and Morality
Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being. Because knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our existence.
08 JUN 2012
The Formation of Grains of Sand
On the basis of the results recorded in this review, it can be claimed that the average sand grain has taken many hundreds of millions of years to lose 10 per cent. of its weight by abrasion and become subangular. It is a platitude to point to the slowness of geological processes. But much depends on the way things are put. For it can also be said that a sand grain travelling on the bottom of a river loses 10 million molecules each time it rolls over on its side and that representation impres...Miraculous in numbers.
29 MAY 2012
Nature Works in Increments
Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap. For example she could not produce a horse if it were not preceded by all the other animals on which she ascends to the horse's structure as if on the rungs of a ladder. Thus every one thing exists for the sake of all things and all for the sake of one; for the one is of course the all as well. Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole; and thus, when she manifests herself in a...All living things rely on the chain of all other living things before them.
18 MAR 2012
Pride in Evolutionary Ancestry
How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation', with an ugly emphasis on Brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of ...Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Cummings takes pride in descending from arboreal ancestors and distant jellyfish.
17 MAR 2012
Equations are Treasures
Equations seem like treasures, spotted in the rough by some discerning individual, plucked and examined, placed in the grand storehouse of knowledge, passed on from generation to generation. This is so convenient a way to present scientific discovery, and so useful for textbooks, that it can be called the treasure-hunt picture of knowledge. Found in nature, plucked and put in a display case for others to admire.
02 JAN 2012
Herschel Sees Spirituality in Science
To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling … A mind that has once imbibed a taste for scientific enquiry has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations. One would think that Shakespeare had such a mind in view when he describes a contemplative man finding
Tongues in trees — books in the running brooks
Sermons in stones — and good in everything
Where the uninformed and unenquiring eye perceives neither novelty nor beauty, he...Folksonomies: philosophy naturalism
Folksonomies: philosophy naturalism
Everything in nature is interesting and significant.
02 JAN 2012
Mungo Park Saved by a Moment of Scientific Fascination
Park travelled on down the river as far as Silla, where, exhausted, he decided to turn back short of Timbuctoo on 25 August 1796. On the return journey he was robbed and stripped by Moorish banditti in ‘a dark wood’ before he reached Kalamia. They took everything — his horse, his compass, his hat, all his clothes except his trousers and his battered boots (‘the sole of one of them was tied onto my foot with a broken bridle rein’). They had evidently intended to kill him, but saw him as a feeb...Park's situation is dire at one point in his explorations of Africa, but he finds a fascinating bit of moss that enchants him and makes him forget his horrible situation.
01 JAN 2012
The Wonders of the Universe
There is a place with four suns in the sky – red, white, blue, and yellow; two of
them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them.
I know of a world with a million moons.
I know of a sun the size of the Earth – and made of diamond.
There are atomic nuclei a mile across that rotate thirty times a second.
There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition
of bacteria.
There are stars leaving the Milky Way. There are immense gas cloud...Carl Sagan describes some of the amazing things science and astronomy have discovered in our universe.
21 SEP 2011
A Noble and Enlightened Way to Spend our Short Time
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have
finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with
color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes
again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief
time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how
we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am
asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the
mornings.Understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it.
06 SEP 2011
Palaeontology is the Aladdin's Lamp of Deserted and Lifel...
Palaeontology is the Aladdin's lamp of the most deserted and lifeless regions of the earth; it touches the rocks and there spring forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and the ancient river streams and savannahs wherein they flourished. The rocks usually hide their story in the most difficult and inaccessible places. Folksonomies: exploration paleontology
Folksonomies: exploration paleontology
Revealing order and history from the barren rocks.
01 SEP 2011
The Forces of the Cosmos are Within Ourselves
When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.
~ Leon Battista AlbertiWe are among the gods.
10 JUN 2011
We Should Appreciate the Winter Solstice
We have become too wise in our own
conceits if ever we let a winter solstice go by
without a glance upward to rejoice that the
sun will sink no lower in the darkening sky
. .. We walk too hurriedly if ever we pass the
season’s first pasqueflower by, too busy to
let its meeting stay us for a quiet moment
before this token of the covenant of life to
continue in beauty despite the storm.It's a shame if we do not at least glance up at the sky to appreciate the fact that the days will be getting longer.
10 JUN 2011
Teddy Roosevelt Considers the Night Sky
After an evening of talk, perhaps about the
fringes of knowledge, or some new
possibility of climbing inside the minds and
senses of animals, we would go out on the
lawn, where we took turns at an amusing
little astronomical rite. We searched until we
found, with or without glasses, the faint,
heavenly spot of light-mist beyond the lower
left-hand comer of the Great Square of
Pegasus, when one or the other of us would
then recite:
That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.
It is as large as our......each night to feel appropriately small.
09 JUN 2011
If the Stars Only Came Out One Night in 1,000 Years
If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.This Emerson quote begs the question: What if we lived on a planet like Venus, where perpetual cloud coverage obscures the skies?
08 JUN 2011
A Beautiful Quote on Wonder
31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the
stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
From Walt Whitman on the wonder all around us. Especially enjoy the "a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars" part.
08 JUN 2011
The Potentiality of Matter
Early in the twenty-first century, the old dualism of matter and spirit seems irrelevant. In the new theories of physicists, the fundamental material particles—protons, neutrons, electrons—dissolve into a kind of cosmic music, all resonances, vibrations, and spooky entanglements. Matter has revealed itself as a thing of astonishing, almost immaterial subtlety The one property of matter that lingers is its potentiality. The hydrogen and helium atoms forged in the Big Bang possessed a built-in ...From simple hydrogen atoms, it is incredible what can become of matter.
02 JUN 2011
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only...Einstein describes the spiritual wonder of exploring nature, compared to the idea of a personal god.
18 MAY 2011
Wonder of the Natural World
Sun's nature as revealed by modern science
far more wonderful: no mere angels or gold coin, but an enormous
sphere into which a million Earths could be packed, in the core of
which the hidden nuclei of atoms are being jammed together,
hydrogen transfigured into helium, the energy latent in hydrogen
for billions of years released, the Earth and other planets warmed
and lit thereby, and the same process repeated four hundred
billion times elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy?
The blueprints, deta...Scientific explanations are so much more enchanting than supernatural.
08 MAY 2011
Science is a Profound Source of Spirituality
In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a littles short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.
[...]
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we r...Science instills a sense of awe and reverence, much like religion instills in its followers.
11 APR 2011
Atoms Within Our Bodies Still Release the Energy of an An...
Explosions are seldom one hundred per cent efficient. When a star ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and plutonium together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, is distributed around and scattered in space just as is the dust cloud from a hydrogen bomb test. Perhaps the strangest fact of all about our planet is that it consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb. Even today, aeons later, there is still enou...High amounts of uranium in the Earth's core suggest our sun was in the vicinity of a supernova event, and the atoms within our bodies, if measured with a Geiger counter, can be found to still be releasing the energy from that event.
05 APR 2011
The Many Ways the Universe Observes Itself
On this planet, and probably countless more, inanimate atoms became molecules which formed cells and over billions of years those cells evolved into complex organisms which finally became viruses, plants, animals, salamanders, banyan trees and human beings. Without giving it any thought, with no way to think it, the universe brought into existence a way of making itself seen.
There is more than one way to see. A leaf turns to the light. A chimpanzee selects a piece of fruit. A fish sees a sm...The Universe, without consciousness, evolved living things with consciousness and the ability to experience the Universe in a multitude of ways.
03 JAN 2011
The Beauty of Science
The world looks so different after learning science. For example, the trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is relased the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into trees, and in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth instead.Folksonomies: science ionian enchantment
Folksonomies: science ionian enchantment
We can see the world much more deeply after learning science.
01 JAN 2010
For Deists, A Fulfilling, Engaging Life Requires Science
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those things is the stu...Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism
Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism
Thomas Paine on why Ben Franklin was always alive and active in life, because he always had science to inspire him. Without it, he would have gone senile.
References
30 DEC 2013
An Address to Men of Science
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Carlile, Richard (1821), An Address to Men of Science, Retrieved on 2013-12-30Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: science
Folksonomies: science
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23 JUN 2013
Richard Feynman Fire
Audiovisual Media>Television Broadcast: Feynman, Richard (Unknown), Richard Feynman Fire, Retrieved on 2013-06-23Source Material [lybio.net]
1
23 JUN 2013
Every Night You Lose More Than A Pound While You're Aslee...
Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article: Krulwich, Robert (June 21, 2013), Every Night You Lose More Than A Pound While You're Asleep (For The Oddest Reason), National Public Radio, Retrieved on 2013-06-23Source Material [www.npr.org]
Folksonomies: biology respiration
Folksonomies: biology respiration
1
20 JUN 2012
Where is science going?
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Planck, Max (1932), Where is science going?, Retrieved on 2012-06-20Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: philosophy
Folksonomies: philosophy
1
08 JUN 2012
Sand-its Origin, Transportation, Abrasion and Accumulation
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Kuenen, Phillip H. (1956), Sand-its Origin, Transportation, Abrasion and Accumulation, The Geological Society of South Africa, Retrieved on 2012-06-08Source Material [books.google.com]
1
29 MAY 2012
Goethe On Science: An Anthology of Goethe's Scientific Wr...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Goethe , Johann Wolfgang von and Naydler , Jeremy (1996-01), Goethe On Science: An Anthology of Goethe's Scientific Writings, Retrieved on 2012-05-29Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: literary criticism
Folksonomies: literary criticism
1
18 MAR 2012
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Cummings, Bruce F. (1919), The Journal of a Disappointed Man, 27-8, Retrieved on 2012-03-18Source Material [books.google.com]
1
17 MAR 2012
The great equations
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Crease , Robert P. (2009-01-18), The great equations, W. W. Norton & Company, Retrieved on 2012-03-17Source Material [books.google.com]
1
02 JAN 2012
The Age of Wonder
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Holmes , Richard (2010-03-02), The Age of Wonder, Vintage, Retrieved on 2012-01-02Source Material [books.google.com]
43
02 JAN 2012
A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Herschel , John Frederick William (1831), A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, Retrieved on 2012-01-02Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: astronomy naturalism
Folksonomies: astronomy naturalism
1
01 JAN 2012
Carl Sagan's cosmic connection
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Sagan , Carl (2000-10-23), Carl Sagan's cosmic connection, Cambridge Univ Pr, Retrieved on 2012-01-01Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: science
Folksonomies: science
33
21 SEP 2011
Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Dawkins, Richard (2000-04-05), Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, Mariner Books, Retrieved on 2011-09-21
20
06 SEP 2011
On the trail of ancient man: A narrative of the field wor...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Andrews , Roy Chapman (1926), On the trail of ancient man: A narrative of the field work of the Central Asiatic Expeditions, Putnam, Retrieved on 2011-09-06
Folksonomies: paleontology
Folksonomies: paleontology
2
01 SEP 2011
History of Italian literature
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Sanctis , Francesco De (1968), History of Italian literature, Barnes & Noble, Retrieved on 2011-09-01
Folksonomies: history
Folksonomies: history
1
10 JUN 2011
The Book of Naturalists
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Beebe, William (1988-04-01), The Book of Naturalists, Princeton University Press, Retrieved on 2011-06-10
Folksonomies: naturalism naturalist
Folksonomies: naturalism naturalist
1
10 JUN 2011
Nature, Value, Duty: Life on Earth with Holmes Rolston, I...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Rolston III, Holmes (2010-11-29), Nature, Value, Duty: Life on Earth with Holmes Rolston, III (The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics), Springer, Retrieved on 2011-06-10
Folksonomies: naturalism
Folksonomies: naturalism
1
09 JUN 2011
Nature: Student Bargain Edition
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Emerson , Ralph Waldo (2010-09-09), Nature: Student Bargain Edition, CreateSpace, Retrieved on 2011-06-09Source Material [www.emersoncentral.com]
Folksonomies: nature naturalism
Folksonomies: nature naturalism
1
08 JUN 2011
Song of Myself: The First and Final Editions of the Great...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Whitman , Walt (2011-02-04), Song of Myself: The First and Final Editions of the Great American Poem, CreateSpace, Retrieved on 2011-06-08
Folksonomies: poetry naturalism
Folksonomies: poetry naturalism
2
08 JUN 2011
The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Raymo , Chet (2003-03-01), The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe, Walker & Company, Retrieved on 2011-06-08
Folksonomies: science naturalism
Folksonomies: science naturalism
21
02 JUN 2011
The World As I See It
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Einstein, Albert (2011-03-16), The World As I See It, Open Road / Philosophical Library, Retrieved on 2011-06-02
1
04 MAY 2011
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Sagan , Carl and Druyan , Ann (1997-02-25), The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books, Retrieved on 2011-05-04
48
11 APR 2011
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Lovelock, James (2000-11-23), Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, USA, Retrieved on 2011-04-11
10
05 APR 2011
A quintessence of dust
Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Ebert, Roger (March 30, 2011 7:21), A quintessence of dust, Chicago Tribune, Retrieved on 2011-04-05Source Material [blogs.suntimes.com]
2
03 JAN 2011
What Is Science?
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book Chapter: Feynman, Richard (1969), What Is Science?, The Physics Teacher, Vol 9, pp 313-320, American Association of Physics Teachers, Retrieved on 2010-11-13
5
01 JAN 2010
Age of Reason
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Paine, Thomas (1795), Age of Reason, Retrieved on -0001-11-30
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