At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.

Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear that they can ride into office.

Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.

We are the children equally of the Sky and the Earth.

We are the universe experiencing itself.

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.