There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.

If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky.

Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.