Words for the Day - 2/1/11
2/1/11
If the name Peter Atkins doesn't sound familiar, you should check your chemistry textbooks because there is a good chance he had a hand in writing them. He is a world-renowned chemist, a well-known atheist, and a member of both the Oxford University Scientific Society and the The Reason Project. Putting aside his countless textbook contributions, his best work probably comes in his books directed to the public including The Creation, Creation Revisited, Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, and The Four Laws That Drive The Universe. The majority of his works deal with creation, thermodynamics, energy, and change, all displaying his wit and superb penchant for writing. The following are two excerpts from his wonderful book Creation Revisited.
"When we have dealt with the values of the fundamental constants by seeing that they are unavoidably so, and have dismissed them as irrelevant, we shall have arrived at complete understanding. Fundamental science then can rest. We are almost there. Complete knowledge is just within our grasp. Comprehension is moving across the face of the Earth, like the sunrise."
"When we have dealt with the values of the fundamental constants by seeing that they are unavoidably so, and have dismissed them as irrelevant, we shall have arrived at complete understanding. Fundamental science then can rest. We are almost there. Complete knowledge is just within our grasp. Comprehension is moving across the face of the Earth, like the sunrise."
"The frailty of molecules, though, raises questions. Why has the universe not already collapsed into unreactive slime? If molecules were free to react each time they touched a neighbour, the potential of the world for change would have been realized long ago. Events would have taken place so haphazardly and rapidly that the rich attributes of the world, like life and its own self-awareness, would not have had time to grow.
The emergence of consciousness, like the unfolding of a leaf, relies upon restraint. Richness, the richness of the perceived world and the richness of the imagined worlds of literature and art — the human spirit — is the consequence of controlled, not precipitate, collapse."
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