"The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having." "It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos -- but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come".  

"So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth's surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal."

"Consider again that dot That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "supreme leader", every "superstar", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

(The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet) Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. And the score is our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known, the pale blue dot.”

The End!

Jeg har personligt et håb for fremtidens generationer.

I det hele taget er det egentlig også spændende at forholde sig til en masse af de forskellige områder, evner og tendenser, der krydser vidt forskellige arter. Og dertil kan også anbefales nogle af de artikler der bliver linket til i artiklen (Det kræver dog i tilfælde et abonnement til Scientific American). Men jeg kan også anbefale denne dokumentar "Ape Genuis" eller denne artikel (Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals) fra New Scientist.

George Carlin - Religion is Bullshit
 

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6355052276934735419&ei=&hl=en]

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1242170100697316675&q=&hl=en]

Big Brains
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6228357441125851602&q=source:002788482592262280686&hl=en]

Copycats
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3758624779894885245&q=source:002788482592262280686&hl=en]

The Language of the Body
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7419380608243936820&q=history+language&ei=RCRBSOrfKIPeigLN5aXtCQ&hl=En]

The Hunting Ape
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3723678050599653349&q=history%20language&hl=en]

The Human Zoo
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7742555242441801307&q=history%20language&hl=en]

Biology of Love
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1736532196355494095&q=history%20language&hl=en]

The Immortal Gene
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8180327207614740828&q=history%20language&hl=en]

Beyond Survival
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=288620113099989944&q=history%20language&hl=en]

In addition to my own knowledge and insights about his scientific and skeptical contributions, I have made extensive use of the two excellent narrative biographies by William Poundstone (1999) and Keay Davidson (1999). Poundstone is stronger on Sagan’s science, Davidson on his personal history. Neither, however, emphasizes his role as a skeptic.

Sagans tilgang til verden er stadig meget relevant med alverdens forskellige former for overtro, der i mere eller mindre grad styrer folks liv på godt og ondt. Og ligeledes i tilgangen til hvordan vi skal anskue verden i mere håndbribelige omstændigheder; om nationalisme, ideologier, religioner. Men først og fremmest i forbindelse med at søge at forstå verden omkring os gennem en skeptisk tilgang, gennem en videnskabelig tilgang.

Sagan’s most important contributions in his final years were in the struggle against pseudoscience. Throughout the last decade of the millennium, this scourge of public irrationality grew, as astrology, alien abductions, alternative medicine, and any number of other New Age and “millennial” fads and cults gained in popularity. Sagan fought back, and after the death of his friend Isaac Asimov, his was the voice most often heard in defense of scientific reason in the United States.
...
The Demon-Haunted World, subtitled Science as a Candle in the Dark, was a passionate defense of science against pseudoscience and irrationality, as illustrated in the following quotes. “It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring [that may be]. . . . Superstition and pseudoscience keep getting in the way [of understanding nature], providing easy answers, dodging skeptical scrutiny, casually pressing our awe buttons and cheapening the experience, making us routine and comfortable practitioners as well as victims of credulity. . . . [Pseudoscience] ripples with gullibility. . . . The tenants of skepticism do not require an advanced degree to master, as most successful used car buyers demonstrate. The whole idea of democratic application of skepticism is that everyone should have the essential tools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowledge. . . . But the tools of skepticism are generally unavailable to the citizens of our society. . . .Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those in power, a skeptic might suggest, have a vested interest in discouraging skepticism”

Og så lige introduktionen til serien Cosmos: