“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it is always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
-Carl Sagan
From an introduction to A Brief History of Time
By Stephen Hawking
After reading your peer's writing responses during Tuesday's class about the listed quotation, what new insight can you add to this quotation analysis? Please respond.
26 comments:
Some new insight that I gained from reading my peers thoughts was I could focus more on the part of how much we don't know about the world. Also alot of papers had great hooks, so i'll also have to revise my hook.
The insight that i got as a result from reading other people's papers was that there is a big differance from how the Greeks aprroced life and hoe we approch life. There is so much that people are missing by not paying attention to what we can do to make the world better. I think that was one of the main things that most of the papers that I read pointed out.
Just from reading some of my classmates' papers I could tell that they shared the opinion that "we go about our daily lives knowing almost nothing of the world." Everyone, that I read at least, agreed that we are missing out by not noticing the world around us. They expounded on the idea presented by Carl Sagan that we don't really seem to care how and why the world works, as long as it does. I think that as long as we're content, we will probably continue to progress through life in that way.
The most significant insight I gained from reading both the papers of my classmates as well as their comments on my own paper is that the early Greeks helped to established the modern way of thinking, through philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
When I wrote my paper, I had a totally different view on the quote and what is has to do with today's society. After reading all of the papers, I do realize that people don't really care about what is going on in the world. They just care about what they have to do and how everyone is affecting them. if people just stopped and thought about what is going on and think about others.
i thought that many of my classmates made great comments on how there are so many things we dont know and are to lazy to try and figure out.
After reading my peers comments i realized many of them shared the same opinions on how we dont take notice of the world anymore.Also many people wrote about the greeks and how they asked the tough questions back then.
Through reading my peers paper and some of my comments I believe that Sagan was trying to say how the human mind could be so great, yet why are we holding back. I disagree with what mckenna said because I think that Sagan did care about how the world worked and why humans have not been learning how the world works. Sagan is asking the question of why aren't people asking the right questions. I agree with steven m with how the Greeks thought and asked questions the way that Sagan wants humans to do it.
New insight into Carl Sagans qoute that I gathered from reading everyones papers was the common thought of how we could and should question events around us. Some of the papers even said that we should think like children to simplify are views which would inevitably lead to some understanding into events that occur daily that we don't have answers to.
A new idea that I gathered from the other papers, is that Sagan might be saying that we are ignorant. The way I had looked at it, is that we are all too caught up in the knowledge that we already have, in order to question things and gain new knowledge. But now, I realised that you can look at Sagan's quote and see that he is could be saying thatcwe are ignorant because we just ignore everything around us, not because of knowledge we allready contain, but instead because we are just uninterested.
From what my peers wrote I could start to compose a new view of the quote and what Sagan meant. I didn’t look close enough to the point that Sagan was trying to get across. It is not that we don’t know how the world worked but why are people not asking the right questions. I believe Dustin spoke of this in his response/paper.
When reading the various students papers, i recieved insight that i hadn't thought of before, such as what might become of our society in the future, and whether we are as brilliant a race as we think. I also realized that some students werent completely compensating what was being asked of them. They said things like, " we need to think more about how pencils are made, and thats what Sagan meant."
But, all in all, all of the class insights put together really gets to the core of the matter and dissects the issue that Sagan is trying to address.
After reading other students' blogs, it seems that we all agree on a couple of the same general ideas. One, that we don't take time to appreciate all the awesome wonders of the world and the way it works. Two, most people seem to agree with Sagan in the sense that the children who ask questions are really the wise ones who will go far in life.
From reading and commenting on others papers I felt my class mates had good insights about children in the qoute. Saying they are the ones that ask "all the questions" as apposed to us. The part I got out of readings others papers and comments was that children are simply not afraid of asking questions. We as men and woman tend to be shy and intimidated in front of large crowds. Thinking that people will just think there stupid and weird. So we no longer bother with going deep and truly understanding the world.
After reading comments about my paper and reading my peers' papers I realized that nobody seems to consider the fact that earth is said to be "a speck on a speck on a speck," when noticing the immensity of our galaxy and the entire universe, and we humans, as a whole, know only a handfull of information about our planet. Humans enjoy pleasure. And as a whole we are not driven to define ourselves as a result. This is one of the biggest mysteries and most of us do not seem to care enough. So yes, stop and smell the roses, but also figure out why we want to smell them in the first place anyways.
I disagree with that quote because people do think about all of that stuff now. Although I do agree with the part that says kids ask the best questions.
First and foremost, i apologize for posting so late. I hope I can at least get partial credit for what I post. What insight I most learned from my peers is that in the basic scheme of things, we spend so much time searching for the questions in life, that we do not take the time to seek the answers. A majority of humanity has succumbed to a existence of laziness, who are much more content on having certain people (scientists, historians, etc.) find the answers for them rather than finding the answers themselves
I find it interesting that whether students agree or disagree with Sagan's statement, it forced them to think; Sagan was complaining about the lack of thought in our society, and therefore his quote accomplished what he wanted.
It is always good to stop and think about the meaning behind something even when you think you know the answer already. That is why reading my peers' responses was so valuable, I learned things that I didn't even consider on my own.
These questions are designed to take ones level of thinking about the existence of the universe to the next level by providing propositions for subjects to be considered. It seems as though the class agrees that the point of the quotation is to shift the readers perspective of what is important so that it includes issues that are complex but taken for granted. I think this needs to be extended to include the idea that the way of thinking that can bring answers to these fundamental questions is far more important than any answer that it could produce.
I found that the class had very insightful comments. If you think about it, it's crazy how everything comes together and works in life. Nobody ever cares about things that seem so basic and routine, but when you do it blows your mind.
All of everyones opinions matter and what carl sagan thought was right but i do believe that children ask more questions because they have that spark for learning. As we grow up we think we know all about how life works to ask questions. We begin to lose that spark and it hurts us in the long run. We hardly know anything about how stuff "really" works. My classmates believe the same exact thing, that we need to start learning more and become more intune with the world around us.
One of the biggest things i got out of reading my peers papers was that im not the only one who thinks about waht goes on in our world. ya most everyone agreed that we are all missing something in our life but by everyone saying that we miss out in somethin, why doesnt someone do something about it? if we see it and notice it why do we all choose to ignore it? i think we should do something about what we are missing.
I think that Afoyle is dead on. I too agree that most people feel that its more than enough to believe what people tell them to be true instead of truly expiriencing the questions that plagues their thoughts. Why would they settle simply on the "thoughts and experiences" of someone else. Especially if it is something that really means something to them or something as big as their own thoughts.
Post a Comment