Thursday, January 11, 2018

Metacognition?

“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 hearing and reading your peer's reactions during class about the listed quotation, what new insight can you add to this quotation analysis? Please respond. (Blog Response Due By Thurs., Jan. 18th at 2:30p.m.)

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

This quote makes me think about how society can pressure our minds to not ask questions we can't answer, and how it's important we keep the same curious mind we have as children. If we remain curious, we may be able to solve the greatest mysteries of nature and the universe. It's also interesting how some of the most complex things are in our everyday lives, and how complexity and mystery are all around us.

Anonymous said...

Reading this quote, I really started to realize that I am one of those people who never really think about why everything is the way that it truly is. As a child, I obviously didn't think about these things. Even in high school, I was never really asked why nature is the way it is or why we have gravity and I think that putting myself in a position to think about that more is interesting and complex.

Anonymous said...

After reading this I really understand how important philosophers are to society, if we just go blindly through life and always complete tasks based on a certain way that we are trained to do over and over again then we will never ask the important question. "Why?" why am i doing this, why am i doing it this way. etc. etc.

Anonymous said...

After reading this, I really don't know why our society changes so much. But thoughts and progression comes from our mindset which then causes us to think of what we do know and not know.Everyone is different but our personality of what might come next is the same. For example gravity or fire stays the same but there very different in many ways.

Anonymous said...

After hearing and reading my peer’s reactions about this listed quote, I really began to think about how all of these things came to be. Before now I never really gave it any thought, but I believe that humans will never be able to know if this could happen because it is beyond our knowledge. I also believe if the day comes where this does happen, we will not only wonder why, but also wonder how it happened. Along with this, we might never be able to figure this out.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote, I noticed that we just accept these complex ideas such as gravity, because they are always around, and always the same. Gravity doesn't change, it isn't stronger some days, and weaker other days, it is constant. Although it would be fun, I know gravity isn't going away.

Anonymous said...

After reading the quote, it made me realize how little I think about complex ideas. Since many ideas are around us, we just accept they are there and the theories about why the exist. Back in ancient times, they had no idea why these things existed, so they used myths to explain what they didn't know. We are similar to these ancient people because we avoid understanding these ideas and instead just live our lives, just avoiding them.

Anonymous said...

This quote almost made feel guilty about not noticing how amazing the nature things around us. I probably spend more then an hour on doing pointless stuff on my phone and so much less time appreciating the truly beautiful magic around us.

Anonymous said...

After I read the quote, I realized that people are so content with being fed information and not finding things out on their own. Ancient Greeks probably had no personal connection with their mythology. They probably had information fed to them, they did not look for the truth in it and simply believed it because everyone of their culture did. This is no different that Hawking and Sagan and the scientific advancements we have made. Of course, we believe we can explain everything with modern science, we are taught this is truth. Many people don't question it and are content with having scientists find the answers. But for all we know, we could be wrong about everything, yet people will not question the answers we have, people will not look for their own truths.

Anonymous said...

However cliche the thought, humanity has always taken advantage of the world around it. A lack of appreciation for things handed to humans every day only help us to neglect questioning the origin of such natural phenomenons. Without gravity or atoms or the possibility of life on this earth, humanity would be nothing, let alone completely eradicated from the universes history. Anyhow, humanity exists and all this machinery that we fundamentally depend on according to Carl Sagan, is handed to us on the daily and we continue to accept it because we have never had to inspect the faults of such a machine as the earth. Had the earth stopped providing us with elemental attributes, we would have began questioning what brought us about so perfectly. But due to the nature of our lives we don't question what we don't have to, because why fix something that isn't broken? So in order to force some kind of explanation for the curious minds of the world, people believe in all kinds of myths, stories, and religions rather than beg the boundaries of science to explain how life came about.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote , I feel like we (humans) don't appreciate the things we have in life, Nor pay attention to the little details which is a problem for our society. I also feel like we need to be more curious in our everyday life because that will lead to more solving which Is a good thing.

Anonymous said...

After reading the quote, it made me realize how many things are unknown. and yes there is a limit to what humans will learn because some things are impossible to figure out. But the thing about humanity is that we will spend countless hours in labs or on research sites to figure out the mysteries of the world but will never learn everything. This quote also made me think about a lot of little things that I depend on every day that I have no idea how it operates like my phone. I relate this to the quote because in a represent the majority of the human race on the earth who honestly don't care how gravity works or the sun.

Anonymous said...

After reading that quote, I'd like to add a reason as to why people don't think that much in this day in age. The general population is so concerned with what's just one step ahead, what someone on Twitter said about them, how many likes they got on their Instagram picture, etc. Rarely do people take a break from looking down at what they're doing, whether it's their loads of work, phones, Netflix, and look up into the sky and just wonder. Especially in the United States, work and social media consume most people's lives now and look mainly at what they need and want to do in the moment, instead of taking that time to just imagine and question and take the time to really delve deep into why they have their phone, how it was made, why they're doing the work that they're doing. It's all about thinking about the next 10 seconds nowadays.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote I would like to add the concept that people these days don't think. Most odd them will take it day by day more worried what their followers on Instagram think about them and how they can get more likes on the pictures that they take. They don't take the time to sit back and think about the complex things that we encounter in our lives every day like global warming, pollution, human rights etc. That'sone of the reasons why I personally love science. It lets you look at the world in a new light and gives you the chance to try and explain or make sense of the world and its problems. Even though not a lot of the world thinks some of it does. The problem is this poem shows how little people actually do. I just wish that more people actually cared and thought about the world's problems because, with the power of the human mind and enough people we could put an end to our problems, we just don't have enough people thinking yet.

Anonymous said...

After reading this, it made me think about how we keep explanations in the back of our minds and use them when we want to think about it and how we learn to accept others beliefs. We go day by day without thinking about how things are explained and we use the ideas and stories given to us to explain it. We continue to learn about how we were created, but everything is a theory, and nothing is set in stone. People are willing to accept an explanation and not question it because of who has said it. For example, Greek Mythology was considered very important to scholars and people of importance, so when others saw that the top people believed it, they saw it as important to themselves as well.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote I realized that once people get older most of them stop asking questions because they take the things around them for granted. Kids however still have questions because they are curious. SO what i'm saying is once people go through school they are mostly taught that things are what they are.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote I realized that no one ever thinks about the grand scheme of things. Everyone gets so wrapped up in their daily life: school, emotions, work, etc, and no one ever stops to think about how none of it matters. The universe is so big and our existence means nothing, we are the dust bunnies of the universe. I think people should want to learn more about all the amazing things that enable us to be here today. We think that children don't know a lot, but in reality nobody really knows anything for sure. We should all take the time to enjoy life because it is a miracle that we are here in the first place.

Anonymous said...

When reading this quote I thought a lot about how when sometimes I learn little facts about the world my mind is blown. I also thought about the beach and how beautiful it is and the stars and how little I actually know about things I love. I also think that that's normal and okay because a lot of other people don't know much about the world. This post also inspires me to want to go out and learn more about the world.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote, it talks about how many of us don't pay enough attention to the world around us whether it be the sky, stars, or the ground we stand on. This isn't all that surprising because a lot of my generation will have their faces in their phones almost all day unless someone takes it or talks to them. This post just makes me want to explore the world and actually ask and maybe try to find out how many universes are there or how the world is like it is today.

Anonymous said...

Reading this quote makes me think about how important philosophers are in society, giving us explanations on unexplainable things but also playing a role in our everyday life. I think it is key to be able to remain curious and interested in the unanswerable questions and maybe one day we can get answers.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote, it makes me think that humans don't appreciate or consider all of the little things happening around us all of the time. We take everything for granted and don't even imagine what life would be like without them. Everyone should spend more time appreciating everything around them instead of what's on their phone screen.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me heavily of Transcendentalism, due to similarities of the idea that humans too often ignore the world around us and the beauty we seemingly always take for granted. It makes me think that if we spent more time asking why and how than we did accepting constants such as the sun rising and setting each day than maybe we would have a better insight on life and on our universe.

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote I realize that as humans we come to comprehend these complex things and accept them. Not because we totally understand them, but more so because others do, and write and tell about them. For example, I do not fully understand atoms and how gravity works, but someone does and because of them I know what atoms are and what gravity is

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote I think it truly shows how everything we do everyday revolves around science and how it created our universe. No one really stops to think about how we got on this earth and how everything truly happened. It is truly mind boggling how the Earth was supposedly created. I think people mostly our age don't ask enough questions because we are just hearing information and believing it.

Anonymous said...

After reading and reviewing the quote many times, I realized how little most people actually comprehend the forces that are complex and hard to explain thoroughly. Most people choose to ignore these things and go about life ignorant to what makes the world spin. Especially at our age,very few of us ask the big questions. I myself have thought and tried to answer a few of these big questions to the best of my ability and after i gave myself an answer that sounds like it could be right, I haven't questioned it anymore. I haven't challenged my own views again after i came to a conclusion

Anonymous said...

After reading this quote, most people comprehend the forces as complex and not very clear. It makes one think what someone in Greece really believed in. Most people our age do not ask bigger questions about deeper meanings.