“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 Thursday's class about
the listed quotation, what new insight can you add to this quotation
analysis? Please respond. (Blog Response Due By Thurs. 8-30-12 at
2:30p.m.)
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32 comments:
As we grow older, society presses upon us the fact that imagination isn't important anymore. As we make that transition into the business world, there is less time for imagination and there is more requirements on facts. When we are kids, all we know is imagination. We could pretend we were astronauts, doctors, or police men. Imagination is what the ancient Greek world was all about. Even though the gods and stories might be silly, they grasped onto it to give themselves an idea of how the world was created.
I see that as humans grow older they lose most of their imagination and curiosity and replace their thinking with reasons and boundaries. "Or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know." This quote shows that if we think beyond our normal metacognitive boxes, we can achieve much more than and find out more than what is already there.
I agree with the message of the quote, as we grow up, we obtain a voice of education, this voice of education actually silences us because we are taught one or two solutions at school. we are not taught to keep an open mind and the result is the future thinking very similar. The best thinkers are the ones who get past this and have an open mind to everyone. what if i asked you how many uses a paper clip has? the average high school student could think of 20 uses, 30 maybe. children could think of over 200 uses, this has been proven in an education reform debate, as people went through education and schooling, their open mindedness to solutions gradually decreased. i never specified the paper clip was of that of what we know, a child's imagination is a near infinite thing that education destroys, we need to be more like these kids, we need to think about things and wonder why. Nash J
I believe that as children we don't know much of the world around us so we decide to ask the questions that we need to understand the world. After a while we realize that there are no answers to these questions. Once we figure that out I believe that we just give up on trying to question everything that we see and hear.
"Old things are passes away; behold, all things are become new." After reading the quote in our mythology book and reading this quote I can connect the two because it kind of shows that nature changes at all times. If we don't ask those questions sometimes we will never know how the world changes and how we ourselves change with the earth.
After reading this, I can see that like children, early man was trying to understand the universe and what was happening around them. However children now can ask adults and get the answers for what is happening. Early man didn't have that, they only got to rely on the stories that had been passed down or to come up with their own rationalization for what was going on.
As a child, we are always curious about why things happen. When we grow, we learn to accept that we may not always understand everything around us. The Greeks created these myths to answer all of their questions in life. They would pass it down to younger generations and it would become facts to them. They used it to explain why bad things in life happen and may have used it as a way to avoid these things in the past. They may have believed that a natural disaster occurred because a god was angry with the humans. It was their way of answering all of the questions that we wonder about but may not have a specific answer to.
This quote by Carl Sagan really puts the world in perspective. Humans really don’t know a lot about the world. We humans also have this sense that someday we will figure everything out. So I feel this quote really is saying that we humans must ask the simple questions like, like why does the wind blow or why is there gravity? To really understand the more complex things that we wish to understand better. A good example of more complex ideas to the simple ideas is the recently discovered Higgs Boson particle, The people of Cern theorize that the Higgs Boson is what gives atoms mass. And to our knowledge mass is what creates gravity.
We do have people who ask these questions, but our society pushes them away. It is a failing of our culture to push away the scientists and the philosophers who ask these important questions. We view them as “elitest” or “snotty” and we fail to realize that we are pushing away a deep and important part of our culture. The quote in the blog shows how our society needs to be creative in order to stay interesting.
As human beings it is our job to question everything. That is what we are encouraged to do in our everyday life. But quite often when we ask those tough questions, we aren’t satisfied with the answer. Even children, who often understand more than we do as teenagers and adults, question things. How can we continue to question things when we don’t like the answer. Well, this is what we have stories for! Stories challenge us to think outside the box! Even though society makes us question everything, stories may not give us the right answer, but they do give us a likeable answer!
I think that this quote is talking about how when we're kids we question everything and want to know why things are the way that they are. When we grow up we tend to just accept the way things are and we don't question how they got there.
I think that when he says "Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions…" He is correct and that we need to ask more questions about how the world works; we find something that we have the majority of the information for but not all of it and we just go along with it because a scientist said it. We should be more like children and ask more questions that may just sound simple, why don't we know the answer when they ask such simple questions that are just things that we have learned to accept as we have grown older. How much more advanced could we be if we asked simple questions like children?
I believe that this quote is true because as humans change and get to be adults their wanting to know about the changing of the world decreases until finally they don't care at all. The imagination of little kids keeps them wondering about what happens and as we grow up we assume we know about everything and chose not to care anymore.
I agree with Nate. We live in such a fast paced world, that people simply don't have the time to appreciate the world around them. Children are to young to be swept up in the world around them, so they can wonder the basic things that make life so special, that most take for granted. If everyone were to stop for a minute, breath, and take a good look around them, I think the world would be in a better place.
What Carl Sagan is trying to make a point aobut is that we dont have the time in this world today to pay any attention on why we are actually here ; instead we are here sort of like robots that do the same thing everyday to be as successfull and happy as possible before our time is up.
What Carl Sagan is trying to make a point aobut is that we dont have the time in this world today to pay any attention on why we are actually here ; instead we are here sort of like robots that do the same thing everyday to be as successfull and happy as possible before our time is up.
feel like the quote is accurate that children don’t know enough not to ask, not because children are more curious than adults or more adventurous, but because they don’t know about beliefs and conflict between those beliefs. As soon as middle school, every person has beliefs they hold close to and defend against others. If you were to ask a astrologist and a priest where the universe came from, well then there starts a huge debate. Children do not understand what’s wrong with different opinions so they feel free to say anything they please.
feel like the quote is accurate that children don’t know enough not to ask, not because children are more curious than adults or more adventurous, but because they don’t know about beliefs and conflict between those beliefs. As soon as middle school, every person has beliefs they hold close to and defend against others. If you were to ask a astrologist and a priest where the universe came from, well then there starts a huge debate. Children do not understand what’s wrong with different opinions so they feel free to say anything they please.
As we grow older we lose our questions to our wonders because we can't understand yet exactly why things are the way they are. We are unable to accept that there are things we can't fully understand as children, but when we grow up we accept that fact that we won't understand everything about everything. This loss of interest results in humans living in a world that we know little about even to things right around us
I think this quote is saying that many people don't ask the important questions anymore. I'm sure that everyone has pondered about time traveling, how the universe came to be and many others things that cannot possibly be answered by humans. Nowadays, people don't really talk about this in normal conversations. They just talk about what's going on in their own little corner. I guess, people aren't amazed by what they see in nature very much anymore and instead look to technological advancements to surprise them and make them think.
I think this quote is saying that many people don't ask the important questions anymore. I'm sure that everyone has pondered about time traveling, how the universe came to be and many others things that cannot possibly be answered by humans. Nowadays, people don't really talk about this in normal conversations. They just talk about what's going on in their own little corner. I guess, people aren't amazed by what they see in nature very much anymore and instead look to technological advancements to surprise them and make them think.
I believe that the older we get the more we have experienced, or less, and we just take things such as gravity holding us down, or the sun giving us light, or atoms being the building blocks for life, for granted. Except when you are a child when you have not woken up each day and still been held to earth.
I believe that the older we get the more we have experienced, or less, and we just take things such as gravity holding us down, or the sun giving us light, or atoms being the building blocks for life, for granted. Except when you are a child when you have not woken up each day and still been held to earth.
When we are young the world is a big place. The questions we ask are less about the future and more about the world we live in. When we grow older though we worry more about the future and how to protect the earth then we were younger.
When we are young the world is a big place. The questions we ask are less about the future and more about the world we live in. When we grow older though we worry more about the future and how to protect the earth then we were younger.
EliseL
personally i have wondered about certain things and questioned different things i’ve seen. i don’t think people want to take the time to question things the way some people do because they just want to go about their daily lives. i ave noticed that as we grow up we do lose our imagination and we don’t question things as much, we learn to go with the flow and follow our instincts.
I agree with the quote. I say this because people are so caught up in their own lives, problems, and jobs that they never really have the time to question the universe. It seems as though everyone is to busy to stop for one minute and ask, "why is that?" At least I hope it's that and people haven't just stopped caring.
I agree with the quote, we are all so caught up with our lives, problems, and jobs that we don't take the time to ask questions as the early greeks did. We all just need to take one minute and just appreciate the universe and it's vast mysteries. I hope we can do this before people forget about it all together
I don't think that as we grow up we begin to care less, I believe that since we all have to have a schedule to survive in our own society in order to eat, sleep, and keep ourselves in good health, we don't have time to be curious about the things around us. However there are those brief moments when your going about your everyday life and then some random comment or object sent our way sparks a question in our head. Sometimes if the question is good enough we will pursue it and ask our friends or neighbors the same question hoping they might be able to answer it or have the same amount of interest in it. But unfortunately since our society has gone on so long with being used to not paying attention to the world around them that the question will be abruptly doused by sarcasm or ignored. Sometimes someones religion will be questioned and people will immediately shut the question down because they fear being wrong about something they rely so heavily on that has been believed to be right for generations. Maybe thats why we don't question the world around us, we are afraid of being wrong and of what the truth really is.
I see that as humans grow older they lose most of their imagination and curiosity and replace their thinking with reasoning. "Or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know." This quote shows that if we think beyond our ‘limits’, we can achieve much more and find out more than what has been told to us.
As technological advances rapidly increase, I feel like older generations are either strictly relying on technology or not at all. Since we have things that will think for us or makes our imagination come to life, older people have no interest in asking questions anymore. But I believe that the youth of today ask so many questions because of technology. They see something on t.v. or in a movie and they begin to get curious; even going to school or playing outside sparks their imagination.
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