tut comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Thomas 01 January 2012 10:28AM

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Comment author: MixedNuts 02 January 2012 02:20:33PM 13 points [-]

The ultimate theological question is: ‘Where does the Sun go at night?’.

The answer that so many civilisations agreed for so long was: ‘The Sun is driven by one of the gods, and at night it goes under the Earth to fight a battle. There is at least some risk that the god will lose this battle, and so the Sun may not rise tomorrow’. It’s something the human race understood was a cast iron fact before they knew how to cast iron. It survived as the working model twenty-five times longer than the four hundred years we’ve understood the Earth goes around the Sun.

Lance Parkin, Above us only sky

This is less a rationality quote than a "yay science" quote, but I find that impressive beyond words. For millenia that was a huge and frightening question, and then we went and answered it, and now it's too trivial to point out. We found out where the sun goes at night. I want to carve a primer on cosmology in gold letters on a mountain, entitled something in all caps along the lines of "HERE IS THE GLORY OF HUMANKIND".

Comment author: tut 03 January 2012 06:29:45PM 2 points [-]

I want to carve a primer on cosmology in gold letters on a mountain

Do you mean cosmology or astronomy?

Comment author: MixedNuts 05 January 2012 02:40:59PM 5 points [-]

Both. Cosmological content: "stuff goes around other stuff"; astronomical content: "this applies to the stuff we sit on"; philosophical content: "finding this out proves we are awesome"; gastronomical content: "here's a recipe for cake to celebrate".