Taliya Mammadhasanzade’s Reviews > Human Universe: A Sunday Times Bestseller of Popular Science, Astronomy, and the Cosmos > Status Update

I think one of the primary barriers to progress is education. I am a believer in the innate rationality of human beings; given the right education, the right information and the right tuition in how to think about problems, I believe that people will make rational choices.

Science is a time machine, and it goes both ways. We are able to predict our future with increasing certainty. Our ability to act in response to these predictions will ultimately determine our fate. Science and reason make the darkness visible. I worry that lack of investment in science and a retreat from reason may prevent us from seeing further, making a meaningful response impossible.

Pg 120- One of the most important things to realise about engineering at the edge is that the only way to learn is to actually do it. You can’t think your way into space; you have to fly there. 👌🏻

Pg 124- “ I told them don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!”- Yuri Gagarin

As you get closer to North Pole, you’ll find you move closer together, and if you carry on all the way to Pole you’ll bump into each other. If you don’t know any better, then you may conclude that there is some kind of force pulling you both together.. physics we love!

The trick as an educated citizen of the 20th century is to realise that nature is far stranger and more wonderful than human imagination, and the only appropriate response to new discoveries is to enjoy one’s inevitable discomfort, take delight in being shown to be wrong and learn something ad a result.