On Being Quotes

“In broad terms, the Second Law asserts that things get worse. A bit more specifically, it acknowledges that matter and energy tend to disperse in disorder. Left to itself, matter crumbles and energy spreads. The chaotic motion of molecules of a gas results in them spreading through the container the gas occupies. The vigorous jostling of atoms in a hot lump of metal jostles the atoms in its cooler surroundings, the energy spreads away, and the metal cools. That’s all there is to natural change: spreading in disorder. The astonishing thing, though, is that this natural spreading can result in the emergence of exquisite form. If the spreading is captured in an engine, then bricks may be hoisted to build a cathedral. If the spreading occurs in a seed, then molecules may be hoisted to build an orchid. If the spreading occurs in your body, then random electrical and molecular currents in your brain may be organized into an opinion.

The spreading of matter and energy is the root of all change. Wherever change occurs, be it corrosion, corruption, growth, decay, flowering, artistic creation, exquisite creation, understanding, reproduction, cancer, fun, accident, quiet or boisterous enjoyment, travel, or just simple pointless motion it is an outward manifestation of this inner spring, the purposeless spreading of matter and energy in ever greater disorder. Like it or not, purposeless decay into disorder is the spring of all change, even when that change is exquisite or results in seemingly purposeful action.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“My own faith, my scientific faith, is that there is nothing that the scientific method cannot illuminate and elucidate. Its revelations and insights add immeasurably to the pleasure of being alive. My faith respects the powerful ability of the collective human intelligence, which initially groped for understanding through myth but now gives us the capacity to comprehend and, optimistically, given time and given cooperation between brains, will do so without limit. The scientific method is a distillation of common sense in alliance with honesty, and its discoveries illuminate the world. Unlike myth-making, which is entertainment in alliance with the desperation of sought but thwarted understanding, that illumination is the sound and firm foundation for the joy of true comprehension.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“As might also be suspected, there are equally conflicting absolute certainties about the precise timing of the Rapture. The choice here is between the unarguable certainty that the Tribulation will precede the Rapture and the equally unarguable certainty that the opposite is true and that the Rapture will precede the Tribulation. Historically, compromise has usually been far from theological debate, where hands typically have been found to lie itchingly closer to swords, but so important are Last Things that happily one is available here, for it is also held to be absolutely certain by some that the Rapture will take place exactly in the middle of the seven-year Tribulation. Spoiling for a fight, though, equally certain to others, brooking no dispute, is the fact that the Rapture will come close to the end of the Tribulation, with a rump of the latter still to run. Happily for the Born Agains, it is also absolutely certain that for them, but not for the unprescient chumps who have not got themselves Born Again, the Rapture will enrapt true believers just in the nick of time at the start of the Tribulation leaving the erstwhile chumps the chance of quickly getting Born Again and being rapt at the end of the Tribulation.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“As far as relevant myths are concerned we are in the world of ‘eschatology’, the discourse on Last Things (from the Greek words eskhatos, last, and logia, discourse). Eschatological matters are of the highest importance to some, for they illuminate the whole point of being. The faithful take the view that matters of the First Importance are illuminated by the discussion of Last Things, for they, the latter, are the consummation of being and the apotheosis of existence; in short, things not to be sneezed at. To the more sceptical, there is the suspicion that nowhere else in speculative discourse has so much endless nonsense been written. The sceptical, I suspect, consider that if normal theological discourse and myths in general are the Himalaya of nonsense, then eschatology is the Martian Olympus Mons, towering miles above petty terrestrial Everests.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“Like greater understanding coming from giants standing on the shoulders of earlier giants, the information in our genes has grown through the ages with information pitted against information, serendipitous junk waking up to discover that it is information, in an ever-changing arena. If you favour deep understanding without relinquishing wonder, or more positively and strongly, favour doubling wonder through deepening understanding, then bask in the illumination of that extraordinarily potent idea, that all living things have merely stumbled into their brief interlude of life. Not only are we stardust, we are the children of chaos.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“Life is easy to identify but remarkably difficult to define. Too tight a definition excludes what looks like life and too loose captures too much. The capacity to self-replicate is a component of the definition, but not without its problems, as a mule is alive but sterile, and computer software can replicate itself, but we do not, in all honesty, think of it as being alive. It might be tempting to ascribe livingness to an entity that has emerged by evolution, but that would exclude the first living entity and any that we might synthesize from scratch in future. Organisms are organized structures; but so is an integrated circuit. Organisms are organized structures built and sustained by the flux of energy through their interiors and its dissipation into the surroundings; but so are the patterns of convection that can arise in heated liquids and, indeed, the atmosphere, to give rise to the weather: think tornado and hurricane. All known organisms are built from compounds of carbon; but if we succeeded in building a replicating, conscious, self-sustaining, energy-dissipating entity from silicon, would we deny that it was alive? Is a virus alive?”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“Creationism, though not a science, is of interest to science. Just as a dead frog pinned to a dissecting board is a legitimate object of study (and once done in schools when real science, rather than its sociological shadow, the scientific method, was studied), so Creationism can be pinned down and studied. Instead of the frog’s entrails, we need to study the psychological and cultural viscera of faith’s attack on reason. What drives individuals away from rational investigation? What drives whole groups of individuals to embrace faith, and specifically this peculiar distortion of faith, in place of the intellectual appreciation of the cosmos? How is it that faith can overpower intellect? Maybe it is fear; maybe it is cultural conditioning; maybe it is simple mental laziness; whatever, it is something not particularly admirable in the psyche.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“Then there is the extraordinary marriage of observation and mathematics. Mankind, and for some perhaps sociological reason it has been mostly man kind, has developed a sinewy language of the utmost rigour and austerity that has proved to be the perfect tool for teasing out objectively the consequences of an imaginative qualitative leap or of adding spine to a whim so that it can stand up to the harshness of quantitative comparison of prediction with observation. I hasten to add that mathematics does not appear explicitly in this book, but it does lie as a hidden deep foundation beneath it.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“In preparation for our journey in which we shall nose around among the myths that a collaboration of ignorance and deep concern have jointly inspired, I would like to establish in broad terms my vision of the nature and limitations, if any, of the scientific method. I suspect that few would disagree that science is competent when it comes to the fabrication of novel stuff and novel applications of stuff in general. That, I believe, is not an issue to delay us. Nor shall I linger on the argument about whether these novel stuffs, including better medicines, better and more abundant foods, better fabrics, better modes of communication and transport, better modes of entertainment, and so on, weighed against the social costs, including better ways of killing, injuring our environment, and accidentally or intentionally maiming, add overall to the sum of human happiness. I focus instead on the ability of the scientific method to illuminate matters of great human concern and drive out ignorance while retaining wonder.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence