I Would Suggest That Science Is, At

We Are, In The Most Profound Sense, Children Of The Cosmos.

The Library Connects Us With The Insight And Knowledge, Painfully Extracted From Nature, Of The Greatest Minds That Ever Were, With The Best Teachers, Drawn From The Entire Planet And From All Our History, To Instruct Us Without Tiring, And To Inspire Us To Make Our Own Contribution To The Collective Knowledge Of The Human Species.

Think Of How Many Religions Attempt To Validate Themselves With Prophecy. Think Of How Many People Rely On These Prophecies, However Vague, However Unfulfilled, To Support Or Prop Up Their Beliefs. Yet Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? ... No Other Human Institution Comes Close.

Cosmos Is A Greek Word For The Order Of The Universe. It Is, In A Way, The Opposite Of Chaos. It Implies The Deep Interconnectedness Of All Things. It Conveys Awe For The Intricate And Subtle Way In Which The Universe Is Put Together.

In The Middle 1970s An Astronomer I Admire Put Together A Modest Manifesto Called "objections To Astrology" And Asked Me To Endorse It. I Struggled With His Wording, And In The End Found Myself Unable To Sign, Not Because I Thought Astrology Has Any Validity Whatever, But Because I Felt (and Still Feel) That The Tone Of The Statement Was Authoritarian.