James Burke: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Self - Host : Whatever your domestic circumstances these days--palace or one-room flat--your life is structured pretty much the same way by science and technology, isn't it? I mean, look what we all take for granted. The power that comes out of the wall. That's just a bit of it. We fly to the moon, engineer genes, computerize nature to play with it and find out how it works. We shoot film in the Empress Maria Theresa's Palace in Vienna so you can watch it on TV. We boil water to make steam to drive turbines to produce the current to make music come out of the air. Or not. And we expect to go on being able to learn new tricks like that because one of our science-based abilities is to be able to predict. That, after all, is what science is about: learning enough about how a thing works so you'll know what comes next. Because, as we all know, everything obeys universal laws. All you need is to understand the laws.

• Self - Host : The plan, you'll remember, with all that song and dance stuff was to get them flocking into church, right? Okay, then what? I mean, when was then? Were you in Easter, Lent, or February the 29th? Because salvation-wise, what you did in church depended on what the date was. And that was just it. They didn't know, exactly! For instance, if Easter was supposed to fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the beginning of the spring equinox, which depended on a moon-sun cycle that couldn't be checked correctly except every 312.5 years, and anyway that night the moon didn't come up, and the calendar you were using was nine days out, which it was. I mean, what? But church authority was what held the whole of society together. Everybody from the prince in his castle down. And it depended on the faithful doing what they were supposed to do at the right time. Small wonder the pope wanted the sun and the moon checked out better than they had been so far. Well when they were, here at the castle of Frombork, his troubles were over! But not for long.

• Self - Host : Well, that was the end of friend Aristotle, and magic crystal spheres in the sky, and questions science shouldn't ask. And the beginning of our modern world dominated by science and technology, and the confidence they give us to explore everything from subatomic particles to the ends of outer space without fear. Mind you, you need the confidence. If, as Kepler said and Newton proved, it all does work like clockwork, there is nobody out there to care. Well, it may be fun to explore nature, to boldy go where no man has gone before. But in Newton's universe, you're no longer the center of attention while you do it. You're on your own. Just a cog in the cosmic clock.