Eric Chaisson Quotes

#1. Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.

Eric Chaisson

#2. Apparently, myths become truths if upheld long enough.

Eric Chaisson

#3. Science is agnostic when it comes to God - not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly - just agnostic.

Eric Chaisson

#4. The blast signatures of a detonated supernova and that of a nuclear bomb are identical.

Eric Chaisson

#5. Nature almost surely operates by combining chance with necessity, randomness with determinism ...

Eric Chaisson

#6. At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe.

Eric Chaisson

#7. The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures.

Eric Chaisson

#8. Though we might like to think so, humankind is not at any special, unique or privileged location in the gargantuan, perhaps infinite, Universe.

Eric Chaisson

#9. Let's first ask, what is life? And immediately we are stumped.

Eric Chaisson

#10. The epitome of culture is the search for truth, or at least a reasonable approximation of reality, most notably the need to know ourselves and the world around us.

Eric Chaisson

#11. Given enough time, even evolution evolves.

Eric Chaisson

#12. Nothing in Nature is black or white, few solutions are clean and clear; rather, reality, and especially our models of it, possess shades of gray throughout.

Eric Chaisson