Fiasco
Stanisław Lem
Top 10 Best Quotes
“A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It's the end of the road, where there is no more mystery, no more hope. And no more questions to ask, since all the answers have been given. But there is no such place. The Universe is a labyrinth made of labyrinths. Each leads to another. And wherever we cannot go ourselves, we reach with mathematics. Out of mathematics we build wagons to carry us into the nonhuman realms of the world.”
“Physics, my friend, is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a set of answers to certain questions that we put to the world, and the world supplies the answers on the condition that we will not then ask it other questions, questions shouted out by common sense. And common sense? It is that which is understood by an intelligence using senses no different from those of a baboon. Such an intelligence wishes to know the world in terms that apply to its terrestrial, biological niche. But the world—outside that niche, that incubator of sapient apes—has properties that one cannot take in hand, see, sniff, gnaw, listen to, and in this way appropriate.”
“I don't think anything can behave as unintelligently as intelligence.”
“Purpose informed every scene on Earth, the planet that produced life, because every detail there had its "benefit," its teleology. True, it did not always--but billions of years of organic labor had accomplished much: thus flowers possessed color for the purpose of attracting insects, and clouds existed for the purpose of dropping rain on pastures and forests. Every form and thing was explained by some benefit...”
“It was not that the ocean depths served the creatures there with darkness, to protect them from attack--a darkness they could light, as they needed, with luminescence--but vice versa: the darkness gave rise to those that were pressure-resistant and could illuminate themselves.”
“If everything became 'artificial,' then nothing was 'artificial.”
“The world is ordered according to universal rules called laws of Nature, but the same rule may manifest itself differently at different intensities.”
“Instead of learning something about an alien intelligence, they had learned how close the bonds of mental kinship were between man and his computer. The nearness of the alien civilization-practically within arm's reach - became a separating distance that mocked their attempts to get to the heart of it.”
“In science, restraint was necessary: there were questions that one was not allowed to put to the world - and he who nevertheless put them was like one who complained about a mirror whose reflection repeated his every movement but refused to reveal to him the volitional reason behind those movements.”
“I still believe that the world is arranged in our favor, since we can nevertheless gain mastery over things that run counter to our senses.”
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Book Keywords:
michael-kandel, universe, truth, intelligence, common-sense, labyrinth, p-27, science, 1986, mind
