The topic for this week ’s Cosmos is the little things in life , like cellphone , molecules , mote and the population . So hop on board the Ship of the Imagination andlet ’s get little .
After provide a little fan religious service by describing himself as a collection of “ three billion billion billion intricately fix up atoms shout out Neil DeGrasse Tyson , ” our host guide the Ship of the Imagination on a fantastic voyage into a dew drib , starting with our old friend theTardigradeand run through photosynthesizing plant cells and into the molecular machinery within , rendered in just a slightly more steampunk formal format than in previous episodes .
Even in this cartoonish and decidedly non - literal interpretation , present our current lack of knowledge of the elaborated mechanics of photosynthesis , we see how overwhelmingly complex “ the ultimate green baron ” really is . Tyson imagines the blessing to humanity that would derive from a recondite sympathy of chlorophyll and uses this deterrent example as a launch period to depict how the realism that arose in the ancient domain , starting with the Grecian philosophersThalesandDemocratus , which informed skill down through the ages to Darwin and beyond .
Scientific rigor is what makes all this knowledge accomplishment possible , and what makes it possible to trust that future noesis will help us figure out the very real trouble our earth face today . The constant returning to this melodic theme , the practical advantage to civilisation of encompass the scientific worldview , is where Tyson has put his most distinctive personal Deutsche Mark on Sagan ’s work . Where Sagan ’s personal motivation was to keep us from blowing ourselves up , Tyson ’s motivation is to keep us from holding ourselves back .
To Tyson , naturalism and the scientific worldview are n’t just a way of life to experience curiosity , though they are that . They ’re also way to work problems that ca n’t be work when we take the law of aperient in person and assume everything that happens , from fires to floods to observe our car keys , is intended as a specific message just for us .
But this does not mean that there is no room for profound signification in our experience of the natural world . Mike Tyson describe how molecular theory holds the secrets of everything from a possible revolution in green vigor to the memories and emotion trigger in our brain by intimate scent .
Why did our sensory faculty of odour evolve to energize the amygdaloid nucleus and the hippocampus ? Was it just to assure that we ’d remember the scent of significant thing , like edible plants , fire and vulture ninny ? Sure . But no one ever said the realness of that evolutionary legacy had to be some cold , clinical , unaffectionate experience .
Each of us knows how a familiar aroma can trigger reveries and remembrances of things retiring . Our deep sense of attachment to our own creation is n’t diminish by our lifelike understanding of ourselves . It is enhanced by it . see our nature does n’t slim down us to unfeeling , mechanistic zombi . Far from it . Carbon , Dr. Tyson recount us , is the atom that can fall in love .
After this , Tyson goesFull Illusive Manto describe how ace crush affair to take form hard constituent and how neutrino , with their ability to clear most undisturbed through unthinkably heavy ocean of issue bound the other existence together in the moments properly after the Big Bang , when it was small enough to be held in the palm tree of your hand .
To those who would suggest that skill is a plate of cold fish that can only answer aseptic question of what and not deeper questions of why , this episode of Cosmos demonstrates that it is impossible to have any sort of meaningful concept of why without a raw understanding of what .
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