Steven J. Dick > Quotes

“[W]e can discover the world, but we decide upon the truth.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“As the God of the ancient Near East stemmed from ideas of supernaturalism, our concept of a modern God could stem from modern ideas divorced from supernaturalism. [...] A natural God need not intervene in human history, nor be the cause for religious wars such as witnessed through human history.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Culture influences our understanding of the world. Our biological perception equipment is influenced by our mental constructions; we do not simply ‘see the world as it is,’ either in the literal sense of vision or in the metaphorical sense of overall apprehension. Our explanations for the patterns we observe are produced in part by what we are taught about the rules of causation, i.e., ‘how the world works.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Indeed, we humans bear witness to the process of evolution in the very composition of our bodies. The calcium that gives solidity to our bones, the iron that lets our blood carry oxygen to our brains, the sodium and potassium that make possible the transmission of impulses along our nerves, all of these elements were formed inside a star that had its own birth and life and death, hurling its remains outward in a supernova explosion billions of years ago.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“The more we know about science, the more we know culture and cosmos are connected, to such an extent that we can now see that the cosmos is inextricably intertwined with human destiny, both in the short term and the long-term, impinging on (and arguably essential to) questions normally reserved for religion and philosophy.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Coping with the uncertainty of larger cosmic objective meaning may be one of the most profound challenges sufficiently aware beings have to face [...]. Indeed, human beings might be further along in this regard than may be commonly thought—much of the human population seems to able to cope without religion and without a larger sense of cosmic meaning and purpose.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Our technology, art, and what we know of our world, is unspeakably exhilarating and terrifyingly dangerous. We are capable of powerful creations and complete annihilation. Our consciousness is uncontainable—to the point of agonizing awareness. Homo sapiens sapiens has a power unlike Earth has ever seen.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“The increased awareness of the new universe and the possibility of a biological universe largely dashed any remaining hopes for an anthropocentric universe with all that implies for religion and philosophy.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Humankind is now moving toward a time, possibly as soon as within a few generations, when we will no longer be able to expect nature to adjust rapidly enough to ensure our own survival. Rather, civilization on Earth will either have to adapt to the natural environment with ever-accelerating speed, or generate artificial environmental conditions needed for our ecological existence. From two magnificent yet local systems—society and machines—will likely emerge a symbiotically functioning technoculture, the epitome (as far as we know) of complexity writ large in nature[.]”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“That the epic journey of Homo sapiens has taken us from the savannah to space is indisputable, but we do not have one simple, comprehensive account of this multigenerational sojourn—and we never will, no matter how much we excavate. Rather, we have grainy snapshots, faded sketches, souvenirs of mysterious purpose, maps of unspecified scales drawn long after the fact, and stories which change with each storyteller and occasion.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“At minimum, there may be an implication that one of the great challenges for intelligent cultural beings may be to learn to cope with, and perhaps finally accept, a profound and deep sense of uncertainty regarding any larger cosmic sense of meaning and purpose—that such an uncertainty may have to be treated as a kind of empirical question to be possibly addressed over very long time periods as evidence is accumulated, but perhaps without ever obtaining a satisfactory answer.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“But exaltation of humanity in no way justifies unchecked devotion at the expense of others who inhabit our world and perhaps worlds beyond.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“All living species “adapt.” Indeed, “adaptation” is a distinctive emergent property of life in general. Adaptation means that, over time, the average features of a species can slowly change so as to ensure that each individual member can extract from its surroundings the energy needed to maintain its complex structures. This is what natural selection is all about. But it’s a slow process, taking many generations. Individuals don’t adapt; what adapt or change are the average qualities of entire species, as the genes of individuals undergo tiny changes from generation to generation.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“We are deciphering how all known objects - form atoms to galaxies, from cells to brains, from people to society - are interrelated. For the more we examine nature, the more everything seems related to everything else.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Billions of people all over the world are infected with a religion at an early age when they have little memetic immunity, usually by their own parents whom they love and trust. They then spend the rest of their lives paying the price of adherence to false beliefs, and in turn infect others. Thus we can see the whole history of religions as an evolutionary competition for the replication of information. What matters here is not specifically whether the ideas are true, or whether believing them benefits their carriers (although both of these may play a role), but whether the religion can successfully get itself stored and replicated using humans as its meme machines. The winners are those that outdo the competition by developing adaptations such as enjoyable rituals, memorable stories, glorious art and music, explanations for life’s mysteries (whether true or not), or nasty meme tricks such as threats of hell, and death to the infidel. The religions we see surviving around us today are the few big winners in that long and mindless competition to infect human minds.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Scientists are people, and they are subject to the influences of their times. Theories explaining the world change diachronically or vary synchronically not only because of variation in the available data, but because of change and variation in the people producing the theories. Objectivity itself is culturally constituted.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“We need not assume our universe is in essence “computational,” “alive,” or even “hierarchically dissipative,” only that these computational, organic, and thermodynamic analogies may serve to advance our understanding of processes far more complex than our models.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“In addition to the uncertainty of broader cosmic significance, it may be that intelligent beings might have to learn to cope with a known cosmic insignificance, leading for some perhaps to a kind of nihilistic worldview. For others, something short of nihilism might suggest instead a kind of “cosmically local” relativism where value, meaning, purpose, ethics, and aesthetics derive solely from the affairs of cultural beings who think, behave, and perhaps freely choose in such ways as to sometimes, but often not, establish widely accepted norms and standards to help “local” beings coexist.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Emergent properties can seem magical because they do not seem to arise from the component parts of a structure. [...] Thought [...] seems to be an emergent property of the organization of neurons in brains. [...] “Emergent properties” arise from a particular arrangement of components—they do not appear within the component parts themselves.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“[T]hink about culture as the collective manifestation of value—where value is that which is valuable to “sufficiently complex” agents, from which meaning, purpose, ethics, and aesthetics can be derived.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Anthropic models propose that life and intelligence are developmentally destined to emerge in our particular universe, and range from the mathematical (the apparent fine tuning of fundamental universal parameters, e.g., Rees 1999), to the empirical (special universal chemistry that promotes precursors to biogenesis, e.g., Henderson 1913, 1917; Miller 1953; Lazcano 2004), to the teleological (analogies and arguments for systemic function or purpose to cosmic intelligence, e.g., this paper). Today, as acknowledged by even their most adept practitioners (Barrow and Tipler 1986; Krauss et. al. 2008), anthropic universe models proceed more from ignorance and assumption than from knowledge.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“A lack of “external” objective meaning may be unsatisfying to many—caught forever in endless cycles of relativism, a morass of unbearable responsibility for our own meaning and purpose, and perhaps ultimately for that of the universe. But it looks like choice is inescapable. And while choice can sometimes be oppressive and debilitating, it is also liberating and empowering[.]”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“[W]hat we can claim with confidence today, what we know about the universe today, is that the cosmos now has the properties of
value—meaning, purpose, and culture—at least through us. [...] So even with this "minimalist” bootstrapped cosmocultural perspective, we can assert that the universe has now become a different kind of entity, an entity that contains culture, manifesting value to extreme degrees. [...] Regardless of origin and form, value is indisputably manifested in the universe through us. What isn’t so obvious is how significant that really is.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Seeing ourselves in a cosmic context that suggests our selfish biological evolution is not necessarily part of a deep cosmic design can help motivate us to take better control of our local and collective global behavior as a species. It can help sensitize us to some of the blinding adverse effects of cultural forces such as dogmatic ideologies that too often lead to unnecessary conflict. Seeing ourselves in a longer-term cosmic context can help us envision a healthier, more united human species, creating recognition of value for global engagement and collective global pursuits as opposed to pursuing strictly group or national interests. Seeing ourselves as a special fragile species that may be “on our own,” with potential cosmic significance, can indeed help us act as a global species—and the need to come together better as a species is evident on many fronts [.]”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“We are deciphering how all known objects—from atoms to galaxies, from cells to brains, from people to society—are interrelated. For the more we examine nature, the more everything seems related to everything else.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“The key shortcoming of the multiverse theory, however, is that it appeals to something outside the universe, namely, a vast ensemble of other universes and a set of meta-laws that exist for no reason (e.g., quantum mechanics, string theory). In this respect, the multiverse theory is little better than a direct theistic explanation where an appeal is made to an external creator/designer.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“Yes, we humans are more than merely biological creatures. We appreciate beauty, we struggle with ethical conflicts, and we strive to make sense of our purpose in the universe, asking questions that science cannot answer. And yet, our sense of aesthetics, our moral sensibilities, and our search for meaning may themselves be intricately connected to the fabric of the cosmos.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“We all have a remarkable capacity to slot our observations into preconceived frameworks, and act accordingly. In other words, our intellectual models of contact generate history as surely as they recount it.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“We now know that the atoms in our bodies were forged in nuclear reactions in stellar furnaces, spewed into the universe in supernovae explosions, and incorporated into our bodies through the long process of the evolution of life over the last 3.8 billion years on Earth. We recognize that after death, our bodily atoms will be dispersed once again through the universe, recycled to once again become star stuff in a cycle of events that will end only with the death of the universe itself. We are part and parcel of the universe, and at the hour of our death when we return to the universe, the old phrase [...] “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” need only be slightly altered to “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust” to be literally true. Cosmic evolution provides us with a master narrative in which our own birth, life, and death are integral parts of the universe, without recourse to the supernatural.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

“But there is also a less practical, and perhaps equally important, consequence of migrating off Earth—the creation of cultural diversity. Finding better ways to live is clearly important. But finding different ways to live is culturally enriching both to the human experience and perhaps to the “nonhuman” experience. New branches of cultural evolution can enhance the human condition and enrich our lives by giving us more to take note of, more to study, more to choose from, more to appreciate, more to take joy in, more to be inspired by, and more to be in awe of.”
― Steven J. Dick, Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context