I think I’ll repurpose a recent quote here: Personally, this is not the first time I’ve heard about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by the death of the solar system, and my attitude has always been that I’m willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes.
I find worries about the heat death of the universe almost as comically premature. Ping me about heat death in a million years—if it still looks like a problem at that point, then I’m willing to consider it an issue. “But you probably won’t be alive in a million years!” Well, then there’s even less reason for me to worry about this.
Edit: I don’t disagree that Russell knew how to turn a phrase—I find the sentence Kazuo quoted especially appealing, the words “a universe in ruins” are evocative. (And thanks for digging up the link, KT.)
Apprentice,
You appear to be of like mind with—ironically, Russell himself (I’m not a Russell fanatic, really I’m not: - though I clearly find him a vein worth mining deeply on this particular topic:-). From ‘Why I Am Not A Christian,’ a 1927 talk to the National Secular Society in London (on a day on which I suppose his stomach was feeling better):
″ I am told that that sort of view [of the earth eventually becoming cold, dead and lifeless] is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out—at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation—it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.”
I pledge NO MORE Russell quotes for the remainder of the day. Pacific Time.
I think I’ll repurpose a recent quote here: Personally, this is not the first time I’ve heard about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by the death of the solar system, and my attitude has always been that I’m willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes.
I find worries about the heat death of the universe almost as comically premature. Ping me about heat death in a million years—if it still looks like a problem at that point, then I’m willing to consider it an issue. “But you probably won’t be alive in a million years!” Well, then there’s even less reason for me to worry about this.
Edit: I don’t disagree that Russell knew how to turn a phrase—I find the sentence Kazuo quoted especially appealing, the words “a universe in ruins” are evocative. (And thanks for digging up the link, KT.)
Apprentice, You appear to be of like mind with—ironically, Russell himself (I’m not a Russell fanatic, really I’m not: - though I clearly find him a vein worth mining deeply on this particular topic:-). From ‘Why I Am Not A Christian,’ a 1927 talk to the National Secular Society in London (on a day on which I suppose his stomach was feeling better):
″ I am told that that sort of view [of the earth eventually becoming cold, dead and lifeless] is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out—at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation—it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.”
I pledge NO MORE Russell quotes for the remainder of the day. Pacific Time.