Finally, a third from Russell that I admire chiefly for its unflinching courage. And love him or hate him, you’ve got to admit—the guy had a way with words:
“That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
“Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding dispair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
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.
… the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins …
Eh… “inevitably” is one of those words that takes a very high degree of confidence to use correctly—a degree of confidence we really don’t have with current cosmology, if the simulation hypothesis is true.
(By the way, here’s the quote from last month’s thread which Apprentice was repurposing.)
Kazuo,
I agree; given our current knowledge that quote is open to criticism on several points of fact (most obviously its focus on the solar system rather than whatever passes for the universe these days). That’s why I said I admire it mainly for its courage and style.
Finally, a third from Russell that I admire chiefly for its unflinching courage. And love him or hate him, you’ve got to admit—the guy had a way with words:
“That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
“Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding dispair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
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.
Eh… “inevitably” is one of those words that takes a very high degree of confidence to use correctly—a degree of confidence we really don’t have with current cosmology, if the simulation hypothesis is true.
(By the way, here’s the quote from last month’s thread which Apprentice was repurposing.)
Kazuo, I agree; given our current knowledge that quote is open to criticism on several points of fact (most obviously its focus on the solar system rather than whatever passes for the universe these days). That’s why I said I admire it mainly for its courage and style.