Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes.... The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms.
Tyson, Neil deGrasse. Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries. W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.
Myths include the then accepted scientific, political, and religious teachings.
By “arts” Jefferson meant the mechanical arts—inventions and engineering. Jefferson Extrapolated the science and technology progress at the time to the future in a way that few others did at that time.
Note that the learned men who wrote the Chronicle accepted the notion that “fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky”. In another 1000 years, who knows what we observe today that will be laughed at by our progeny. The quotation also demonstrates that historical primary sources are not necessarily reliable because they were sometimes written by men and women with primitive outlook who accepted certain things without critical analysis.
At the time, the public investment in science was just exploded as a result of the Manhattan Project, the effort that researched and built the first atomic bomb. By the end of the 20th century, a period of a little more than 50 years science research was funded in the billions of dollars and even correcting for inflation, the investment (Federal, State, and Local) had multiplied many fold.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author, and science communicator.
