We are all stardust, de Klein

El título completo es "We Are All Stardust: Scientists Who Shaped Our World Talk about Their Work, Their Lives, and What They Still Want to Know", y la verdad es que es muy recomendable. Es una colección de entrevistas con científicos que tienen cosas muy interesantes que decir sobre ciencia, religión, investigación, y más cosas. Y, en esta ocasión, como creo que ellos dicen todo mucho mejor, me limito a copiar las frases más interesantes que subrayé de cada uno. En todo caso, mejor leerlo completo.

Martin Rees:

That’s why I advise my students to read first-rate science fiction rather than second-rate scientific publications.

Science and religion can coexist peacefully—although I don’t think they have much to say to each other.

I know that we don’t yet even understand the hydrogen atom—so how could I believe in dogmas? I’m a practicing Christian, but not a believing one.

I find it irrational to become attached to one theory. I prefer to let different ideas compete like horses in a race and watch which one wins.

We humans of the present are certainly not the summit of Creation. Species more intelligent than us will inhabit the earth. They might even appear quite soon. These days evolution is no longer driven by slow natural development, as Darwin described it, but by human culture. So a post-human intelligence might be made by us ourselves. And I hope that our successors have a better understanding of the world.

Jared Diamond:

extreme specialization prevents scholars from developing a perspective. And only that perspective would allow them to come to valid conclusions—instead of just telling stories.

Jane Goodall:

Animal behavior research will never be a hard science. Science can be arrogant—it pushes aside a lot of fascinating things because it does not have the tools to study them.

Steven Weinberg:

There’s nothing in the laws of nature to suggest that we have a particular place in the universe. That doesn’t mean I find my life pointless. We can love each other and try to understand the world. But we have to give our lives that meaning ourselves.

Sometimes religion seems to me like a somewhat crazy old aunt who lies, gets up to all sorts of mischief, and might not have much life left ahead of her. But she was once very beautiful—and when she’s gone, we’ll miss her.

We can be amused with ourselves—not with a sneering humor but with a kindhearted one. It’s the sort of humor we feel when we see a child taking its first steps. We laugh at all the child’s arduous efforts, but we do it full of sympathy. And if laughter ever fails us, we can still take a grim satisfaction in the fact that we are able to live without wishful thinking. 

Peter Singer:

The way to have a good character is to develop it gradually, make a habit of it.  

Craig Venter:

I mean there’s a certain  . . . there’s a substantial amount of hardwiring in humans, something I don’t think our society is totally ready to face. But there’s a big distinction between having hardwiring for many traits and genetic determinism. Somebody may have an aggressive personality, be very competitive. They can end up an Olympic champion. They could end up a criminal, right? It doesn’t determine life outcomes. It determines the set of operating tools that each of us has or doesn’t have.

Because while we are one of the most genetically advanced species, and we’re genetically hardwired, we’re also probably the most plastic species. 

Hannah Monyer:

We believe that we’re in control of our lives. But in reality we can only seize opportunities.

[every memory, without a doubt, alters the structure of our brain....our memories make us who we are.] I definitely see it that way.

because everyone has a completely unique life story, the networks in the brain are wired differently in each person. Human beings will remain mysterious.

[Many people who devote themselves so fully to something hope for glory]. It’s an illusion. In reality, the individual is irrelevant to science. The experiments don’t bear any personal stamp. And if I didn’t do them, someone else would a few months later. Forty thousand scientists attended the last annual conference of the American Society for Neuroscience! In science, the individual doesn’t count.

Vittorio Gallese:

You can actually separate empathy and sympathy from each other completely. Just think of a sadist, who takes pleasure in his victim’s pain precisely because he can empathize with him. Empathy doesn’t at all guarantee altruism.

[Sympathy and altruism are apparently interdependent in the brain as well.] That seems to be the case. But we still know really little about those connections too. I personally believe that altruistic behavior isn’t innate to us—unlike our capacity for empathy. That might be supported by the fact that children don’t begin to share until the age of four or later—that’s how long it takes to overcome their natural egoism. In any case, mirror neurons alone don’t make us better people. In my view, our discovery contributes in an entirely different way to improving our understanding of why we act morally: All of us have a sort of apparatus in our head by means of which certain customs can spread very easily among people—because we simply copy them.

Instead of intuitively empathizing with other people, you can make an intellectual effort to understand them. But what you experience in that intellectual process has an entirely different quality from empathy.

...it’s not without consequences for our capacity for empathy whether we see another person only on a screen or face-to-face....our social skills evolved for direct encounters, not virtual ones.

Yes, they [Americans] focus their interest more intensely on immediate solutions to problems. And they have no choice in that, because there’s far more competition in their universities. They have to produce results—and can’t afford to take great risks or think about far-reaching theoretical consequences of their research. It seems to me that our cultural heritage will help us Europeans continue to make significant contributions to science.

[What can philosophy learn from neuroscience about empathy?] That the human mind is inconceivable without the body.

As we now know, all our thoughts and feelings are dependent on the fact that we observe the bodies of other people, that we touch and manipulate things. And there’s increasing evidence that we owe even the ability to speak to such motor skills. Our mind exists only in the corporeal world.

[And is therefore hopelessly mortal.] Definitely. But by pursuing far-reaching goals, we make that prospect bearable for ourselves....And even by passing on just a little bit of knowledge, every human being makes a contribution to that culture, which transcends mortality. 

Raghavendra Gadagkar:

even among wasps, not only the genes, but also the environment determines behavior. For example, as long as the circumstances of life are relaxed, a relatively large number of wasps actually go off on their own and build their own nest. If, however, food is scarce and the colony is threatened by enemies, many more insects are willing to devote themselves to the community.

The lower the cost, the higher the benefit, and the closer the relatedness, the more willing animals as well as people will be to put themselves out for others. If, for example, there’s a big age difference between siblings, it doesn’t cost the older siblings much effort to do something for the younger ones and achieve a lot. With a narrower gap in age, the ratio is not as favorable, and as a result, those siblings aren’t willing to go to as much trouble for each other. In our Indian extended families, you can observe this effect all the time.

Some of my colleagues even believe that the reason we humans cooperate isn’t so much that we feel a particular urge to do so but rather that we need to guard against cheaters.

We need more nonconformists! After I received my doctorate, everyone advised me to continue my research in America, or else I’d never get a good job. At the time, I said I’d accept that consequence. I want an environment in which, on the contrary, we reward people for not conforming.

Intelligence and consciousness can certainly be defined in such a way that insects are automatically excluded. But such linguistic conventions don’t interest me, because it’s clear that wasps are not merely robots. They learn, and their behavior isn’t simply predictable.

You can’t draw a sharp line between creatures endowed with reason here and purely instinct-driven ones over there. It’s a continuum.

In India no one has trouble with the theory of evolution. The idea that the world is in a state of constant development, that destruction and creation go hand in hand, that natural history has no goal—all this has been taught in Hindu philosophy from time immemorial. 

Walter Zieglgänsberger:

Pain will always be a signal—even if an extreme one—that we’re alive.