Quotes by Steven J. Dick

“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.”

“[T]he most familiar kind of evolution — biological evolution, or neo-Darwinism — is just one, albeit important, subset of a broader evolutionary scheme encompassing much more than mere life on Earth. In short, what Darwinian change does for plants and animals, cosmic evolution aspires to do for all things. And if Darwinism created a revolution of understanding by helping to free us from the notion that humans differ from other life-forms on our planet, then cosmic evolution extends that intellectual revolution by treating matter on Earth and in our bodies no differently from that in the stars and galaxies beyond.”

“[A] thread of change links the evolution of primal energy into elementary particles, the evolution of those particles into atoms, in turn of those atoms into galaxies and stars, and of stars into heavy elements, the evolution of those elements into the molecular building blocks of life, of those molecules into life itself, and of intelligent life into the cultured and technological society that we now share. Despite the compartmentalization of today’s academic science, evolution knows no disciplinary boundaries.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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[.]”