Fiasco

A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It's the end of the road, where there is no more mystery, no more hope. And no more questions to ask, since all the answers have been given. But there is no such place. The Universe is a labyrinth made of labyrinths. Each leads to another. And wherever we cannot go ourselves, we reach with mathematics. Out of mathematics we build wagons to carry us into the nonhuman realms of the world.

I don't think anything can behave as unintelligently as intelligence.

Physics, my friend, is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a set of answers to certain questions that we put to the world, and the world supplies the answers on the condition that we will not then ask it other questions, questions shouted out by common sense. And common sense? It is that which is understood by an intelligence using senses no different from those of a baboon. Such an intelligence wishes to know the world in terms that apply to its terrestrial, biological niche. But the world—outside that niche, that incubator of sapient apes—has properties that one cannot take in hand, see, sniff, gnaw, listen to, and in this way appropriate.

It was not that the ocean depths served the creatures there with darkness, to protect them from attack--a darkness they could light, as they needed, with luminescence--but vice versa: the darkness gave rise to those that were pressure-resistant and could illuminate themselves.

If everything became 'artificial,' then nothing was 'artificial.

Purpose informed every scene on Earth, the planet that produced life, because every detail there had its "benefit," its teleology. True, it did not always--but billions of years of organic labor had accomplished much: thus flowers possessed color for the purpose of attracting insects, and clouds existed for the purpose of dropping rain on pastures and forests. Every form and thing was explained by some benefit...

A ceremony full of contradictory meanings, as if to say: "There is nothing here for you, intruders. You will wrest nothing from us, by your fire or falling ice, but traps, deceptions, and camouflage. Your envoy can do what he likes. Everywhere he will be met by the same stony silence, until, forced to part from his expectations, bewildered and defeated, he flies into a muddled rage, begins blasting at whatever is at hand, and buries himself beneath tumbling ruins - or crawls out from under them and departs skyward, not with knowledge stolen in an orderly retreat, but only in panic, fleeing. And even if he could in fact force anything, strong-arming his way into locked places, into the iron reaches of the one-eyed metropolis beyond the wall of smoke, surely in such alien, nonhuman surroundings the harder he struck the less he would learn, unable to distinguish between what was discovered and what was destroyed.

In science, restraint was necessary: there were questions that one was not allowed to put to the world - and he who nevertheless put them was like one who complained about a mirror whose reflection repeated his every movement but refused to reveal to him the volitional reason behind those movements.

The world is ordered according to universal rules called laws of Nature, but the same rule may manifest itself differently at different intensities.

I still believe that the world is arranged in our favor, since we can nevertheless gain mastery over things that run counter to our senses.

He was walking down a narrow, steeply downhill street, between houses, in the sun. Before the arches, children played. Laundry hung on lines at the windows. The uneven pavement, strewn with trash, banana peels, scraps of food, was cut by a gutter full of muddy water. Far at the foot of the hill was the port, crowded with sails. Shallow, lethargic waves lapped the beach; boats pulled up on the sand were separated by fishing nets. The sea, smooth to the horizon, gleamed with a ribbon of reflected sun. He smelled fried fish, urine, olive oil. He did not know how he got here, but knew that it was Naples.

Pel motiu que a Tità res no presentava una finalitat (en cap moment i per a ningú), i pel motiu que no actuava cap guillotina de l'evolució, amputant de cada genotip el que no contribuïa a la supervivència, la natura, que no estava frenada ni per la vida que creés ni per la mort que provoqués, podia causar l'alliberament de la matèria, la natura podia mostrar la prodigalitat característica d'ella mateixa, una desolació il·limitada, una magnificència brutal que resultava inútil, un poder etern de creació sense objectiu, sense necessitat, sense significança. Aquesta veritat, que s'emparava gradualment de l'observador, era més pertorbadora que la impressió de ser testimoni d'un mimetisme còsmic de la mort, o la impressió que eren despulles d'éssers desconeguts situades per sota de l'horitzó curull de tempestes. Per tant, calia capgirar la manera tradicional de pensar, que només seguia una sola direcció: aquestes formes eren semblants a ossos, costelles, cranis i ullals no pas perquè haguessin tingut vida alguna vegada (mai no n'havien tinguda), sinó perquè els esquelets dels vertebrats terrestres i la seva pell, i la cuirassa quitinosa dels insectes, i les closques dels mol·luscs presentaven la mateixa disposició estructural, la mateixa simetria i gràcia, ja que la natura podia crear-les, tot i que manquessin i sempre haguessin de mancar la vida i la finalitat pròpia de la vida.

For the very reason that here nothing served a purpose--not ever, not to anyone--and that here no guillotine of evolution was in play, amputating from every genotype whatever did not contribute to survival, nature, constrained neither by the life she bore nor by the death she inflicted, could achieve liberation, displaying a prodigality characteristic of herself, a limitless wastefulness, a brute magnificence that was useless, an eternal power of creation without a goal, without a need, without a meaning.

Instead of learning something about an alien intelligence, they had learned how close the bonds of mental kinship were between man and his computer. The nearness of the alien civilization-practically within arm's reach - became a separating distance that mocked their attempts to get to the heart of it.