暗淡小蓝点是旅行者1号在1990年完成首要任务之际，回头拍下的整个太阳系的照片，而其中一个暗淡的大概只有一帧的小蓝点就是地球。天文学家萨根因此获得灵感写成了《暗淡蓝点》《Pale Blue Dot》。我是STEM学科的门外汉，对天文学完全无知，然而看着这张照片，却为之动容。地球在太阳系中的那么小，不仔细看几乎看不到，照片中的地球看起来也很孤独，和地球上人类的存在那么相似，苍茫中渺小又孤立，却是鲜活的生命体。
萨根的这本书，虽是天文学，但极具人文情怀，序言与正文都十分动人，我感动于人类的探索，感动于宇宙间的渺茫一瞬却是人类的历史长河，感动于从天文学的角度来看待生命，对自己的存在也有了另一层理解的角度。
引用书中的一段话：
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
--Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
https://book.douban.com/subject/1465244/
以上为上次看时候的激动，周末拿起来继续读，萨根讨论了天主教迫害伽利略的历史，与如今天主教对那段历史的态度。从本质上来讲，我想我和任何一个无神论一样是反对所有宗教的，如果宗教对信徒来说相当于心理医生，对于社会来说是历史的参考，文学艺术的痕迹那都没什么问题。但如果把宗教中的创世论作为认知这个世界的基础，那么问题就很严重了。别的宗教与社会发展我不是很了解，但以基督教和美国为例，可以说，基督教如今在美国的作用是弊大于利的，是另一种洗脑，拒绝事实的洗脑。
随着年龄的增长，我逐渐明白了人性中的各种不足与缺陷。看这本书和我最近的感慨是人们不愿意正视现实和事实不过是懦弱的体现。承认自己渺小是困难的，承认他人的不幸就要承认自己对别人的不幸无动于衷就要承认自己麻木不仁，毕竟，所有的人都只有那么有限的能力/时间/精力…
