"The scientist is like an explorer climbing a mountain: giddy from the heights and thin atmosphere, he feels a premature elation and thinks that he can reach out and grab the stars. And then he climbs to the top and sees that even higher peaks await him in the distance and that the stars are so far beyond his grasp that they will never become light under the nails of his Heavenscraping fingers.

"In every century since its birth, science has proclaimed itself capable of explaining everything in one complete and grand synthesis, but inevitably human culture has reversed itself, and each period of scientific inflation has been followed by a period of depression over rather painful evidence of just how far off the premature claim of totality really was." (William Irwin Thompson)