This Ordinary Stardust

A Scientist's Path from Grief to Wonder

*underlined and highlighted passages from this beautiful book by Alan Townsend

Our life choices similarly write lasting change within our bodies. Choosing hope over ear results in distrinctly different chemical cascades within. If we can remain hopeful in the face of life's chaos, our bodies are bathed in hormones that both settle and invigorate us; slip into fear and stress, a different cocktail goes on the attack.

-p.21

I saw how curiosity, no matter how difficult our circumstances are, not only leds to answers that can help, but it literally settles us down. Just like the balmtha comes from hope, a curious mind eases our nerves, opens our hearts, and puts the brakes on those stress hormones that eat us from within. Curiosity-a bedrock of the scientific mindest-is medicine itself.

-p.22

We like to frame the world in stories, and we tend to think they should progress logically. Yet the butterfly shows us otherwise. It reveals that, much like our own realities, a story can dissolve into goo in the middle and end up a completely different animal. And in that, it is also a microcosm for so much of science as a whole. Sometimes we get exactly what we expect. But much of the time, we don't. Science has a way of ensuring reality intrudes, whether we like it or not, and ultimately that's a good thing. It helps us to evaluate our lives in the context of the world that is, not amind the false worlds we are prone to construct.

-p.24

But like that butterfly, science teaches you that a moment of contraction and chaos-a time when everything seems to be falling apart-is probably temporary. That something surprising and wonderful might lie ahead. You just have to keep yourself in the position to find it, and as Diana would ultimately show me more powerfully than anyone else, perhaps discover some wonder and peace in not knowing how the story will end.

-p.47-8

Just like the landscapes that surrounded us. Just like the world we all share. Science shows us that nearly every seeming apocalypse is ultimately ephermeral and that many of them are followed by unimaginzable beauty.

-p.89

We scientists are supposed to be unbiased, driven by the purest forms of curiosity, ready to question and admit we are wrong. But we're humans. We fall short.

And yet I've come to believe that only through centering our humanity in all of its messiness and wonder does science reach its best forms. Sciene, like Christianity or any other faith traditions, is often not about a fixed reality. It's a human construct of its own, a way of seeing the world. And that world is constantly in flux, far too complex and unpredictable for us to ever fully pin down. We can-and should!- keep digging into its mysteries. But in doing so, we have to retain the humility that comes with understanding our limitations. The very essence of science is to question what we think to be true. And therefore we must question the limitations of science itself.

-p.107-8

Why did Lorenz's ideas go prime time and so far out of their lane? Because we so want that predictability in our daily lives. We want to know what a thing that happens oever there means for me right here. So. we cling to numbers and odds and erroneous extensions of science into realms they never could-and likely never will-predict. It's frequently just an outfit to mask the underlying truth: we can only know and do so much. Sooner or later, something is going to happen that we can't control and can't predict, and if we spend our lives clinging to the odds, it robs us of the daily magic of our existence.

-p.155

Science teaches us that yes, miracles are possible, but also that there are limits to our control, whether that be curing cancer or shaping behavior or even simply building a bridge. If you approach scienve with the mindset that success is only defined by that miraculous, break-through answer, you're missing a critical part of its power. If we let it, science can also teach us about limits and acceptane, without which we can never find peace.

-p.193

I started to ask her the big questions that lay before me. And as I talked of my hopes and dreams and sorrows in a new reality I still could not always grasp, I heard her once again. Heard her remind me to live boldy, generously, fully. Remind me to pour my energies into what mattered most and to lift myself by lifting others first. That there is no greater solace and joy than that which comes by being generous, by being endlessly curious and by never being afraid to fail. To listen to what's deep inside, to question with joy instead of dismissal, and to take the big changes before me, even if some of them crash and burn.

-p.249