I read your article about the way that science tends to mislead us in regards to distances between one place in the universe and another.
I am responding here because I disagree with you on most of your presentation.
My wish, however, is not to flame you but to give you another point of view.
In regards to the size of the universe and even our own milky way you are obviously correct. With current technology we certainly have no means to travel to any of these so call neighbors. However, in my opinion thinking of these extra solar bodies as neighbors excites the imagination.
To put my view in the form of a question as you did I would ask:
Wouldnt people want to stop fighting and clean up the earth more if they thought there might be other beings near to us that might be visiting us in the not too distant future?
Wouldnt we want to show our neighbors a clean house?
There is more to my view than just these simple questions.
I am not a scientist. I am more of an amature philosopher with more interest in science than in religeon.
Which is my next point.
Ultimately what it comes down to is belief or more popularly termed faith.
We know that most of science it built upon theory upon theory down through the ages to the present. This means that everything in science could be wrong and it could be right.
Yet we also know that any other fundamental belief system like religeon, spiritualism, philosophy (and on and on) are all also built on ideas passed down to us from our forefathers.
It seems to me that in your peice you are negating belief in science as a way to gain belief in harmonious living between our fellow humans.
But what if science should discover that there are inteligent beings on alot of other planets out in the universe?
And what if we discover that NONE of those beings any where are anything like us?
Would that bring us closer together?
I think it would.
I am not saying that its the only thing that will bring us together and that is my point.
You seem to be saying, not only, that science cant bring us together but also that the only way to bring us together is by looking with in rather than with out.
I do agree that looking with in is a very good possible solution to our disharmony but I am also pointing out that looking within is not the only answer.
I may be wrong but it seems that you are saying that dreaming (in respect to extrasolar travel) is not a good thing.
That seems to me to be a closed minded conclusion.
What if a child today reads about our "neighboring" extrasolar planet and creates a belief system in his/her mind that in 30 or 40 years causes him/her to find a way that we can indeed travel to that "neighboring" planet in a life time. Well if we follow the advise in your article that unlikely event does not even have a chance of happening because we will have closed that childs mind to dreaming of it at all.
I once saw a rerun on the scifi channel that represents a good case in point.
In this television show which was originally aired in the early days of television (before there was any kind of satelite communications systems) an embassadore of an important nation was visiting america. This embassadore was shot. The man lay dying on an operating table and the only doctor that could help him was out in the middle of the pacific on a ship.
The solution to the problem was the completely rediculious idea of bouncing a television signal off of the moon and to the ship at sea where the doctor was.
In this way the doctor presided over the operation and told the other doctors how fix the wounded man.
Now I call the idea of bouncing a television signal off of the moon a completely rediculious idea and yet it was a similarly rediculious idea (or day dream) that led us to the modern satelite communications that we have today.
Hmmm....Would we have this modern communications skill and educational tool today if we had closed our minds to the possibilitys of our day dreams?
Hell, you would not have the computer that you created your web page on if not for a division of science called "Quantum Mechanics" (a division of science, by the way, thats made of day dreamers who imagined a way)!
So to answer your question: No! I do not believe that it would be better to limit our imaginations but negating the possibility of anything. (including that some day we might learn to traverse the mass distances to our neighboring stars)
