Dare to Know

Dare to Know is a website published by me, David Morton Rintoul, offering feature stories aimed at those who find discoveries about our universe, our place in nature and our humanity meaningful.

I’ve come to believe that science has consigned our traditional stories to the realm of myth. For that reason, I feel that we need new, science-based stories to give meaning to our daily lives.

I started Dare to Know because my passion for writing is a gift people have recognized in me since childhood. Revealing the latest scientific discoveries in the context of unearthing our new stories is my chance to express that part of myself while sharing with you the wondrous insights unfolding in this remarkable era.

We always have more to learn if we dare to know.

“Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in its midst. That which extends throughout the universe, I regard as my body and that which directs the universe, I regard as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters and all things are my companions.”

Chang Tsai
Western Inscription

All site text content © David Morton Rintoul, Freelance Writer, all rights reserved.
Graphics may be taken from the public domain, used with permission, or used under fair dealing.

Panel 1

Contact

Panel 2

Universe

“Through the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.”
Bertrand Russell

“Our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate.”
Seneca, First Century CE

”Our ancestors are not just our grandparents and great-grandparents, not just our ethnic group, not just the human species, not just life or even Planet Earth, but stars, galaxies, dark matter, and all the forces of nature, living and not, in an unbroken chain back to the Big Bang.”
Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack

“Only through understanding the universe can we understand ourselves or our proper role in the great community of existence.”
Thomas Berry

Panel 3

Nature

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
John Muir

“There is grandeur in this view of life, that from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Charles Darwin

“The Gaia hypothesis is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to wonder about the Earth and the life it bears, and to speculate about the consequences of our own presence here.“
James Lovelock

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”
Rachel Carson

Panel 4

Humanity

“All the works of humanity have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to deprecate creative imagination?”
Carl Jung

“People forget facts, but they remember stories.”
Joseph Campbell

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
Eleanor Roosevelt

“When we come to it, we must confess that we are the possible. We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world. That is when, and only when, we come to it.”
Maya Angelou

“Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.”

Wole Soyinka