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"When we talk about the Big Bang or the fabric of space, what we are doing is not a continuation of the free and fantastic stories
which humans have told nightly around campfires for hundred of thousands of years. It is the continuation of something else: of the gaze of those same men in the first light of day looking at tracks left by antelope
in the dust of the savannah - scrutinizing and deducting from the details of reality in order to pursue something which we can't see directly but can follow the traces of. In the awareness
that we can always be wrong, and therefore ready at any moment to change direction if a new track appears; but knowing also that if we are good enough we will get it right and will find
what we are seeking. This is the nature of science.
The confusion between these two diverse human activities - inventing stories and following traces in order to find something - is the origin of the incomprehension and distrust of science
shown by a significant part of our contemporary culture. The separation is a subtle one: the antelope at dawn is not far removed from the antelope deity in that night's storytelling.
The border is porous. Myths nourish science and science nourishes myth. But the value of knowledge remains. If we find the antelope, we can eat."
(Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli)