Humankind shares with all animals our innate impulse to survive and procreate. But few characteristics distinguish us more from the rest of creation than our powerful desire to explore, to discover, to understand and to explain. Descartes could have as easily said, “I explore, therefore I am.”
The mundane version of humankind’s history involves the development of agriculture, religion, legal systems and the capacity to live in communities. The romantic version reflects our inherent drive to explore, usually in search of new resources but often in service of our need to understand. It’s what led us out of Africa and into every cranny of our globe from the peak of Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Where to next? The moon, obviously, where we deposited our first tentative footsteps more than 50 years ago, and then to Mars and beyond.
