Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia (photo by Nina Munteanu)

“Surely this is a great part of our dignity … that we can know, and that through us matter can know itself; that beginning with protons and electrons, out of the womb of time and the vastness of space, we can begin to understand; that organized as in us, the hydrogen, the carbon, the nitrogen, the oxygen, those 16 to 21 elements, the water, the sunlight—all, having become us, can begin to understand what they are, and how they came to be.”–George Wald