. . . a grand and complex place comprised of more places still. Mariners of the ancient seas would sail all around the world in search of adventure and knowledge, discovery and commerce, threading together the known universe and the unknown. In those times, nations were islands among the continents and continents were islands in the seven seas – a stage in which all the scenes of history were played out.

Today, the work begun by these confident explorers has culminated in a planet easily comprehended, a fragile world that submits to the willfull and accidental mind of mankind in both nature and artifact. But the work of discovery has not completed its mission. The mariners of the waters here below have passed the helm to new generations of mariners of the waters above.

And just as sailors of old would climb the masts to see a little farther than their shipmates, and peer through spyglasses for signs of terra firma in the distance, so observers today take advantageous positions and point our instruments in the direction of far shores and shout . . .