In our performance, one of the pieces we’ve crafted is called “Most Astounding Fact,” and it tries to help us imagine all of the possible astonishing facts there are about the natural world.  These include:

• Matter that is essential to life is made from recycled stars.
• There are lots of living things inside our bodies, besides ourselves.
• Forces reach out through space.
• Everything is made from particles, even the space surrounding the stage — something demonstrated by our “paper piece,” which gives the impression that the auditorium is really just a big aquarium of air particles that our paper swim through.

But there’s one other “fact” statement that we think is really important:

The most astounding fact is that each precious fact is not, by itself, all that important.

Do you think this is true?  Why do we say this if we spend so much time fascinated by so many really interesting facts?