Cathedrals of Science

Well, well, after a long while, one occasionally comes across gems like this:

There are cathedrals which, part from their consecrated purpose, inspire solemnity and awe. Even the curious visitor speaks of serious things, with hushed voice, and as each whisper reverberates through the vaulted nave, the returning echo seems to bear a message of mystery. The labor of generations of architects and artisans has been forgotten, the scaffolding erected for the toil has long since been removed, their mistakes have been erased, or have become hidden by the dust of centuries. Seeing only the perfection of the completed whole, we are impressed as by some superhuman agency. But sometimes we enter such a edifice that is still partly under construction; then the sound of hammers, the reek of tobacco, the trivial jests bandied from workman to workman, enable us to realize that these great structures, are but the result of giving to ordinary human effort a direction and a purpose.
Science has its cathedrals, built by the efforts of a few architects and many workers...

-Gilbert Newton Lewis, from the preface to Thermodynamics and the
free Energy of Chemical Substances

Yes yes, we wonder how the Pyramids of Egypt came about, or the Great Wall of China, and we wonder how could the human erected such structures. Too often we forget its only mere humans that produced these great works, and that with the same motivation, one might conceive a similar miracle. It is no different with great academic works by scientists and other luminaries. We are over humbling ourselves if we think that there is no way we can learn or even match up to the great scientists' work, for we forget that they are only human. With the same drive, we may go over the same ground that they have already laid the path before us.