Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction – in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.
The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a ‘what’ created the universe; the theist believes a ‘who’ created the universe.
The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.
Your relationship to duality consciousness determines the level of suffering you experience as a human.
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
It’s kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It’s about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.
Science often progresses by carving out new distinctions that refine the fuzzy categories of natural language.
I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means guess. To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is just a theory too.
What use was time to those who’d soon achieve Digital Immortality?
New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.
We are supernaturalists first, not naturalists. The only reason we feel compelled to accommodate science is that science says we ought to. But it is science that should accommodate revelation. Revelation has been around much longer.
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
This seeming chaos belies the tight web of interconnections between them all, stitched with filaments of fungi, silk of spiders, and silver threads of water. Alone is a word without meaning in this forest.
There is an anti-science by the far right. We have to be careful that the far left doesn’t balance this with a naive approach of promising what we can’t deliver. I mean, science is neutral; it’s not politically conservative or liberal.
Paranormalists, however, insist that our minds are transmitters that, with special effort, can focus like lasers to communicate across great distances, and even make things happen. That may seem far-fetched, but it’s also a definition of prayer.
We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library
Before it is science and career, before it is livelihood, before even it is family or love, freedom is sound sleep and safety to notice the play of morning sun.
To ascend to the pinnacle of wisdom, you must first recognize and shed the burden of your ignorance. Knowledge is the flame that illuminates your path. ~ Peter Ojo
If we cannot adjust our differences peacefully we are less than human
I loved literary science fiction. In fact, as a kid, when I was reading science fiction, I thought ‘I can’t wait for the future when the special effects are good’ to represent what was in these books by Arthur C. Clarke, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Jack Vance.
Beneath the violet pillar, in the vacuum before the roar of the cloud, there came a soft sound that might have been heard by those who listened closely: the gentle sigh of an idea unbound.
It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
Follow your curiosity, and have the courage to meet the challenge. That’s where science starts, in my opinion.
The main reason for the failure of the modern medical science is that it is dealing with results and not causes. Nothing more than the patching up of those attacked and the burying of those who are slain, without a thought being given to the real strong hold.
… respecto al origen del mundo, si es que lo tuvo, no nos queda más remedio que aceptar que nunca sabremos cómo ocurrió y que Dios es una explicación necia que no explica nada pues es tan difícil imaginar la eternidad suya como la de la materia. Dios es la vuelta del bobo: lo postulamos para entender cuanto no entendemos, pero sin entenderlo a Él.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
Every time you think about settling on a more mundane question to answer, or reducing your sample size, or skipping an experiment that would strengthen your interpretation, remember that reviewers and editors of the major journals are looking for the small minority of papers that stand out from the rest.
… researchers argue that it’s of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society.
It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
What we need is a strong education system that allows creativity to grow and encourages students to be interested in science and technology.
We must not be afraid to push boundaries; instead, we should leverage our science and our technology, together with our creativity and our curiosity, to solve the world’s problems.
‘I see you made it Jack,’ he started to say, noticing a silver sphere roll across the loading bay floor. It stopped just short of his shoes before it exploded.
A common theme in science is we do science best when we don’t have an application in mind because it limits our imagination and creativity. But, in the end, we feel most rewarded when what we discover, out of a quest for knowledge, leads actually to an application.
In many species, males pay for sex. For example, among black ticked hanging flies, an amorous male will present a female with a nice, juicy insect and then copulate with her while she distractedly enjoys her meal. If the female finishes before he does, she simply walks away. Game over. If, on the other hand, he finishes first, he snatches the insect away and tries to woo another female with the leftovers.
Neuroscience is by far the most exciting branch of science because the brain is the most fascinating object in the universe. Every human brain is different – the brain makes each human unique and defines who he or she is.
Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.
TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse – news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.
What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.
Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
The business of biomedical research is mostly about failure. Few projects we commission will ultimately result in success. But every study we do contributes to the body of knowledge that brings science and society closer to a solution.
While our modern culture is replete with stories incorporating every imaginable setting, plot and character, the history of storytelling has been characterised by the retelling of a few basic stories, involving a selection of core character types.
Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them.
I don’t know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.
New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.
There’s nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind.
A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene and the son, badly injured, is rushed to the hospital. In the operating room, the surgeon looks at the boy and says, I can’t operate on this boy. He is my son
Give me the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, and I will predict the future.
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony God’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my own intelligence.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is clearly Ocean.
A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.
My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico. Then I moved back to Kenya shortly after I turned one, and I grew up in Kenya.
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
The deepest of powers are often the most subtle. Something that most fail to realize… ☥
Look, I don’t know what you are, but you’re more than a geologist, if you are one at all. I’ve met lots of geologists on different projects like this, and they’re all tiny sunburned men with fetishes for geodes. They wear floppy hats and carry baggies for soil samples around with them. … And geologists don’t make rocks disappear like you did the other night. They keep them and build little shrines to them.
Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one.
As for these celebrated victories of science, there is no doubt that they are victories. But victories over what?
The thing I love about science is finding out something new and different.
When I was making ‘Star Wars,’ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‘I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.’
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer; art is everything else.