Truth is not an apple, that you can devour in a few bites – truth is an onion, peel off one layer, plenty more to peel alright.
For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.
The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
Have we learned, for instance, how to take -but not too much? And what’s too much?
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
A mathematician believes that describing the speed of Mercury with equations amounts to science.
Know what you want to do; know how you want to do it; focus clearly, excitedly, and aggressively on your purpose; and you will be empowered to succeed.
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
If you work in the right direction, then everyone will help you.
The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you’re sensible, you’ll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.
Knock-knock-knockNo, that’s not creepy at all. Being in a spaceship twelve light-years from home and having someone knock on the door is totally normal.
Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the far-fetched, and those who believe that ‘belief’ must be discarded and replaced by the ‘scientific method.’ Between these two extremes there is enough scope for believing the reasonable and reasoning on sound beliefs.
Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.
Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That’s why economics is not the dismal science, it’s no science at all.
I am always struck by the fact that human awareness of our place in nature, like so much of modern science, began with the Industrial Revolution.
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
God is a concept more than anything else. The idea of God or about God, as it functions in religions, doesn’t deal with reality but with presuppositions based on revelations. Revelation, in itself, is arbitrary and can result from hallucination, among other things, which does not exclude the possibility that even hallucination may lead to some ways of truth.
All man must live in Machu Picchu for some time! Over there, you will be closer to the universe and you will realise how trivial you are in this chaotic cosmos. Science is the only power which will make you bigger and significant in this universe!
…it seems to me that sometimes-or perhaps I might venture most of the time-occurrences have no cause at all. New stars appear and old ones vanish. Short hats become popular again. Things are as they are and do as they please for absolutely no reason at all.
I loved school, was an exceptional student, and found a passion for math and science that led me to Vanderbilt University, where I discovered the world of electrical engineering. I did well in college, loved the work I was doing, and soon found myself climbing the corporate ladder after graduation. I was one of the lucky ones.
Whereas apes must learn every skill they eventually acquire through trial-and-error and without a parent or other group member actively teaching them, humans can much more effectively build on the accumulated knowledge of previous generations.
There are laws of nature. We may describe the laws of nature but still not wholly unravel and understand them to pronounce that scientific laws are equal to natural laws or that they are an absolute representation of natural laws. Scientific laws did not yet cover, describe, and explain all natural laws, mysteries, and secrets.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Someone may have all the technical knowledge, scientific intellect and business know-how but when he/she decides to choose laziness, excuses, procrastination, complaining and other bad attitudes, his/her relevance is meaningless.
If you can’t illustrate ‘it’, ‘it’ doens’t belong in Physics as a noun! You can’t put an article in front. You can’t put a verb after!
Priusquam autem ad creationem, hoc est ad finem omnis disputationis, veniamus: tentanda omnia existimo.However, before we come to [special] creation, which puts an end to all discussion: I think we should try everything else.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don’t look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn’t a time. It’s a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
It begins to appear that almost everything one does to gain a livelihood or for pleasure is fattening, immoral, illegal, or, even worse, oncogenic.
I am troubled by grave doubts about the usefulness of scientific endeavor and have a whole drawer filled with treatises on politics and their relation to science, written for myself with the sole purpose of clarifying my mind, and finding an answer to the question: will science lead to the elevation or destruction of -man- and has my scientific endeavor any sense?
I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.
The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.
One of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliche before it has even been understood
If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change, then he can do so in his personal time. But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous.
Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.
I’m not much interested in extrapolating science and technology; I merely use extrapolation as a means of putting people into new quandaries which produce colorful pressures and conflicts.
I don’t reject God, because for me to be able to reject him he first would have to exist.
The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds.
My dad is an electrical engineer. So he was always very focused on, you know, teaching his daughters about, you know, science, math, technology. None of us actually became engineers for our careers, but I always had that exposure when I was young, and I just loved playing computer games.
From the age of 11, I was cleaning floors, washing dishes, making sandwiches and being a cashier. Survival was the name of the game. Life was so hard that I had to struggle to keep up my standards. Under these conditions, I didn’t think about science too much.
It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is … If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
Vulnerable, like all men, to the temptations of arrogance, of which intellectual pride is the worst, he [the scientist] must nevertheless remain sincere and modest, if only because his studies constantly bring home to him that, compared with the gigantic aims of science, his own contribution, no matter how important, is only a drop in the ocean of truth.
We should never wait for science to give us permission to do the uncommon; if we do, then we are turning science into another religion.
I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.
The first principles of any system of knowledge cannot be arrived at through the means of that knowledge itself, but must be given in advance; they are the object, not of scientific demonstration, but of faith. We have discussed, in an earlier chapter, the universality of faith, seeing it as underlying all human activity and knowledge.
Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why is metal a conductor of electricity, and wood is not, but you’re more likely to be struck by lightning when standing under a tree? These are questions that require science to answer.
To navigate in a world without value is to be without rudder or destination, and yet without science, we navigate blind. To many, apparently, blindness is preferable.
Birth after birth the line unchanging runs,And fathers live transmitted in their sons;Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds,The same their manners, and the same their minds:Till, as erelong successive buds decay,And insect-shoals successive pass away,Increasing wants the pregnant parent vexWith the fond wish to form a softer sex. ..
If you don’t understand how somethingworks, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don’tknow how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understandhow memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesisa bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t goto work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.
Western doctors are like poor plumbers. They treat a splashing tube by cleaning up the water. These plumbers are extremely apt at drying up the water, constantly inventing new, expensive, and refined methods of drying up water. Somebody should teach them how to close the tap.
We know that energy can not be created nor destroyed but can be changed in it’s form. If it can not be formed then it can not exist. We may not exist.
I enjoy science, and I’m a very curious person. I always want to know the reason behind everything, big or small.
Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.
Neptune’s complex migration history, known as the ‘jumping Neptune’ altered the Kuiper Belt’s properties in the ways, all of which have a bearing on the possibility for advanced life and civilization on Earth.
Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.
The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.