As the offspring of Platonist-Abrahamic de-enchantment of nature, science bears the birth scar of a world unvalued. Through a kind of emotionally detached childhood, science grew strong but felt little love for its mother, Nature. Consequently, science has had a brilliant career, but as it matured it has tended to deny paternity for two unintended twin offspring: sufferings inflicted and damages done.
I fully recognize that all certainty and truth in science depend only on a knowledge of the true God, so much so that, before I knew Him, I could have no perfect knowledge of anything else. But now I am able to understand innumerable things completely and clearly, about both God Himself and other intellectual matters, as well as about all those things in corporeal nature that are objects of study in pure mathematics.
Through the discovery of Buchner, Biology was relieved of another fragment of mysticism. The splitting up of sugar into CO2 and alcohol is no more the effect of a ‘vital principle’ than the splitting up of cane sugar by invertase. The history of this problem is instructive, as it warns us against considering problems as beyond our reach because they have not yet found their solution.
Somehow the wondrous promise of the earth is that thereare things beautiful in it, things wondrous and alluring, and byvirtue of your trade you want to understand them. He put thecigarette down. Smoke rose from the ashtray, first in a thin columnand then (with a nod to universality) in broken tendrils that swirledupward to the ceiling.
We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness.
Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.
This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of Philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my Readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.
My most memorable science fiction experience was ‘Star Wars’ and seeing R2D2 and C3PO. I fell in love with those robots.
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
We’re all a genius, but If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don’t know what it is. Well I do. It’s apathy. That’s the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.
It was during my enchanted days of travel that the idea came to me, which, through the years, has come into my thoughts again and again and always happily—the idea that geology is the music of the earth.
We now know that the proverbial snail’s pace is compelled to be so by pedal mucus, which is so powerfully adhesive – even when serving as a lubricant – that the creature is hard-pressed to free itself from the slime, and the slime in turn is difficult to remove from the ground.
There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.
Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.
Science cannot progress without reliable and accurate measurement of what it is you are trying to study. The key is measurement, simple as that.
Might it be possible at some future time, when neurophysiology has advanced substantially, to reconstruct the memories or insight of someone long dead?…It would be the ultimate breach of privacy.
The people who actually make the advances in theoretical physics don’t think in these categories that the philosophers and the historians of science subsequently invent for them
The distinction that only sciences are useful and only arts are spirit-enhancing is a nonsensical one. I couldn’t write much without scientists designing my computer. And some of them must want to read about Greek myth after a long day at work. These Muses always remind me that scientists and artists should disregard the idiotic attempts to separate us. We are all nerds, in the end.
When your mind wanders away from your breath it’s not good or bad. It’s just doing what it does. Just notice it. Then guide it back to your breath. Help it focus again. That’s all. You just have to show it who is in control.
Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow`s speed.
If you act for self-gain then no good can come of it. If you act selflessly, then you act well for all and you must not be afraid.
Eat healthy. Work hard. Stay strong. Worry less. Dance more. Love often. Be happy…
When the light reached its zenith, the group of 1,000 Travelers down below could no longer be seen. Suddenly, the intense light ceased to be, returning the lighting of the stadium to a normal level. Dani felt a moment of disorientation, but she soon recovered and looked down at an empty stadium.
When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future – those are science fictional questions.
God is the name we give to the science we don’t understand. Science is the name we give to the God we don’t understand.
Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
There is no shame in not knowing something. The shame is not being willing to learn.
The secret of DNA’s success is that it carries information like that of a computer program, but far more advanced. Since experience shows that intelligence is the only presently acting cause of information, we can infer that intelligence is the best explanation for the information in DNA.
A cup is just crockerytill there is coffee in it.A head is just a skulltill there’s a mind in it.
It seems that all eukaryotic cells either have, or once had (and then lost) mitochondria. In other words, possession of mitochondria is a sine qua non of the eukaryotic condition
The best place to start the evolution of the vertebrates is the imagination.
Except for God, perfection doesn’t exist, thus the production and consumption of petroleum, which have contributed to so many advances of humanity, has also brought some problems that are discussed here. This is, of course, true of any other natural resources and also of inventions, which bring benefits to humanity but also some unwelcome situations. But overall, however, the benefits outweigh the problems by a significant margin.
By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.
Ideologically, the pursuit of science is not that different from the ideology that goes into punk rock. The idea of challenging authority is consistent with what I have been taught as a scientist.
And fragile is thy tenure of this worldStill haunted by the monstrous ghost of God.(To Science)
Science, gentlemen, by definition, is any skill that reflects a precise application of principles.
How is it that, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, there are still some who would deny the dangers of climate change? Not surprisingly, the loudest voices are not scientific, and it is remarkable how many economists, lawyers, journalists and politicians set themselves up as experts on the science.
Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it.
No one has proof that I know of, that a higher power exists, yet a major portion of the world believes in it and relies on it in faith in trust, in what that is. Where is the science in that? And yet you have incredible belief in that.
Not that there’s anything wrong with just lying around on your back. In it’s way, rotting is interesting too, as we will see. It’s just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver.
It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.
The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence.
With the observable fact that scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human welfare and environmental protection, there is no question that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without.
Hofstadter… fears that AI might show us that the human qualities we most value are disappointingly simple to mechanize.
Modernism in Vienna brought together science and culture in a new way to create an Age of Insight that emphasized a more complex view of the human mind than had ever existed before.
In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.
Brain is there to think first, then take a side, but society teaches you to pick a side first, then think alike. In a world of flexible spine and rigid mind, muster an unbending spine with expanding mind.
The Bible is a book of Science. Secular Humanism is a religion of mythology.
It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.
Thirty-five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.
The is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.
Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.
Acting is not rocket science, but it is an art form. What you are doing is illuminating humanity. Or not.