Science

"Today, when so much depends on our informed action, we as voters and taxpayers can no longer afford to confuse science and technology, to confound “pure” science and “applied” science."

"Far from attempting to control science, few among the general public even seem to recognize just what “science” entails. Because lethal technologies seem to spring spontaneously from scientific discoveries, most people regard dangerous technology as no more than the bitter fruit of science, the real root of all evil."

"Science is one of the few areas of human life in which the majority does not rule."

"It seems to me that we live in a society in which technology is continuously presented as wonderful. We were less exposed to the negative aspects of technology which were inevitably there. One of my interests is to provide that kind of balance to these notions that cell phones and faxes are all wonderful and great. Isn't it fabulous that we all have computers? Well, yes and no is my response. I was particularly interested in that, in working on Jurassic Park that aspect of what are the negative parts. Because in talking with the people who were doing this kind of research what I was hearing was that the most responsible of them were deciding not to proceed down certain lines of inquiry which is really a new phase in science. Traditionally in science what the scientists themselves have said is: "I might as well do it, because if I don't, someone else will. It is going to happen inevitably." I think there's recognition now, that it's no so inevitable and it's quite conceivable that if I don't do this research neither will anyone else. It's simply too dangerous."

"Experimental physics—hell, all of science—is about solving problems. However, you can’t solve them all at once. There’s always a larger, overarching question—the big target. But if you obsess on the sheer enormity of it, you lose focus."

"To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to make reason the arbiter and supreme guide of public opinion; that is the essential goal of the sciences; that is how science will contribute to the advancement of civilization, and that is what deserves protection of governments who want to insure the stability of their power."

"The objective world of science has nothing in common with the world of things-in-themselves of the metaphysician. The metaphysical world, assuming that it has any meaning at all, is irrelevant to science."

"The vast majority of modern scientists are agnostics in that they reject the claim of the metaphysical realist who presumes to have discovered substance and true being in the outside world. They will claim that substance and the thing in itself are unknowable, or at least that these elude rational investigation, and that the objective world of science is nothing but a mental construct imagined for the purpose of co-ordinating our sense impressions. But, once this point is admitted, they will recognise that this mentally constructed objective universe must to all intents and purposes be treated as a reality pre-existing to the observer who discovers it bit by bit. This last expression of opinion is not the result of some philosophical system. It is imposed upon scientists as an inevitable conclusion; for had it been proved impossible to imagine a common objective universe, the same for all men, science could never have existed, since it would have been reduced to individual points of view which could never have been co-ordinated. In other words, knowledge would have lacked generality; and without generality there could have been no such thing as science."

"But beyond the bright searchlights of science, Out of sight of the windows of sense, Old riddles still bid us defiance, Old questions of Why and of Whence."

"Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections — a mere heart of stone."

"The time is always ripe for the re-interpretation of theories in the light of new vision and of new facts. This is the very province of science."

"Science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them."

"It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs."

"Finding hidden links between seemingly disparate phenomena is what makes the scientific method so powerful and compelling. The distinctive feature of science is that it is both broad and deep: broad in the way it tackles all physical phenomena and deep in the way it weaves them, economically, into a common explanatory scheme requiring fewer and fewer assumptions. No other system of thought can match its breadth and depth."

"Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist’s opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession."

"Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer."

"There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity."

"There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality."

"We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of exact science are mathematics and logic: the mathematical sect puts out the logical eye, the logical sect puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it can see better with one eye than with two."

"What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful. ...There are great truths to tell, if we had either the courage to announce them or the temper to receive them."

"Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. And question everything. Including authority."

"What I would be so happy about is—I don’t expect everybody to understand everything about science at the end of the season, but I want them to be curious about learning more. I want them to understand the power of science, and its tremendous liberating potential. If those things are communicated, then I feel like my work is done."

"... science is a birthright that belongs to every one of us. And the degree to which we're excluded from science is the degree to which we are powerless. We can't be informed decision-makers."

"It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life’s preciousness on our tiny planet."

"Science is a culture, constantly growing and changing. The science of today has broken out of the molds of classical nineteenth-century science, just as the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock broke out of the molds of nineteenth-century art. Science has as many competing styles as painting or poetry."

"Science has an important part to play in our everyday existence, and there is far too much neglect of science; but its intention is to supplement not to supplant the familiar outlook."

"It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."

"All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking."

"The aim of science is, on the one hand, a comprehension, as complete as possible, of the connection between the sense experiences in their totality, and, on the other hand, the accomplishment of this aim by the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations. (Seeking, as far as possible, logical unity in the world picture, i.e. paucity in logical elements.)"

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but it gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science. Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations—in short, by metaphysics. I believe that every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist, no matter how pure a "positivist" he may fancy himself. The metaphysicist believes that the logically simple is also the real. The tamed metaphysicist believes that not all that is logically simple is embodied in experienced reality, but that the totality of all sensory experience can be "comprehended" on the basis of a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity. The skeptic will say that this is a "miracle creed." Admittedly so, but it is a miracle creed which has been borne out to an amazing extent by the development of science."

"One thing I have learned in a long life: all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

"I had fallen in love with a young man..., and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery..."

"Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it."

"From society's standpoint, modern science and technology appears Janus-faced : It has given us wealth in one sense, and poverty in another; it has harnessed nature to man's basic needs in ways and to extents undreamed - of only a few decades ago, but it has fostered a continuingly lowered "quality of life"."

"We tend to think of science as an activity that has its own ways and rules, independent of the political or social environment where they take place. And we often think of s as being detached from their mundane surroundings, paying only attention to this or that yet unsolved problem. This is of course not true. All facets of society, and science is no exception, are interconnected, at a much deeper level than we may naively think. Everyday experiences, social turmoils or wars influence the life and the death of everyone and a scientist is not immune to any such events."

"It is a cliché that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is "civilized." Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with "positive" scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively. What, for example, could the symbol of the sunset of a dynasty, like the Japanese, mean to him when he knows scientifically what the sun is: merely a star, at which one can even fire missiles."

"The impression that science is over has occurred many times in various branches of human knowledge, often because of an explosion of discoveries made by a genius or a small group of men in such a short time that average minds could hardly follow and had the unconscious desire to take breath, to get used to the unexpected things that came to be revealed. Dazzled by these new truths, they could not see beyond. Sometimes an entire century did not suffice to produce this accommodation."

"These days, scientists are largely treated like beggars, their tin cups externally extended to the government funding agencies."

"Science is first of all the savants. A somewhat sorry crowd. They are timid, fusty, sad and shortsighted, wonderful when it comes to not seeing the world, to not appreciating men, to not knowing what man is, also to not knowing either the principles, origins and foundations nor the end, the importance and the consequences of the very science they are studying. Often enough they are superstitious and dogmatic in their superstitions and prejudices because, knowing exactly what effectively they know, they bring to the expression of their prejudices the strictness and imperiousness of the formulas of their laboratories and studies."

"The delights of science and mathematics—their revelations of natural beauty and harmony, their visions of thing to come, and the joy of discovery in itself, the light and shadow it casts on the mystery dance of mind and nature—are too profound, and too important, to be left to scientists and mathematicians alone. They belong to the cultural heritage of the entire world, and to know something about them is to be acquainted with the finest new achievements of the human mind."

"Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives."

"The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution."

"The assertion...that there is no knowledge outside science – extra scientiam nulla salus – is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale."

"Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained."

"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ... Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it."

"Modern civilization depends on science … James Smithson was well aware that knowledge should not be viewed as existing in isolated parts, but as a whole, each portion of which throws light on all the other, and that the tendency of all is to improve the human mind, and give it new sources of power and enjoyment … narrow minds think nothing of importance but their own favorite pursuit, but liberal views exclude no branch of science or literature, for they all contribute to sweeten, to adorn, and to embellish life … science is the pursuit above all which impresses us with the capacity of man for intellectual and moral progress and awakens the human intellect to aspiration for a higher condition of humanity."