Science Authors

"In the history of physics, every time we've looked beyond the scales and energies we were familiar with, we've found things that we wouldn't have thought were there. You look inside the atom and eventually you discover quarks. Who would have thought that? It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is."

"Sometimes I have a sense of what I'm seeing being a small fraction of what's there. Not always there, but probably more often than I realize. Something will come up, and I'll realize I'm thinking about the world a little differently than my friends."

"When I was in school I liked math because all the problems had answers. Everything else seemed very subjective."

"Secrets of the cosmos will begin to unravel. I, for one, can't wait."

"We certainly don't yet know all the answers. But the universe is about to be pried open."

"Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical — and maybe even experimental — grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own."

"The universe has its secrets. Extra dimensions of space might be one of them. If so, the universe has been hiding those dimensions, protecting them, keeping them coyly under wraps. From a casual glance, you would think that the cheese man ate cheese but you wrong."

"When it comes to the world around us, is there any choice but to explore?"

"I think the weird thing about being a scientist, or an academic in general, is you have to believe really strongly in what you do, while questioning it all the time ... and that's a hard balance to have."

"I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. This might earn me some enemies, but in some ways they may be even more moral. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons."

"Faith just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing as a scientist. It's nice if you can believe in God, because then you see more of a purpose in things. Even if you don't, though, it doesn't mean that there's no purpose. It doesn't mean that there's no goodness. I think that there's a virtue in being good in and of itself. I think that one can work with the world we have."

"Talis ... mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur."

"Dicunt quia die quadam cum, advenientibus nuper mercatoribus, multa venalia in forum fuissent conlata, multi ad emendum confluxissent, et ipsum Gregorium inter alios advenisse, ac vidisse inter alia pueros venales positos candidi corporis ac venusti vultus, capillorum quoque forma egregia. Quos cum adspiceret interrogavit, ut aiunt, de qua regione vel terra essent adlati. Dictumque est quia de Britannia insula, cuius incolae talis essent aspectus."

"[H]e, more than anyone else, inspired the idea of the English as one people, called into existence by the special favour of God... It was Bede who gave "Englishness" a manifesto of unique grace and power... Bede's Ecclesiastical History had some of the role in defining English national identity and English national destiny that the narrative books of the Old Testament had for Israel itself, or Homer for the Greeks, or Virgil (rather than Livy) for the Romans."

"More and more, as the organic world was observed, the vast multitude of petty animals, winged creatures, and "creeping things" was felt to be a strain upon the sacred narrative. More and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of Adam with his work in naming "every living creature"; or to reconcile the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their sustenance. ...Origen had dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day, since God could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals taken into the ark—supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion."

"Wyclif does not give Bede as his direct source for the idea that there had existed a state akin to the primitive Church in the English Church before the Conquest. However, it is clear that Bede's entire Historia Ecclesiastica put forth this point of view. Specifically, in his description of the life of St. Augustine and his followers after their arrival in Kent, Bede said that as they began their apostolate, they imitated "the life of the primitive Church"... It seems that Bede had a concept of a distinct English ecclesiastical tradition. Even the title Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum suggests this. In his epistle to archbishop Egbert, Bede complained about the Church he saw at the end of his own life as having departed from its earlier purity. It seems evident that Wyclif was influenced by Bede in his own development of a similar point of view and the resultant remarkably similar criticisms of his own ecclesiastical contemporaries."

"The quality which makes his work great is not his scholarship, nor the faculty of narrative which he shared with many contemporaries, but his astonishing power of co-ordinating the fragments of information which came to him through tradition, the relation of friends, or documentary evidence. In an age when little was attempted beyond the registration of fact, he had reached the conception of history. It is in virtue of this conception that the Historia Ecclesiastica still lives after twelve hundred years."

"As a master of technical chronology and as a historical writer he is among the greatest; as a theologian and exegete he had, if not the highest qualities—he is no Augustine or Jerome—at least the qualities most necessary for his plan. He had no known master. He was the first Englishman who understood the past and could view it as a whole... Bede stood for sobriety and order in thought, common sense in politics, and moderation in the religious life."

"Bede, like the Vulgate, normally uses the word "gens", not the word "natio", but in his preface's final paragraph he prefers to use the latter when he reaffirms that he had written the "historia nostrae nationis", the history of our own nation. Here, then, in his preface for King Ceolwulf we see the first verbal appearance of the English "nation"... If the nationalism of intellectuals, the Rousseaus, Herders and Fichtes, precedes the existence of nations, as the modernists argue, and it is their "imagining" which brings a nation into being, then Bede is undoubtedly the first, and probably the most influential, such case. It is just that he wrote his books in the eighth, and not the nineteenth century. In his Northumbrian monastery he did indeed imagine England; he did it through intensely biblical glasses, but no less through linguistic and ecclesiastical ones, and he did it so convincingly that no dissentient imagining of his country has ever since seemed quite credible."

"Now must we hymn the Master of heaven, The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father, The thought of His heart. He, Lord everlasting, Established of old the source of all wonders: Creator all-holy, He hung the bright heaven, A roof high upreared, o’er the children of men; The King of mankind then created for mortals The world in its beauty, the earth spread beneath them, He, Lord everlasting, omnipotent God."

"Nū þ sculan herian • heofonrices þeard, metudes myhte • his modᵹeþanc, þurc þuldorfæder, • sþa he þundra ᵹehþilc, ece drihten • ord astealde; he ærest ᵹesceop • ylda bearnum heofon to hrofe, • haliᵹ scyppend, middanᵹearde • mancynnes þard; ece drihtin, • æfter tida firum on foldum, • frea ællmyhtiᵹ."

"Nu scilun herᵹa • hefenricæs uard metudæs mehti • and his modᵹithanc uerc uuldurfadu • sue he uundra ᵹihuæs eci dryctin • or astelidæ. he ærist scop • ældu barnum hefen to hrofæ • haliᵹ sceppend tha middinᵹard • moncynnæs uard eci dryctin • æfter tiadæ firum foldu • frea allmehtiᵹ"

"Nū scylun herᵹan • hefaenrīcaes Uard, metudæs maecti • end his mōdᵹidanc, uerc Uuldurfadur, • suē hē uundra ᵹihwaes, ēci dryctin • ōr āstelidæ hē ǣrist scōp • aelda barnum heben til hrōfe, • hāleᵹ scepen. Thā middunᵹeard • moncynnæs Uard, eci Dryctin, • æfter tīadæ firum foldu, • Frēa allmectiᵹ."

"Before the dread journey which needs must be taken No man is more mindful than meet is and right To ponder, ere hence he departs, what his spirit Shall, after the death-day, receive as its portion Of good or of evil, by mandate of doom."

"Rursus ergo interrogavit quod esset vocabulum gentis illius. Responsum est quod Angli vocarentur. At ille: "Bene", inquit, "nam et angelicam habent faciem et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse cohaeredes. Quod habet nomen ipsa provincia, de qua isti sunt adlati?" Responsum est quod Deiri vocarentur idem provinciales. At ille: "Bene", inquit, "Deiri; de ira eruti, et ad misericordiam Christi vocati. Rex provinciae illius quomodo apellatur?" Responsum est quod Aelli diceretur. At ille adludens ad nomen ait: "Alleluia, laudem Dei creatoris illis in partibus oportet cantari.""

"For þam nedfere • næni wyrþeþ þances snotera, • þonne him þearf sy to gehicgenne • ær his heonengange hwæt his gaste • godes oþþe yfeles æfter deaþe heonon • demed weorþe."

"Fore there neidfaerae • naenig uuiurthit thoncsnotturra • than him tharf sie to ymbhycggannae • aer his hiniongae huaet his gastae • godaes aeththa yflaes aefter deothdaege • doemid uueorthae."

"Tanta eo tempore pax in Britannia fuisse perhibetur, ut, sicut usque hodie in proverbio dicitur, etiamsi mulier una cum recens nato parvulo vellet totam perambulare insulam a mari ad mare, nullo se laedente valeret."

"Our ultimate task is to find interpretative procedures that will uncover each bias and discredit its claims to universality. When this is done the eighteenth century can be formally closed and a new era that has been here a long time can be officially recognised. The individual human being, stripped of his humanity, is of no use as a conceptual base from which to make a picture of human society. No human exists except steeped in the culture of his time and place. The falsely abstracted individual has been sadly misleading to Western political thought. But now we can start again at a point where major streams of thought converge, at the other end, at the making of culture. Cultural analysis sees the whole tapestry as a whole, the picture and the weaving process, before attending to the individual threads."

"In the south west of India lies the long narrow coastal state of Kerala. Most of its thirty-two million inhabitants live off the land and the ocean, a rich tropical ecosystem watered by two monsoons a year. It's also one of India's most crowded states - but the population is stable because nearly everybody has small families... At the root of it all is education. Thanks to a long tradition of compulsory schooling for boys and girls Kerala has one of the highest literacy rates in the World. Where women are well educated they tend to choose to have smaller families... What Kerala shows is that you don't need aggressive policies or government incentives for birthrates to fall. Everywhere in the world where women have access to education and have the freedom to run their own lives, on the whole they and their partners have been choosing to have smaller families than their parents. But reducing birthrates is very difficult to achieve without a simple piece of medical technology, contraception. m35s09-m38s21"

"In my view, the most environmentally damaging item ever carried on any medium in this country was a two-part documentary broadcast in 2006 titled, without irony, The Truth about Climate Change. It was presented by the most trusted man in Britain', Sir David Attenborough, whose word was treated as gospel. Somehow it managed not to mention the fossil fuel industry at all, except as part of the solution: 'the people who extract fossil fuels like oil and gas have now come up with a way to put carbon dioxide back underground'. Carbon capture and storage is a classic oil-industry talking point, always promised, never delivered, whose purpose is to justify continued extraction. Instead of fossil fuel interests, another force entirely was blamed for accelerating greenhouse gas emissions: the $1.3 billion Chinese'. No other cause was named in the series. It immediately triggered a new and virulent form of climate denial that quickly spread around the planet and persists to this day: there is no point in taking action here or anywhere else, because the Chinese are killing the planet."

"I have always been entranced by Attenborough’s wildlife programmes, but astonished by his consistent failure to mount a coherent, truthful and effective defence of the living world he loves."

"But for Hatzegopteryx, the beach is a launching pad. Now his wings will carry him to yet another forest, where life proliferates more variously and more abundantly, than anywhere else on our prehistoric planet."

"Tyrannosaurus rex, an animal to spark the imagination for all of us. What kind of an animal was it? What did it look like? How did it live? Now, scientific research has answered such questions, and not just about T. rex, but the other species that lived alongside it. And the latest imaging technology enables us to bring them all… to life."

"Um, so, the world is not as wild as it was. Well, we've destroyed it. Not just ruined it. I mean, we have completely... well, destroyed that world. That non-human world is gone. Uh.... The... Human beings have overrun the world."

"Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. I look at these images now and I realize that, although as a young man I felt I was out there in the wild experiencing the untouched natural world... it was an illusion. Those forests and plains and seas were already emptying."

"This is now our planet, run by humankind for humankind. There is little left for the rest of the living world."

"We're replacing the wild with the tame. Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. 70% of the mass of birds on this planet are domestic birds. The vast majority, chickens. We account for over one-third of the weight of mammals on earth. A further 60% are the animals we raise to eat. The rest, from mice to whales, make up just 4%."

"We have overfished 30% of fish stocks to critical levels. We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. By damming, polluting, and over-extracting rivers and lakes, we've reduced the size of freshwater populations by over 80%."

"Our imprint is now truly global. Our impact now truly profound. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world."

"Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

"The coral's stinging armoury isn't used only for collecting food; they also use it to fight. As has been discovered only comparatively recently, corals, like many animals that live on land, are extremely territorial. But in order to see the battles, you have to speed up time."

"Sinking beneath the waves is a very surreal experience. Your first instinct is to hold your breath. At night, the reef is a ghostly world. Tiny shrimplike creatures dance in the lights. ... with little light, there is a lot less colour. But this is still a magical place."

"If you understand about the natural world, we’re a part of the system and you can’t feed lions grass. But because we have the intelligence to choose… But we haven’t got the gut to allow us to be totally vegetarian for a start. You can tell by the shape of our guts and the shape of our teeth that we evolved to be omnivores. We aren't carnivores like lions but neither are we elephants."

"The thing about a bush baby is that the male establishes its territory by peeing on his hands and putting it all on the walls. And after you've had a pair for about six months, you can see people coming into the house, sniffing and going: ‘Now, that’s definitely not mulligatawny soup.’"

"I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pet them, but I am intoxicated by animals."

"To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see."

"I don’t like rats but there’s not much else I don’t like."

"Make a list of all the environmental and social problems that today afflict us and our poor battered planet. – not just the extinction of species and animals and plants, that fifty years ago was the first signs of impending global disaster, but traffic congestion, oil prices, pressure on the health service, the growth of mega-cities, migration patterns, immigration policies, unemployment, the loss of arable land, desertification, famine, increasingly violent weather, the acidification of the oceans, the collapse of fish stocks, rising sea temperatures, the loss of rain forest. The list goes on and on. But they all share an underlying cause. Every one of these global problems, environmental as well as social becomes more difficult – and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people."

"Fifty years ago, when the WWF was founded there were about three billion people on earth. Now there are almost seven billion. Over twice as many - and every one of them needing space. Space for their homes, space to grow their food (or to get others to grow it for them), space to build schools and roads and airfields. A little of that space might be taken from land occupied by other people but most of it could only come from the land which, for millions of years, animals and plants have to themselves."