Science

"Misuse of science has often obscured the value of science itself."

"In science, just as in art and in life, only that which is true to culture is true to nature."

"Edison definitely ended the distinction between the theoretical man of science and the practical man of science, so that today we think of scientific discoveries in connection with their possible present or future application to the needs of man. He took the old rule-of-thumb methods out of industry and substituted exact scientific knowledge, while, on the other hand, he directed scientific research into useful channels."

"For indeed it is one of the lessons of the history of science that each age steps on the shoulders of the ages which have gone before. The value of each age is not its own, but is in part, in large part, a debt to its forerunners. And this age of ours, if, like its predecessors, it can boast of something of which it is proud, would, could it read the future, doubtless find much also of which it would be ashamed."

"It is probably not too much to say that the hope of progress--moral and intellectual as well as material--in the future is bound up with the fortunes of science, and that every obstacle placed in the way of scientific discovery is a wrong to humanity."

"Although many... feel we can prepare for our future by thinking, acting, and learning using present methods and values, nothing is farther from the truth... in today’s rapidly changing world... Each succeeding generation inherits the values, accomplishments, hopes, successes, and failings of previous generations... they inherit the results of the decisions made by those generations. For the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence when technologies were simple or non-existent, this may have had little impact on human life and the earth that sustains it. Each generation of hunters and gatherers, then plowmen and pioneers, passed on tools to the next generation to help them survive. Change from one generation to the next was slow and hardly noticeable. In those days there was little understanding of science and how things worked, and explanations were not scientific. This is no longer the case in today’s high-tech world where a change that affects millions may happen in a matter of seconds. A child born today inherits a world vastly different from that of its parent’s generation, let alone that from centuries ago. Previous generations left a legacy of, exploitation, occupation, and irrelevant values that present great challenges, but also opportunities to the people of today. The application of scientific principles, for better or worse, accounts for every single advance that has improved people’s lives... at the heart of human progress – or destruction – is the rock-solid foundation of science."

"And most people say of astrology, "Oh, it's harmless fun, isn't it?" And I should say probably for about 80% of the cases it probably is harmless fun, but there's a strong way in which it isn't harmless: one, because it's so anti-science; you know, you'll hear things like "Science doesn't know everything." Well, of course science doesn't know everything. But because science doesn't know everything that doesn't mean science knows nothing. Science knows enough for us to be watched by a few million people now on television, for these lights to be working, for quite extraordinary miracles to have taken place in terms of the harnessing of the physical world and our dim approaches towards understanding it."

"We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience."

"The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case. ... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization."

"Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible."

"Man’s responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases."

"So far what we’re doing here is pure science. We’re learning facts about the universe without worrying what they’re good for."

"“Are you sure?” Myron asked. “If I was sure,” Uncle Hugo said, “I wouldn’t have to do the experiment.”"

"Wissenschaft und Kunst gehören der Welt an, und vor ihnen verschwinden die Schranken der Nationalität."

"In many ways, science, including statistics, is like detective work. Beginning with a set of observations, we ask what can be said about the systems that generated them."

"In the measure in which they are scientific, the sciences of man can consider man only by selecting points of view under which it is possible to treat him objectively. It is obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore the various forms of sociology, psychology, ethnology, neurology, and so forth: he must simply wonder if the sciences of man, added up, constitute a science of man."

": Four pounds. Four pounds – like two pounds wasn't bad enough. We're talking two – three-hundred boxes of sinus pills. There ain't that many Smurfs in the world. : We're not going to need pseudoephedrine. We're going to make phenylacetone in a tube furnace, then we're going to use reductive amination to yield methamphetamine. Four pounds. : So no pseudo? : No pseudo. : So you do have a plan! Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, science!"

"Science is not “organized common sense”; at it most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition."

"Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome."

"Science does progress toward more adequate understanding of the empirical world, but no pristine, objective reality lies "out there" for us to capture as our technologies improve and our concepts mature. The human mind is both an amazing instrument and a fierce impediment—and the mind must be interposed between observation and understanding. Thus we will always "see" with the aid (or detriment) of conventions. All observation is a partnership between mind and nature, and all good partnerships require compromise. The mind, we trust, will be constrained by a genuine external reality; this reality, in turn, must be conveyed to the brain by our equally imperfect senses, all jury-rigged and cobbled together by that maddeningly complex process known as evolution."

"While bright-eyed Science watches round."

"The success of the scientific method in the past has encouraged us to think that with enough time and effort we can unravel nature's mysteries. But hitting the absolute limit of scientific explanation—not a technological obstacle or the current but progressing edge of human understanding—would be a singular event, one for which past experience could not prepare us. ...the possibility that there are limits to scientific explanation ...is an issue that may never be resolved."

"That is better and more valuable which requires fewer, other circumstances being equal, just as that demonstration is better, other circumstances being equal, which necessitates the answering of a smaller number of questions for a perfect demonstration or requires a smaller number of suppositions and premises from which the demonstration proceeds. For if one thing were demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premisses, clearly that is better which is from fewer because it makes us know quickly, just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises. Similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics the best is that which needs no premisses and the better that which needs the fewer, other circumstances being equal."

"The gentleman [Mr. Taber] from New York says [agricultural research] is all foolish. Yes; it was foolish when Burbank was experimenting with wild cactus. It was foolish when the Wright boys went down to Kitty Hawk and had a contraption there that they were going to fly like birds. It was foolish when Robert Fulton tried to put a boiler into a sail boat and steam it up the Hudson. It was foolish when one of my ancestors thought the world was round and discovered this country so that the gentleman from New York could become a Congressman. (Laughter.) ... Do not seek to stop progress; do not seek to put the hand of politics on these scientific men who are doing a great work. As the gentleman from Texas points out, it is not the discharge of these particular employees that is at stake, it is all the work of investigation, of research, of experimentation that has been going on for years that will be stopped and lost."

"Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research."

"We must regard science...from three points of view. First, it is the free activity of man’s divine faculties of reason and imagination. Secondly, it is the answer of the few to the demands of the many for wealth, comfort and victory, for “νόσων τ᾽ ἀπείρους καί μακραίωνας βίους," gifts which it will grant only in exchange for peace, security, and stagnation. Finally it is man’s gradual conquest, first of space and time, then of matter as such, then of his own body and those of other living beings, and finally the subjugation of the dark and evil elements in his own soul. None of these conquests will ever be complete, but all, I believe, will be progressive. The question of what he will do with these powers is essentially a question for religion and aesthetic. It may be urged that they are only fit to be placed in the hands of a being who has learned to control himself, and that man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches."

"The tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man whom all the prophets and poets could not move turns at last and extinguishes the evil at its source."

"My own belief is that science remains the most powerful tool we have yet generated to apply leverage for our future. It is the instrument which is most useful for guiding our own destinies, for assuring the condition of man in the years to come. I have much to hope that we will not abandon that tool, leaving us to our own brute devices."

"Much recent philosophy of science has been dedicated to disclosing that a 'given' or a 'pure' observation language is a myth-eaten fabric of philosophical fiction. ...In any observation statement the cloven hoofprint of theory can readily be detected."

"Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus - 'we do not know'."

"The willingness to admit ignorance has made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than any previous tradition of knowledge."

"Mere observations, however, are not knowledge. In order to understand the universe, we need to connect observations into comprehensive theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics."

"exact science - defined as 'exact' by their use of mathematical tools."

"Scientists themselves are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control the flow of money; many scientists do, in fact, act out of purely intellectual curiosity. Hovever, only rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda."

"To whatever extent the science of the past may have contributed to a mechanistic and economic image of man and a technocratic image of the good society, the new science of subjective experience may provide a counteracting force toward the ennobling of the image of the individual's possibilities, of the educational and socializing processes, and of the future. And since we have come to understand that science is not a description of "reality" but a metaphorical ordering of experience, the new science does not impugn the old. It is not a question of which view is "true" in some ultimate sense. Rather, it is a matter of which picture is more useful in guiding human affairs. Among the possible images that are reasonably in ac-cord with accumulated human experience, since the image held is that most likely to come into being, it is prudent to choose the noblest."

"What follows naturally from [the] empiricist starting-point is the division of propositions into two main classes, (i) empirical propositions, about synthetic matters of fact, which are (or should be, if they are to have literal meaning) testable by experience, and (ii) those which are purely analytic, the function of which is to elucidate the use and meaning of terms, but which give no in¬ formation about the world. The truth or falsity of the latter depends solely on their self-consistency and the law of non-contradiction, whereas of the former self-consistency, though necessary, is not a sufficient condition of truth. Accordingly there are two main types of science, exact science on the one hand comprising logic and mathematics, concerned with analytic truths and using purely deductive reasoning; and empirical science on the other seeking laws which are generalizations from particular experiences and are verifiable (or, more strictly, ‘probabilifiable’) only by observation and experiment."

"Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul."

"Though there be one onely roade to Science, namely, that by which we proceed from things more known, to things known less; and from that which is more manifest, to that which is more obscure; and though Universals are chiefly known to us (for Science is begot by reasoning from Universals to Particulars) yet that very comprehension of Universals in the Understanding, springs from the perception of Singulars in our sense."

"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"

"Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning."

"He who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain to the least degree of mastery. But then, O my son, do thou experiment so that thou mayesy acquire knowledge. Scientists delight not in abundance of material; they rejoice only in the excellence of their experimental methods."

"Science embraces facts and debates opinion; religion embraces opinion and debates the facts."

"The spirit of poetry (only authentic and great poetry is meant) is essentially superior to the spirit that prevails in all mere science."

"In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes a sharp separation between the world and the I impossible. If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation... one can trace the roots... to the Cartesian partition. ... It will take a long time for it [this partition] to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality."

"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."

"Science … may be degraded from its native dignity … by placing it in the light of a mere appendage to and caterer for our pampered appetites. The question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this enquiry."

"Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one."

"Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!"

"Obviously something is wrong with the entire argument of "obviousness"."