Science quotes

From Motley Bytes Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Isaac_Asimov

Engineering

“Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, chapter epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 22, page 78. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.
Keywords: Science_quotes Amuse_quotes Fascinate_quotes Engineering_quotes Change_quotes World_quotes

Physics

“Physics is the basic science. One can easily argue that all other sciences are specialized aspects of physics.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, chapter epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 56, page 210. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.
Keywords: Physics_quotes Basic_quotes Science_quotes Argue_quotes Specialization_quotes Aspect_quotes

Science and Art

“There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, chapter epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 65, page 251. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.
Keywords: Art_quotes Science_quotes Enemy_quotes Different_quotes Aspect_quotes Whole_quotes

Science and Politics

“The nations may be divided in everything else, but they all share a single body of science.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, chapter epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 70, page 270. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.
Keywords: Nation_quotes Divided_quotes Everything_quotes Share_quotes Body_quotes Science_quotes Politics_quotes

Technology

“Science in the service of humanity is technology, but lack of wisdom may make the service harmful.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, chapter epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Shulman, published in 1988 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York. Chapter 83, page 321. ISBN 1-555-84111-2.
Keywords: Science_quotes Service_quotes Humanity_quotes Technology_quotes Lack_quotes Wisdom_quotes Make_quotes Harmful_quotes

Douglas_Adams

Scientific Method

“The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.”
  • Source: Douglas Adams. From the speech entitled "Is There an Artificial God?"; spoken on 1998-09; spoken at the "Digital Biota 2" conference' held at Magdelene College Cambridge; online at http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/ (accessed 2017).
Keywords: Scientific_Method_quotes Invention_quotes Science_quotes Agreement_quotes Power_quotes Intellectual_quotes Idea_quotes Framework_quotes Thinking_quotes Investigation_quotes Understanding_quotes Challenge_quotes World_quotes Premise_quotes Attack_quotes Fight_quotes Day_quotes Down_quotes Religion_quotes

David_Bohm

Extraphysical Principles

“There is no reason why an extraphysical general principle is necessarily to be avoided, since such principles could conceivably serve as useful working hypotheses. For the history of scientific research is full of examples in which it was very fruitful indeed to assume that certain objects or elements might be real, long before any procedures were known which would permit them to be observed directly.”
  • Source: David Bohm in the paper “A Suggested Interpretation of the Quantum Theory in Terms of ‘Hidden’ Variables. II”. Published January 1952 in Physical Review volume 35 issue 2.
Keywords: Reason_quotes Extraphysical_quotes Physical_quotes General_quotes Principle_quotes Avoid_quotes Conceive_quotes Serve_quotes Useful_quotes Working_quotes Hypothesis_quotes History_quotes Science_quotes Research_quotes Example_quotes Fruitful_quotes Assumption_quotes Object_quotes Element_quotes Real_quotes Procedure_quotes Know_quotes Permit_quotes Observation_quotes Direct_quotes

Henry_Brooks_Adams

State Hostility

“The hostility of the state would be assured toward any system or science that might not strengthen its arm.”
  • Source: Henry Brooks Adams, In the Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919), 129.

John_Adams

Study

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
  • Source: John Adams in a letter to wife Abigail Adams (12 May 1780).
Keywords: Study_quotes Science_quotes Government_quotes Legislation_quotes Administration_quotes Negotiation_quotes Political_quotes War_quotes Liberty_quotes Mathematics_quotes Philosophy_quotes Geography_quotes Natural_History_quotes Naval_quotes Navigation_quotes Commerce_quotes Agriculture_quotes Art_quotes Painting_quotes Poetry_quotes Music_quotes Architecture_quotes Statuary_quotes Tapestry_quotes Porcelain_quotes

Herbert_George_Andrewartha

Model Making

“Model-making, the imaginative and logical steps which precede the experiment, may be judged the most valuable part of the scientific method because skill and insight in these matters are rare. Without them, we do not know what experiment to do. But it is the experiment which provides the raw material for scientific theory. Scientific theory cannot be built directly from the conclusions of conceptual models.”
  • Source: Herbert George Andrewartha, Introduction to the Study of Animal Population (1961), 181.
Keywords: Model_quotes Experiment_quotes Creativity_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Theory_quotes Make_quotes Imagination_quotes Logic_quotes Valuable_quotes Skill_quotes Insight_quotes Rare_quotes Knowledge_quotes Provide_quotes Raw_quotes Material_quotes Science_quotes Direct_quotes Conclusion_quotes Conceptual_quotes

Thomas_Aquinas

Reason

“Reason may be employed in two ways to establish a point: first for the purpose of furnishing sufficient proof of some principle, as in natural science, where sufficient proof can be brought to show that the movement of the heavens is always of uniform velocity. Reason is employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results, as in astrology the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this reason were sufficient, since some other theory might explain them.”
  • Source: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica [1266-1273], Part I, question 32, article 2 (reply to objection 2), trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (i.e. L. Shapeote), revised D. J. Sullivan (1952), Vol. I, 177.
Keywords: Reason_quotes Proof_quotes Confirmation_quotes Congruity_quotes Employ_quotes Establish_quotes Point_quotes First_quotes Furnish_quotes Sufficient_quotes Principle_quotes Natural_quotes Science_quotes Show_quotes Move_quotes Heaven_quotes Uniform_quotes Velocity_quotes Result_quotes Astrology_quotes Theory_quotes Eccentric_quotes Epicycles_quotes Consider_quotes Sensible_quotes Appearance_quotes Explanation_quotes

Isaac_Asimov

Science Uncertainty

“Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.”
  • Source: Isaac Asimov, The ‘Threat’ of Creationism. In Ashley Montagu (ed.), Science and Creationism, published 1984, page 192.
Source: Certainty_quotes Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Bible_quotes Thinking_quotes Theory_quotes Revision_quotes Observation_quotes Open_quotes Interpretation_quotes Scientist_quotes Quarrel_quotes Disillusion_quotes Untrained_quotes Rigid_quotes Comfort_quotes Allow_quotes Deviation_quotes Spare_quotes Pain_quotes Necessary_quotes Think_quotes

David_Auerbach

Safe Accurate Data

“The specific problem computer science faces in these ‘data network’ scenarios is that of making the data ‘safe’ and ‘accurate’ for the networks.”
  • Source: David Auerbach, in the article “Bitwise: A Life in Code” published in 2019 in Communications of the ACM, Volume 62, Issue 9 (September). DOI: 10.1145/3347864.
Keywords: Problem_quotes Computer_quotes Science_quotes Computer_Science_quotes Face_quotes Data_quotes Network_quotes Scenario_quotes Make_quotes Safe_quotes Accurate_quotes

Francis_Bacon

Axioms

“It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.”
  • Source: Sir Francis Bacon, From Novum Oranum (1620), Book 1, Aphorism 24. Translated as The New Organon: Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man), collected in James Spedding, Robert Ellis and Douglas Heath (eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon (1857), Vol. 4, 51.
Keywords: Mathematics_quotes Axiom_quotes Reason_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Establish_quotes Argument_quotes Avail_quotes Discover_quotes Work_quotes Nature_quotes Great_quotes Subtle_quotes Order_quotes Particular_quotes Easy_quotes Render_quotes Science_quotes Active_quotes

Jim_Baggott

The Reality Principle

“The Reality Principle. Reality is a metaphysical concept, and as such it is beyond the reach of science. Reality consists of things-in-themselves of which we can never hope to gain knowledge. Instead, we have to content ourselves with knowledge of empirical reality, of things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-measured. Nevertheless, scientific realists assume that reality (and its entities) exists objectively and independently of perception or measurement. They believe that reality is rational, predictable and accessible to human reason.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 8). Pegasus Books, New York, NY.
Keywords: Reality_quotes Metaphysics_quotes Conception_quotes Science_quotes Knowledge_quotes Epistemology_quotes Empirical_quotes Measurement_quotes Objectivity_quotes Independent_quotes Perception_quotes Belief_quotes Rational_quotes Reason_quotes Prediction_quotes Accessibility_quotes Human_quotes Principle_quotes

The Fact Principle

“The Fact Principle. Our knowledge and understanding of empirical reality are founded on verified scientific facts derived from careful observation and experiment. But the facts themselves are not theory-neutral. Observation and experiment are simply not possible without reference to a supporting theory of some kind.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 12). Pegasus Books. New York, NY.
Keywords: Fact_quotes Principle_quotes Knowledge_quotes Understanding_quotes Empirical_quotes Reality_quotes Verification_quotes Science_quotes Observation_quotes Experiment_quotes Theory_quotes Abstraction_quotes

The Theory Principle

“The Theory Principle. Although physical theories are constructed to describe empirical facts about reality, they are nevertheless founded on abstract mathematical (we could even say metaphysical) concepts. The process of abstraction from facts to theories is highly complex, intuitive and not subject to simple, universal rules applicable to all science for all time. In the act of scientific creation, any approach is in principle valid provided it yields a theory that works.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 17). Pegasus Books. New York, NY.
Keywords: Fact_quotes Principle_quotes Empirical_quotes Reality_quotes Complexity_quotes Science_quotes Intuition_quotes Validity_quotes Theory_quotes Abstraction_quotes Rule_quotes Creativity_quotes

The Testability Principle

“The Testability Principle. The principal requirement of a scientific theory is that it should in some way be testable through reference to existing or new facts about empirical reality. The test exposes the veracity or falsity of the theory, but there is a caveat. The working stuff of theories is itself abstract and metaphysical. Getting this stuff to apply to the facts or a test situation typically requires wrapping the abstract concepts in a blanket of auxiliary assumptions; some explicitly stated, many taken as read. This means that a test is rarely decisive. When a test shows that a theory is false, the theory is not necessarily abandoned. It may simply mean that one or more of the auxiliary assumptions are wrong.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 20). Pegasus Books. New York, NY.
Keywords: Testability_quotes Testing_quotes Principle_quotes Science_quotes Theory_quotes Fact_quotes Empirical_quotes Reality_quotes Verification_quotes Falsification_quotes Abstraction_quotes Metaphysics_quotes Assumption_quotes Certainty_quotes

The Veracity Principle

“The Veracity Principle. It is not possible to verify a scientific theory such that it provides absolute certainty for all time. A theory is instead accepted (or even tolerated), on the basis of its ability to survive the tests and meet additional criteria of simplicity, efficacy, utility, explanatory power and less rational, innately human measures such as beauty. Over time the theory becomes familiar and is accepted as ‘true’ or, at least, as possessing a high truth-likeness or verisimilitude. The scientists’ confidence or degree of belief in the theory grows. It is eventually absorbed into the common body of knowledge which forms the current ‘authorized’ version of empirical reality.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 22). Pegasus Books. New York, NY.
Keywords: Veracity_quotes Verification_quotes Principle_quotes Science_quotes Theory_quotes Certainty_quotes Acceptance_quotes Tolerance_quotes Ability_quotes Survival_quotes Simplicity_quotes Efficacy_quotes Utility_quotes Explanation_quotes Power_quotes Rational_quotes Human_quotes Measurement_quotes Beauty_quotes Time_quotes Truth_quotes Probability_quotes Likelihood_quotes Verisimilitude_quotes Confidence_quotes Belief_quotes Knowledge_quotes Authority_quotes Empirical_quotes Reality_quotes

The Copernican Principle

“The Copernican Principle. The universe is not organized for our benefit and we are not uniquely privileged observers. Science strives to remove ‘us’ from the centre of the picture, making our existence a natural consequence of reality rather than the reason for it. Empirical reality is therefore something that we have learned to observe with detachment, without passion. Scientists ask fundamental questions about how reality works and seek answers in the evidence from observation and experiment, irrespective of their own personal preferences, prejudices and beliefs.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 23). Pegasus Books. New York, NY
Keywords: Copernican_quotes Principle_quotes Universe_quotes Observation_quotes Benefit_quotes Privilege_quotes Science_quotes Existence_quotes Consequence_quotes Reality_quotes Causality_quotes Empirical_quotes Detachment_quotes Passion_quotes Fundamental_quotes Question_quotes Answer_quotes Evidence_quotes Experiment_quotes Preference_quotes Prejudice_quotes Belief_quotes

Robert_A_Baker

Science Has Humor

“Science, like any human enterprise, does have its humorous aspects.”
  • Source: Written by Robert A. Baker in the introduction to the book entitled “A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown: Essays for a Scientific Age”, edited by Robert A. Baker, published in 1963 by Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0138526087.
Keywords: Science_quotes Human_quotes Enterprise_quotes Humor_quotes Aspect_quotes

Friedrich_Ludwig_Bauer

Software Engineering Too Difficult

“Software engineering is the part of computer science which is too difficult for the computer scientist.”
  • Source: [Bauer; 1972]. A paper entitled Software Engineering. Written by Friedrich Ludwig Bauer. Published 1972 in Information Processing 71: Proceedings of Ifip Congress 1971, volume 1. ISBN: 9780720420630.
Keywords: Software_Engineering_quotes Programming_quotes Software_quotes Engineering_quotes Part_quotes Computer_Science_quotes Computing_quotes Science_quotes Difficulty_quotes Scientist_quotes

William_Bayliss

Mistakes

“But at the same time, there must never be the least hesitation in giving up a position the moment it is shown to be untenable. It is not going too far to say that the greatness of a scientific investigator does not rest on the fact of his having never made a mistake, but rather on his readiness to admit that he has done so, whenever the contrary evidence is cogent enough.”
  • Source: Sir William Bayliss, Principles of General Physiology (1915), x.xi.
Keywords: Mistake_quotes Error_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Ego_quotes Time_quotes Hesitation_quotes Give_quotes Position_quotes Moment_quotes Show_quotes Untenable_quotes Go_quotes Far_quotes Say_quotes Great_quotes Science_quotes Investigator_quotes Rest_quotes Fact_quotes Ready_quotes Admit_quotes Contrary_quotes Evidence_quotes Cogent_quotes

Francis_Bello

Glory of Science

“The glory of science is not that it discovers “truth”; rather it advances inexorably by discovering and correcting error.”
  • Source: Francis Bello, In Francis Bello, Lawrence Lessing and George A.W. Boehm, Great American Scientists (1960, 1961), 116.
Keywords: Science_quotes Truth_quotes Error_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Falsification_quotes

Reinout_Willem_van_Bemmelen

Validity of Hypothesis

“The functional validity of a working hypothesis is not a priori certain, because often it is initially based on intuition. However, logical deductions from such a hypothesis provide expectations (so-called prognoses) as to the circumstances under which certain phenomena will appear in nature. Such a postulate or working hypothesis can then be substantiated by additional observations ... The author calls such expectations and additional observations the prognosis-diagnosis method of research. Prognosis in science may be termed the prediction of the future finding of corroborative evidence of certain features or phenomena (diagnostic facts). This method of scientific research builds up and extends the relations between the subject and the object by means of a circuit of inductions and deductions.”
  • Source: Reinout Willem van Bemmelen. In 'The Scientific Character of Geology', The Journal of Geology (Jul 1961), 69, No. 4, 454-5.
Keywords: Hypothesis_quotes Certainty_quotes Validity_quotes Intuition_quotes Logic_quotes Deduction_quotes Expectation_quotes Nature_quotes Observation_quotes Confirmation_quotes Prognosis_quotes Diagnosis_quotes Induction_quotes Science_quotes Research_quotes Subject_quotes Object_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Functional_quotes Work_quotes Provide_quotes Circumstance_quotes Method_quotes Prediction_quotes Future_quotes Corroborate_quotes Evidence_quotes Feature_quotes Phenomenon_quotes Build_quotes Extend_quotes Relation_quotes Circuit_quotes

Claude_Bernard

Hypothesis Not Verified

“If an hypothesis is not verified and disappears, the facts which it has enabled us to find are none the less acquired as indestructible materials for science.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter I, page 24. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Hypothesis_quotes Verify_quotes Disappear_quotes Fact_quotes Enable_quotes Find_quotes Acquire_quotes Indestructible_quotes Material_quotes Science_quotes

True Presentiment

“Men with a presentiment of new truths are rare in all the sciences; most men develop and follow the ideas of a few others.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter II, page 34. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Men_quotes Presentiment_quotes New_quotes Truth_quotes Rare_quotes Science_quotes Develop_quotes Follow_quotes Idea_quotes Few_quotes Other_quotes

Alter Theory Not Nature

“The theories which embody our scientific ideas as a whole are, of course, indispensable as representations of science. They should also serve as a basis for new ideas. But as these theories and ideas are by no means immutable truth, one must always be ready to abandon them, to alter them or to exchange them as soon as they cease to represent the truth. In a word, we must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter II, page 39. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Theory_quotes Embody_quotes Scientific_quotes Idea_quotes Whole_quotes Indispensable_quotes Representation_quotes Science_quotes Serve_quotes Basis_quotes New_quotes Immutable_quotes Truth_quotes Ready_quotes Abandon_quotes Alter_quotes Exchange_quotes Cease_quotes Adapt_quotes Nature_quotes

Theory Overthrow

“When we have put forward an idea or a theory in science, our object must not be to preserve it by seeking everything that may support it and setting aside everything that may weaken it. On the contrary, we ought to examine with the greatest care the facts which apparently would overthrow it.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter II, page 40. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Put_quotes Forward_quotes Idea_quotes Theory_quotes Science_quotes Object_quotes Preserve_quotes Seek_quotes Everything_quotes Support_quotes Set_quotes Aside_quotes Weak_quotes Contrary_quotes Examine_quotes Care_quotes Fact_quotes Apparent_quotes Overthrow_quotes Falsification_quotes

William_Ian_Beardmore_Beveridge

Role of Hypothesis

“The role of hypothesis in research can be discussed more effectively if we consider first some examples of discoveries which originated from hypotheses. One of the best illustrations of such a discovery is provided by the story of Christopher Columbus’ voyage; it has many of the features of a classic discovery in science. (a) He was obsessed with an idea—that since the world is round he could reach the Orient by sailing West, (b) the idea was by no means original, but evidently he had obtained some additional evidence from a sailor blown off his course who claimed to have reached land in the west and returned, (c) he met great difficulties in getting someone to provide the money to enable him to test his idea as well as in the actual carrying out of the experimental voyage, (d) when finally he succeeded he did not find the expected new route, but instead found a whole new world, (e) despite all evidence to the contrary he clung to the bitter end to his hypothesis and believed that he had found the route to the Orient, (f) he got little credit or reward during his lifetime and neither he nor others realized the full implications of his discovery, (g) since his time evidence has been brought forward showing that he was by no means the first European to reach America.”
  • Source: W. I. B. Beveridge in his book ‘The Art of Scientific Investigation’ published in 1950 by William Heinemann, London, page 41.
Keywords: Hypothesis_quotes Research_quotes Discovery_quotes Exploration_quotes Evidence_quotes Money_quotes Experiment_quotes Belief_quotes Perseverance_quotes Reward_quotes Role_quotes Disscussion_quotes Effective_quotes Consider_quotes Example_quotes Originate_quotes Best_quotes Illustration_quotes Provide_quotes Story_quotes Voyage_quotes Feature_quotes Classic_quotes Science_quotes Obsess_quotes Idea_quotes World_quotes Round_quotes Orient_quotes Sail_quotes Original_quotes Obtain_quotes Additional_quotes Sailor_quotes Blow_quotes Course_quotes Claim_quotes Reach_quotes Land_quotes Return_quotes Great_quotes Difficult_quotes Money_quotes Enable_quotes Test_quotes Find_quotes Expect_quotes Route_quotes Despite_quotes Contrary_quotes Cling_quotes Bitter_quotes End_quotes Little_quotes Credit_quotes Lifetime_quotes Realize_quotes Full_quotes Implication_quotes Time_quotes Show_quotes First_quotes European_quotes America_quotes

Max_Born

Experience and Knowledge

“But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology. Moreover, they must be men of action and not contemplation. I have the impression that no method of education can produce people with all the qualities required. I am haunted by the idea that this break in human civilization, caused by the discovery of the scientific method, may be irreparable.”
  • Source: Max Born, My Life & My Views (1968), 57-8.
Keywords: Political_quotes Humanity_quotes Experience_quotes Interest_quotes Science_quotes Technology_quotes Contemplation_quotes Action_quotes Education_quotes Civilization_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Practical_quotes Affair_quotes Men_quotes Need_quotes Combine_quotes Relation_quotes Knowledge_quotes Impression_quotes Produce_quotes People_quotes Quality_quotes Require_quotes Haunt_quotes Idea_quotes Break_quotes Discovery_quotes Irreparable_quotes

Lawrence_Bragg

Important Thing in Science

“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.”
  • Source: Suspiciously attributed to Lawrence Bragg in several sources including the book ‘No-Nonsense Classical Mechanics: A Student-Friendly Introduction’ by Jakob Schwichtenberg published independently in 2019, ISBN:978-1096195382, page before title page.
Keywords: Science_quotes Fact_quotes Discovery_quotes Thinking_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Model_quotes Abstraction_quotes Important_quotes Obtain_quotes

Tycho_Brahe

Instruments of Copernicus

“If Nicolaus Copernicus, the distinguished and incomparable master, in this work had not been deprived of exquisite and faultless instruments, he would have left us this science far more well-established.”
  • Source: Letter Tycho Brahe (20 Jan 1587) to Christopher Rothman, chief astronomer of the Landgrave of Hesse.
Keywords: Copernicus(topic)_quotes Distinguish_quotes Incomparable_quotes Master_quotes Work_quotes Deprive_quotes Exquisite_quotes Faultless_quotes Instrument_quotes Left_quotes Science_quotes Far_quotes Well_quotes Establish_quotes Astronomy_quotes

Percy_Williams_Bridgman

Many Scientific Methods

“Science is what scientists do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists.”
  • Source: Percy W. Bridgman. 'On Scientific Method' in Reflections of a Physicist (1950), 370.
Keywords: Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Individuality_quotes Scientist_quotes

Robert_N_Britcher

Programming Not Science

“Programming is not a science, and there is no theory of programming. If there were, everyone would approach programming the same way.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 17.
Keywords: Programming_quotes Science_quotes Theory_quotes Approach_quotes Way_quotes

Theory Informs Programming

“...theory has informed Programming largely through programming languages.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 18.
Keywords: Programming_quotes Science_quotes Theory_quotes Inform_quotes Language_quotes

Fred_Brooks

Science of Design

“I believe ‘a science of design’ to be an impossible and indeed misleading goal.”
  • Source: Brooks Jr., F. P. (2010). The Design of Design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 978-0-201-36298-5. Preface.
Keywords: Design_quotes Science_quotes Impossibility_quotes Goal_quotes Misleading_quotes

Edward_Bulwer-Lytton

Art and Science

"Art and science have their meeting point in method."
  • Source: Earl Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Caxtoniana (1875), 303.
Keywords: Art_quotes Science_quotes Mind_quotes Meet_quotes Point_quotes Method_quotes

The Few and the Many

"In science, address the few; in literature, the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgment on the few. But the few and the many are not necessarily the few and the many of the passing time: for discoverers in science have not un-often, in their own day, had the few against them; and writers the most permanently popular not unfrequently found, in their own day, a frigid reception from the many. By the few, I mean those who must ever remain the few, from whose dieta we, the multitude, take fame upon trust; by the many, I mean those who constitute the multitude in the long-run. We take the fame of a Harvey or a Newton upon trust, from the verdict of the few in successive generations; but the few could never persuade us to take poets and novelists on trust. We, the many, judge for ourselves of Shakespeare and Cervantes."
  • Source: Earl Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Caxtoniana: A Series of Essays on Life, Literature, and Manners (1863), Vol. 2, 329- 30.
Keywords: Science_quotes Minority_quotes Majority_quotes Literature_quotes Opinion_quotes Judgment_quotes Time_quotes Influence_quotes Persuasion_quotes Popularity_quotes Fame_quotes Trust_quotes Few_quotes Dictate_quotes Force_quotes Discovery_quotes Against_quotes Opposition_quotes Writer_quotes Frigid_quotes Verdict_quotes Generation_quotes Poet_quotes Novelist_quotes

Samuel_Butler

Scientific Mind

"The best class of scientific mind is the same as the best class of business mind. The great desideratum in either case is to know how much evidence is enough to warrant action. It is as unbusiness-like to want too much evidence before buying or selling as to be content with too little. The same kind of qualities are wanted in either case. The difference is that if the business man makes a mistake, he commonly has to suffer for it, whereas it is rarely that scientific blundering, so long as it is confined to theory, entails loss on the blunderer. On the contrary it very often brings him fame, money and a pension. Hence the business man, if he is a good one, will take greater care not to overdo or underdo things than the scientific man can reasonably be expected to take."
  • Source: Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones (ed.), The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1917), 217.
Keywords: Mind_quotes Science_quotes Business_quotes Evidence_quotes Action_quotes Desire_quotes Mistake_quotes Suffering_quotes Theory_quotes Fame_quotes Money_quotes Best_quotes Desideratum_quotes Warrant_quotes Buy_quotes Sell_quotes Content_quotes Difference_quotes Blunder_quotes Pension_quotes Overdo_quotes Underdo_quotes

Richard_Clarke_Cabot

Ethics and Science

"Ethics and science need to shake hands."
  • Source: Richard C. Cabot (1933), The meaning of Right and Wrong, Introduction, p. 10. New York, NY: Macmillian.
Keywords: Ethics_quotes Science_quotes Shake_quotes Hand_quotes

Write Barbarously

"Scientists, economists, and historians often write barbarously."
Keywords: Writing_quotes Science_quotes History_quotes Economics_quotes Barbarous_quotes

Albert_Camus

Apprehend the World

“I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world.”
  • Source: Written by Albert Camus in the essay 'The Myth Of Sisyphus' translated by Justin O'Brien. Found in the book entitled 'The Myth Of Sisyphus And Other Essays' published in 1955 by Vintage Books, New York, NY. Retrieved 2024-02-15 from https://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Camus/Myth%20of%20Sisyphus-.pdf. Originally published in France as Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Copyright 1942, by Librairie Gallimard.
Keywords: Realize_quotes Science_quotes Seize_quotes Phenomena_quotes Enumerate_quotes Apprehend_quotes World_quotes

Rudolf_Carnap

System of Statements

"Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements."
  • Source: Rudolf Carnap, The Unity of Science (1934), trans. Max Black, 42.
Keywords: Science_quotes Programming_quotes Experience_quotes Experiment_quotes Verification_quotes System_quotes Logic_quotes Statement_quotes Direct_quotes Control_quotes

Thomas_Chrowder_Chamberlin

Scientific Study

"In scientific study, or, as I prefer to phrase it, in creative scholarship, the truth is the single end sought; all yields to that. The truth is supreme, not only in the vague mystical sense in which that expression has come to be a platitude, but in a special, definite, concrete sense. Facts and the immediate and necessary inductions from facts displace all pre-conceptions, all deductions from general principles, all favourite theories. Previous mental constructions are bowled over as childish play-structures by facts as they come rolling into the mind. The dearest doctrines, the most fascinating hypotheses, the most cherished creations of the reason and of the imagination perish from a mind thoroughly inspired with the scientific spirit in the presence of incompatible facts. Previous intellectual affections are crushed without hesitation and without remorse. Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions."
  • Source: Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, The Ethical Functions of Scientific Study: An Address Delivered at the Annual Commencement of the University of Michigan, 28 June 1888, 7-8
Keywords: Science_quotes Scholarship_quotes Truth_quotes Induction_quotes Deduction_quotes Bias_quotes Theory_quotes Mind_quotes Dogma_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Reason_quotes Imagination_quotes Compatibility_quotes Intellectualism_quotes Ideals_quotes Absurdity_quotes Impossibility_quotes Evidence_quotes Preconception_quotes Study_quotes Supreme_quotes Vague_quotes Mystical_quotes Expression_quotes Platitude_quotes Special_quotes Concrete_quotes Fact_quotes Principle_quotes Mental_quotes Construction_quotes Play_quotes Doctrine_quotes Spirit_quotes Incompatible_quotes Hesitate_quotes Remorse_quotes Ideals_quotes Beauty_quotes Lofty_quotes Absurd_quotes True_quotes Appear_quotes

Nigel_Cross

Analysis Versus Synthesis

"Scientists problem solve by analysis, whereas designers problem-solve by synthesis."
Keywords: Science_quotes Problem_quotes Analysis_quotes Solution_quotes Design_quotes Synthesis_quotes

Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Thinking_Is_Pleasurable

“Philosophy and science were invented and flourished because thinking is pleasurable.”
  • Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, chapter “The Rules of the Games of the Mind”, page 126. Original content published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 1990. Kindle edition published by Harper Collins in 2008. ISBN: 978-0061876721.
Keywords: Philosophy_quotes Science_quotes Invent_quotes Flourish_quotes Thinking_quotes Pleasure_quotes

Paul_Davies

Hidden Links

"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."
  • Source: Paul Davies, Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life (2007)
Keywords: Hiding_quotes Link_quotes Relationship_quotes Phenomena_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Power_quotes Feature_quotes Science_quotes Breadth_quotes Depth_quotes Explanation_quotes Scheme_quotes Requirements_quotes Assumption_quotes System_quotes Thinking_quotes Find_quotes Disparate_quotes Method_quotes Compelling_quotes Distinct_quotes Tackle_quotes Physical_quotes Deep_quotes Weave_quotes Economic_quotes

Richard_Dawkins

Real Poetry

"There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality."
  • Source: Dawkins, R. (2007). “There’s real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.” In Richard Dawkins, The Enemies of Reason, “Slaves to Superstition” [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff.
Keywords: Poetry_quotes World_quotes Science_quotes Reality_quotes Real_quotes

Daniel_Dennett

Philosophy and Pornography

“Philosophy is to science as pornography is to sex: it is cheaper, easier and some people prefer it.”
  • Source: Unattributed, but cited by Daniel C. Dennett in the book 'Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking', 2013, WW Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-24068-9 (e-book), Introduction.
Keywords: Philosophy_quotes Pornography_quotes Sex_quotes Cheap_quotes Ease_quotes People_quotes Preference_quotes Science_quotes

David_Deutsch

Mathematical Knowledge

“Mathematical knowledge may, just like our scientific knowledge, be deep and broad, it may be subtle and wonderfully explanatory, it may be uncontroversially accepted; but it cannot be certain.”
  • Source: David Deutsch in the book “The Fabric of Reality”. ISBN 978-0713990614. Published in 1997 by Viking Press. Chapter 10.
Keywords: Mathematics_quotes Knowledge_quotes Science_quotes Depth_quotes Breadth_quotes Explanation_quotes Acceptability_quotes Certainty_quotes

Amending Data

“Amending the ‘data’, or rejecting some as erroneous, is a frequent concomitant of scientific discovery, and the crucial ‘data’ cannot even be obtained until theory tells us what to look for and how and why.”
  • Source: David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (2011).
Keywords: Amending_quotes Data_quotes Rejection_quotes Error_quotes Science_quotes Discovery_quotes Theory_quotes Creativity_quotes Concomitant_quotes Obtain_quotes Look_quotes

John_Dewey

Scientific Inquiry

“That the great majority of those who leave school should have some idea of the kind of evidence required to substantiate given types of belief does not seem unreasonable. Nor is it absurd to expect that they should go forth with a lively interest in the ways in which knowledge is improved and a marked distaste for all conclusions reached in disharmony with the methods of scientific inquiry.”
  • Source: John Dewey, Address to Section L, Education, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Boston (1909), 'Science as Subject-Matter and as Method'. Published in Science (28 Jan 1910), N.S. Vol. 31, No. 787, 126.
Keywords: Science_quotes School_quotes Idea_quotes Evidence_quotes Belief_quotes Interest_quotes Knowledge_quotes Conclusion_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Error_quotes Improvement_quotes Majority_quotes Substantiate_quotes Absurd_quotes Expect_quotes Distaste_quotes Disharmony_quotes Method_quotes Inquiry_quotes

Scientific Method

“The scientific method is the only authentic means at our command for getting at the significance of our everyday experiences of the world in which we live. It means that scientific method provides a working pattern of the way in which and the conditions under which experiences are used to lead ever onward and outward. ... Consequently, whatever the level of experience, we have no choice but either to operate in accord with the pattern it provides or else to neglect the place of intelligence in the development and control of a living and moving experience.”
  • Source: John Dewey, In Experience And Education (1938), 88
Keywords: Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Authenticity_quotes Significance_quotes Experience_quotes World_quotes Choice_quotes Pattern_quotes Intelligence_quotes Improvement_quotes Method_quotes Condition_quotes Onward_quotes Outward_quotes Operate_quotes Accord_quotes Neglect_quotes Development_quotes Control_quotes Living_quotes Moving_quotes

Freeman_Dyson

Science Uncertain

“The fringe of physics is not a sharp boundary with truth on one side and fantasy on the other. All of science is uncertain and subject to revision. The glory of science is to imagine more than we can prove. The fringe is the unexplored territory where truth and fantasy are not yet disentangled.”
  • Source: Freeman Dyson [book/author]; “Dreams of Earth and Sky” [title]; 192 [page]; New York Review Books [publisher]; First [edition]; 2015 [pubdate]; New York, NY [publoc]; 978-1590178546 [isbn].
Keywords: Science_quotes Uncertainty_quotes Revision_quotes Glory_quotes Imagination_quotes Proof_quotes Fringe_quotes Physics_quotes Sharp_quotes Boundary_quotes Truth_quotes Side_quotes Fantasy_quotes Unexplored_quotes Territory_quotes Disentangle_quotes


Science and Society

“In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, 'Sorry, but we don’t know.' The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed.”
  • Source: Freeman Dyson, Frederick S. Pardee Distinguished Lecture (Oct 2005), Boston University. Collected in 'Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society', A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (2007), 43-44.
Keywords: World_quotes Modern_quotes Science_quotes Society_quotes Interaction_quotes Perversity_quotes Technology_quotes Political_quotes Problem_quotes Politician_quotes People_quotes Answer_quotes Expert_quotes Knowledge_quotes Confidence_quotes Prediction_quotes Humanity_quotes Activity_quotes Talking_quotes Contention_quotes Thinking_quotes Future_quotes Belief_quotes Dogma_quotes Bias_quotes Heretical_quotes

Albert_Einstein

Magnificent Applied Science

“Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day's work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations... 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 endeavours; 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.”
  • Source: Albert Einstein [Speaker];
    • 1950-02-16 [Speech/Date]; California Institute of Technology [Location]; CalTech students [Audience];
    • 1950-02-17 [Reporting/Article/Date]; “Einstein Sees Lack in Applying Science” [Title]; Anonymous [Article/Author]; New York Times [Reporting/Newspaper]; 8 [Page];
Keywords: Science_quotes Happiness_quotes War_quotes Wisdom_quotes Peace_quotes Work_quotes Slavery_quotes Automation_quotes Ethics_quotes Values_quotes Empathy_quotes Labor_quotes Distribution_quotes Mind_quotes Humanity_quotes Mathematics_quotes Engineering_quotes Magnificent_quotes Applied_quotes Save_quotes Life_quotes Simple_quotes Answer_quotes Learn_quotes Sensible_quotes Poison_quotes Mutilate_quotes Hurry_quotes Uncertain_quotes Freedom_quotes Spiritual_quotes Exhausting_quotes Men_quotes Machinery_quotes Monotonous_quotes Long_quotes Day_quotes Disgust_quotes Continual_quotes Tremble_quotes Poor_quotes Rations_quotes Understand_quotes Increase_quotes Blessing_quotes Man_quotes Fate_quotes Chief_quotes Interest_quotes Technical_quotes Endeavour_quotes Concern_quotes Problem_quotes Unsolved_quotes Organization_quotes Creation_quotes Curse_quotes Mankind_quotes Forget_quotes Diagram_quotes Equation_quotes

Science Objective and Subjective

“Science as something already in existence, already completed, is the most objective, impersonal thing that we humans know. Science as something coming into being, as a goal, is just as subjectively, psychologically conditioned as are all other human endeavors.”
  • Source: Albert Einstein, address to the students of UCLA, February 1932.
    • Included in Builders of the Universe: From the Bible to the Theory of Relativity, written by Albert Einstein. Los Angeles, CA: U.S. Library Association, p. 91.
Keywords: Science_quotes Objectivity_quotes Subjectivity_quotes Humanity_quotes Psychology_quotes Reality_quotes Existence_quotes Completion_quotes Knowledge_quotes Impersonal_quotes Goal_quotes Condition_quotes Endeavor_quotes

Cosmic Religious Feelings

“It is, therefore, quite natural that the churches have always fought against science and have persecuted its supporters. But, on the other hand, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”
  • Source: Albert Einstein (1930). An article. Entitled Religion and Science. Written by Albert Einstein. Published in New York Times Magazine. Published on 1930-11-09.
Keywords: Science_quotes Research_quotes Religion_quotes Spirituality_quotes Values_quotes Nobility_quotes Emotion_quotes Church_quotes Fight_quotes Persecute_quotes Supporter_quotes Cosmic_quotes Experience_quotes Strong_quotes Force_quotes

Intuition and Inspiration

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. ... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
  • Source: Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138.
Keywords: Intuition_quotes Inspiration_quotes Certainty_quotes Imagination_quotes Creativity_quotes Knowledge_quotes Science_quotes Research_quotes Reason_quotes Eclipse_quotes Confirm_quotes Surprise_quotes Astonish_quotes Important_quotes Limit_quotes Embrace_quotes World_quotes Stimulate_quotes Progress_quotes Birth_quotes Evolution_quotes Factor_quotes

Science is Primitive

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
  • Source: Letter to Hans Muehsam (9 July 1951), Einstein Archives 38-408, quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010) by Alice Calaprice, page 404.
Keywords: Science_quotes Reality_quotes Wisdom_quotes Knowledge_quotes Values_quotes Learn_quotes Life_quotes Primitive_quotes Childlike_quotes Precious_quotes

Art Science Life

“I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman’s irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.”
  • Source: Words spoken by Albert Einstein in an address to The Physical Society in Berlin in 1918 to honor Max Planck’s 60th birthday, Transcribed into the book 'Essays in Science' in the chapter 'Principles of Research' written by Albert Einstein and translated to english by Alan Harris. Published in 1934 by The Philosophical Library, New York, NY.
Keywords: Art_quotes Science_quotes Motivation_quotes Life_quotes Pain_quotes Hopeless_quotes Desire_quotes Objectivity_quotes Perception_quotes Thinking_quotes Escape_quotes Schopenhauer(topic)_quotes Strong_quotes Men_quotes Crudity_quotes Dreariness_quotes Fetter_quotes Temper_quotes Nature_quotes Personal_quotes World_quotes Townsman_quotes Irresistible_quotes Noise_quotes Cramped_quotes Surround_quotes Silence_quotes High_quotes Mountain_quotes Eye_quotes Free_quotes Still_quotes Pure_quotes Air_quotes Fond_quotes Trace_quotes Restful_quotes Contour_quotes Build_quotes Eternity_quotes

Mysterious

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
  • Source:
    • Albert Einstein in his ‘The World as I See It’, later published in 1931 in the book ‘Living Philosophies’, ISBN 978-0404591281.
Keywords: Most_quotes Beauty_quotes Thing_quotes Experience_quotes Mysterious_quotes Source_quotes All_quotes True_quotes Art_quotes Science_quotes Emotion_quotes Stranger_quotes Pause_quotes Wonder_quotes Stand_quotes Rapt_quotes Awe_quotes Good_quotes Dead_quotes Eye_quotes Close_quotes

Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

Science Unpoetical

“Science was false by being unpoetical. It assumed to explain a reptile or a mollusk, and isolated it — which is hunting for life in graveyards. Reptile or mollusk or man or angel only exists in system, in relation.”
  • Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson, In 'Letters and Social Aims: Poetry and Imagination', Prose works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1880), Vol. 3, 199.
Keywords: Poetry_quotes Science_quotes Explanation_quotes Reptile_quotes Life_quotes Search_quotes Hunting_quotes Graveyard_quotes Mollusk_quotes Humanity_quotes Angel_quotes Existence_quotes System_quotes Relationship_quotes

David_Epstein

Researcher Freedom

“The problem of researcher freedom leading to false conclusions is now known to be pervasive in science. The age of big data and big-database software makes it easier than ever to mix and match statistics in pursuit of positive results that are likely just artifacts of chance.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better”. Published 2026 by Riverhead Books. Page 38. ISBN 978-0593715734 (Ebook).
Keywords: Problem_quotes Research_quotes Freedom_quotes Lead_quotes False_quotes Conclusion_quotes Know_quotes Now_quotes Pervasive_quotes Science_quotes Age_quotes Big_quotes Data_quotes Database_quotes Software_quotes Make_quotes Easy_quotes Mix_quotes Match_quotes Statistics_quotes Pursuit_quotes Positive_quotes Result_quotes Likely_quotes Artifact_quotes Chance_quotes

Replication Crisis

“The so-called replication crisis over the last decade has been painful for many scientists, but researchers in every discipline have been learning from it and working to improve their fields. It was, after all, scientists themselves who raised the alarm about their colleagues’ work (and in some cases their own work) in the first place. Increasingly, researchers now share or formally preregister their hypotheses at the start of a project. They can still deviate from the plan to explore unexpected findings, but the deviations are transparent. The point of restricting freedom in this way... is not to stifle inquiry but to make it more valuable.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better”. Published 2026 by Riverhead Books. Page 39. ISBN 978-0593715734 (Ebook).
Keywords: Replication_quotes Crisis_quotes Decade_quotes Pain_quotes Science_quotes Research_quotes Discipline_quotes Learn_quotes Work_quotes Improve_quotes Field_quotes Raise_quotes Alarm_quotes Colleague_quotes Case_quotes First_quotes Place_quotes Increase_quotes Share_quotes Formal_quotes Preregister_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Start_quotes Project_quotes Deviation_quotes Plan_quotes Explore_quotes Unexpected_quotes Finding_quotes Transparency_quotes Point_quotes Restrict_quotes Freedom_quotes Way_quotes Stifle_quotes Inquiry_quotes Make_quotes Valuable_quotes

Scientific Method Constraints

“Well-conceived constraints, like those at the heart of the scientific method, compel us to stop, think, and test. In other words, they force us to learn.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better”. Published 2026 by Riverhead Books. Page 43. ISBN 978-0593715734 (Ebook).
Keywords: Well_quotes Conceive_quotes Constraint_quotes Heart_quotes Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Compel_quotes Stop_quotes Think_quotes Test_quotes Word_quotes Force_quotes Learn_quotes Other_quotes

Michael_Faraday

Assertion Duties

“A man who makes assertions, or draws conclusions, regarding any given case, ought to be competent to investigate it. He has no right to throw the onus on others, declaring it their duly to prove him right or wrong. His duty is to demonstrate the truth of that which he asserts, or to cease from asserting. The men he calls upon to consider and judge have enough to do with themselves, in the examination, correction, or verification of their own views. The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary conclusions have been realized.”
  • Source: Lecturer=Michael Faraday; Lecture/Title=“Observations on Mental Education: A Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain Before H.R.H. Prince Albert”; Date=1854-05-06; Book/Title=“Lectures on Education”; Publication/Date=1855; Book/Title=“Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics”; Publication/Date=1859); Page=486.
Keywords: Assertion_quotes Conclusion_quotes Investigation_quotes Rights_quotes Duty_quotes Proof_quotes Truth_quotes Examination_quotes Correction_quotes Verification_quotes Opinion_quotes World_quotes Thinking_quotes Theory_quotes Mind_quotes Science_quotes Self-Examination_quotes Criticism_quotes Success_quotes Suggestion_quotes Hope_quotes Wish_quotes Man_quotes Case_quotes Competent_quotes Throw_quotes Onus_quotes Right_quotes Wrong_quotes Demonstrate_quotes Men_quotes Consider_quotes Judge_quotes View_quotes Crush_quotes Silent_quotes Secret_quotes Preliminary_quotes Realize_quotes

Richard_Feynman

Repeatability

“A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well they don't!”
  • Source: Book/Title: “The Character of Physical Law”; Author: Richard Feynman; Publication/Date: 1965; Publisher: MIT Press; Publisher/Location: Cambridge, MA; ISBN: 978-0262533416; Chapter 6; Page: 147.
Keywords: Philosophy_quotes Existence_quotes Science_quotes Condition_quotes Repeatability_quotes Causality_quotes Materialism_quotes Result_quotes Necessary_quotes Produce_quotes Same_quotes

Same Circumstances

“Philosophers have said that if the same circumstances don't always produce the same results, predictions are impossible and science will collapse. Here is a circumstance — identical photons are always coming down in the same direction to the piece of glass — that produces different results. We cannot predict whether a given photon will arrive at A or B. All we can predict is that out of 100 photons that come down, an average of 4 will be reflected by the front surface. Does this mean that physics, a science of great exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event, and not predicting exactly what will happen? Yes. That's a retreat, but that's the way it is: Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities. Yet science has not collapsed.”
  • Source: Feynman, R. P. (1983). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Page 19.
Keywords: Philosophy_quotes Circumstance_quotes Repeatability_quotes Prediction_quotes Science_quotes Impossibility_quotes Collapse_quotes Photon_quotes Glass_quotes Result_quotes Materialism_quotes Causality_quotes Calculation_quotes Probability_quotes Produce_quotes Same_quotes Circumstance_quotes Identical_quotes Direction_quotes Average_quotes Reflect_quotes Surface_quotes Physics_quotes Exactitude_quotes Reduce_quotes

Cargo Cult

“...there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on — with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train rats to go to the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before. The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe they were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell. He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go to the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell. Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using — not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running. I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or of being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.”
  • Source: "Cargo Cult Science", adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 345.
    • Feynman, R. P. (1974). In Feynman, R. P. (1974, June). Cargo Cult Science. Science and Engineering.
Keywords: Cargo_quotes Cult_quotes Experiment_quotes Rat_quotes Maze_quotes Result_quotes Door_quotes Smell_quotes Sight_quotes Sound_quotes Clue_quotes Control_quotes Attention_quotes Ignore_quotes Ignorance_quotes Discovery_quotes Corridor_quotes Food_quotes Train_quotes Immediate_quotes Time_quotes Question_quotes Know_quotes Uniform_quotes Obvious_quotes Different_quotes Paint_quotes Arrange_quotes Texture_quotes Face_quotes Think_quotes Chemical_quotes Change_quotes Run_quotes Realize_quotes Light_quotes Laboratory_quotes Common_quotes Sense_quotes Person_quotes Cover_quotes Floor_quotes Fool_quotes Relax_quotes Condition_quotes Science_quotes Standpoint_quotes Uncover_quotes Careful_quotes Look_quotes History_quotes Research_quotes Refer_quotes Criteria_quotes Sand_quotes Old_quotes Fact_quotes Characteristic_quotes

Samuel_C_Florman

Scientific Engineers

“Although engineers are not scientists, they study the sciences and use them to solve problems of practical interest, most typically by the process that we call creative design.”
  • Source: From the book “The Existential Pleasures of Engineering” by {Samuel C. Florman}. Second edition published in 1994 by {St. Martin's Press}, New York, NY. First edition published in 1976. Kindle edition published in 2023. E-book ISBN 978-1466842366. Preface to the first edition.
Keywords: Engineer_quotes Scientist_quotes Science_quotes Study_quotes Solve_quotes Problem_quotes Practical_quotes Interest_quotes Typical_quotes Process_quotes Creative_quotes Design_quotes

Milton_Friedman

Positive Knowledge

“In both social and natural sciences, the body of positive knowledge grows by the failure of a tentative hypothesis to predict phenomena the hypothesis professes to explain; by the patching up of that hypothesis until someone suggests a new hypothesis that more elegantly or simply embodies the troublesome phenomena, and so on ad infinitum. In both, experiment is sometimes possible, sometimes not (witness meteorology). In both, no experiment is ever completely controlled, and experience often offers evidence that is the equivalent of controlled experiment. In both, there is no way to have a self-contained closed system or to avoid interaction between the observer and the observed. The Gödel theorem in mathematics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, the self-fulfilling or self-defeating prophecy in the social sciences all exemplify these limitations.”
  • Source: Milton Friedman, Inflation and Unemployment (1976), 348
Keywords: Society_quotes Nature_quotes Science_quotes Knowledge_quotes Failure_quotes Tentative_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Prediction_quotes Phenomena_quotes Explanation_quotes Elegant_quotes Infinity_quotes Experiment_quotes Meteorology_quotes Control_quotes Evidence_quotes Equal_quotes Closed_quotes System_quotes Avoidance_quotes Interaction_quotes Observation_quotes Measurement_quotes Uncertainty_quotes Mathematics_quotes Principle_quotes Physics_quotes Self-Fulfill_quotes Self-Defeat_quotes Prophecy_quotes Limitation_quotes Positive_quotes Grow_quotes Suggest_quotes Troublesome_quotes Gödel(topic)_quotes Heisenberg(topic)_quotes

Galen

Seeks the Truth

“It would be better, I think, for the man who really seeks the truth not to ask what the poets say; rather, he should first learn the method of finding the scientific premises that I discussed in the second book; then he should train and exercise himself in this method; and when his training is sufficiently advanced, then, as he approaches each particular problem, he should enquire into the premise needed for proving it, which premise he should take from simple sense-perception, which from experience, whether drawn from life or from the arts, which from the truths clearly apprehended by the mind, in order to draw out from them the desired conclusion.”
  • Source: Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato,: PHP III 8.35.1-11 translation: De Lacy, Phillip (1978- 1984) Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Berlin. p. 233; cited in: Christopher Jon Elliott. "Galen, Rome and the Second Sophistic." p. 147-148.
Keywords: Better_quotes Thinking_quotes Truth_quotes Poetry_quotes Learning_quotes Methodology_quotes Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Training_quotes Exercise_quotes Problem_quotes Proof_quotes Premise_quotes Assumption_quotes Perception_quotes Sense_quotes Experience_quotes Life_quotes Art_quotes Comprehension_quotes Mind_quotes Conclusion_quotes Man_quotes Seek_quotes Ask_quotes Find_quotes

Murray_Gell-Mann

Curiosity

“My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?”
  • Source: Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1969), in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.),Les Prix Nobel en 1969 (1970).
Keywords: Particle_quotes Theory_quotes Curiosity_quotes Insatiable_quotes Science_quotes Work_quotes Game_quotes Correctness_quotes Prediction_quotes Experiment_quotes Result_quotes Simplicity_quotes Elegance_quotes Formula_quotes Mathematics_quotes Poetry_quotes Rule_quotes Repeatability_quotes Nature_quotes Universal_quotes

Gordon_Glegg

Engineering Stars

“A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him.”
  • Source: Glegg, G. L. (1969). The Design of Design. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0-511-79996-9. Introduction.
Keywords: Science_quotes Engineering_quotes Discovery_quotes Star_quotes Make_quotes Ask_quotes Do_quotes

Thomas_Gold

Knowledge Rules

“In no subject is there a rule, compliance with which will lead to new knowledge or better understanding. Skilful observations, ingenious ideas, cunning tricks, daring suggestions, laborious calculations, all these may be required to advance a subject. Occasionally the conventional approach in a subject has to be studiously followed; on other occasions it has to be ruthlessly disregarded. Which of these methods, or in what order they should be employed is generally unpredictable. Analogies drawn from the history of science are frequently claimed to be a guide; but, as with forecasting the next game of roulette, the existence of the best analogy to the present is no guide whatever to the future. The most valuable lesson to be learnt from the history of scientific progress is how misleading and strangling such analogies have been, and how success has come to those who ignored them.”
  • Source: Thomas Gold, 'Cosmology', in Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1956), Vol. 2, 1722.
Keywords: Rule_quotes Subject_quotes Compliance_quotes Knowledge_quotes Understanding_quotes Skill_quotes Observation_quotes Idea_quotes Trick_quotes Courage_quotes Labor_quotes Status_Quo_quotes Creativity_quotes Prediction_quotes Analogy_quotes History_quotes Science_quotes Game_quotes Success_quotes Ingenious_quotes Cunning_quotes Daring_quotes Suggest_quotes Calculation_quotes Conventional_quotes Approach_quotes Order_quotes Follow_quotes Ruthless_quotes Disregard_quotes Method_quotes Unpredictable_quotes Guide_quotes Forecast_quotes Roulette_quotes Existence_quotes Present_quotes Future_quotes Value_quotes Learn_quotes Progress_quotes Mislead_quotes Strangle_quotes Ignore_quotes

Nelson_Goodman

Simple Theories

“For if as scientists we seek simplicity, then obviously we try the simplest surviving theory first, and retreat from it only when it proves false. Not this course, but any other, requires explanation. If you want to go somewhere quickly, and several alternate routes are equally likely to be open, no one asks why you take the shortest. The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is the most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.”
  • Source: Nelson Goodman, Problems and Projects (1972), 352.
Keywords: Science_quotes Simplicity_quotes Survival_quotes Theory_quotes Falsification_quotes Explanation_quotes Quick_quotes Reward_quotes Alternative_quotes Hope_quotes Truth_quotes Occams_Razor_quotes Retreat_quotes Proof_quotes False_quotes Course_quotes Go_quotes Several_quotes Route_quotes Equal_quotes Probable_quotes Likely_quotes

Richard_Hamming

Scientific Laws

“Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.”
  • Source: Richard Hamming, 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics', The American Mathematical Monthly (Feb 1980), 87 No.2.
Keywords: Science_quotes Law_quotes Observation_quotes Mathematics_quotes Measurement_quotes Accuracy_quotes Data_quotes Justification_quotes Compose_quotes Apply_quotes

Yuval_Noah_Harari

Self-Skepticism

“The trademark of science is not merely skepticism but self-skepticism, and at the heart of every scientific institution we find a strong self-correcting mechanism.”
  • Source: Yuval Noah Harari writing in his book ‘Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI’. Published in 2024 by Random House. Kindle edition. Chapter 4 page 104. ISBN 978-0593734247.
Keywords: Trademark_quotes Science_quotes Skepticism_quotes Self-Skepticism_quotes Self_quotes Heart_quotes Scientific_quotes Institution_quotes Find_quotes Strong_quotes Self-Correcting_quotes Correcting_quotes Mechanism_quotes

Stephen_Hawking

Star Trek

“Science fiction like Star Trek is not only good fun but it also serves a serious purpose, that of expanding the human imagination.”
  • Source: Stephen Hawking quoted in the book “The Physics of Star Trek” written by Lawrence M. Krauss. Forward, page xi.
Keywords: Science_quotes Fiction_quotes Star_Trek_quotes Fun_quotes Serve_quotes Serious_quotes Purpose_quotes Expand_quotes Human_quotes Imagination_quotes

Robert_Heinlein

Scientific Method

“There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.”.
  • Source: Written by Robert A. Heinlein in the short story “Life-Line” originally published in the 1939-08 edition of “Astounding Science Fiction” magazine, page 83. Character: Dr. Pinero. Retrieved 2024-05-05 from https://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/AST.htm.
Keywords: Scientific_Method_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes Way_quotes Form_quotes Opinion_quotes Scholastic_quotes Judge_quotes Experiment_quotes Blind_quotes Accept_quotes Authority_quotes Mind_quotes Proof_quotes Important_quotes Theory_quotes Convenience_quotes Description_quotes Junk_quotes Fit_quotes Academic_quotes Everything_quotes Fact_quotes Laid_quotes Down_quotes

Sabine_Hossenfelder

Ascientific

“Demarcating the current limits of science doesn’t only destroy illusions; it also helps us recognize which beliefs are still compatible with scientific fact. Such beliefs should maybe not be called unscientific but rather ascientific.”
  • Source: Hossenfelder, Sabine. Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (pp. xv-xvi). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Keywords: Demarcating_quotes Limit_quotes Science_quotes Destroy_quotes Illusion_quotes Recognize_quotes Belief_quotes Compatible_quotes Fact_quotes Unscientific_quotes Ascientific_quotes

Religion and Science

“I am not opposed to religious belief. Science has limits, and yet humanity has always sought meaning beyond those limits. Some do it by studying holy scripture, some meditate, some dig philosophy, some smoke funny things. That’s all fine with me, really. Provided that—and here’s the crux—your search for meaning respects scientific fact. If your belief conflicts with empirically confirmed knowledge, then you are not seeking meaning; you are delusional.”
  • Source: Hossenfelder, Sabine. Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (p. xvii). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Keywords: Oppose_quotes Religion_quotes Belief_quotes Science_quotes Limit_quotes Humanity_quotes Seek_quotes Beyond_quotes Study_quotes Holy_quotes Scripture_quotes Meditation_quotes Dig_quotes Philosophy_quotes Smoke_quotes Funny_quotes Crux_quotes Search_quotes Meaning_quotes Respect_quotes Fact_quotes Conflict_quotes Empirical_quotes Confirm_quotes Knowledge_quotes Delusional_quotes

Fred_Hoyle

Scientific Hypotheses

“It is often held that scientific hypotheses are constructed, and are to be constructed, only after a detailed weighing of all possible evidence bearing on the matter, and that then and only then may one consider, and still only tentatively, any hypotheses. This traditional view however, is largely incorrect, for not only is it absurdly impossible of application, but it is contradicted by the history of the development of any scientific theory. What happens in practice is that by intuitive insight, or other inexplicable inspiration, the theorist decides that certain features seem to him more important than others and capable of explanation by certain hypotheses. Then basing his study on these hypotheses the attempt is made to deduce their consequences. The successful pioneer of theoretical science is he whose intuitions yield hypotheses on which satisfactory theories can be built, and conversely for the unsuccessful (as judged from a purely scientific standpoint).”
  • Source: Sir Fred Hoyle, Co-author with British astronomer, Raymond Arthur Lyttleton (1911-95), 'The Internal Constitution of the Stars', Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society 1948, 12, 90.
Keywords: Science_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Construction_quotes Weighing_quotes Evidence_quotes Consideration_quotes Absurdity_quotes Impossibility_quotes Contradiction_quotes History_quotes Theory_quotes Intuition_quotes Inspiration_quotes Inexplicable_quotes Importance_quotes Explanation_quotes Study_quotes Deduction_quotes Consequence_quotes Success_quotes Tradition_quotes Insight_quotes Feature_quotes Pioneer_quotes Satisfactory_quotes Unsuccessful_quotes

M_King_Hubbert

Principle of Uniformity

“[The] first postulate of the Principle of Uniformity, namely, that the laws of nature are invariant with time, is not peculiar to that principle or to geology, but is a common denominator of all science. In fact, instead of being an assumption or an ad hoc hypothesis, it is simply a succinct summation of the totality of all experimental and observational evidence.”
  • Source: Marion King Hubbert, 'Critique of the Principle of Uniformity', in C. C. Albritton (ed.), Uniformity and Simplicity (1967), 29.
Keywords: Postulate_quotes Principle_quotes Uniformity_quotes Nature_quotes Law_quotes Invariant_quotes Time_quotes Geology_quotes Science_quotes Assumption_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Experiment_quotes Observation_quotes Evidence_quotes

Edwin_Hubble

Scientific Judgments

“Science deals with judgments on which it is possible to obtain universal agreement. These judgments do not concern individual facts and events, but the invariable association of facts and events known as the laws of science. Agreement is secured by observation and experiment — impartial courts of appeal to which all men must submit if they wish to survive. The laws are grouped and explained by theories of ever increasing generality. The theories at first are ex post facto — merely plausible interpretations of existing bodies of data. However, they frequently lead to predictions that can be tested by experiments and observations in new fields, and, if the interpretations are verified, the theories are accepted as working hypotheses until they prove untenable. The essential requirements are agreement on the subject matter and the verification of predictions. These features insure a body of positive knowledge that can be transmitted from person to person, and that accumulates from generation to generation.”
  • Source: Edwin Powell Hubble. From manuscript on English Science in the Renaissance (1937), Edwin Hubble collection, Box 2, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. As cited by Norriss S. Hetherington in 'Philosophical Values and Observation in Edwin Hubble's Choice of a Model of the Universe', Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (1982), 13, No. 1, 41. (Hetherington comments parenthetically that the references to court, judgment and appeal may be attributable to his prior experiences as a Rhodes Scholar reading Roman law at Oxford, and to a year's practice as an attorney in Louisville, Kentucky.)
Keywords: Science_quotes Judgment_quotes Universal_quotes Agreement_quotes Survival_quotes Fact_quotes Association_quotes Event_quotes Law_quotes Observation_quotes Experiment_quotes Court_quotes Explanation_quotes Theory_quotes Generality_quotes Ex_Post_quotes Plausibility_quotes Interpretation_quotes Data_quotes Prediction_quotes Verification_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Falsification_quotes Proof_quotes Requirements_quotes Feature_quotes Positive_quotes Knowledge_quotes Transmission_quotes Accumulation_quotes Generation_quotes

Scientific Guesses

“[A scientist] naturally and inevitably ... mulls over the data and guesses at a solution. [He proceeds to] testing of the guess by new data — predicting the consequences of the guess and then dispassionately inquiring whether or not the predictions are verified.”
  • Source: Edwin Powell Hubble, From manuscript on Francis Bacon as a scientist (1942), Edwin Hubble collection, Box 2, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. As cited by Norriss S. Hetherington in 'Philosophical Values and Observation in Edwin Hubble's Choice of a Model of the Universe', Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (1982), 13, No. 1, 42.
Keywords: Analysis_quotes Data_quotes Science_quotes Guess_quotes Solution_quotes Testing_quotes Prediction_quotes Consequence_quotes Passion_quotes Inquiry_quotes Verification_quotes Mull_quotes

Hans_Hüttel

Program Synthesis

“The problem of generating correct program code from a specification is well known in computer science and in fact it is a central one. It is the problem of program synthesis... A lot is already known about the synthesis problem in its various guises and in particular we know it is hard, where ‘hard’ means computationally hard.”
  • Source: Written by Hans Hüttel in the journal article entitled “On Program Synthesis and Large Language Models”, in Communications of the ACM, volume 68, number 1, 2025-01. DOI:10.1145/3680410.
Keywords: Problem_quotes Generate_quotes Correct_quotes Program_quotes Code_quotes Specification_quotes Know_quotes Computer_quotes Science_quotes Fact_quotes Central_quotes Synthesis_quotes Lot_quotes Already_quotes Various_quotes Guise_quotes Hard_quotes Computation_quotes

Aldous_Huxley

Science without Art

“The peoples of the West no longer share a literature and a system of ancient wisdom. All that they now have in common is science and information. Now, science is knowledge, not wisdom; deals with quantities, not with the qualities of which we are immediately aware. In so far as we are enjoying and suffering beings, its words seem to us mostly irrelevant and beside the point. Moreover, these words are arranged without art; therefore possess no magical power and are incapable of propping or moulding the mind of the reader.”
  • Source: Aldous Huxley (1936). An essay entitled Words and Behavior within the book The Olive Tree and Other Essays, published by Harper and Brothers, ASIN: B08VNTBLY4.
Keywords: People_quotes West_quotes Sharing_quotes Literature_quotes System_quotes Ancient_quotes Wisdom_quotes Common_quotes Science_quotes Information_quotes Knowledge_quotes Deal_quotes Quantity_quotes Quality_quotes Aware_quotes Enjoy_quotes Suffering_quotes Being_quotes Relevance_quotes Point_quotes Word_quotes Arrangement_quotes Art_quotes Possess_quotes Magic_quotes Power_quotes Capability_quotes Prop_quotes Mold_quotes Mind_quotes Reading_quotes

Technological and Social Change

“In modern scientific method we have a technique for invention; technological progress proceeds at an accelerating speed. But social change is inevitably associated with technological progress. To quicken the rate of the second is to quicken the rate of the first.”
  • Source: Aldous Huxley (1936). An essay entitled Words and Behavior within the book The Olive Tree and Other Essays, published by Harper and Brothers, ASIN: B08VNTBLY4.
Keywords: Modern_quotes Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Technique_quotes Invention_quotes Technology_quotes Progress_quotes Acceleration_quotes Speed_quotes Society_quotes Sociology_quotes Inevitability_quotes Association_quotes Quick_quotes Rate_quotes Change_quotes

Thomas_Henry_Huxley

Tragedy of Science

“The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact.”
  • Source: Thomas Henry Huxley speaking at the Presidential Address at the British Association, "Biogenesis and abiogenesis" (1870). Retrieved from https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE8/B-Ab.html. Later published in Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 229.
Keywords: Tragedy_quotes Science_quotes Slaying_quotes Beauty_quotes Theory_quotes Ugly_quotes Fact_quotes

Byron_K_Jennings

Science is a Construction

“Science is the construction of parsimonious, internally consistent models that can reliably predict future observations.”
  • Source: Byron K. Jennings. As quoted in Mark Buchanan, 'Thesis: Madness in the Method', Nature Physics (1 Feb 2009), 5, No. 2, 83.
Keywords: Science_quotes Construction_quotes Consistency_quotes Model_quotes Reliability_quotes Prediction_quotes Future_quotes Observation_quotes Parsimonious_quotes

Crows

“While seeing any number of black crows does not prove all the crows are black, seeing one white crow disproves it. Thus science proceeds not by proving models correct but by discarding false ones or improving incomplete ones.”
  • Source: Byron K. Jennings, In 'On the Nature of Science', Physics in Canada (Jan/Feb 2007), 63, No. 1, 7.
Keywords: Black_quotes White_quotes Crow_quotes Sight_quotes Observation_quotes Proof_quotes Induction_quotes Falsification_quotes Improve_quotes Incomplete_quotes Science_quotes Model_quotes Correct_quotes Discard_quotes False_quotes Disprove_quotes

Science is the Art

“Science is the art of the appropriate approximation. While the flat earth model is usually spoken of with derision it is still widely used. Flat maps, either in atlases or road maps, use the flat earth model as an approximation to the more complicated shape.”
  • Source: Byron K. Jennings, In 'On the Nature of Science', Physics in Canada (Jan/Feb 2007), 63, No. 1, 13.
Keywords: Science_quotes Art_quotes Appropriate_quotes Approximation_quotes Flat_quotes Earth_quotes Criticism_quotes Map_quotes Complexity_quotes Shape_quotes Model_quotes Derision_quotes Use_quotes Road_quotes

Carl_Jung

Devil's Disdain

“It is the devil who says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind's highest powers. That is never appropriate even though we are forced to acknowledge the irrational.”
  • Source: Written by Carl Jung in a letter to J, B. Lang, dated 1918-01-17. Letter in private possess of Stephen Martin. Reprinted in the book The Red Book: Liber Novus: A Reader's Edition, published 2009 by W. W. Norton, ISBN: 978-039308908-0. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kybruz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani. Introduction, page 46.
Keywords: Devil_quotes Say_quotes Disdain_quotes Reason_quotes Science_quotes Mankind_quotes Power_quotes Appropriate_quotes Force_quotes Acknowledge_quotes Irrational_quotes

Prophetic Delusion

“The danger consists in the prophet’s delusion which often is the result of dealing with the unconscious. It is the devil who says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind’s highest powers. That is never appropriate even though we are forced to acknowledge the irrational.”
  • Source: Written by Carl G. Jung On January 17, 1918-01-17 in a letter to to J. B. Lang. Letter is a private possession of Stephan Martin but is also reported in ‘The Red Book: Liber Novus: A Reader's Edition’, written by C. G. Jung, edited with an introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani; published by W. W. Norton in 2012; ISBN 978-0393089080; Page 46.
  • Notes: This quotes makes a reference to Mephistopheles' statement in Faust (1.1851f.)
Keywords: Danger_quotes Prophet_quotes Delusion_quotes Result_quotes Deal_quotes Unconscious_quotes Devil_quotes Say_quotes Disdain_quotes Reason_quotes Science_quotes Mankind_quotes High_quotes Power_quotes Appropriate_quotes Force_quotes Acknowledge_quotes Irrational_quotes

Immanuel_Kant

Systematic Unity Knowledge

“As systematic unity is what first raises ordinary knowledge to the rank of science, that is, makes a system out of a mere aggregate of knowledge, architectonic is the doctrine of the scientific in our knowledge, and therefore necessarily forms part of the doctrine of method.”
  • Source: Immanuel Kant, In 'The Transcendental Doctrine of Method', Critique of Pure Reason (2016), 653.
Keywords: System_quotes Unity_quotes Knowledge_quotes Science_quotes Aggregation_quotes Architectonic_quotes Doctrine_quotes Methodology_quotes

Systematic Unity Cognition

“Since systematic unity is that which first makes ordinary cognition into science, i.e., makes a system out of a mere aggregate of it, architectonic is the doctrine of that which is scientific in our cognition in general, and therefore necessarily belongs to the doctrine of method.”
  • Source: Immanuel Kant, From page 691, part II chapter 3 in Critique of Pure Reason; written by Immanuel Kant; originally published in 1788; translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood; published in English in 1998 by Cambridge University Press; ISBN 0-521-35402-1.
Keywords: System_quotes Unity_quotes Cognition_quotes Science_quotes Aggregation_quotes Architectonic_quotes Doctrine_quotes Methodology_quotes

John_F_Kennedy

Resources

“Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come.”
  • Source: John F. Kennedy, From Address to the Centennial Convocation of the National Academy of Sciences (22 Oct 1963), 'A Century of Scientific Conquest'. Online at The American Presidency Project.
Keywords: Century_quotes Humanity_quotes Resource_quotes Limitation_quotes Subsistence_quotes Condemnation_quotes Indefinite_quotes Future_quotes Misery_quotes Poverty_quotes Hope_quotes Belief_quotes Law_quotes Nature_quotes Science_quotes Wisdom_quotes Society_quotes Truth_quotes Falsehood_quotes Prediction_quotes Dependency_quotes Tool_quotes Action_quotes Scarcity_quotes Abundance_quotes Malthus(topic)_quotes Argue_quotes Man_quotes Express_quotes Year_quotes Malthusian_quotes

Arthur_Koestler

Progress of Science

“The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.”
  • Source: Arthur Koestler, In The Ghost in the Machine (1967).
Keywords: Progress_quotes Science_quotes Ancient_quotes Ghost_quotes Machine_quotes Strewn_quotes Desert_quotes Trail_quotes Bleach_quotes Skeleton_quotes Discard_quotes Theory_quotes Seem_quotes Possess_quotes Eternal_quotes Life_quotes

Kenneth_W_Kolence

Software Not Physical

“We clearly do not now have an engineering capability comparable to those based on the physical sciences. Such a capability is what is implied by the term software engineering. But software is not a physical system, it is a description of what one describes how a given physical system (a computer of some sort) should act. Thus software is more akin to engineering drawings, either maintained on paper or within a computer. ... So probably it is incorrect to assume software engineering should be considered as a sibling in the family of the physical science based engineering disciplines.”
Keywords: Engineering_quotes Capability_quotes Compare_quotes Physical_quotes Science_quotes Software_Engineering_quotes Software_quotes System_quotes Computer_quotes Activity_quotes Drawing_quotes Paper_quotes Sibling_quotes Family_quotes Discipline_quotes Consider_quotes Maintain_quotes Incorrect_quotes

Software Engineering Body of Knowledge

‘While software engineering may be based on good principles of design activities, it is not a physical science based engineering body of knowledge. So we have to build an engineering capability based on some other body of knowledge.”
Keywords: Software_Engineering_quotes Principle_quotes Design_quotes Activity_quotes Physical_quotes Science_quotes Engineering_quotes Body_quotes Knowledge_quotes Capability_quotes Software_quotes

Lawrence_M_Krauss

Think the Unthinkable

“Science has taught us to think the unthinkable. Because when nature is the guide—rather than a priori prejudices, hopes, fears or desires — we are forced out of our comfort zone. One by one, pillars of classical logic have fallen by the wayside as science progressed in the 20th century, from Einstein's realization that measurements of space and time were not absolute but observer-dependent, to quantum mechanics, which not only put fundamental limits on what we can empirically know but also demonstrated that elementary particles and the atoms they form are doing a million seemingly impossible things at once.”
  • Source: Lawrence M. Krauss, In op-ed, 'A Universe Without Purpose', Los Angeles Times (1 Apr 2012).
Keywords: Science_quotes Thinking_quotes Unthinkable_quotes Nature_quotes Guide_quotes A_Priori_quotes Hope_quotes Fear_quotes Desire_quotes Force_quotes Comfort_quotes Pillar_quotes Logic_quotes Fall_quotes Progress_quotes Measurement_quotes Realization_quotes Space_quotes Time_quotes Absolute_quotes Observation_quotes Dependence_quotes Quantum_quotes Mechanics_quotes Fundamental_quotes Limitation_quotes Empirical_quotes Demonstration_quotes Elementary_quotes Particle_quotes Atom_quotes Impossibility_quotes Concurrent_quotes Teach_quotes Prejudice_quotes Classical_quotes Einstein(topic)_quotes Know_quotes

Biggest Misconception

“The biggest misconception about science is that it tells us what's true. It doesn't do that at all. It tells us what's false. And by knowing what's false, it's like Sherlock Holmes, you get rid of what's false and you hope what's left is closer to the truth. But you never know that any theory is absolutely true, and the only way to find out to make progress is to be able to rule things out. So falsifiability is very important.”
  • Source: Panel comments by Lawrence Krauss at Perimeter Institute's festival "Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future" in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, October 2009. Available online as Youtube video "Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carroll, Neil Turok & Others - Quantum to Cosmos" at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ftH1yig-HDU (accessed 2017) at about 27 minutes into the video.
Keywords: Big_quotes Misconception_quotes Science_quotes Truth_quotes False_quotes Knowledge_quotes Deduction_quotes Elimination_quotes Theory_quotes Absolute_quotes Find_quotes Progress_quotes Rule_quotes Falsification_quotes Importance_quotes Holmes(topic)_quotes Rid_quotes Hope_quotes Closer_quotes Out_quotes

Pierre-Simon_Laplace

Problems of Probability

“The most important questions of life... are indeed for the most part only problems of probability. Strictly speaking it may even be said that nearly all our knowledge is problematical; and in the small number of things which we are able to know with certainty, even in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means for ascertaining truth — induction and analogy — are based on probabilities.”
Keywords: Important_quotes Question_quotes Life_quotes Part_quotes Problem_quotes Probability_quotes Near_quotes Knowledge_quotes Problematical_quotes Small_quotes Number_quotes Thing_quotes Ability_quotes Certainty_quotes Mathematics_quotes Science_quotes Principal_quotes Mean_quotes Ascertain_quotes Truth_quotes Induction_quotes Analogy_quotes Base_quotes

Latin_Proverbs

Science Truth Art Honour

“In scientia veritas, in arte honestas.”
  • English Translation: In science truth, in art honor.
  • Source: Anonymous, included in Jon R. Stone, The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations (2005), 170.
Keywords: Science_quotes Truth_quotes Art_quotes Honor_quotes

George_Henry_Lewes

Systematic Classification of Experience

“Science is the systematic classification of experience.”
  • Source: George Henry Lewes, The Physical Basis of Mind (1877), 4.
Keywords: System_quotes Class_quotes Experience_quotes Science_quotes

Pim_van_Lommel

Science

“For me, the definition of science is asking a question with an open mind.”
  • Source: Words from Pim van Lommel in a video interview. From the YouTube video “Consciousness beyond death, with Dr. Pim van Lommel” on the Essentia Foundation channel. Posted 2023-07-23. Online at https://youtu.be/NVsBFOB7H44. Offset 46:05.
Keywords: Definition_quotes Science_quotes Ask_quotes Open_quotes Mind_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes

Materialist Science

“In materialist science, only that is true that you can objectify, what you can measure, what you can duplicate, or what you can falsify. Then it is true. Now what you feel and what you think, your consciousness, you cannot objectify, you cannot duplicate, you cannot measure, and you cannot falsify. Consciousness, the essence of who you are, what you feel, what you think, is beyond our current materialist science. So, they call it an illusion. But it is the essence of who we are. We have to expand science into post-materialist science. We have to change the paradigm to include subjective experiences... Science should include subjective experiences into the scientific method... The materialist aspect of science is still important, but it's not enough... This is a totally different approach when you realize that everything has its subjective aspects.”
  • Source: Words from Pim van Lommel in a video interview. From the YouTube video “Consciousness beyond death, with Dr. Pim van Lommel” on the Essentia Foundation channel. Posted 2023-07-23. Online at https://youtu.be/NVsBFOB7H44. Offset 46:19.
Keywords: Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Materialism_quotes Truth_quotes Objective_quotes Measurement_quotes Duplicate_quotes Falsification_quotes Feel_quotes Think_quotes Consciousness_quotes Essence_quotes Beyond_quotes Illusion_quotes Call_quotes Expand_quotes Post-materialist_quotes Aspect_quotes Important_quotes Change_quotes Paradigm_quotes Subjective_quotes Experience_quotes Enough_quotes Different_quotes Approach_quotes Realize_quotes Everything_quotes

Benoît_Mandelbrot

Engineering and Science

“Engineering is too important to wait for science.”
  • Source: Quoted in the article 'Fractal Finance' by Greg Phelan, Yale Economic Review, Fall, 2005.
Keywords: Engineering_quotes Science_quotes Importance_quotes Wait_quotes

Karl_Marx

Product of Mental Labor is Science

“The product of mental labor — science — always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.”
  • Source: Addenda, "Relative and Absolute Surplus Value" in Economic Manuscripts (1861-63)
Keywords: Science_quotes Labor_quotes Mind_quotes Thinking_quotes Value_quotes Time_quotes Effort_quotes Production_quotes Product_quotes Mental_quotes Below_quotes Reproduce_quotes Relation_quotes Original_quotes

Alister_McGrath

Why is the Kettle Boiling?

“The distinguished geologist Frank Rhodes made this point back in 1965, using the analogy of a boiling kettle. So why is the kettle boiling? Rhodes notes that two types of explanation might be given. At the scientific level, energy is being supplied, which raises the temperature of the water to its boiling point. Yet another answer can be given. 'The kettle is boiling because I put it on to make a cup of tea.' Rhodes makes a point which some of you may find predictable, but is none the less important. Here is what he says: 'Now these are different answers. But both are true, both are complementary and not competitive. One answer is appropriate within a particular frame of reference, the other within another frame of reference. There is a sense in which each is incomplete without the other.”
  • Note: Frank Rhodes gave credit for the kettle analogy to Dr. Douglas Spanner.
Keywords: Geology_quotes Analogy_quotes Boil_quotes Kettle_quotes Explanation_quotes Science_quotes Energy_quotes Level_quotes Temperature_quotes Water_quotes Answer_quotes Cup_quotes Tea_quotes Prediction_quotes Importance_quotes Differences_quotes True_quotes Complement_quotes Competition_quotes Appropriate_quotes Frame_quotes Reference_quotes Incomplete_quotes Perspective_quotes Bias_quotes Requirements_quotes Rhodes(topic)_quotes

Peter_Medawar

Scientific Method

"The fact that scientists do not consciously practice a formal methodology is very poor evidence that no such methodology exists. It could be said — has been said — that there is a distinctive methodology of science which scientists practice unwittingly, like the chap in Moliere who found that all his life, unknowingly, he had been speaking prose.”
  • Source: Sir Peter B. Medawar, Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (1969), 9.
Keywords: Fact_quotes Science_quotes Consciousness_quotes Practice_quotes Formal_quotes Methodology_quotes Poor_quotes Evidence_quotes Distinct_quotes Unwitting_quotes Unintentional_quotes Unknown_quotes Speak_quotes Prose_quotes Exist_quotes Chap_quotes Moliere(topic)_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes

Scientific Creativity

“To be creative, scientists need libraries and laboratories and the company of other scientists; certainly, a quiet and untroubled life is a help. A scientist's work is in no way deepened or made more cogent by privation, anxiety, distress, or emotional harassment. To be sure, the private lives of scientists may be strangely and even comically mixed up, but not in ways that have any special bearing on the nature and quality of their work. If a scientist were to cut off an ear, no one would interpret such an action as evidence of an unhappy torment of creativity; nor will a scientist be excused any bizarrerie, however extravagant, on the grounds that he is a scientist, however brilliant.”
  • Source: Sir Peter B. Medawar, In Advice to a Young Scientist (1979), 40
Keywords: Creativity_quotes Science_quotes Library_quotes Laboratory_quotes Quiet_quotes Trouble_quotes Life_quotes Deep_quotes Cogent_quotes Privation_quotes Anxiety_quotes Distress_quotes Emotion_quotes Harass_quotes Privacy_quotes Strange_quotes Comical_quotes Mixed_Up_quotes Special_quotes Nature_quotes Work_quotes Cut_quotes Ear_quotes Interpretation_quotes Action_quotes Evidence_quotes Unhappy_quotes Torment_quotes Bizarre_quotes Extravagent_quotes Grounds_quotes Brilliant_quotes Help_quotes Bearing_quotes Quality_quotes Excuse_quotes

Robert_K_Merton

Certified Knowledge

”The institutional goal of science is the extension of certified knowledge. The technical methods employed toward this end provide the relevant definition of knowledge: empirically confirmed and logically consistent predictions. The institutional imperatives (mores) derive from the goal and the methods. The entire structure of technical and moral norms implements the final objective. The technical norm of empirical evidence, adequate, valid and reliable, is a prerequisite for sustained true prediction; the technical norm of logical consistency, a prerequisite for systematic and valid prediction. The mores of science possess a methodologic rationale, but they are binding, not only because they are procedurally efficient, but because they are believed right and good. They are moral as well as technical prescriptions. Four sets of institutional imperatives – universalism, communism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism – comprise the ethos of modern science.”
  • Source: Robert King Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (1957), 552-3.
Keywords: Institution_quotes Goal_quotes Science_quotes Extension_quotes Certified_quotes Knowledge_quotes Technology_quotes Methodology_quotes Employment_quotes End_quotes Relevance_quotes Definition_quotes Empirical_quotes Confirmation_quotes Logic_quotes Consistency_quotes Prediction_quotes Imperative_quotes Derive_quotes Structure_quotes Morality_quotes Norms_quotes Implementation_quotes Final_quotes Objectives_quotes Evidence_quotes Adequate_quotes Validity_quotes Reliability_quotes Prerequisite_quotes Sustain_quotes Truth_quotes System_quotes Rational_quotes Mores_quotes Bind_quotes Procedure_quotes Efficiency_quotes Belief_quotes Right_quotes Good_quotes Prescription_quotes Universalism_quotes Communism_quotes Disinterest_quotes Skeptical_quotes Composition_quotes Ethos_quotes Modern_quotes

Publishing Ideas

“Only when he has published his ideas and findings has the scientist made his contribution, and only when he has thus made it part of the public domain of scholarship can he truly lay claim to it as his own. For his claim resides only in the recognition accorded by peers in the social system of science through reference to his work.”
  • Source: Robert King Merton, In The Sociology of Science: An Episodic Memoir (1977), 47. As quoted and cited in David A. Kronick, The Literature of the Life Sciences: Reading, Writing, Research (1985), 89. This has been summarized as a paradox “the more freely the scientist gives his intellectual property away, the more securely it becomes his property” by Mengxiong Liu, in 'The Complexity of Citation Practice: A Review of Citation Studies', The Journal of Documentation (1993), 49, No. 4, 372.
Keywords: Publishing_quotes Idea_quotes Science_quotes Contribution_quotes Public_quotes Public_Domain_quotes Scholarship_quotes Claim_quotes Recognition_quotes Peer_quotes Peer_Review_quotes Society_quotes Reference_quotes Work_quotes Finding_quotes

John_Stuart_Mill

Knowledge and Logic

“The distinction is that the science or knowledge of the particular subject-matter furnishes the evidence, while logic furnishes the principles and rules of the estimation of evidence.”
  • Source: John Stuart Mill, In A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (1843), Vol. 1, 11.
Keywords: Knowledge_quotes Logic_quotes Science_quotes Evidence_quotes Distinction_quotes Subject_quotes Furnish_quotes Principle_quotes Rule_quotes Estimate_quotes

Ernest_Nagel

Explanations

“It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.”
  • Source: Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (1961), 4.
Keywords: Desire_quotes Explanation_quotes System_quotes Control_quotes Fact_quotes Evidence_quotes Generation_quotes Science_quotes Organization_quotes Class_quotes Knowledge_quotes Principle_quotes Distinct_quotes Goal_quotes

John_von_Neumann

Gradual Development of Theory

“What is important is the gradual development of a theory, based on a careful analysis of the ... facts. ... Its first applications are necessarily to elementary problems where the result has never been in doubt and no theory is actually required. At this early stage the application serves to corroborate the theory. The next stage develops when the theory is applied to somewhat more complicated situations in which it may already lead to a certain extent beyond the obvious and familiar. Here theory and application corroborate each other mutually. Beyond lies the field of real success: genuine prediction by theory. It is well known that all mathematized sciences have gone through these successive stages of evolution.”
  • Source: John von Neumann, 'Formulation of the Economic Problem' in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1964), 8. Reprinted in John Von Neumann, F. Bródy (ed.) and Tibor Vámos (ed.), The Neumann Compendium (2000), 416.
Keywords: Importance_quotes Gradual_quotes Development_quotes Theory_quotes Careful_quotes Analysis_quotes Fact_quotes Application_quotes Elementary_quotes Problem_quotes Result_quotes Doubt_quotes Requirements_quotes Early_quotes Stage_quotes Service_quotes Corroborate_quotes Complexity_quotes Situation_quotes Lead_quotes Obvious_quotes Familiar_quotes Mutual_quotes Success_quotes Genuine_quotes Prediction_quotes Mathematics_quotes Science_quotes Evolution_quotes Beyond_quotes

Science Models

“The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work — that is, correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area.”
  • Source: John von Neumann, 'Method in the Physical Sciences', in The Unity of Knowledge, edited by L. Leary (1955), 158. Reprinted in John Von Neumann, F. Bródy (ed.) and Tibor Vámos (ed.), The Neumann Compendium (2000), 628.
Keywords: Science_quotes Explanation_quotes Mathematics_quotes Construct_quotes Sole_quotes Precision_quotes Expectation_quotes Work_quotes Correctness_quotes Description_quotes Phenomena_quotes Reason_quotes Wide_quotes Area_quotes Interpret_quotes Model_quotes Verbal_quotes Observation_quotes Justification_quotes Correct_quotes

John_David_North

Art of Engineering

“Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretense and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest that engineering can do without science, on the contrary, it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer.”
  • Source: John D. North, In John D. North, 'The Case for Metal Construction', The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, (Jan 1923), 27, 11.
Keywords: Airplane_quotes Design_quotes Science_quotes Pretense_quotes Humbug_quotes Contrary_quotes Suggestion_quotes Engineering_quotes Foundation_quotes Gap_quotes Research_quotes Bridge_quotes Art_quotes Product_quotes

J_Robert_Oppenheimer

Science Starts with Preconception

“Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].”
  • Source: J. Robert Oppenheimer, From 'The Growth of Science and the Structure of Culture', Daedalus (Winter 1958), 87, No. 1, 67.
Keywords: Science_quotes Preconception_quotes Common_quotes Culture_quotes Common_Sense_quotes Observation_quotes Discovery_quotes Paradox_quotes Correction_quotes Assumption_quotes Design_quotes Experiment_quotes Nature_quotes Evidence_quotes Experience_quotes Nourish_quotes Unfamiliar_quotes Language_quotes Strange_quotes Sense_quotes

Abraham_Pais

Speculation

“Physicists, good physicists, enjoy scientific speculation in private, but tend to frown upon it when done in public. They are conservative revolutionaries, resisting innovation as long as possible at all intellectual cost, but embracing it when the evidence is incontrovertible - or, if they do not, physics tends to pass them by.”
Keywords: Physics_quotes Good_quotes Enjoy_quotes Speculation_quotes Privacy_quotes Frown_quotes Public_quotes Conservative_quotes Revolution_quotes Resistance_quotes Innovation_quotes Intellectualism_quotes Cost_quotes Embrace_quotes Evidence_quotes Incontrovertible_quotes Passing_quotes Science_quotes

Parkinson_and_Margulieux

Spatial Skills

“Higher spatial reasoning skills universally correlate with better STEM [Science Technology Engineering Mathematics] performance and achievement... This correlation is particularly interesting because spatial skills can be trained, and spatial skills training globally improves STEM performance and achievement.”
  • Source: From the journal article entitled “Improving CS Performance by Developing Spatial Skills”, in Communications of the ACM, volume 68, number 1, 2025-01. DOI:10.1145/3680409.
Keywords: High_quotes Spatial_quotes Reason_quotes Skill_quotes Universal_quotes Correlation_quotes Better_quotes STEM_quotes Science_quotes Technology_quotes Engineering_quotes Mathematics_quotes Performance_quotes Achievement_quotes Interest_quotes Train_quotes Global_quotes Improve_quotes

Alan_Perlis

Computing Fun

“I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.”
  • Source: Quoted in The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Hal Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman (McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition, 1996).
Keywords: Thinking_quotes Importance_quotes Computer_Science_quotes Computing_quotes Fun_quotes Pay_quotes Customer_quotes Shaft_quotes Complaint_quotes Serious_quotes Responsibility_quotes Success_quotes Error_quotes Error-Free_quotes Perfect_quotes Machine_quotes Quality_quotes Defect_quotes Stretch_quotes Innovation_quotes New_quotes Direction_quotes House_quotes Field_quotes Loss_quotes Sense_quotes Missionary_quotes Evangelism_quotes Bible_quotes Salesman_quotes World_quotes Knowledge_quotes Learning_quotes Feel_quotes Key_quotes Hand_quotes Intelligence_quotes Ability_quotes Sight_quotes First_quotes Extraordinary_quotes Science_quotes Learn_quotes

Balance Efficiency and Generality

“Our progress, then, is measured by the balance we achieve between efficiency and generality. As the nature of our involvement with computation changes — and it does — the appropriate description of language changes; our emphasis shifts. I feel that our successor model will show such a change. Computer science is a restless infant and its progress depends as much on shifts in point of view as on the orderly development of our current concepts.”

Keywords: Progress_quotes Measurement_quotes Balance_quotes Achievement_quotes Efficiency_quotes Generality_quotes Nature_quotes Involve_quotes Computation_quotes Change_quotes Appropriate_quotes Description_quotes Language_quotes Emphasis_quotes Shift_quotes Feel_quotes Successor_quotes Model_quotes Show_quotes Computer_Science_quotes Restless_quotes Infant_quotes Dependence_quotes Point_of_View_quotes Perspective_quotes Order_quotes Development_quotes Current_quotes Conceptual_quotes Science_quotes

Steven_Pinker

Neurons to Consciousness

“None of us has a brain that can actually put us in touch with reality unaided with truth. I've just shown you a bunch of gadgetry that responds to things that are essential to our survival, things that prevent us from falling off cliffs and bumping into trees. But they don't actually correspond to any clear description of the world as it is. So we have, for example, circuitry that responds to the edges rather than the physical distribution of light, because edges are important, that's where objects leave off and their backgrounds begin. Moreover, they can be fooled, as I did with each one of you. That since our neural circuitry does consist of a mechanism, not a pipeline to the truth or a window onto objective reality. That is naïve realism we know is false because there are illusions. You can't just trust your senses. That means we need some way of augmenting the faculties that nature gave us to make our beliefs as accurate as possible. Which of course is why the early modern philosophers made such a big deal of visual illusions. They said you can't just open your eyes and see the world as it is. Look at all these illusions. So what we do, what gives some of us confidence that our beliefs are objectively true is that they are part of an institutional infrastructure of testing and criticism and logic and determining which hypotheses withstand criticism and attempts at refutation. Devising exotic arrangements of reality to reflect the way reality is put together, namely experiments. Thanks to this huge network of minds, each one of them making up for deficits of all the others, we like to think that we have a collective grasp on truth that none of us individually can have. But of course, it's always fallible. The religious beliefs I think were actually pretty reasonable hypotheses in earlier states of our collective knowledge. Even Richard Dawkins said that before Darwin he probably would have been a creationist because the cosmic engineer was the only available explanation for the obvious adaptive complexity of living things. I would add that prior to the advent of modern neuroscience I probably would have believed in souls because there was no better explanation for phenomena such as that people respond intelligently to their environments. When you dream some part of you is up and about the world while your body is in bed the whole time. That seems like there must be some part of you that can leave your body. When a person suddenly dies some kind of animating force no longer seems to be animating the body that was there just a few minutes ago. So the soul hypothesis is not a stupid or irrational belief, nor is creationism if it's the best that you have. Now, of course, we can do better. But doing better in part depends not just on this cumulative weight of evidence and argument. But because few of us can actually reconstruct the scientific observations that justify the theory of natural selection or the theory of neural networks, all of us, at least a little bit, take it on faith in the following sense; that there is a community that you trust enough because when they have been challenged to defend their beliefs they can connect them to reality. They have shown that it isn't magic. That they have given reason to trust them because they've convinced you that they're the mores of their culture, of their scientific culture, designed so that they will find true things and weed out false things. If you don't have a degree of solidarity or trust, if you think that scientists are all in cahoots with big corporations or are trying to tear down all faith and values and meaning and you simply refuse to follow through the very long chain of deduction that connects the claims to the experiments, then you'll naturally reject it just because it's not your tribe. For you and me scientists are our tribe and we're apt to give them some credibility, indeed some credulousness, knowing that if ever challenged it would be repaid. But unless you trace that through it can be all too easy to reject the conclusions of science, and indeed a number of studies have shown that contrary to the common belief that people believe in falsehoods, such as that vaccines cause autism or that humans were created five thousand years ago or that the burning of fossil fuels has no effect on global temperatures, it turns out that people with those beliefs that we have every reason to believe are false are no more scientifically naïve on average than people that have beliefs that are scientifically justified. You give a test on evolution to a bunch of people who believe in evolution, give it to a bunch of creationists, there's not much difference in how well they score. In fact, often they are equal. Likewise, the typical grasp of climate science among someone who signs on to the scientific consensus is not much better than the adamant deniers. That kind of dashes the hope that simply by increasing the quality of science education you will lead people to more accurate beliefs. There, in addition, has to be a dissociation of who you think are the good guys and who are the bad guys from who has the best claims to truth. That's what it depends on.”
Keywords: Accuracy_quotes Adament_quotes Adaptability_quotes Addition_quotes Advent_quotes Aid_quotes Animate_quotes Argue_quotes Arrangement_quotes Attempt_quotes Augment_quotes Autism_quotes Availability_quotes Background_quotes Bad_quotes Bed_quotes Belief_quotes Best_quotes Big_quotes Body_quotes Brain_quotes Bump_quotes Bunch_quotes Burn_quotes Cahoot_quotes Chain_quotes Challenge_quotes Circuit_quotes Claim_quotes Clear_quotes Cliff_quotes Climate_quotes Collective_quotes Complexity_quotes Common_quotes Community_quotes Conclusion_quotes Confidence_quotes Connection_quotes Consensus_quotes Consist_quotes Contrary_quotes Convince_quotes Cooperation_quotes Corporation_quotes Correspondence_quotes Cosmic_quotes Creationism_quotes Credibility_quotes Criticism_quotes Culture_quotes Cumulative_quotes Dash_quotes Deal_quotes Death_quotes Deception_quotes Deduction_quotes Defence_quotes Deficit_quotes Degree_quotes Deny_quotes Dependence_quotes Description_quotes Design_quotes Determine_quotes Devise_quotes Differences_quotes Dissociation_quotes Distribution_quotes Dreaming_quotes Early_quotes Easy_quotes Edge_quotes Education_quotes Effect_quotes Engineer_quotes Environment_quotes Essential_quotes Evidence_quotes Evolution_quotes Exotic_quotes Experiment_quotes Explanation_quotes Eye_quotes Faculty_quotes Faith_quotes Fall_quotes Fallible_quotes False_quotes Few_quotes Find_quotes Follow_quotes Fool_quotes Force_quotes Fossil_quotes Fuel_quotes Gadget_quotes Global_quotes Good_quotes Grasp_quotes Guy_quotes Huge_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Illusion_quotes Importance_quotes Increasing_quotes Individual_quotes Infrastructure_quotes Institution_quotes Intelligence_quotes Irrational_quotes Justification_quotes Knowledge_quotes Leave_quotes Life_quotes Light_quotes Logic_quotes Long_quotes Magic_quotes Meaning_quotes Mechanism_quotes Mind_quotes Modern_quotes Moral_quotes Naïve_quotes Nature_quotes Natural_Selection_quotes Network_quotes Neural_quotes Neuroscience_quotes Object_quotes Objectivity_quotes Observation_quotes Obvious_quotes Part_quotes People_quotes Perception_quotes Phenomena_quotes Philosophy_quotes Physical_quotes Pipeline_quotes Possibility_quotes Prehistoric_quotes Prevent_quotes Reality_quotes Reason_quotes Reconstruct_quotes Reflection_quotes Refuse_quotes Refutation_quotes Rejection_quotes Religion_quotes Repay_quotes Respond_quotes Science_quotes Scientist_quotes Score_quotes Seem_quotes Selection_quotes Sense_quotes Show_quotes Sight_quotes Solidarity_quotes Soul_quotes State_quotes Study_quotes Stupidity_quotes Survival_quotes Tear_quotes Temperature_quotes Testing_quotes Theory_quotes Thinking_quotes Time_quotes Touch_quotes Trace_quotes Tree_quotes Tribal_quotes Trust_quotes Truth_quotes Try_quotes Typical_quotes Unaided_quotes Vaccine_quotes Value_quotes Visual_quotes Weed_quotes Weight_quotes Whole_quotes Window_quotes Withstand_quotes World_quotes

Learning

“But learning is not a surrounding gas or force field, and it does not happen by magic. It is made possible by innate machinery designed to do the learning... To understand learning, we need new ways of thinking to replace the prescientific metaphors — the mixtures and forces, the writing on slates and sculpting of blocks of marble.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 1 Section Reverse-Engineering the Psyche.
Keywords: Learning_quotes Surround_quotes Gas_quotes Force_quotes Field_quotes Happen_quotes Magic_quotes Possibility_quotes Innate_quotes Machine_quotes Design_quotes Do_quotes Understanding_quotes Way_quotes Thinking_quotes Replace_quotes Science_quotes Prescience_quotes Metaphor_quotes Mix_quotes Writing_quotes Slate_quotes Block_quotes Marble_quotes Sculpting_quotes

Science

“In a large society with writing and institutionalized science, the cost of an exponential number of tests is repaid by the benefit of the resulting laws to a large number of people. That is why taxpayers are willing to fund scientific research. But for the provincial interests of a single individual or even a small band, good science isn’t worth the trouble.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 5 Section: Ecological Intelligence.
Keywords: Large_quotes Society_quotes Writing_quotes Institution_quotes Science_quotes Cost_quotes Exponential_quotes Number_quotes Testing_quotes Repay_quotes Benefit_quotes Result_quotes Law_quotes People_quotes Taxpayer_quotes Willing_quotes Fund_quotes Research_quotes Provincial_quotes Interest_quotes Single_quotes Individual_quotes Small_quotes Band_quotes Worth_quotes Trouble_quotes

Good Science

“Good science is pedantic, expensive, and subversive.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 5 Section: Ecological Intelligence.
Keywords: Good_quotes Science_quotes Pedantic_quotes Expense_quotes Subversive_quotes

Robert_M_Pirsig

Traditional Scientific Method

“Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.”
  • Source: Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), 251.
Keywords: Tradition_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Science_quotes Best_quotes Hindsight_quotes Sight_quotes Good_quotes Testing_quotes Truth_quotes Thinking_quotes Knowledge_quotes Tell_quotes Go_quotes Method_quotes

Max_Planck

Scientific Truth

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
  • Source: Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33
    • Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, 1949.
Keywords: New_quotes Science_quotes Truth_quotes Triumph_quotes Convince_quotes Opponent_quotes Light_quotes Eventual_quotes Death_quotes Generation_quotes Grow_quotes Familiar_quotes

Henri_Poincaré

Scientific Language

“All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.”
  • Source: The Value of Science (1905), in The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method(1946), trans. by George Bruce Halsted, 332.
Keywords: Science_quotes Language_quotes Create_quotes Fact_quotes Enunciate_quotes Prediction_quotes Employment_quotes Speak_quotes Understanding_quotes Free_quotes Ambiguity_quotes Dependence_quotes Fullfill_quotes Evident_quotes

Michael_Polanyi

Vast Knowledge First and Second Hand

“Nobody knows more than a tiny fragment of science well enough to judge its validity and value at first hand. For the rest he has to rely on views accepted at second hand on the authority of a community of people accredited as scientists. But this accrediting depends in its turn on a complex organization. For each member of the community can judge at first hand only a small number of his fellow members, and yet eventually each is accredited by all. What happens is that each recognizes as scientists a number of others by whom he is recognized as such in return, and these relations form chains which transmit these mutual recognitions at second hand through the whole community. This is how each member becomes directly or indirectly accredited by all. The system extends into the past. Its members recognize the same set of persons as their masters and derive from this allegiance a common tradition, of which each carries on a particular strand.”
  • Source: Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (1958), 163.
Keywords: Vast_quotes Knowledge_quotes Tiny_quotes Fragment_quotes Accredit_quotes Dependence_quotes Turn_quotes Complexity_quotes Organization_quotes Member_quotes Community_quotes Science_quotes Judgment_quotes Validity_quotes Value_quotes First-Hand_quotes Reliance_quotes View_quotes Acceptance_quotes Second-Hand_quotes Authority_quotes People_quotes Scientist_quotes Number_quotes Small_quotes Fellow_quotes Eventual_quotes Recognition_quotes Return_quotes Relationship_quotes Chain_quotes Transmit_quotes Mutual_quotes Direct_quotes Indirect_quotes System_quotes Extend_quotes Past_quotes Master_quotes Derive_quotes Allegiance_quotes Common_quotes Tradition_quotes Carry_quotes Particular_quotes Strand_quotes

Scientific Method Elucidation

“Almost every major systematic error which has deluded men for thousands of years relied on practical experience. Horoscopes, incantations, oracles, magic, witchcraft, the cures of witch doctors and of medical practitioners before the advent of modern medicine, were all firmly established through the centuries in the eyes of the public by their supposed practical successes. The scientific method was devised precisely for the purpose of elucidating the nature of things under more carefully controlled conditions and by more rigorous criteria than are present in the situations created by practical problems.”
  • Source: Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (1958), 183.
Keywords: Major_quotes System_quotes Error_quotes Delusion_quotes Humanity_quotes Year_quotes Practical_quotes Experience_quotes Horoscope_quotes Incantation_quotes Oracle_quotes Magic_quotes Witchcraft_quotes Cure_quotes Witch-Doctor_quotes Medical_quotes Practitioner_quotes Modern_quotes Medicine_quotes Firm_quotes Establish_quotes Century_quotes Eye_quotes Public_quotes Suppose_quotes Success_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Devise_quotes Precision_quotes Purpose_quotes Elucidate_quotes Nature_quotes Careful_quotes Control_quotes Condition_quotes Rigorous_quotes Criteria_quotes Present_quotes Situation_quotes Create_quotes Problem_quotes Thousand_quotes Doctor_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes

Karl_Popper

Scientific Game

“Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.”
  • Source: Popper, K. R. (2005). The Logic of Scientific Discovery | 1935 (1935/Epub). New York, NY: Routledge. Page 280.
Keywords: Unwilling_quotes Expose_quotes Idea_quotes Hazard_quotes Refutation_quotes Falsification_quotes Part_quotes Science_quotes Game_quotes

Confirmation Easy

“It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions... A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it.”
  • Source: Karl Raimund Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), 36.
Keywords: Easy_quotes Obtain_quotes Confirmation_quotes Verification_quotes Theory_quotes Count_quotes Result_quotes Risk_quotes Prediction_quotes Refutation_quotes Conceivable_quotes Event_quotes Science_quotes Falsification_quotes Irrefutability_quotes Virtue_quotes People_quotes Thinking_quotes Vice_quotes Genuine_quotes Testing_quotes Attempt_quotes

Rule of Rules

“It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.”
  • Source: Karl Raimund Popper (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery: Logik Der Forschung (2002), 33.
Keywords: Rule_quotes Law_quotes Science_quotes Procedure_quotes Design_quotes Protection_quotes Statement_quotes Falsification_quotes

Method of Science

“The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.”
  • Source: Karl Raimund Popper, Karl Raimund Popper and William Warren Bartley (ed.), The Open Universe: an Argument for Indeterminism (1991), 44. by Karl Raimund Popper, William Warren Bartley - Science - 1991
Keywords: Methodology_quotes Science_quotes Dependence_quotes Attempt_quotes Description_quotes World_quotes Simplicity_quotes Theory_quotes Complexity_quotes Testing_quotes True_quotes Truth_quotes Art_quotes System_quotes Discern_quotes Advantage_quotes Omit_quotes Untestable_quotes

Science Not Certain

“Science is not a system of certain, or established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality... And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover — discover. Like Bacon, we might describe our own contemporary science — 'the method of reasoning which men now ordinarily apply to nature' — as consisting of 'anticipations, rash and premature' and as 'prejudices'.”
  • Source: Karl Raimund Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), 278.
Keywords: Science_quotes System_quotes Certainty_quotes Establish_quotes Statement_quotes Steady_quotes Advance_quotes State_quotes Final_quotes Guess_quotes Guide_quotes Unscientific_quotes Metaphysics_quotes Biology_quotes Explanation_quotes Faith_quotes Law_quotes Regular_quotes Uncover_quotes Discovery_quotes Description_quotes Contemporary_quotes Methodology_quotes Reason_quotes Humanity_quotes Ordinary_quotes Apply_quotes Nature_quotes Consist_quotes Anticipation_quotes Rash_quotes Premature_quotes Prejudice_quotes Bacon(topic)_quotes

Irresponsible Dreams

“The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.”
  • Source: Karl Raimund Popper, From Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), 216. Reproduced in Karl Popper, Truth, Rationality and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1979), 9.
Keywords: History_quotes Science_quotes Humanity_quotes Idea_quotes Irresponsible_quotes Dreaming_quotes Obstinate_quotes Error_quotes Activity_quotes System_quotes Criticism_quotes Often_quotes Time_quotes Correction_quotes Learning_quotes Mistake_quotes Speak_quotes Clear_quotes Sensibility_quotes Progress_quotes Field_quotes Endeavour_quotes Change_quotes Evaluation_quotes

Considerations

“These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows.
1. Confirmation is easy.
2. Only risky predictions should count.
3. A good theory is a prohibition.
4. A theory which is not refutable is not scientific.
5. A genuine test is an attempt to falsify a theory.
6. Confirming evidence should not count unless it attempted to falsify.
7. Some genuine testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers.”
Keywords: Consideration_quotes Conclusion_quotes Reformulate_quotes Confirmation_quotes Easy_quotes Risk_quotes Prediction_quotes Count_quotes Good_quotes Theory_quotes Prohibition_quotes Refutation_quotes Science_quotes Genuine_quotes Testing_quotes Attempt_quotes Falsification_quotes Evidence_quotes False_quotes Uphold_quotes Admire_quotes

Strict Proof

“If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are.”
  • Source: Popper, K. R. (2005). The Logic of Scientific Discovery | 1935 (1935/Epub ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Keywords: Insist_quotes Strict_quotes Proof_quotes Disproof_quotes Empirical_quotes Science_quotes Benefit_quotes Experience_quotes Learning_quotes Wrong_quotes

Scientific Knowledge

“If the picture of the world which modern science draws comes anywhere near the truth — in other words, if we have anything like ‘scientific knowledge’ — then the conditions obtaining almost everywhere in the universe make the discovery of structural laws of the kind we are seeking — and thus the attainment of ‘scientific knowledge’ — almost impossible. For almost all regions of the universe are filled by chaotic radiation, and almost all the rest by matter in a likewise chaotic state. In spite of this, science has been miraculously successful in proceeding toward what I think should be regarded as its aim. This strange fact cannot, I think, be explained without proving too much. But it can encourage us to pursue that aim, even though we may not get any further encouragement to believe that we can actually attain it; neither from metaphysical realism nor from any other source.”
  • Source: Realism and the Aim of Science: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. 146, ISBN 0415084008
Keywords: Picture_quotes World_quotes Modern_quotes Science_quotes Truth_quotes Knowledge_quotes Condition_quotes Obtain_quotes Universe_quotes Discovery_quotes Structure_quotes Kind_quotes Seek_quotes Attain_quotes Impossibility_quotes Region_quotes Chaos_quotes Radiation_quotes Matter_quotes Miracle_quotes Success_quotes Progress_quotes Aim_quotes Strange_quotes Fact_quotes Explanation_quotes Proof_quotes Encouragement_quotes Pursuit_quotes Belief_quotes Metaphysics_quotes Realism_quotes Source_quotes Law_quotes

Epistemology

“In accordance with my proposal made above, epistemology, or the logic of scientific discovery, should be identified with the theory of scientific method. The theory of method, in so far as it goes beyond the purely logical analysis of the relations between scientific statements, is concerned with the choice of methods — with decisions about the way in which scientific statements are to be dealt with. These decisions will of course depend in their turn upon the aim which we choose from among a number of possible aims. The decision here proposed for laying down suitable rules for what I call the ‘empirical method’ is closely connected with my criterion of demarcation: I propose to adopt such rules as will ensure the testability of scientific statements; which is to say, their falsifiability.”
  • Source: Chapter 2. Popper, K. R. (2005). The Logic of Scientific Discovery | 1935 (1935/Epub ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Keywords: According_quotes Proposal_quotes Epistemology_quotes Logic_quotes Science_quotes Discovery_quotes Identity_quotes Theory_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Methodology_quotes Beyond_quotes Analysis_quotes Relationship_quotes Statement_quotes Concern_quotes Choice_quotes Decision_quotes Way_quotes Deal_quotes Dependence_quotes Aim_quotes Number_quotes Possibility_quotes Rule_quotes Law_quotes Empirical_quotes Connection_quotes Criteria_quotes Demarcation_quotes Adopt_quotes Ensure_quotes Testing_quotes Testability_quotes Falsification_quotes Pure_quotes

Pseudo-Science

“Science is distinguished from pseudo-science - or from 'metaphysics' - by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive.”
Keywords: Science_quotes Distinguish_quotes Pseudo-Science_quotes Metaphysics_quotes Empirical_quotes Essential_quotes Induction_quotes Method_quotes

Myths

“Science must begin with myths, and the criticism of myths.”
  • Source: Karl Popper (1957) The Philosophy of Science.
Keywords: Science_quotes Myth_quotes Criticism_quotes Begin_quotes

Willard_Van_Orman_Quine

Science as a Tool

“As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries - not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”
  • Source: From A Logical Point of View (1953), p. 44.
Keywords: Empirical_quotes Thinking_quotes Conceptual_quotes Scheme_quotes Science_quotes Tool_quotes Prediction_quotes Future_quotes Experience_quotes Light_quotes Past_quotes Physical_quotes Object_quotes Import_quotes Situation_quotes Convenience_quotes Intermediary_quotes Definition_quotes Term_quotes Irreducible_quotes Posit_quotes Compare_quotes Epistemology_quotes God_quotes Myth_quotes Part_quotes Physics_quotes Belief_quotes Error_quotes Point_quotes Degree_quotes Kind_quotes Entity_quotes Culture_quotes Superior_quotes Proof_quotes Effectiveness_quotes Device_quotes Management_quotes Structure_quotes Flux_quotes Homer(topic)_quotes Efficacious_quotes

James_Randi

Science Is Best Defined

“Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.”
  • Source: James Randi, The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer (1993), Page 66.
Keywords: Science_quotes Definition_quotes Careful_quotes Logic_quotes Search_quotes Knowledge_quotes Aspect_quotes Universe_quotes Obtain_quotes Examination_quotes Availability_quotes Evidence_quotes Subject_quotes Correction_quotes Improvement_quotes Discovery_quotes Better_quotes Magic_quotes Work_quotes Discipline_quotes

Hans_Reichenbach

Picture of Scientific Method

“The picture of scientific method drafted by modern philosophy is very different from traditional conceptions. Gone is the ideal of a universe whose course follows strict rules, a predetermined cosmos that unwinds itself like an unwinding clock. Gone is the ideal of the scientist who knows the absolute truth. The happenings of nature are like rolling dice rather than like revolving stars; they are controlled by probability laws, not by causality, and the scientist resembles a gambler more than a prophet. He can tell you only his best posits — he never knows beforehand whether they will come true. He is a better gambler, though, than the man at the green table, because his statistical methods are superior. And his goal is staked higher — the goal of foretelling the rolling dice of the cosmos. If he is asked why he follows his methods, with what title he makes his predictions, he cannot answer that he has an irrefutable knowledge of the future; he can only lay his best bets. But he can prove that they are best bets, that making them is the best he can do — and if a man does his best, what else can you ask of him?”
  • Source: Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (1951, 1973), 248-9. Collected in James Louis Jarrett and Sterling M. McMurrin (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy: A Book of Readings (1954), 376.
Keywords: Picture_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Modern_quotes Philosophy_quotes Differences_quotes Tradition_quotes Ideal_quotes Universe_quotes Causality_quotes Course_quotes Strict_quotes Rule_quotes Predetermine_quotes Cosmos_quotes Unwind_quotes Clock_quotes Science_quotes Absolute_quotes Certainty_quotes Truth_quotes Nature_quotes Roll_quotes Dice_quotes Probability_quotes Revolve_quotes Star_quotes Control_quotes Law_quotes Gambler_quotes Prophet_quotes Prediction_quotes Posit_quotes Knowledge_quotes Beforehand_quotes True_quotes Statistics_quotes Superior_quotes Goal_quotes Stake_quotes High_quotes Foretell_quotes Methodology_quotes Title_quotes Answer_quotes Irrefutability_quotes Future_quotes Bet_quotes Proof_quotes Best_quotes Ask_quotes Conception_quotes Scientist_quotes Man_quotes

Nicholas_Rescher

Inherent Unpredictability

“The inherent unpredictability of future scientific developments — the fact that no secure inference can be drawn from one state of science to another — has important implications for the issue of the limits of science. It means that present-day science cannot speak for future science: it is in principle impossible to make any secure inferences from the substance of science at one time about its substance at a significantly different time. The prospect of future scientific revolutions can never be precluded. We cannot say with unblinking confidence what sorts of resources and conceptions the science of the future will or will not use. Given that it is effectively impossible to predict the details of what future science will accomplish, it is no less impossible to predict in detail what future science will not accomplish. We can never confidently put this or that range of issues outside 'the limits of science', because we cannot discern the shape and substance of future science with sufficient clarity to be able to say with any assurance what it can and cannot do. Any attempt to set 'limits' to science — any advance specification of what science can and cannot do by way of handling problems and solving questions — is destined to come to grief.”
  • Source: Nicholas Rescher, The Limits of Science (1984), 102-3.
Keywords: Inherent_quotes Prediction_quotes Unpredictability_quotes Future_quotes Science_quotes Development_quotes Progress_quotes Inference_quotes Conclusion_quotes State_quotes Causality_quotes Importance_quotes Imply_quotes Issue_quotes Limitation_quotes Meaning_quotes Present_quotes Day_quotes Speak_quotes Principle_quotes Impossibility_quotes Substance_quotes Time_quotes Significance_quotes Differences_quotes Prospect_quotes Revolution_quotes Preclude_quotes Blink_quotes Confidence_quotes Resource_quotes Conception_quotes Detail_quotes Accomplish_quotes Range_quotes Shape_quotes Sufficient_quotes Clarity_quotes Assurance_quotes Attempt_quotes Specification_quotes Advance_quotes Handle_quotes Problem_quotes Solution_quotes Question_quotes Destiny_quotes Grief_quotes Secure_quotes Outside_quotes Discern_quotes

Frank_H_T_Rhodes

Scientific Method Essence

“The essence of scientific method is the method of inductive and empirical enquiry, the process of observation, experiment and hypothesis... The second important aspect of scientific method is its abstraction.”
  • Source: Frank H. T. Rhodes in the essay “Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe”, included in the book “Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe and Other Essays” edited by Donald M. MacKay, published by Inter-Varsity Press, Chicago, Illinois, in 1965.
Keywords: Essence_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes Induction_quotes Empiricism_quotes Enquiry_quotes Process_quotes Observation_quotes Experiment_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Second_quotes Important_quotes Aspect_quotes Abstraction_quotes

Rittel_and_Webber

Wicked Problems

“The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, because of the nature of these problems. They are 'wicked' problems, whereas science has developed to deal with 'tame' problems.”
Keywords: Search_quotes Science_quotes Base_quotes Confront_quotes Problem_quotes Society_quotes Policy_quotes Bounding_quotes Failure_quotes Nature_quotes Wicked_quotes Deal_quotes Tame_quotes

Planning Problems are Wicked Problems

“A great many barriers keep us from perfecting such a planning/governing system. Theory is inadequate for decent forecasting, our intelligence is insufficient to our tasks, plurality of objectives held by pluralities of politics makes it impossible to pursue unitary aims, and so on. The difficulties attached to rationality are tenacious, and we have so far been unable to get untangled from their web. This is partly because the classical paradigm of science and engineering - the paradigm that has underlain modern professionalism - is not applicable to the problems of open societal systems.”
Keywords: Great_quotes Barrier_quotes Keep_quotes Perfect_quotes Plan_quotes Govern_quotes System_quotes Theory_quotes Inadequate_quotes Decent_quotes Forecast_quotes Intelligence_quotes Insufficient_quotes Task_quotes Pluralistic_quotes Objective_quotes Political_quotes Impossibility_quotes Pursuit_quotes Unitary_quotes Aim_quotes Difficulty_quotes Attach_quotes Rational_quotes Tenacious_quotes Untangle_quotes Web_quotes Classical_quotes Paradigm_quotes Science_quotes Engineering_quotes Modern_quotes Professional_quotes Applicable_quotes Problem_quotes Society_quotes

Royal_Society

On No Man's Word

“Nullius in Verba. - On no man’s word.”
  • Source: Motto of the Royal Society, Royal Society of London
  • Notes: The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment. See https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/
Keywords: Humanity_quotes Word_quotes Skeptical_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Evidence_quotes Man_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes

Bertrand_Russell

Exact Science Approximate

“Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 42
Keywords: Paradox_quotes Seem_quotes Exact_quotes Science_quotes Domination_quotes Idea_quotes Approximation_quotes Humanity_quotes Truth_quotes Safe_quotes Inference_quotes Inexact_quotes Careful_quotes Measurement_quotes Probability_quotes Error_quotes Observation_quotes Wrong_quotes Knowledge_quotes Man_quotes

Science Ideal

“Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, traveling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 38.
Keywords: Science_quotes Ideal_quotes Ultimate_quotes Consist_quotes Set_quotes Proposal_quotes Arrangement_quotes Hierarchy_quotes Level_quotes Concern_quotes Fact_quotes Generality_quotes Law_quotes Govern_quotes Universe_quotes Logic_quotes Connection_quotes Induction_quotes Deduction_quotes

Significance of Fact

“The significance of a fact is relative to [the general body of scientific] knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law; for science, though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general. A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance. In this the scientist differs from the artist, who, if he deigns to notice facts at all, is likely to notice them in all their particularity.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 38.
Keywords: Significance_quotes Fact_quotes Relative_quotes Generality_quotes Body_quotes Science_quotes Knowledge_quotes Establish_quotes Refutation_quotes Law_quotes Start_quotes Observation_quotes Particular_quotes Concern_quotes Essential_quotes Instance_quotes Differences_quotes Art_quotes Design_quotes General_quotes Notice_quotes

Exact Theory Beyond Human Powers

“A wholly exact theory is utterly beyond human powers. Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.”
Keywords: Exact_quotes Theory_quotes Beyond_quotes Humanity_quotes Power_quotes Seem_quotes Paradox_quotes Science_quotes Domination_quotes Idea_quotes Approximation_quotes Safe_quotes Inference_quotes Inexact_quotes Truth_quotes Man_quotes

Fed the Chicken

“The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, (1912), In the book entitled “The Problems of Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell. Second edition published in 1998 (originally published in 1912) by Oxford University Press, Oxford, England. Chapter 6. ISBN 978-0-19-285423-0. Online at <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5827> retrieved 2022.
Keywords: Man_quotes Fed_quotes Chicken_quotes Every_quotes Day_quotes Life_quotes Last_quotes Wring_quotes Neck_quotes Refine_quotes View_quotes Uniformity_quotes Nature_quotes Useful_quotes Induction_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes

Scientific Method Complicated and Simple

“Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell (1931), In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 3.
Keywords: Scientific_Method_quotes Refine_quotes Form_quotes Complexity_quotes Simplicity_quotes Essential_quotes Remarkable_quotes Consist_quotes Observation_quotes Fact_quotes Enable_quotes Discovery_quotes Generality_quotes Law_quotes Govern_quotes Kind_quotes Question_quotes Stage_quotes Inference_quotes Susceptible_quotes Indefinite_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes

Fire Burns

“The first man who said 'fire burns' was employing scientific method, at any rate if he had allowed himself to be burnt several times. This man had already passed through the two stages of observation and generalization. He had not, however, what scientific technique demands — a careful choice of significant facts on the one hand, and, on the other hand, various means of arriving at laws otherwise than by mere generalization.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, (1931), In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 3.
Keywords: First_quotes Humanity_quotes Fire_quotes Burn_quotes Employment_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Allow_quotes Repeatability_quotes Stage_quotes Observation_quotes Generality_quotes Demand_quotes Careful_quotes Choice_quotes Significance_quotes Fact_quotes Hand_quotes Arrive_quotes Law_quotes Man_quotes Science_quotes Method_quotes

Carl_Sagan

Science Arouses Wonder

“Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.”
  • Source: Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996), 6.
Keywords: Science_quotes Arise_quotes Soar_quotes Wonder_quotes Pseudoscience_quotes Sparse_quotes Poor_quotes Popularity_quotes Abandon_quotes Ecology_quotes Niche_quotes Prompt_quotes Fill_quotes Wide_quotes Understanding_quotes Claim_quotes Knowledge_quotes Requirements_quotes Adequate_quotes Evidence_quotes Before_quotes Acceptance_quotes Room_quotes

Wrong Hypothesis OK

“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.”
  • Source: Carl Sagan, Quoted in Donald R. Prothero and Carl Dennis Buell, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (2007), 3.
Keywords: Hypothesis_quotes Science_quotes Wrong_quotes Acceptance_quotes Aperture_quotes Find_quotes Right_quotes Self-Correcting_quotes Process_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Idea_quotes Survival_quotes Rigorous_quotes Standards_quotes Evidence_quotes Scrutiny_quotes Correct_quotes Method_quotes

Changing Opinion

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
  • Source: Carl Sagan, Keynote address at CSICOP conference, 1987
Keywords: Science_quotes Scientist_quotes Often_quotes Happen_quotes Speak_quotes Good_quotes Argue_quotes Position_quotes Mistake_quotes Bias_quotes Change_quotes Mind_quotes Hearing_quotes Old_quotes View_quotes Do_quotes Humanity_quotes Pain_quotes Day_quotes Recall_quotes Political_quotes Religion_quotes

Science Is Not Perfect

“[Science] is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. ... The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.”
  • Source: Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1985), 277
Keywords: Science_quotes Perfect_quotes Misuse_quotes Tool_quotes Far_quotes Best_quotes Self-Correcting_quotes Ongoing_quotes Application_quotes Everything_quotes Rule_quotes Sacred_quotes Truth_quotes Assumption_quotes Critical_quotes Examination_quotes Argue_quotes Authority_quotes Worthless_quotes Inconsistent_quotes Fact_quotes Discard_quotes Revision_quotes Obvious_quotes Sometime_quotes False_quotes Unexpected_quotes True_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes

Natural Born Scientist

“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”
  • Source: Carl Sagan, Quoted in interview with magazine staff, Psychology Today (Jan 1996).
Keywords: Kid_quotes Children_quotes Nature_quotes Birth_quotes Scientist_quotes Education_quotes Beat_quotes Few_quotes Trickle_quotes System_quotes Wonder_quotes Enthusiasm_quotes Science_quotes Intact_quotes

Religious Prophecy

“Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close.”
  • Source: Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996.
Keywords: Thinking_quotes Religion_quotes Attempt_quotes Validation_quotes Prediction_quotes Prophecy_quotes People_quotes Reliance_quotes Vagueness_quotes Unfulfilled_quotes Support_quotes Prop_quotes Belief_quotes Accuracy_quotes Reliability_quotes Science_quotes Humanity_quotes Institution_quotes Closeness_quotes

Technology Decisions

“...we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers... and if we don't understand it, by we I mean the general public, if it's something that - 'Oh, I'm not good at that. I don't know anything about it' then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in?”
  • Source: Carl Sagen speaking in an video entitled 'CARL SAGEN - A Way of Thinking' posted on YouTube at https://youtu.be/J1cNaFG1VII , at 00:00:22 in video. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
Keywords: Life_quotes Age_quotes Base_quotes Science_quotes Technology_quotes Formidable_quotes Power_quotes Understanding_quotes Generality_quotes Public_quotes Good_quotes Knowledge_quotes Decision_quotes Determine_quotes Kind_quotes Future_quotes Children_quotes

Technology Understanding

“... we've arranged the society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is gonna blow up in our faces.”
  • Source: Carl Sagen speaking in an video entitled 'CARL SAGEN - A Way of Thinking' posted on YouTube at https://youtu.be/J1cNaFG1VII , at 00:01:05 in video. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
Keywords: Arrangement_quotes Society_quotes Science_quotes Technology_quotes Understanding_quotes Combustible_quotes Mix_quotes Ignorance_quotes Power_quotes Soon_quotes Later_quotes Blow_quotes Face_quotes

Science Thinking

“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of the human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we are up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. It is a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn't enough he said to enshrine some rights in a constitution or bill of rights. The people had to be educated and they have to practice their skepticism and education. Otherwise we don't run the government. The government runs us.”
  • Source: Carl Sagen speaking in an video entitled 'CARL SAGEN - A Way of Thinking' posted on YouTube at https://youtu.be/J1cNaFG1VII , at 00:01:25 in video. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
Keywords: Science_quotes Body_quotes Knowledge_quotes Thinking_quotes Truth_quotes Skeptical_quotes Interrogate_quotes Understanding_quotes Human_quotes Fallibility_quotes Question_quotes Tell_quotes Authority_quotes Grab_quotes Charlatan_quotes Political_quotes Religion_quotes Amble_quotes Jefferson_quotes Lay_quotes Stress_quotes Great_quotes Enshrine_quotes Rights_quotes Constitution_quotes Bill_quotes People_quotes Education_quotes Practice_quotes Run_quotes Government_quotes Way_quotes

George_Sarton

Science an Outgrowth of Life

“Abstract as it is, science is but an outgrowth of life. That is what the teacher must continually keep in mind. ... Let him explain ... science is not a dead system — the excretion of a monstrous pedantism — but really one of the most vigorous and exuberant phases of human life.”
  • Source: George (Alfred Léon) Sarton, In 'The Teaching of the History of Science', The Scientific Monthly (Sep 1918), 195-196.
Keywords: Abstraction_quotes Science_quotes Life_quotes Teaching_quotes Mind_quotes Explanation_quotes Dead_quotes System_quotes Excretion_quotes Outgrowth_quotes Monster_quotes Pedantism_quotes Vigor_quotes Exuberant_quotes Humanity_quotes

Scientific Progress

“No history of civilization can be tolerably complete which does not give considerable space to the explanation of scientific progress. If we had any doubts about this, it would suffice to ask ourselves what constitutes the essential difference between our and earlier civilizations. Throughout the course of history, in every period, and in almost every country, we find a small number of saints, of great artists, of men of science. The saints of today are not necessarily more saintly than those of a thousand years ago; our artists are not necessarily greater than those of early Greece; they are more likely to be inferior; and of course, our men of science are not necessarily more intelligent than those of old; yet one thing is certain, their knowledge is at once more extensive and more accurate. The acquisition and systematization of positive knowledge is the only human activity which is truly cumulative and progressive. Our civilization is essentially different from earlier ones, because our knowledge of the world and of ourselves is deeper, more precise, and more certain, because we have gradually learned to disentangle the forces of nature, and because we have contrived, by strict obedience to their laws, to capture them and to divert them to the gratification of our own needs.”
  • Source: George (Alfred Léon) Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (1927), Vol. 1, 3-4.
Keywords: History_quotes Civilization_quotes Tolerance_quotes Completion_quotes Explanation_quotes Science_quotes Progress_quotes Doubt_quotes Sufficient_quotes Constitute_quotes Essential_quotes Differences_quotes Early_quotes Course_quotes Period_quotes Country_quotes Small_quotes Saint_quotes Great_quotes Art_quotes Intelligence_quotes Old_quotes Year_quotes Greece_quotes Inferior_quotes Knowledge_quotes Extension_quotes Accuracy_quotes Acquire_quotes System_quotes Positive_quotes Humanity_quotes Activity_quotes True_quotes Cumulative_quotes World_quotes Depth_quotes Precision_quotes Certainty_quotes Gradual_quotes Learning_quotes Disentangle_quotes Force_quotes Nature_quotes Contrive_quotes Strict_quotes Obedience_quotes Law_quotes Capture_quotes Divergence_quotes Gratify_quotes Need_quotes Progressive_quotes

Erwin_Schrödinger

Observation and Theory

“Scientific theories serve to facilitate the survey of our observations and experimental findings... This procedure, while very useful for our remembering the facts in a well-ordered pattern, tends to obliterate the distinction between the actual observations and the theory arisen from them. And since the former always are of some sensual quality, theories are easily thought to account for sensual qualities; which, of course, they never do.”
  • Source: Erwin Schrödinger in the book “Mind and Matter”, chapter 6. Contained within the anthology “What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches”. Published in 1992 and reprinted in 2013 by Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. ISBN: 9781107604667. Online at <http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/schrodinger-what-is-life-mind-matter-auto-sketches.pdf> retrieved 2024. Note: “Mind and Matter” originally published separately in 1944.
Keywords: Science_quotes Theory_quotes Serve_quotes Facilitate_quotes Survey_quotes Observation_quotes Experiment_quotes Finding_quotes Procedure_quotes Useful_quotes Remember_quotes Fact_quotes Pattern_quotes Tend_quotes Obliterate_quotes Distinction_quotes Actual_quotes Arise_quotes Sensual_quotes Quality_quotes Easy_quotes Thought_quotes Account_quotes

Rupert_Sheldrake

Dogmas

“I am convinced that the sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. These beliefs protect the citadel of established science, but act as barriers against open-minded thinking.”
  • Source: Rupert Sheldrake. The book “Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery”, Introduction, page 12. Published in 2012 by Crown Publishing, New York, NY. Kindle Edition. ISBN: 978-0-7704-3671-1.
Keywords: Convince_quotes Science_quotes Held_quotes Back_quotes Assumption_quotes Hardened_quotes Dogma_quotes Maintain_quotes Powerful_quotes Taboo_quotes Belief_quotes Protect_quotes Citadel_quotes Established_quotes Barrier_quotes Open_quotes Minded_quotes Thinking_quotes

Empirical Approach

“Science needs to be liberated from these constrictive dogmas of mechanistic materialism... If we go beyond those dogmas, science gets much more interesting. All sorts of new research become possible. New questions can be asked. We can find out more about nature and more about consciousness by doing science in a new more open way. But what remains part of science so crucial to it is the empirical approach. The putting forward of hypotheses, the critical discussion, and the testing of hypotheses by experiment, the scientific method.”
  • Source: Rupert Sheldrake. The video “Nature's Hidden Intelligence: Morphic Fields”. Online at https://youtu.be/qrIlWrGe4w4?t=4894. Posted 2025-01-03. Video offset 1:21:34.
Keywords: Need_quotes Liberate_quotes Constrict_quotes Dogma_quotes Mechanistic_quotes Materialism_quotes Interesting_quotes New_quotes Research_quotes Possible_quotes Question_quotes Ask_quotes Find_quotes Nature_quotes Consciousness_quotes Do_quotes Open_quotes Way_quotes Remain_quotes Part_quotes Science_quotes Crucial_quotes Empirical_quotes Approach_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Critical_quotes Discussion_quotes Test_quotes Experiment_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Method_quotes

Herbert_Simon

Engineering and Design

“Historically and traditionally, it has been the task of the science disciplines to teach about natural things: how they are and how they work. It has been the task of engineering schools to teach about artificial things: how to make artifacts that have desired properties and how to design.”
Keywords: History_quotes Tradition_quotes Task_quotes Science_quotes Discipline_quotes Teaching_quotes Natural_quotes Work_quotes Engineering_quotes Artificial_quotes Artifact_quotes Desire_quotes Property_quotes Design_quotes School_quotes

Design and Analysis

“In view of the key role of design in professional activity, it is ironic that in this century the natural sciences almost drove the sciences of the artificial from professional school curricula, a development that peaked about two or three decades after the Second World War. Engineering schools gradually became schools of physics and mathematics; medical schools became schools of biological science; business schools became schools of finite mathematics. The use of adjectives like 'applied' concealed, but did not change, the fact. It simply meant that in the professional schools those topics were selected from mathematics and the natural sciences for emphasis which were thought to be most nearly relevant to professional practice. It did not mean that design continued to be taught, as distinguished from analysis.”
Keywords: View_quotes Key_quotes Role_quotes Design_quotes Professional_quotes Activity_quotes Irony_quotes Century_quotes Natural_quotes Science_quotes Drive_quotes Artificial_quotes School_quotes Curriculum_quotes Development_quotes Peak_quotes Decade_quotes World_quotes War_quotes Engineering_quotes Gradual_quotes Physics_quotes Mathematics_quotes Medical_quotes Biology_quotes Business_quotes Finite_quotes Applied_quotes Conceal_quotes Change_quotes Fact_quotes Simplicity_quotes Meaning_quotes Topic_quotes Selection_quotes Emphasis_quotes Thinking_quotes Near_quotes Relevance_quotes Practice_quotes Continue_quotes Teaching_quotes Analysis_quotes

How Things Ought to Be

“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are... Design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.”
Keywords: Natural_quotes Science_quotes Concern_quotes Design_quotes Hand_quotes Concern_quotes Ought_quotes

Design without Final Goals

“In the discussion of discovery processes. We saw there that search guided by only the most general heuristics of ‘interestingness’ or novelty is a fully realizable activity. This kind of search, which provides the mechanism for scientific discovery, may also provide the most suitable model of the social design process.”
Keywords: Discussion_quotes Discovery_quotes Process_quotes Search_quotes Guide_quotes Generality_quotes Heuristic_quotes Interest_quotes Novelty_quotes Full_quotes Realizable_quotes Activity_quotes Kind_quotes Provide_quotes Mechanism_quotes Science_quotes Suitability_quotes Model_quotes Social_quotes Design_quotes

Saul-Paul_Sirag

Heart of Science

“The essential point in science is not a complicated mathematical formalism or a ritualized experimentation. Rather the heart of science is a kind of shrewd honesty that springs from really wanting to know what the hell is going on!”
  • Source: Words of Saul-Paul Sirag as reported in the book “Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics” written by Nick Herbert, page 268, published by Doubleday in 1985. ISBN 978-0385187046.
Keywords: Essential_quotes Point_quotes Science_quotes Complexity_quotes Mathematics_quotes Formal_quotes Ritual_quotes Experiment_quotes Heart_quotes Shrewd_quotes Honesty_quotes Spring_quotes Want_quotes Knowledge_quotes Hell_quotes Go_quotes On_quotes

Baruch_Spinoza

Understanding Things and God

“The more we understand particular things, the more do we understand God.”
Keywords: Deity_quotes Comprehension_quotes Science_quotes Understanding_quotes Particular_quotes Thing_quotes God_quotes

Anthony_Standen

True Conclusions

“But although in theory physicists realize that their conclusions are ...not certainly true, this ... does not really sink into their consciousness. Nearly all the time ...they ... act as if Science were indisputably True, and what's more, as if only science were true ...Any information obtained otherwise than by the scientific method, although it may be true, the scientists will call 'unscientific,' using this word as a smear word, by bringing in the connotation from its original [Greek] meaning, to imply that the information is false, or at any rate slightly phony.”
  • Source: Anthony Standen, In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 176-77.
Keywords: Theory_quotes Physicist_quotes Realization_quotes Conclusion_quotes Certainty_quotes True_quotes Sink_quotes Consciousness_quotes Time_quotes Act_quotes Science_quotes Indisputable_quotes Information_quotes Obtain_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Unscientific_quotes Word_quotes Smear_quotes Connotation_quotes Original_quotes Meaning_quotes Imply_quotes False_quotes Phony_quotes Method_quotes

First Thing About Physics

“The first thing to realize about physics ... is its extraordinary indirectness.... For physics is not about the real world, it is about “abstractions” from the real world, and this is what makes it so scientific.... Theoretical physics runs merrily along with these unreal abstractions, but its conclusions are checked, at every possible point, by experiments.”
  • Source: Anthony Standen, In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 60-62.
Keywords: First_quotes Realization_quotes Physics_quotes Extraordinary_quotes Indirect_quotes Reality_quotes World_quotes Abstraction_quotes Science_quotes Theoretical_quotes Merry_quotes Run_quotes Unreal_quotes Conclusion_quotes Check_quotes Possibility_quotes Point_quotes Experiment_quotes

Alfred_Tarski

Search For Truth

“The search for truth is rightly considered the essence of scientific activities, it appears as an important problem to find at least partial criteria of truth and to develop procedures that may enable us to ascertain or negate the truth (or at least the likelihood of truth).”
  • Source: Alfred Tarski in his paper entitled ‘Truth and Proof’, published in Scientific America, 1969, volume 220 issue 6, pages 63-77. Online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24926385.
Keywords: Search_quotes Truth_quotes Right_quotes Consider_quotes Essence_quotes Science_quotes Activity_quotes Appear_quotes Important_quotes Problem_quotes Find_quotes Least_quotes Partial_quotes Criteria_quotes Develop_quotes Procedure_quotes Enable_quotes Ascertain_quotes Negate_quotes Likelihood_quotes

Frederick_Winslow_Taylor

Average versus First Class Productivity

“That there is a difference between the average and the first class man is known to all employers, but that the first class man can do in most cases from two to four times as much is known to few, and is fully realized only by those who have made a thorough and scientific study of the possibilities of men.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor (1903) "Shop management; a paper read before the American society of mechanical engineers, " in: Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 24: 1337-1480. p. 1346.
Keywords: Productivity_quotes Employment_quotes First_Class_quotes Average_quotes Mediocrity_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Potential_quotes Difference_quotes Class_quotes Man_quotes Known_quotes Few_quotes Realize_quotes Science_quotes Management_quotes Possibility_quotes Men_quotes

Great Men Needed

“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor, 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers. p. 7: Introduction.
Keywords: Merit_quotes Worker_quotes Employment_quotes System_quotes First_Class_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Future_quotes Management_quotes Past_quotes Man_quotes First_quotes Sense_quotes Great_quotes Men_quotes Need_quotes Contrary_quotes Object_quotes Science_quotes Good_quotes Develop_quotes Best_quotes Rise_quotes Top_quotes Certain_quotes Rapid_quotes

Principal Object of Management

“The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor, 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers. Chapter 1.
Keywords: Employment_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Prosperity_quotes Management_quotes Science_quotes Principal_quotes Object_quotes Secure_quotes Maximum_quotes Employer_quotes Couple_quotes Employee_quotes

Maximum Prosperity

“It would seem to be so self-evident that maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with maximum prosperity for the employee, ought to be the two leading objects of management, that even to state this fact should be unnecessary. And yet there is no question that, throughout the industrial world, a large part of the organization of employers, as well as employees, is for war rather than for peace, and that perhaps the majority on either side do not believe that it is possible so to arrange their mutual relations that their interests become identical.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor, 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers. Chapter 1.
Keywords: Employment_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Prosperity_quotes Management_quotes Conflict_quotes War_quotes Cooperation_quotes Maximum_quotes Optimal_quotes Science_quotes Self-evident_quotes Evident_quotes Employer_quotes Couple_quotes Employee_quotes Leading_quotes Object_quotes State_quotes Fact_quotes Unnecessary_quotes Question_quotes Industrial_quotes World_quotes Part_quotes Organization_quotes Peace_quotes Majority_quotes Side_quotes Believe_quotes Possible_quotes Arrange_quotes Mutual_quotes Relation_quotes Interest_quotes Identical_quotes

Kindly Interest

“...in order to have any hope of obtaining the initiative of his workmen the manager must give some special incentive to his men beyond that which is given to the average of the trade. This incentive can be given in several different ways, as, for example, the hope of rapid promotion or advancement; higher wages, either in the form of generous piece-work prices or of a premium or bonus of some kind for good and rapid work; shorter hours of labor; better surroundings and working conditions than are ordinarily given, etc., and, above all, this special incentive should be accompanied by that personal consideration for, and friendly contact with, his workmen which comes only from a genuine and kindly interest in the welfare of those under him.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor, 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers. Chapter 1.
Keywords: Employment_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Interest_quotes Management_quotes Incentive_quotes Compensation_quotes Promotion_quotes Bonus_quotes Labor_quotes Environment_quotes Hours_quotes Friendliness_quotes Kindness_quotes Welfare_quotes Human_Resources_quotes Science_quotes Order_quotes Hope_quotes Obtain_quotes Initiative_quotes Workman_quotes Manager_quotes Special_quotes Men_quotes Beyond_quotes Give_quotes Average_quotes Trade_quotes Different_quotes Rapid_quotes Advancement_quotes Higher_quotes Wage_quotes Generous_quotes Piece_quotes Work_quotes Price_quotes Premium_quotes Good_quotes Short_quotes Better_quotes Surrounding_quotes Condition_quotes Ordinary_quotes Incentive_quotes Accompany_quotes Personal_quotes Consideration_quotes Friendly_quotes Contact_quotes Genuine_quotes Kind_quotes

Max_Tegmark

Quantum Impact

“We virtually ignore the astonishing range of scientific and practical applications that quantum mechanics undergirds: today an estimated 30 percent of the U.S. gross national product is based on inventions made possible by quantum mechanics, from semiconductors in computer chips to lasers in compact-disc players, magnetic resonance imaging in hospitals, and much more.”
  • Source: Max Tegmark and John Archibald Wheeler; Scientific American, February 2001
Keywords: Virtual_quotes Ignore_quotes Astonishment_quotes Range_quotes Science_quotes Practical_quotes Application_quotes Quantum_quotes Mechanics_quotes Physics_quotes Undergird_quotes Today_quotes GDP_quotes Invention_quotes Possibility_quotes Semiconductor_quotes Computer_quotes Chip_quotes Laser_quotes CD_quotes Magnetic_quotes Resonance_quotes Image_quotes Hospital_quotes Estimate_quotes

Alfred_Russel_Wallace

Truth Proof

“There is no more convincing proof of the truth of a comprehensive theory than its power of absorbing and finding a place for new facts, and its capability of interpreting phenomena which had been previously looked upon as unaccountable anomalies. It is thus that the law of universal gravitation and the undulatory theory of light have become established and universally accepted by men of science. Fact after fact has been brought forward as being apparently inconsistent with them, and one after another these very facts have been shown to be the consequences of the laws they were at first supposed to disprove. A false theory will never stand this test. Advancing knowledge brings to light whole groups of facts which it cannot deal with, and its advocates steadily decrease in numbers, notwithstanding the ability and scientific skill with which it may have been supported.”
  • Source: Alfred Russel Wallace, From a review of four books on the subject 'Mimicry, and Other Protective Resemblances Among Animals', in The Westminster Review (Jul 1867), 88, 1. Wallace is identified as the author within the article as reprinted in William Beebe, The Book of Naturalists: An Anthology of the Best Natural History (1988), 108.
Keywords: Convince_quotes Proof_quotes Truth_quotes Comprehension_quotes Theory_quotes Power_quotes Absorb_quotes Find_quotes Place_quotes Fact_quotes Capability_quotes Interpretation_quotes Phenomena_quotes Unaccount_quotes Anomalies_quotes Law_quotes Universal_quotes Gravity_quotes Undulate_quotes Light_quotes Establish_quotes Acceptance_quotes Man_quotes Science_quotes Inconsistent_quotes Consequence_quotes Disproof_quotes False_quotes Stand_quotes Testing_quotes Advance_quotes Knowledge_quotes Group_quotes Deal_quotes Advocate_quotes Decrease_quotes Number_quotes Ability_quotes Skill_quotes Support_quotes Apparent_quotes Suppose_quotes

Gerald_Weinberg

Knowledge Came Slowly

“In ages past, the knowledge came very slowly, and one man in his life was not likely to see much change other than that wrought by nature. The controlled incorporation of arsenic into copper to make bronze took several thousand years to develop; the substitution of tin for the more dangerous arsenic took another thousand or two. In our modern age, laboratories turn out an alloy a day, or more, with properties made to order. The alloying of metals led to the rise and fall of civilizations, but the changes were too slow to be appreciated. A truer blade meant victory over the invaders, but changes were local and slow enough to be absorbed by a million tiny adjustments without destroying the species. With an alloy a day, we can no longer be sure. Science and engineering have been the catalysts for the unprecedented speed and magnitude of change. The physicist shows us how to harness the power of the nucleus; the chemist shows us how to increase the quantity of our food; the geneticist shows us how to improve the quality of our children. But science and engineering have been unable to keep pace with the second-order effects produced by their first-order victories. The excess heat from the nuclear generator alters the spawning pattern of fish, and, before adjustments can be made, other species have produced irreversible changes in the ecology of the river and its borders. The pesticide eliminates one insect only to the advantage of others that may be worse, or the herbicide clears the rain forest for farming, but the resulting soil changes make the land less productive than it was before. And of what we are doing to our progeny, we still have only ghastly hints. Some have said the general systems movement was born out of the failures of science, but it would be more accurate to say the general systems approach is needed because science has been such a success. Science and technology have colonized the planet, and nothing in our lives is untouched. In this changing, they have revealed a complexity with which they are not prepared to deal. The general systems movement has taken up the task of helping scientists unravel complexity, technologists to master it, and others to learn to live with it.”
  • Source: Weinberg, Gerald (2011-04-07). An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (Kindle Locations 264-267). Weinberg & Weinberg. Kindle Edition.
Keywords: History_quotes Knowledge_quotes Slow_quotes Humanity_quotes Life_quotes Change_quotes Nature_quotes Arsenic_quotes Copper_quotes Bronze_quotes Technology_quotes Tin_quotes Metal_quotes Laboratory_quotes Property_quotes On_Demand_quotes Rise_quotes Fall_quotes Civilization_quotes Appreciation_quotes Victory_quotes Blade_quotes Invader_quotes Adjustment_quotes Species_quotes Science_quotes Engineering_quotes Catalyst_quotes Speed_quotes Physics_quotes Chemistry_quotes Food_quotes Genetics_quotes Quality_quotes Children_quotes Effect_quotes Heat_quotes Fish_quotes Irreversible_quotes Ecology_quotes River_quotes Pesticide_quotes Insect_quotes Herbicide_quotes Forest_quotes Farming_quotes Soil_quotes Productivity_quotes Progeny_quotes System_quotes Failure_quotes Accuracy_quotes Colonize_quotes Planet_quotes Earth_quotes Complexity_quotes Preparation_quotes Man_quotes Nucleus_quotes Quantity_quotes Second-order_quotes First-order_quotes Nuclear_quotes Generator_quotes Alter_quotes Spawn_quotes Pattern_quotes Border_quotes Eliminate_quotes Advantage_quotes Worse_quotes Rain_quotes Land_quotes Ghastly_quotes Hint_quotes General_quotes Approach_quotes Success_quotes Accurate_quotes Say_quotes Untouch_quotes Reveal_quotes Master_quotes Learn_quotes

Technical Leaders

“Leadership, in the sense that social scientists use it, means the ability to influence people. Programmers, being people who tend to value creative work and professional competence, tend to put their stock in people whom they perceive to be good at the things they do. Thus, it is easier to exert leadership over — to influence — programmers by being a soft-spoken programming wizard than by being the world's fastest-talking salesman. When nonprogramming leaders are brought in to be in charge of programming teams, trouble usually brews unless the appointed leader explicitly and implicitly recognizes his incapacity on technical matters. The very worst he can do — and this goes also for a former programmer who has lost touch with the field — is to try to match programming wits with the other members of the team. Although a team might come to respect a leader who openly admitted his programming inexperience, they could only come to ridicule one whose pretense at knowledge was revealed to be a sham.”
  • Source: Chapter 5. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.
Keywords: Technology_quotes Leadership_quotes Society_quotes Science_quotes Sociology_quotes Ability_quotes Influence_quotes People_quotes Creativity_quotes Professional_quotes Competence_quotes Trust_quotes Good_quotes Skill_quotes Wizard_quotes Programming_quotes Fast_quotes Talking_quotes Salesman_quotes Humility_quotes Respect_quotes Team_quotes Experience_quotes Ridicule_quotes Pretense_quotes Knowledge_quotes Revealing_quotes Sham_quotes Programmer_quotes Stock_quotes Perceive_quotes Soft_quotes Spoken_quotes World_quotes Nonprogramming_quotes Brought_quotes Charge_quotes Trouble_quotes Brew_quotes Appoint_quotes Explicitly_quotes Implicitly_quotes Recognize_quotes Incapacity_quotes Worse_quotes Former_quotes Lost_quotes Touch_quotes Field_quotes Try_quotes Match_quotes Wit_quotes Member_quotes Admit_quotes Inexperience_quotes

Allen_Wheelis

Science Accuracy Certainty

“Science would have us believe that such accuracy, leading to certainty, is the only criterion of knowledge, would make the trial of Galileo the paradigm of the two points of view which aspire to truth, would suggest, that is, that the cardinals represent only superstition and repression, while Galileo represents freedom. But there is another criterion which is systematically neglected in this elevation of science. Man does not now — and will not ever — live by the bread of scientific method alone. He must deal with life and death, with love and cruelty and despair, and so must make conjectures of great importance which may or may not be true and which do not lend themselves to experimentation: It is better to give than to receive; Love thy neighbor as thyself; Better to risk slavery through non-violence than to defend freedom with murder. We must deal with such propositions, must decide whether they are true, whether to believe them, whether to act on them — and scientific method is no help for by their nature these matters lie forever beyond the realm of science.”
  • Source: Allen Wheelis, In The End of the Modern Age (1973), 89.
Keywords: Science_quotes Belief_quotes Accuracy_quotes Lead_quotes Certainty_quotes Criteria_quotes Knowledge_quotes Trial_quotes Galileo(topic)_quotes Paradigm_quotes Point_quotes View_quotes Aspiration_quotes Truth_quotes Suggestion_quotes Cardinal_quotes Representation_quotes Superstition_quotes Repression_quotes Freedom_quotes Systematic_quotes Neglect_quotes Elevation_quotes Humanity_quotes Bread_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Deal_quotes Living_quotes Death_quotes Love_quotes Cruel_quotes Despair_quotes Conjecture_quotes Importance_quotes True_quotes Lend_quotes Experiment_quotes Better_quotes Give_quotes Recieve_quotes Neighbor_quotes Risk_quotes Slavery_quotes Violence_quotes Non-Violence_quotes Defend_quotes Murder_quotes Proposition_quotes Decision_quotes Act_quotes Help_quotes Nature_quotes Forever_quotes Beyond_quotes Realm_quotes Man_quotes Method_quotes

William_Whewell

Process of Scientific Discovery

“The process of scientific discovery is cautious and rigorous, not by abstaining from hypotheses, but by rigorously comparing hypotheses with facts, and resolutely rejecting all which the comparison does not confirm.”
Keywords: Process_quotes Science_quotes Discovery_quotes Cautious_quotes Rigorous_quotes Abstain_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Compare_quotes Fact_quotes Resolute_quotes Rejection_quotes Confirmation_quotes

T_H_White

Learning Cure for Sadness

“‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn — pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics — why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.’”
  • Source: White, T. H. (2011). The Once and Future King | 1939. New York, NY: Penguin. ISBN 9781101657546.
Keywords: Best_quotes Sad_quotes Begin_quotes Puff_quotes Blow_quotes Learning_quotes Failure_quotes Grow_quotes Old_quotes Tremble_quotes Anatomy_quotes Lie_quotes Awake_quotes Night_quotes Listening_quotes Disorder_quotes Vein_quotes Miss_quotes Love_quotes See_quotes World_quotes Devastate_quotes Evil_quotes Honor_quotes Trample_quotes Sewer_quotes Base_quotes Mind_quotes Why_quotes Wag_quotes Exhaust_quotes Alienate_quotes Torture_quotes Fear_quotes Distrust_quotes Dreaming_quotes Regret_quotes Look_quotes Pure_quotes Science_quotes Astronomy_quotes Lifetime_quotes Natural_quotes History_quotes Literature_quotes Biology_quotes Medicine_quotes Theocriticism_quotes Geography_quotes Economics_quotes Start_quotes Cartwheel_quotes Appropriate_quotes Wood_quotes Beat_quotes Adversary_quotes Fencing_quotes Mathematics_quotes Time_quotes Plow_quotes

Alfred_North_Whitehead

Rigid Dogma Destroys Truth

“It is rigid dogma that destroys truth; and, please notice, my emphasis is not on the dogma, but on the rigidity. When men say of any question, ‘This is all there is to be known or said of the subject; investigation ends here,' that is death. It may be that the mischief comes not from the thinker but for the use made of his thinking by late-comers. Aristotle, for example, gave us our scientific technique ... yet his logical propositions, his instruction in sound reasoning which was bequeathed to Europe, are valid only within the limited framework of formal logic, and, as used in Europe, they stultified the minds of whole generations of medieval Schoolmen. Aristotle invented science, but destroyed philosophy.”
  • Source: Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, as recorded by Lucien Price (1954, 2001), 165.
Keywords: Rigidity_quotes Dogma_quotes Destroy_quotes Truth_quotes Emphasis_quotes Men_quotes Say_quotes Question_quotes Knowledge_quotes Subject_quotes Investigation_quotes Death_quotes Mischief_quotes Come_quotes Thinker_quotes Late_quotes Aristotle(topic)_quotes Example_quotes Logic_quotes Science_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Technique_quotes Proposition_quotes Instruction_quotes Sound_quotes Reason_quotes Bequeath_quotes Europe(topic)_quotes Validity_quotes Limitation_quotes Framework_quotes Formal_quotes Stultify_quotes Mind_quotes Generation_quotes Medieval_quotes Schoolmen_quotes Philosophy_quotes Method_quotes

Eugene_Wigner

Miracle of Mathematics

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”
  • Source: Eugene Paul Wigner, In 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,' Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics (Feb 1960), 13, No. 1 (February 1960). Collected in Eugene Paul Wigner, A.S. Wightman (ed.), Jagdish Mehra (ed.), The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner (1955), Vol. 6, 535.
Keywords: Miracle_quotes Appropriate_quotes Language_quotes Mathematics_quotes Natural_quotes Science_quotes Formulation_quotes Law_quotes Physics_quotes Wonderful_quotes Gift_quotes Understanding_quotes Deserve_quotes Unreasonable_quotes Effectiveness_quotes

E_O_Wilson

Passion Desire Truth

“If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.”
  • Source: p. 262 Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998). The Unity of Knowledge (1998). Vintage Books. ISBN: 9780679450771. ISBN: 9780679768678.
Keywords: History_quotes Science_quotes Teach_quotes Passion_quotes Desire_quotes Same_quotes Truth_quotes

Science and Fantasy

“Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.”
  • Source: chapter 5, ‘Letters to a Young Scientist' (2013). Published in 2013 by Liveright Publishing, New York, New York. The Creative Process, page 69. ISBN: 978-0871403773 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0871403858 (paperback).
Keywords: Good_quotes Science_quotes All_quotes Great_quotes Root_quotes Fantasy_quotes

Stephen_Wolfram

Paradigm Change

“When you change the paradigm, lots of stuff can come out. In science, the biggest paradigm change that's already happened... which is model things in nature with programs not with equations. For 300 years there was this tradition that [if] you want to make a model in science that's an exact model, write down a mathematical equation. People don't do that anymore in most areas of science... It's fun to see this transition from what seems impossible to what becomes obvious.”
  • Source: Spoken by Stephen Wolfram in a video interview with Brian Keating recorded in the YouTube video ‘What is Time? Stephen Wolfram’s Groundbreaking New Theory’ published on channel ‘Dr. Brian Keating’ on 2024-12-02. Video offset 1:13:57. Online at https://youtu.be/c-RO3vM10Ok?si=i-XspeEtzqA3jPl9 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Change_quotes Paradigm_quotes Science_quotes Happen_quotes Model_quotes Nature_quotes Program_quotes Algorithm_quotes Equation_quotes Year_quotes Tradition_quotes Exact_quotes Mathematics_quotes People_quotes Do_quotes Area_quotes Fun_quotes Transition_quotes Seem_quotes Impossible_quotes Become_quotes Obvious_quotes

Computational Irreducibility

“I’ve increasingly come to view the whole fundamental story of science as being about the interplay between computational irreducibility and computational reducibility. The computational nature of things inevitably leads to computational irreducibility. But there are slices of computational reducibility that inevitably exist on top of this irreducibility that are what make it possible for us — as computationally bounded entities — to identify meaningful scientific laws and to do science.”
Keywords: View_quotes Whole_quotes Fundamental_quotes Story_quotes Science_quotes Interplay_quotes Between_quotes Computation_quotes Irredicible_quotes Reducible_quotes Nature_quotes Inevitable_quotes Lead_quotes Slice_quotes Exist_quotes Top_quotes Make_quotes Possible_quotes Bound_quotes Entity_quotes Identify_quotes Meaning_quotes Law_quotes Do_quotes

Ellis_Leon_Yochelson

Scientists Make Predictions

“Scientists are supposed to make predictions, probably to prove they are human and can be as mistaken as anyone else. Long-range predictions are better to make because the audience to whom the prediction was made is no longer around to ask questions. The alternative... is to make conflicting predictions, so that one prediction may prove right.”
  • Source: Ellis Leon Yochelson. 'Fossils—The How and Why of Collecting and Storing', Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (1969), 82, 597.
Keywords: Scientist_quotes Science_quotes Suppose_quotes Prediction_quotes Probability_quotes Proof_quotes Human_quotes Mistake_quotes Anyone_quotes Long_quotes Range_quotes Better_quotes Make_quotes Audience_quotes Ask_quotes Question_quotes Alternative_quotes Conflict_quotes Right_quotes

Shoshana_Zuboff

Divergence of Interests

“Taylor had believed that the transcendent logic of science, together with easier work and better, more fairly determined wages, could integrate the worker into the organization and inspire a zest for production. Instead, the forms of work organization that emerged with scientific management tended to amplify the divergence of interests between management and workers.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 45. ISBN:0465032125.
Keywords: Logic_quotes Science_quotes Taylorism_quotes Work_quotes Automation_quotes Fairness_quotes Compensation_quotes Worker_quotes Organization_quotes Zest_quotes Production_quotes Amplification_quotes Divergence_quotes Interest_quotes Management_quotes Taylor(topic)_quotes Believe_quotes Transcendent_quotes Wage_quotes Integrate_quotes Inspire_quotes Form_quotes Emerge_quotes

Know-How

“The agenda for scientific management was to increase productivity by streamlining and rationalizing factory operation from cost accounting and supervision to the dullest job on the shop floor. Efficiency was the mania, and to achieve efficiency, it would be necessary to penetrate the labor process and force it to yield up its secrets. In order that effort be rationalized, the worker's skills had to be made explicit. In many cases, workers' perceptions of their own interests prevented them from articulating their know-how, but there was yet another involuntary barrier. These skills did not easily yield themselves to explication; they were embedded in the ways of the body, in the knacks and know-how of the craftworker.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 42. ISBN:0465032125.
Keywords: Knowledge_quotes Requirements_quotes Agenda_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Productivity_quotes Reason_quotes Efficiency_quotes Drudgery_quotes Mania_quotes Achievement_quotes Labor_quotes Process_quotes Secret_quotes Rational_quotes Worker_quotes Skill_quotes Explicit_quotes Perception_quotes Interest_quotes Articulation_quotes Involuntary_quotes Barrier_quotes Embedded_quotes Body_quotes Subconscious_quotes Mind_quotes Craft_quotes Taylorism_quotes Science_quotes Management_quotes Increase_quotes Streamline_quotes Factory_quotes Operation_quotes Cost_quotes Accounting_quotes Supervision_quotes Dull_quotes Job_quotes Shop_quotes Floor_quotes Penetrate_quotes Force_quotes Yield_quotes Case_quotes Prevent_quotes Know-how_quotes Explication_quotes Knack_quotes Craftworker_quotes

Fundamental Scientific Management Reevaluation

“The logic that motivated the early purveyors and adapters of scientific management has continued to dominate the course of automation... It is a logic that must undergo a fundamental reevaluation as information technology is widely adapted to productive activity.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 42. ISBN:0465032125.
Keywords: Logic_quotes Motivation_quotes Adapter_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Domination_quotes Automation_quotes Fundamental_quotes Evaluation_quotes Information_Technology_quotes Adaptation_quotes Productivity_quotes Activity_quotes Early_quotes Purveyor_quotes Science_quotes Management_quotes Undergo_quotes Reevaluation_quotes Information_quotes Technology_quotes

Steven_S_Zumdahl

Progress of Science

“The progress of science is often affected more by the frailties of humans and their institutions than by the limitations of scientific measuring devices. The scientific method is only as effective as the humans using it. It does not automatically lead to progress.”
  • Source: Steven S. Zumdahl, Chemistry (1989), 6.
Keywords: Progress_quotes Science_quotes Affect_quotes Frail_quotes Human_quotes Institution_quotes Limitation_quotes Measurement_quotes Device_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Methodology_quotes Effectiveness_quotes Usage_quotes Automatic_quotes Lead_quotes

See Also

Retrieved from "https://motleybytes.com/wiki/index.php?title=Science_quotes&oldid=49817"