SCIENCE QUOTES VI

quotations about science

Some people think that science is just all this technology around, but NO it's something much deeper than that. Science, scientific thinking, scientific method is for me the only philosophical construct that the human race has developed to determine what is reliably true.

SIR HARRY KROTO

"Ask a Nobel Laureate", September 23, 2010


Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

STEPHEN HAWKING

A Brief History of Time

Tags: Stephen Hawking


Science is a subordinate category. When science offers itself as the final stage or form of knowing, it is guilty of a false quantity, in that it puts the accent, which belongs elsewhere, upon the penultimate.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908

Tags: Nicholas Murray Butler


Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The Doctor's Dilemma

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


For decades now the picture of the world painted by the scientists had become strange, distant, unbelievable. Far easier, then, to ignore it than try to understand. Things were too complicated. Why bother? Turn on the telly, luv. Right.

GREGORY BENFORD

Timescape

Tags: Gregory Benford


The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The World As I See It


Scientists actively approach the door to knowledge--the boundary of the domain of what we know. We question and explore and we change our views when facts and logic force us to do so. We are confident only in what we can verify through experiments or in what we can deduce from experimentally confirmed hypotheses.

LISA RANDALL

Knocking on Heaven's Door

Tags: Lisa Randall


So what is science, and why do we consider it so useful and important? Despite the Hollywood stereotypes, science is not about white lab coats and bubbling beakers or sparkling apparatuses. Science is a way of looking at the world using a specific toolbox--the scientific method.

DONALD PROTHERO

"The Holocaust, Denier's Playbook, and the Tobacco Smokescreen: Common Threads in the Thinking and Tactics of Denialists and Pseudoscientists", Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem


In the history of science and throughout the whole course of its progress we see certain epochs following one another more or less rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow workers spring up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that it does not in the least matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a lifeless word stamped on the memory.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

attributed, Clarke Foundation

Tags: Arthur C. Clarke


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.

CARL SAGAN

Keynote address to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, 1987

Tags: Carl Sagan


Science is the whore of industry and the handmaiden of war.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

Tags: Edward Abbey


Science is not the total answer; this I know, this I have learned in my lifetime. And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things.

NICHOLAS SPARKS

The Notebook

Tags: Nicholas Sparks


Weird Science
Plastic tubes and pots and pans
Bits and pieces and
Magic from the hand
We're makin'
Things I've never seen before
Behind bolted doors
Talent and imagination
Not what teacher said to do
Makin' dreams come true

OINGO BOINGO

"Weird Science"


Science is truth for life
Watch religion fall obsolete
Science Will be truth for life
Technology as nature

10,000 MANIACS

"Planned Obsolescence"


By science men may learn the mysteries of the spirit world.

JOHN DEE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: John Dee


I consider it an error in scientific communication that, most of the time, merely the polished and flawless results of natural research are displayed, as in an art show. And exhibit of the finished product alone has many drawbacks and dangers for both its creator and its users. The creator of the product will be only too ready to demonstrate perfection and flawlessness while concealing gaps, uncertainties and discordant contradictions of his insight into nature. He thus belittles the meaning of the real process of natural research. The user of the product will not appreciate the rigorous demands made on the natural scientist when the latter has to reveal and describe the secrets of nature in a practical way. He will never learn to think for himself and to cope by himself.

WILHELM REICH

Ether, God and Devil

Tags: Wilhelm Reich


Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

RICHARD FEYNMAN

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Tags: Richard Feynman


The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance -- the idea that anything is possible.

RAY BRADBURY

Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1976

Tags: Ray Bradbury


Every science owns kin with its sister science.

HYPATIA

attributed, Day's Collacon