SCIENCE QUOTES III
quotations about science
When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.
W. R. ALGER
attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical
Human sciences are like gaslights in the streets. They serve our purpose only while the heavens are dark. The brighter the sky the more dim and useless they become.
DR. THOMAS
attributed, Holy Thoughts on Holy Things
The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration; it is essential only that the drains function adequately.
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Cancer
Scientific revolutions, almost by definition, defy common sense.
MICHIO KAKU
preface, Hyperspace
Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.
WILHELM REICH
The Function of the Organism
Science has grown frightfully audacious in these days -- swift-footed, ponderous, careering over her iron ways with unslacking pace. This rampant dragon, on which I am mounted, see how he bends his once stiff neck to his rider, champing his checked bit and pawing the dust, impatient to leap around the globe. Genius is prescient, foresees its own might. Man is striving through these iron-ribbed, steam-sped hippogriffs, to recover his lost ubiquity and omnipotence, and threatens soon to grasp in his ample palm, and fix with flaming eye-ball, the elemental forces!
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
In the history of science we have discovered a sequence of better and better theories or models, from Plato to the classical theory of Newton to modern quantum theories. It is natural to ask: Will this sequence eventually reach an end point, an ultimate theory of the universe, that will include all forces and predict every observation we can make, or will we continue forever finding better theories, but never one that cannot be improved upon?
STEPHEN HAWKING & LEONARD MLODINOW
The Grand Design
I'm scared to death about the denial of science. Science is real. Science is the most real thing in our world, other than nature. I'm hoping we'll all get back to a place where we can really understand that science is tested knowledge.
HARRISON FORD
"Harrison Ford on conservation: 'Nature is my god'", Washington Post, September 29, 2017
Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
undelivered summation of the Scopes 'Monkey' Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, 1925
When I observe the luminous progress and expansion of natural science in modern times, I seem to myself like a traveller going eastwards at dawn, and gazing at the growing light with joy, but also with impatience; looking forward with longing to the advent of the full and final light, but, nevertheless, having to turn away his eyes when the sun appeared, unable to bear the splendour he had awaited with so much desire.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Out of My Later Years
In science one achieves the greatest impact (and often the greatest headlines) not by going along with the herd, but by bucking against it.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing
Science embraces facts and debates opinion; religion embraces opinion and debates the facts.
TOM HEEHLER
The Well-Spoken Thesaurus
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man
Scientists are supposed to be dispassionate, cool-headed, and unemotional when they evaluate their data. But it's hard for me to avoid a sense of awe when I'm hunting fossils.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
Raptor Red
Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.
SETH LLOYD
attributed, The Clock and the Arrow
The amount of scientific information we've discovered in the last twenty years is more than all the discoveries up to that point, from the beginning of language.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
The Organized Mind
Without the ontological assumption which goes with it, what is called science, is nothing but the dreamer's well-ordered dream.
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD
Philosophy of Mind: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Psychology
I'd like to think by the end of the show, you have warmed up to what science is. It's not just some class you took in school and you forget about after you sell back the textbook. You recognize that science is everywhere -- it touches us at all times.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Science Isn't Dead -- And You're The One Who's Saving It", Good Education, September 29, 2017