Le savant doit ordonner ; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres ; mais une accumulation de faits n’est pas plus une science qu’un tas de pierres n’est une...

laws” in the sense of empirical rules about the behavior of objects definable in physical terms. All that the theory of the social sciences attempts is to provide a technique of reasoning which assists us...

For those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis. This quasi-religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind...

Every one is fond of comparing himself to something great and grandiose, as Louis XIV likened himself to the sun, and others have had like similes. I am more humble. I am a mere street...

Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push without limits.And today’s scientists had a pretty good guess at what that runaway...

No existing form of anthropoid ape is even remotely related to the stock which has given rise to man.

When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one...

When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.

Başkalarının değişebileceğine inanç duymam için benim değişme deneyimini yaşamış olmam gerekir.

There is a fundamental tension between science and freedom – no matter how science is viewed by its practitioners nor how freedom is sensed by those who believe they have it.

Goddard was not personally religious; his most immediate and consistent motivation was a desire for recognition as the founding genius of rocket science.

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something...

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, De Maillet made the first serious attempt to apply the doctrine [of evolution] to the living world. In the latter part of it, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck...

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set...

Most people regarded Psychology as a science. Some called it a soft science, but those making such a distinction grew fewer by the year.

Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.

Call it “a wonder” or “a mystery” and you have an excuse to never try understanding it – an excuse to not take responsibility for it. People knew about love no more than they knew...

Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. Many of them don’t have much to do with evolution – they’re observations about the details of physiology, biochemistry, development,...

The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification—judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind—essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific...

The Theist tells us that the truth is god exists,the Atheist tells us that the truth is there is no god,while the truth tells us we don’t know.

For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution.

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

Branches or types are characterized by the plan of their structure,Classes, by the manner in which that plan is executed, as far as ways and means are concerned, Orders, by the degrees of complication of...

Science is a satisfactory curiosity.

There is nothing opposed in Biometry and Mendelism. Your husband and I worked that out at Peppards [on the Chilterns] and you will see it referred in the Biometrika memoir. The Mendelian formula leads up...

EVERY WOMAN THAT QUOTES ME IS A PIECE OF SHIT.

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.

The popular conception of any philosophical doctrine is necessarily imperfect, and very generally unjust. Lucretius is often alluded to as an atheistical writer, who held the silly opinion that the universe was the result of...

As was the case for Nobel’s own invention of dynamite, the uses that are made of increased knowledge can serve both beneficial and potentially harmful ends. Increased knowledge clearly implies increased responsibility.

The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: ‘I better get...

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on ‘The Survival of the Fittest.’ These are illustrious names, this...

…the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today’s atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had...

It is safer to face a strong enemy in the field of battle, than to fight a war by the side of a weak friend.

Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all.No judgment implied. Just an observation.

More about the selection theory: Jerne meant that the Socratic idea of learning was a fitting analogy for ‘the logical basis of the selective theories of antibody formation’: Can the truth (the capability to synthesize...

and be guided by a likewise rational ethic of human concern. You must do your utmost as individuals to improve your understanding, ability and compassion.

As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving...

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from...

Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to the shimmering red presence in the clear night sky…

A lot of who you were in middle age was determined before you had a chance to manipulate, control, or eve understand the things around you. It was no mystery, he thought, why some old...

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.

Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton’s time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the beach while the whole ocean lies before us unexplored remains substantially as true...

I am one of those who think, like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.

If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours each night, renounce sex, and subsist on a diet of raw vegetables, you would find a new...

Like rain drops dripping on the floor like a thousand drumists beating those drums repeatedly,My blood runs through my veins ninety nine point nine metres per second when i think of you.

I had this terrible nightmare; I dreamt I was a politician and they were dragging me off to parliament

The progress of science has always been the result of a close interplay between our concepts of the universe and our observations on nature. The former can only evolve out of the latter and yet...

I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all...

It has been argued that close attention to the history of science is indispensable for doing good philosophy of science.

Never memorize something that you can look up.