Lyell and Poulett Scrope, in this country, resumed the work of the Italians and of Hutton; and the former, aided by a marvellous power of clear exposition, placed upon an irrefragable basis the truth that...

We ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the universe. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the skies so...

But in the early 1970s, we were not birdwatching. We were birding, and that made all the difference. We were out to seek, to discover, to chase, to learn, to find as many different kinds...

I studied calculus for the first time, which to me was an amazingly empowering experience which I could really see how you could understand all sorts of things, and I decided that chemistry and biology...

It is high time that we grew up and left the Garden. We are indeed Eden’s children, yet it is time to place Genesis alongside the geocentric myth in the basket of stories that once,...

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by...

The most essential prediction of Darwinism is that, given an astronomical number of chances, unintelligent processes can make seemingly-designed systems, ones of the complexity of those found in the cell. ID specifically denies this, predicting...

God resides most strongly and evidently where science has not yet progressed to go… And if this is true then it follows that God resides everywhere and in everything.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Willard Gibbs is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems...

Whenever explaining an event, we must choose from three competing modes of explanation. These are regularity, chance, and design… To attribute an event to design is to say that it cannot reasonably be referred to...

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...

During this time (at high school) I discovered the Public Library… It was here that I found a source of knowledge and the means to acquire it by reading, a habit of learning which I...

In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous.

The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.

And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?

The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

There is a reference in Aristotle to a gnat produced by larvae engendered in the slime of vinegar. This must have been Drosophila.

To say that the humanities can be a path to truth itself is to challenge one of our most closely held beliefs. We live not only in a scientific world, but also in a scientistic...

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big secret to success.

I learned what research was all about as a research student [with] Stoppani … Max Perutz, and … Fred Sanger… From them, I always received an unspoken message which in my imagination I translated as...

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for...

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading;...

The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That’s an inevitable, undeniable fact. It’s embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancment. It is the future. We are the future...

Although five European computer science professors have already confirmed that our documentation meets or exceeds industry standards, we are committed to doing everything in our power to address the Commission’s concerns. These new documentation projects,...

Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings.

The finest peculiarity of belief is that believers do not recognize themselves as believers.

The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a...

All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look...

Number three: Stay away from the church. In the battle over science vs. religion, science offers credible evidence for all the serious claims it makes. The church says, ‘Oh, it’s right here in this book,...

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.

I do not consider myself a religious person, because I don’t adhere to a particular religion or faith or prescribed beliefs, as did my father, who was a Baptist minister. And I am not an...

Christian missions to India imply that India is a land of heathens, and, therefore, stands on the same level with the Andaman or the Fiji Islands. That a country which has been recognised in all...

[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.

No one is right or wrong. The circumstances define the nature of human being.

Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed…to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit...

Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it’s the smell of schizophrenia.

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there’s nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is ‘body’ and that...

Might it be possible at some future time, when neurophysiology has advanced substantially, to reconstruct the memories or insight of someone long dead?…It would be the ultimate breach of privacy.

‎In modern physics, there is no such thing as “nothing.” Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though...

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

This little book has been written in the hope that it may appeal to several classes of readers.Not infrequently I have been asked by friends of different callings in life to recommend them some book...

Black holes collect problems faster than they collect matter.

Perhaps the hopes I have confessed to are of an illusory nature, too. But I hold fast to one distinction. Apart from the fact that no penalty is imposed for not sharing them, my illusions...

When I saw that Moses’ version of the Genesis of the world did not fit sufficiently in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, I began to have doubts about the truth...

In describing the honourable mission I charged him with, M. Pernety informed me that he made my name known to you. This leads me to confess that I am not as completely unknown to you...

From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid...