Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.

Moreover, knowledge and investigation help promote wonder they do not destroy it. Whatever our tastes, we can generally appreciate such things as music, art or wine better when we understand a bit about them. We...

It is a curious thought that the earliest description of the steam-engine in antiquity describes its use for the magic opening of the temple doors, when the priests lit the fires on the altars, to...

La pensée n’est qu’un écliar au milieu d’une longue nuit. Mais c’est cet éclair qui est tout.Thought is only a flash in the middle of a long night. But this flash means everything.

…in pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers...

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look...

Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy’s main source of problems. That is why it is of...

Humanity cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps; there is no such thing as spontaneous generation; life does not come from crystals; poetry does not come from donkeys; international peace does not come from wars;...

Today the earth speaks with resonance and clearness and every ear in every civilized country of the world is attuned to its wonderful message of the creative evolution of man, except the ear of William...

There is in the chemist a form of thought by which all ideas become visible in the mind as strains of an imagined piece of music. This form of thought is developed in Faraday in...

Scientists are those who change facts

Davranışı yönlendiren itici güçleri bilirsek, yalnızca şimdiki zamanda gerçekleştirilen davranışı anlamakla kalmayız, bir kişinin değiştirilmiş koşullar altında nasıl davranabileceği konusunda da akla uygun varsayımlarda bulunabiliriz.

Sure, at some level scientists know nanobots will destroy mankind. They just can’t resist seeing how it happens.

Le regard analytique et le regard intuitif sur la vie ne peuvent s’harmoniser dans un même être que dans la mesure où le premier est subordonné au second. C’est du second, et notamment du sentiment...

Society is indeed a contract. … It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.

The teacher manages to get along still with the cumbersome algebraic analysis, in spite of its difficulties and imperfections, and avoids the smooth infinitesimal calculus, although the eighteenth century shyness toward it had long lost...

THESE ARE THE REASONS, THEN, FOR WHICH A MAN CAN BE CONFIDENT ABOUT THE FATE OF HIS SOUL – AS LONG AS IN LIFE HE HAS…DEVOTED HIMSELF TO THE PLEASURES OF AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE …WITH SELF...

Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their ‘unbeliefs.’ Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the...

At the moment I am occupied by an investigation with Kirchhoff which does not allow us to sleep. Kirchhoff has made a totally unexpected discovery, inasmuch as he has found out the cause for the...

The question of the relation between modernity and postmodernity revolves around the issue of ‘legitimation.’ Modernity, then, appeals to science to legitimate its claim – and by ‘science’ we simply mean the notion of a...

In science’s pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history’s inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate...

When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of that universe, every phase of present or past life therein, has been examined, classified, and co-ordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be...

All of (the habitats) are gone. Aquarius is the last one used for science.

Dearest love, let me count the ways. Dismemberment, garroted, poisoned, drowned, named. I read that as soon as a species is named it begins its travels up the endangered list. Discovery meaning death.

¡Cuán pobre e interiormente mutilado nos resulta un mono, un prosimio o un gran papagayo, acostumbrado a vivir en una jaula, y cómo contrasta con la increíble movilidad, diversión e interés del mismo animal cuando...

Even as dead bugs they are still influencing these forest ecosystems, … Science.

It seems that all eukaryotic cells either have, or once had (and then lost) mitochondria. In other words, possession of mitochondria is a sine qua non of the eukaryotic condition

Since only a narrow range of the allowed values for, say, the fine structure constant will permit observers to exist in the Universe, we must find ourselves in the narrow range of possibilities which permit...

And so from then onwards, Daniel understood that the point of this grueling sundial project was not merely to plot the curve but to understand why each curve was shaped as it was. To put...

There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist—musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn. … No amounts of stone...

He was one of that class of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well have proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary or artistic, for...

Science is measurement. Measurement is not science but technology.

We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

Whether the Eisenhower administration has underestimated the American people’s interest in space exploration or Truman never full appreciated MacArthur, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik program has created a public spectacle that even Disney and von Braun...

When looking for evidence that something exists, it’s silly to start by assuming that it is impossible. Taking any assumptions into study is bad science.

Predator and prey move in silent gestures, on the seductive dance of death, in the shadows cast by the vultures of the night. ☥

When students cheat on exams it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.

It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. Such an assertion involves a far greater departure from the natural position of mankind...

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. (125)

They didn’t understand what they were doing.I’m afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.

And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for...

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.

Remember, I’m the only person her who’s paid to be nice to you. But not too nice. Give me any lip and I’ll break your face. OK?

Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also...

Without ethics, science would be cruelty.

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to...

In rational inquiry, we idealize to selected domains in such a way (we hope) as to permit us to discover crucial features of the world. Data and observations, in the sciences, have an instrumental character....

I’m taking inorganic chem and physics not because I want to but because I have to. Not every doctor wants to be a scientist. Some of us just want to take care of sick people....

Das ganze Zeitalter betet das Geld, die Ordnung, das Wissen, Rechnen, Messen und Wägen, alles in allem also den Geist des Geldes und seiner Verwandten an und beklagt es zugleich.

He was a physicist, more precisely an astrophysicist, diligent and eager but without illusions: the Truth lay beyond, inaccessible to our telescopes, accessible to the initiates. This was a long road which he was traveling...