Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.

But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of the...

Science gave us forensics. Law gave us crime.

The TV scientist who mutters sadly, “The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for,” is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure...

In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations – that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute...

Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature. Why do these constants come together to make the particular number 1/137.036...

I have a friend — or had a friend, now dead — Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me...

If we had always thought from a so-called practical angle – we would’ve never had anything new in this world. We would’ve hidden under the security of practicality and taken no risk, we would have...

Sleeping beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe.

Academic pedigree alone is no guarantor of useful knowledge and wisdom.

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years.

I don’t think I understand that,” Meg insisted. “How can you lust yourself into oblivion. “”Oh, easily,” Ekaterina answered. “The lust is for things, possessions. The weapon turns on the nature of possessions, the fact...

I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.

At Gabriel College there was a very holy object on the high altar of the Oratory, covered with a black velvet cloth… At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal...

Why do you like show jumping?””… Beauty and excitement. The elements of trust, talent, training, love, and danger make show jumping a thrilling and aesthetic experience. It’s really the ultimate test of two nervous systems–the...

There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.

He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was...

Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.

If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth’s history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances...

If existance of something cannot be proved scientifically, it only means that science is not equipped to prove it right now.

Men presumably always have looked at flowers and been moved by their beauty and their smell: but only since the last century has it been possible to take a flower in your hand and know...

So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely”. At that he said, “You...

Dans la nature rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd, tout change.In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes.

In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,...

Am I right in suggesting that ordinary life is a mean between these extremes, that the noble man devotes his material wealth to lofty ends, the advancement of science, or art, or some such true...

It is my intent to beget a good understanding between the chymists and the mechanical philosophers who have hitherto been too little acquainted with one another’s learning.

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he’s often sure he can find one. And that’s a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

Physical vision – one might say scientific vision – brings about a metaphysical shift in the observer’s view of reality as a whole. The geography of the earth, or the structure of the solar system,...

Perception is the illusion that gives all matter mass,” The Flight of the Eagle A.K. Luthienne

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the...

Look … first and foremost, I’m a scientist. That means it’s my responsibility to make observations and gather evidence before forming a hypothesis, not vice versa.

In fact, meta- and particle physicists have more in common than one might suppose: both tug, if in slightly different directions, at the knots which hold the cosmos together, both look beyond the immediate world...

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what...

How little we really know about the life all around us. Would we be so cavalier and ruthless with it if we understood it better?

Newton’s laws of physics can rarely be applied to the real world. There is more to life than cause and effect. Things just aren’t that simple

It is the relationship between the physical environment and the environed organism, between physiography and ontography (to coin a term), that constitutes the essential principles of geography today.

Woman study loving him his whole life; Man study loving well, your whole wife

With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the...

I don’t want to believe. I want to know.

Freud could never be certain, he said,in view of his wide and early reading,whether what seemed like a new creationmight not be the work insteadof hidden channels of memory leadingback to the notions of others...

Pero ,por qué hemos de empeñarnos en pensar que el universo fue hecho para nosotros? ,Por qué resulta tan atractiva esa idea? ,Por qué seguimos alimentándola? ,Es tan precaria nuestra autoestima que no podemos conformarnos...

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t...

We stand at the onset of a great age of adventure—and always shall, so long as we keep doing science.

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him...

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities....

El obispo pasa a argüir que ‘el universo ha sido hecho y está gobernado por un propósito inteligente’ y que sería una falta de inteligencia el haber hecho al hombre para que pereciera. Hay muchas...

The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.

Si noti il meraviglioso «Mi sembra…» iniziale, che ricorda l’«Io penso…» con cui Darwin introduce nei suoi taccuini la grande idea che le specie evolvono, o l’«esitazione» di cui parla Faraday quando nel suo libro...

With great power comes great dissipation.