A sound Physics of the Earth should include all the primary considerations of the earth’s atmosphere, of the characteristics and continual changes of the earth’s external crust, and finally of the origin and development of...

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the ‘social sciences’ is: some do, some don’t.

A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the...

[They] pervert the course of nature [by saying] the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns.[John Calvin illustrating his opposition to heliocentrism in a sermon due...

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those...

For a brief review of our history to date shows us in a very singular role:that of serial killers.

In preparing the present volume, it has been the aim of the author to do full justice to the ample material at his command, and, where possible, to make the illustrations tell the main story...

Children discover and verify their theories in quite the same way that scientists do: through experimentation. They manipulate the world and discover regularities of causation from those manipulations. Why do they do it? The discovery...

The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects.

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

Lister saw the vast importance of the discoveries of Pasteur. He saw it because he was watching on the heights, and he was watching there alone.

The Theory of Relativity confers an absolute meaning on a magnitude which in classical theory has only a relative significance: the velocity of light. The velocity of light is to the Theory of Relativity as...

Science is the topography of ignorance.

If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.

We will never understand our world until we have come to terms with its future: it is the age in which we live. The Cold War depended upon internal division in order to maintain itself....

Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers.

Did you ever face Death and let it stare back at you right in the Eyes? ☥

God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with...

I like to think that when Medawar and his colleagues showed that immunological tolerance could be produced experimentally the new immunology was born. This is a science which to me has far greater potentialities both...

I didn’t want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that’s the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not...

Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the...

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.

The longing to behold this pre-established harmony [of phenomena and theoretical principles] is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself … The state of mind which enables a...

Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. … Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in...

Napoleon, when hearing about Laplace’s latest book, said, ‘M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator.’Laplace responds, ‘Je n’avais...

Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified.–Neville Goddard

Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works...

Is the conclusion that the universe was designed – and that the design extends deeply into life – science, philosophy, religion, or what? In a sense it hardly matters. By far the most important question...

Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.

Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham....

He didn’t like to fly–the noise and vibration gave him a headache–but, as with anything new, he was excited by the strangeness of it. The disjuncture intrigued him: stepping through a door in one place,...

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design – as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does – because it misses some...

She discovered in a series of beautifully executed researches the fundamental distinction between carbons that turned on heating into graphite and those that did not. Further she related this difference to the chemical constitution of...

You know, sometimes I don’t understand what’s wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don’t seem to have the gumption to exploit our...

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit...

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.

The truth is more magical – in the best and most exciting sense of the word – than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.

There are different ways to take over the World. But there is only one way to take over the Universe and that’s through meditation.

A biochemist colleague has kindly provided me with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and enough hydroquinone for 50 bombardier beetles, I am now about to mix the two together. According to the above, they will...

Only theory can turn a heap of facts into a tower of knowledge

For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains...

For the moment we might very well can them DUNNOS (for Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Objects Somewhere).

It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions,...

Should the discovery of fire have been avoided because arsonists can misuse it? Any kind of information can be misused by those who are determined to do so. The place to stop the misuse of...

If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not...

Homeopathy pills are, after all, empty little sugar pills which seem to work, and so they embody [..] how we can be misled into thinking that any intervention is more effective than it really is.

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes...

Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.

[In geology,] As in history, the material in hand remains silent if no questions are asked. The nature of these questions depends on the ‘school’ to which the geologist belongs and on the objectivity of...