There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable — unobservable in principle — it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs...

The intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is a vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours...

If the brain was simple enough to be understood – we would be too simple to understand it!

The technology is the independent variable, the social system the dependent variable. Social, systems are therefore determined by systems of technology; as the latter change, so do the former.

Contrary to popular belief, there are peaks higher than Mount Everest. These are the hurdles that lie within each of us. Thank you Stephen Hawking for showing us that they are not insurmountable

Herschel removed the speckled tent-roof from the world and exposed the immeasurable deeps of space, dim-flecked with fleets of colossal suns sailing their billion-leagued remoteness.

And, if you’ll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you’ll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just...

Science contributes to our culture in many ways, as a creative intellectual activity in its own right, as the light which has served to illuminate man’s place in the universe, and as the source of...

An Asetian never tries to talk louder than the crowd surrounding him. An Asetian becomes that crowd.

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

Chemistry is the dirty part of physics.

Actually, what we really need to remember about Galileo is that most of the people who use his name in argument could barely spell it, let alone tell us what actually happened to the man....

Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save...

It is easier to believe that there was nothing before there was something than that there was something before there was nothing.

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is… we cannot expect things to be much better in this world… We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any...

I’m doing now with cornets exactly what I used to do with trilobites: measuring, analyzing and cataloging the myriad gradations of their forms.

If my efforts have led to greater success than usual, this is due, I believe, to the fact that during my wanderings in the field of medicine, I have strayed onto paths where the gold...

The fundamental laws of the universe which correspond to the two fundamental theorems of the mechanical theory of heat.1. The energy of the universe is constant.2. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.

However, as I hope to persuade you, there are some interesting connections between science and magic. They share a belief, as one mathematician put it, that what is visible is merely a superficial reality, not...

That’s something we all want to know, isn’t it? Is there a “purpose” to our form and substance? Or are we simply the random result of billions of years of chemical reactions and accidents influenced...

What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are effectively zero.

Despite all our amazing ability, ingenuity, technology and industry humans are the one species who have not mastered the art of simplicity.

Science is implausible to untutored human common sense, but that in no way casts doubt on the correctness of well-established scientific findings. Feelings of transcendence are simply that—feelings—and, as such, have no capacity to reveal...

Necessity is not the mother of invention. Knowledge and experiment are its parents. It sometimes happens that successful search is made for unknown materials to fill well-recognized and predetermined requirements. It more often happens that...

The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other...

Of the contributions made during the essayist period three call for notice: Weismann deserves mention for his useful work in asking for the proof that “acquired characters” or, to speak more precisely, parental experience can...

Common human experience alone is no guarantee with which we can build a science of psychology.

From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our...

discovery” of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up.

Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.

The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a...

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and...

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that...

If a mathematician wishes to disparage the work of one of his colleagues, say, A, the most effective method he finds for doing this is to ask where the results can be applied. The hard...

…I am not, however, militant in my atheism. The great English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac is a militant atheist. I suppose he is interested in arguing about the existence of God. I am not. It...

As we parted at the Natural History Museum in London, I asked Richard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there’s someone ready to take his place.He chuckled rather heartily at my naiveté....

Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

Nature never jests.

Astrology is a cousin of racism.

You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.

The digital age believes in the rational ordering of human beings. We believe that information will eventually solve every conceivable problem.

The twentieth century prided itself on invalidating the metaphysical. Doubts about the afterlife arose even as so-called nonbelievers attempted to locate surrogates for the loss of meaning atheism occasioned. Enraptured with progress, we deepened our...

It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.

But, as Bacon has well pointed out, truth is more likely to come out of error, if this is clear and definite, than out of confusion, and my experience teaches me that it is better...

I don’t know what being god must feel like, but it can’t be much different that being an inventor.There is power in the idea that a certain product never existed before you thought of it,...

Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its...

The church and the scientific community are fighting at times a common enemy: the truth religion cannot deny and the positivist materialist scientist is unable to explain.

One is almost tempted to say… at last I can almost see a bond. But that will never be, for a bond does not really exist at all: it is a most convenient fiction which,...

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? […] Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist.

The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish...