Best 9669 quotes in «science quotes» category

There can be no doubt that the existing Fauna and Flora is but the last term of a long series of equally numerous contemporary species, which have succeeded one another, by the slow and gradual substitution of species for species, in the vast interval of time which has elapsed between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the present day.

There can never be a conflict between science and religion, once you understand the spiritual knack of the human brain circuits.

... the reason why we find some things intuitively easy to grasp and others hard, is that our brains are themselves evolved organs: on-board computers, evolved to help us survive in a world (...) where the objects that mattered to our survival were neither very large nor very small; a world where things either stood still or moved slowly compared with the speed of light; and where the very improbable could safely be treated as impossible. Our mental burka window is narrow because it didn't need to be any wider in order to assist our ancestors to survive.

There exists indeed an opposition to it [building of UVA, Jefferson's secular college] by the friends of William and Mary, which is not strong. The most restive is that of the priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live. In this the Presbyterian clergy take the lead. The tocsin is sounded in all their pulpits, and the first alarm denounced is against the particular creed of Doctr. Cooper; and as impudently denounced as if they really knew what it is. [Letter to José Francesco Corrê a Da Serra - Monticello, April 11, 1820]

There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized… patent offices handle an endless succession of inventors who still produce perpetual-motion machines that don't work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling) frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them.

There have been applied sciences throughout the ages. ... However this so-called practice was not much more than paper in nearly all of these cases, and the various applied sciences were only lacking a bagatelle, namely proper scientific practice. The applied sciences show the application of theoretic doctrines in existing events; but that is precisely what it does, it merely shows. Whereas the scientific practice autonomously puts to use these theories.

There is data [on race and intelligence]. My claim is that it doesn't mean what we think it means. There isn't enough work; there aren't enough people who have done the work – and the definition...I mean, trust me: "heritable" is a serious problem. Because...for example, let's say that there was a belief that people who had a brow ridge, or something, were stupid. And that belief was widespread. And that brow ridge was genetically encoded, and it resulted in people going into the world and facing discrimination in school, let's say, because the brow ridge connoted to the teachers that they were not likely to be intelligent, and therefore they were given simpler lessons; they got dumbtracked or something like that. That would show up as a genetically heritable difference in intelligence between brow-ridged people and non-brow-ridged people. That does not mean that it was encoded in the genome and that it was the brain that was blueprinted...what it means is that some feature that was encoded in the genome caused the environment to interact with the individual in a way that then produced a difference in intellect. [...] It is so early in the study of this stuff, we really don't know. And the taboo nature of those questions is causing a vacuum that is being filled with an artificially pure (and probably not correct) perspective.

There is adventure in finding compelling stories and exploring complex issues in challenging environments, but there is also a responsibility to tell those stories accurately and objectively.

There is a fascinating entanglement of science and knowledge, which is expressed as scientific knowledge.

There is a deep and perennial and profoundly human impulse to approach the world with a DEMAND, to approach the world with a PRECONDITION, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of OURSELVES... and that, more than any of their particular factual inaccuracies - is what bothers me the most about them. It is precisely the business of resisting that demand, it is precisely the business of approaching the world with open and authentic wonder, and with a sharp, cold eye, and singularly intent upon the truth, that's called science.

There is a fine line between radiation being your best friend or your worst enemy.

There is a further trouble; no matter how meticulous the scientist, he or she cannot be separated from the experiment itself. Impossible to detach the observer from the observed. A great deal of scientific truth has later turned out to be its observer's fiction. It is irrational to assume that this is no longer the case.

There is always a sense of loss, a feeling forgotten. There is nothing else here; no castles, no ancient monuments, no hills like green clouds. It is just a curve of earth, a rawness of winter fields. Dim, flat, desolate lands that cauterise all sorrow.

[There is an] immense advantage to be gained by ample space and appropriate surroundings in aiding the formation of a just idea of the beauty and interest of each specimen... Nothing detracts so much from the enjoyment ... from a visit to a museum as the overcrowding of the specimens exhibited.

There is a miracle in your mess, don't let the mess make you miss the miracle.

There is a massive, irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. Religion was humanity's original cosmology, biology and anthropology. It provided explanations for the origin of the world, life and humans. Science now gives us increasingly complete explanations for those big three. We know the origins of the universe, the physics of the big bang and how the basic chemical elements formed in supernovas. We know that life on this planet originated about 4 billion years ago, and we are all descendants of that original replicating molecule. Thanks to Darwin we know that natural selection is the only workable explanation for the design and variety of all life on this planet. Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have reconstructed much of the human tree of life. We are risen apes, not fallen angels. We are the most successful and last surviving African hominid. Every single person on this Earth, all 7 billion of us, arose 50,000 years ago from small bands of African hunter-gatherers, a total population of somewhere between 600 and 2,000 individuals.

There is an inexplicable sense of relief in being proven wrong, which perhaps can only be realized by either a scientist or a philosopher.

There is a remedy and there is a hope but the remedy is not in the political party or in places that will take you away from hope. You better run to God, that is the only place you can find both.

There is a scientific explanation behind everything. Finding it depends on whether you give in to the much simpler supernatural explanation.

There is a saying in the medical profession 'Inside every tablet is a little bit of poison'. Avoid medications if you can.

There is a throne up there and someone is sitting on it. It is not you, the economy or your government. My God is still on the throne and I shall not worry.

There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause, there is no First Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized.

There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty. This picture is strangely frightening. It should be familiar. It is our universe. Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. Nothing! We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s Pensées and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.' [From an undated, handwritten piece of text from the early 1950s which Sagan wrote when he was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago]

There is endless happiness in this world, but provided one knows the science behind it! ‘Science’ can give happiness. You have become disillusioned; the wrong belief has set in and that is why you are unhappy. When the wrong belief leaves and the ‘right belief’ sets in, there is nothing but happiness.

There is even a certain tendency to punish those who do try to see. A case in point: At the dawn of the sexual revolution, social scientists produced statistical studies purporting to show that children are better off when quarreling parents divorce, that broken homes are just as functional as intact ones, and that cohabitation has no influence on the stability of a subsequent marriage. As anyone conversant with the field now knows, newer and more careful studies show all that to be wildly false. A young, untenured family sociologist whom I know used to circulate the results of these new studies secretly among other scholars. But he asked me and his other friends never to mention his name. Why? Because calling the mirage a mirage is a good way to end a career.

There is more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy.

There is no definitive answer as to why cannibalism provides us with such stimulation, although what is clear, and what remains extremely disturbing for me, is our increasing desensitization to violence and gore - a trait that does not bode well for the future.

There is no division, in practice, between work and life. [An intellectual craft] is a practice that involves the whole person, continually drawing on past experience as it is projected into the future.

There is no greater crime against humanity than usury.

There is no greater crime than a crime against humanity. There is no greater crime against humanity than usury. The greatest violence, and the greatest threat to humanity, is the growth of MONEY.

There is no greater virtue than to teach the many what you have been blessed to learn from a few.

There is no permanent ideal of disease resistance, merely the shifting sands of impermanent obsolescence.

There is no means other than vitrag-science (science that frees us from all attachments) that will give Final-Liberation [Moksha]. Other means [methods, instruments] will cause bondage; they only help to pass the time; [whereas] means to attain the Eternal Thing (experience of Pure Soul) can be attained from the ‘Gnani Purush’ (the enlightened one).

There is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, 'See, this is new?' it had been already of old time, which was before us.

[...] there is no need to pay homage to the product of selfish genes - as though self-replicating DNA from the old Darwinian era were some sort of secular equivalent to Providence.

There is no "religious language" or "scientific language". There is rather the international notation of mathematics and logic; and English, French, Spanish and the like. In short, "religious discourse" and "scientific discourse" are part of the same overall conceptual structure. Moreover, in that conceptual structure there is a large amount of discourse, which is neither religious nor scientific, that is constantly being utilized by both the religious man and the scientist when they make religious and scientific claims. In short, they share a number of key categories.

There is no secret in attaining God. In the path of Enlightenment, any theoretical mystery-mongering preacher that weakens the mind, should be rejected at once. Science has no secrets. The very purpose of it is to unravel the secrets of Nature and the Universe. That is why it is so beautiful. And so should be the path of Enlightenment.

There is no science without spirituality; spirituality has no meaning without science.

There is no sharp boundary line separating the reactions of the immune bodies from chemical processes between crystalloids, just as in nature there exists every stage between crystalloid and colloid. The nearer the colloid particle approximates to the normal electrolyte, the nearer its compounds must obviously come to conforming to the law of simple stoichiometric proportions, and the compounds themselves to simple chemical compounds. At this point, it should be recalled that Arrhenius has shown that the quantitative relationship between toxin and antitoxin is very similar to that between acid and base.

There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.

There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.

There is no religion better than love, no color better than the color of happiness and no language better than the language of compassion.

There is nothing distinctively scientific about the hypothetico-deductive process. It is not even distinctively intellectual. It is merely a scientific context for a much more general stratagem that underlies almost all regulative processes or processes of continuous control, namely feedback, the control of performance by the consequences of the act performed. In the hypothetico-deductive scheme the inferences we draw from a hypothesis are, in a sense, its logical output. If they are true, the hypothesis need not be altered, but correction is obligatory if they are false. The continuous feedback from inference to hypothesis is implicit in Whewell's account of scientific method; he would not have dissented from the view that scientific behaviour can be classified as appropriately under cybernetics as under logic.

There is no such thing as reincarnation, but only similar incarnation.

There is nothing ideal in Nature, because it was not created by some sort of ideal Almighty Being with perfect peerless craftsmanship. Nature as it is, has evolved through millions of years out of the biological drive for survival.

There is nothing opposed in Biometry and Mendelism. Your husband and I worked that out at Peppards [on the Chilterns] and you will see it referred in the Biometrika memoir. The Mendelian formula leads up to the 'ancestral law'. What we fought against was the slovenliness in applying Mendel's categories and asserting that such formulae apply in cases when they did not.

There is no time to discuss the fact that this horrible, horrible system is not working, or to assert that we are neither criminals or machines. There are only endless medication orders, given by exhausted people with nobody better than us to depend on.

There is nothing hidden in the hidden time. Know that this, the hidden time, is your everlasting, and live.

There is no such thing as reality, only our perception of it.

There is nothing truthful, wise, humane, or strategic about confusing hostility to injustice and oppression, which is leftist, with hostility to science and rationality, which is nonsense.