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This discussion is dedicated to sayings or words of wisdom in the subject of science.
Feel free to quote or add your own.“Imagination is more important than Knowledge” – Einstein
“Because the five senses of the human body are the fastest, most efficient method of programming ever devised. Just imagine. Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. You’ve got all that going for you instead of some guy sitting at a computer terminal punching keys.” – from the (1985) movie D.A.R.Y.L.
“The progression from point (0-dimensional) to line (1-dimensional) to plane (2-dimensional) to space (3-dimensional) and beyond leads us to the question – if mapping from higher order dimensions to lower ones loses vital information (as we can readily observe with optical illusions resulting from third to second dimensional mapping), does our “fixation” with a 3-dimensional space introduce crucial distortions in our view of reality that a higher-dimensional perspective would not lead us to?” – ?
Thomas Edison is credited with the saying that “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.
I know where the perspiration comes from. Wonder where that inspirations comes from?
I think science has enjoyed an extraordinary success because it has such a limited and narrow realm in which to focus its efforts. Namely, the physical universe.
Ken JenkinsScience does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope.
Theodore Roszak,“Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act.” – Sir Fred Hoyle
To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.
Evelyn Fox Keller “I can't believe Dirac's ability to discover [quantum field] theory, or Einstein’s ability to discover the general theory of relativity, is a sort of spin-off from our ancestors having to dodge saber-toothed tigers. Something much more profound, much more mysterious, is going on…” – John Polkinghorne, of the University of Cambridge, England
“Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs. [That] suggests to me that consciousness and our ability to do mathematics are no mere accident, no trivial detail, no insignificant by-product of evolution.” – Professor Paul Davies
Quote (mikeboll64 @ May 31 2011,11:27) “Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act.” – Sir Fred Hoyle
How is that a scientific quote?Stuart
Quote (mikeboll64 @ May 31 2011,13:13) “I can't believe Dirac's ability to discover [quantum field] theory, or Einstein’s ability to discover the general theory of relativity, is a sort of spin-off from our ancestors having to dodge saber-toothed tigers. Something much more profound, much more mysterious, is going on…” – John Polkinghorne, of the University of Cambridge, England
Or that?Stuart
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.
Charles Darwin
“Lines that are parallel
meet at Infinity!”
Euclid repeatedly,
heatedly,
urged.
Until he died,
and so reached that vicinity:
in it he
found that the damned things
diverged.–Piet Hein, Grooks VIWhat worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding.
Richard Dawkins
Stu, before you comment that my quote is not scientific, let me distract you by saying: “lines that are parallel meet at infinity.”
“God exists,”–Richard Dawkins.
I guess I should quote that in context:
“God exists if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.”
An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who looks for a source of power in the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine.
Ernest Rutherford
Quote (david @ May 31 2011,18:04) “God exists,”–Richard Dawkins. I guess I should quote that in context:
“God exists if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.”
Indeed! An excellent example of quote-mining: the creationist's “greatest” weapon.Stuart
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