Mordechai Ben-Ari Quotes (28 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Mordechai Ben-Ari: 28 quotes0 likes

Famous Mordechai Ben-Ari Quotes

“Scientists refuse to study astrology, not because of prejudice or because there is a conspiracy afoot, but simply because there is not a shred of evidence that would justify the expenditure of valuable time from a career.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 5, “Pseudoscience: What Some People Do Isn’t Science” (p. 93)

“If ghosts and witches are not yet altogether exploded, it is the fault, not so much of the ignorant people, as of the law and the government that have neglected to enlighten them.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 5, “Pseudoscience: What Some People Do Isn’t Science” (p. 96; quoting Charles Mackay)

“If the Moon is made of green cheese, then Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo.
We would be committing this fallacy (i. e., affirming the consequent) if we used this sentence to claim that the Moon is made of green cheese. Pseudosciences employ this fallacy frequently, because it enables you to claim the truth of any premise you wish simply by choosing a true conclusion.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 11, “Logic and Mathematics: Scientists Like It Clear and Precise” (p. 177)

“The statement “I don’t see how X could have evolved” simply means that you cannot see how X evolved, not that X could not have evolved.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 36)

“Enormous resources are invested in pseudoscience that could be better invested in improving the health and education of the public.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 5, “Pseudoscience: What Some People Do Isn’t Science” (p. 95)

“It is clear today that modern science developed when people stopped debating metaphysical questions about the world and instead concerned themselves with the discovery of laws that were primarily mathematical.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 11, “Logic and Mathematics: Scientists Like It Clear and Precise” (p. 184)

Mordechai Ben-Ari Quotes about science

“Just because people doing science are embedded in a particular social and cultural milieu, it doesn’t follow that science is not universal.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 6, “The Sociology of Science: Scientists Do It as a Group” (p. 111)

“It is important to distinguish between the scientific concept of law as a generalization, and the social concept of law which is prescriptive and normative. A desire for tolerance in respecting the laws of different social systems must not lead us into the mistake of attributing volition to the entities of science or relativism to scientific laws.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 3, “Words Scientists Don’t Use: At Least Not the Way You Do” (p. 49)

“The difference between these beliefs and the beliefs of religions is that scientific beliefs are methodological, not propositional…It is the absence of propositional beliefs that distinguishes science from a belief system. There is no proposition of the content of science that is accepted upon belief alone.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 3, “Words Scientists Don’t Use: At Least Not the Way You Do” (pp. 51-52)

“The charm of our studies, the enchantment of science, is that, everywhere and always, we can give the justification of our principles and the proof of our discoveries.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 5, “Pseudoscience: What Some People Do Isn’t Science” (p. 98; quoting Louis Pasteur)

“The scientific point of view is that such claims of postmodernism are a travesty that comes from mixing ideology and politics with science.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 7, “Postmodernist Critiques of Science: Is Science Universal?” (p. 128)

“Popper’s attempt to construct a methodology from falsification may have been flawed, but the concept is central in the demarcation of science from nonscience. No matter how strong one’s convictions, a true scientist will always allow for the possibility that her results may be falsified; if she denies this possibility or refuses to abandon or modify a theory in the face of repeated falsifications, you can be sure that you are dealing with pseudoscience, not science.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 4, “Falsificationism: If It Might Be Wrong, It’s Science” (p. 75)

Mordechai Ben-Ari Quotes

“Why was progress in computing technology so fast compared with the lack of progress in space travel? The reason is very simple: computing technology is only now approaching scientific limits such as quantum uncertainty and the speed of light, while space technology has already run into its limits that derive from the basic principles of physics and chemistry.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 13, “The Future of Science: Surprises or Revolutions” (p. 210)

“Imaginary numbers are not imaginary and the theory of complex numbers is no more complex than the theory of real numbers. Complex numbers are as intuitive for an electronics engineer as -100 is for the average person with an overdrawn bank account.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 3, “Words Scientists Don’t Use: At Least Not the Way You Do” (p. 56)

“Concise and coherent is not the same as “simple and obvious.””

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 26)

“A scientific theory is a concise and coherent set of concepts, claims, and laws (frequently expressed mathematically) that can be used to precisely and accurately explain and predict natural phenomena.
A theory should include a mechanism that explains how its concepts, claims, and laws arise from lower-level theories.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 24)

“Our existence in this world seems insignificant within the extent of space and of time. Therefore, nonreligious people have to come to terms with living in a world full of uncertainty and unknowns. Nevertheless, many people prefer facing the uncertainty, rather than believing in a certainty that makes no sense to them.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 8, “Science and Religion: Scientists Just Do Science” (pp. 136-137; minor grammatical errors corrected silently)

“Needless to say, there is no formal or mathematical content to ID—a “theory” that explains everything, explains nothing, and predicts nothing. ID cannot explain why millions of species were created and then became extinct. Even more importantly, it cannot explain “mistakes” in the design of living organisms such as us.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 39)

“A good rule of thumb for diagnosing an activity as pseudoscientific is the existence of ad hoc explanations: “my telepathic powers aren’t working today because of a force field emanating from the hostile talk-show host.” There are no “bad-gravity days” and there are no days when your TV set stops working because electromagnetic waves feel hostility.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 25)

“Modern science explicitly and emphatically rejects teleology.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 24)

“Until creationists accept that their claims must be falsifiable and show how they could be falsified, creationism cannot be said to be a scientific theory.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 4, “Falsificationism: If It Might Be Wrong, It’s Science” (p. 75)