Mordechai Ben-Ari: Quotes about science

“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)

Study , Science

“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)

Religion , Science

“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)

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)

People , Universe , Science

“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)

People , World , Law , Mathematics

“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)

Law , Science

“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)

Science

“Science has also been analyzed by sociologists, political scientists and literary critics, who make little or no effort to understand the scientific subjects that they are analyzing. These critiques, known under the umbrella label of postmodernism, are seen by scientists as uninformed and pernicious in their effects on the real problems that arise in the relationship between science and society.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 7, “Postmodernist Critiques of Science: Is Science Universal?” (p. 115)

Understanding , Problem , Effort , Science

“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)

Strong , Science