Conclusion of his Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1978/wilson-lecture.html (December 8, 1978) emphasizing that every new experimental discovery increases significantly our knowledge.
"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
Interview with Diane Sawyer, as quoted in "Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'" on ABC World News (7 June 2010) http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Technology/stephen-hawking-religion-science-win/story?id=10830164
"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction
“Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.”
Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.128-129
Context: We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that requires a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the event... Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.
They're imposing (I believe) the religion of naturalism or atheism on generations of students. You see, I assert that the word 'science' has been hijacked by secularists in teaching evolution to force the religion of naturalism on generations of kids.
"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)
“Cosmology is peculiar among the sciences for it is both the oldest and the youngest.”
"Theories of the Universe" (10 Apr 1958)
Context: Cosmology is peculiar among the sciences for it is both the oldest and the youngest. From the dawn of civilization man has speculated about the nature of the starry heavens and the origin of the world, but only in the present century has physical cosmology split away from general philosophy to become an independent discipline.
Michael Moon in Manalive (1912)
Source: Course of Experimental Philosophy, 1745, p. v: Preface
Context: All the knowledge we have of nature depends upon facts; for without observations and experiments our natural philosophy would only be a science of terms and an unintelligible jargon. But then we must call in Geometry and Arithmetics, to our Assistance, unless we are willing to content ourselves with natural History and conjectural Philosophy. For, as many causes concur in the production of compound effects, we are liable to mistake the predominant cause, unless we can measure the quantity and the effect produced, compare them with, and distinguish them from, each other, to find out the adequate cause of each single effect, and what must be the result of their joint action.
Let There Be Light, Natural History Magazine, October 2003, 2010-12-07 http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2003/10/01/let-there-be-light,
2000s
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: Mind has come up with this brilliant way of looking at the world — science — but it can’t look at itself. Science has no place for the mind. The whole of our science is based upon empirical, repeatable experiments. Whereas thought is not in that category, you can’t take thought into a laboratory. The essential fact of our existence, perhaps the only fact of our existence – our own thought and perception is ruled off-side by the science it has invented. Science looks at the universe, doesn’t see itself there, doesn’t see mind there, so you have a world in which mind has no place. We are still no nearer to coming to terms with the actual dynamics of what consciousness is.
