
“I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.”
Christian Science Monitor (24 July 1986)
2016
“I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.”
Christian Science Monitor (24 July 1986)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1978), p. 235
General sources
Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: I am a reasonably emotional person, and I see no reason why that's incompatible with being a scientist. Even if we learn about how everything works, that doesn't mean anything at all. You can reduce how an impala leaps to a bunch of biomechanical equations. You can turn Bach into contrapuntal equations, and that doesn't reduce in the slightest our capacity to be moved by a gazelle leaping or Bach thundering. There is no reason to be less moved by nature around us simply because it's revealed to have more layers of complexity than we first observed.
The more important reason why people shouldn't be afraid is, we're never going to inadvertently go and explain everything. We may learn everything about something, and we may learn something about everything, but we're never going to learn everything about everything. When you study science, and especially these realms of the biology of what makes us human, what's clear is that every time you find out something, that brings up ten new questions, and half of those are better questions than you started with.
The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.
Progress In Religion (2000)
Scientist wonders why nobody asks him about Dan David prize (2013)
p. 133 https://books.google.com/books/about/More_and_Different.html?id=tU9yOac455kC&pg=PA133
More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon (2011)
"Exultation and Explanation", p. 187
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)
BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/regions/yorkshire_and_lincolnshire/8298649.stm
Aeaea, Ch. 6
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I am the consummate scientist, Road-Storm. Science has suffered in having her name applied to mechanics, an ugly step-child of hers. Matter herself is a humiliation to the serious. We cannot make it vanish forever, but can make it seem to. For my purpose that is even better. All matter can be modified as long as it is kept subjective. Let us keep it so. … Those who fail to understand my science may call it magic or hypnotism or deception. But it is only my projection of total subjectivity.
“The secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It’s what he asks.”
Source: Raft (1991), Chapter 4 (p. 45)