Quotes about science

A collection of quotes on the topic of science.

„The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically, there is nothing in the world that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.“

— Jiddu Krishnamurti Indian spiritual philosopher 1895 - 1986

Bombay, Second Public Talk (25 February 1962)
1960s
Context: The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically, there is nothing in the world that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing. That is a scientific fact, as well as a psychological fact. Because, your leaders — religious and political — and your books — sacred and profane — have all failed, and you are still confused, in misery, in conflict. So, that is an absolute, undeniable fact.

Faith, World, God

„The world itself is a great fusing pot, out of which the One Humanity is emerging. This necessitates a drastic change in our methods of presenting history and geography. Science has always been universal. Great art and literature have always belonged to the world. It is upon these facts that the education to be given to the children of the world must be built - upon our similarities, our creative achievements, our spiritual idealisms, and our points of contact. Unless this is done, the wounds of the nations will never be healed, and the barriers which have existed for centuries will never be removed.“

— Alice A. Bailey esoteric, theosophist, writer 1880 - 1949

Source: Education in the New Age (1954), p.46

Change, Universe, Literature, History

„The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.“

— Isaac Asimov American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction and popular … 1920 - 1992

Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), edited with Jason A. Shulman, p. 281
General sources

Knowledge, Wisdom, Life

„Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.“

— Freeman Dyson theoretical physicist and mathematician 1923

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

„He (Bose) was modern India’s first physicist after all, one of her very first scientists. He was his motherland’s first active participant in the Galilean - Newtonian tradition. He had confounded the British disbeliever. He had shown that the Eastern mind was indeed capable of the exact and exacting thinking demanded by western science. He had broken the mould.“

— Jagadish Chandra Bose Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist 1858 - 1937

By S. Dasgupta

Thinking

„The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.“

— Paul Valéry French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871 - 1945

Moralités (1932)
Context: Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.

Art

„Experience by itself is not science.“

— Edmund Husserl German philosopher, known as the father of phenomenology 1859 - 1938

... bloße Erfahrung ist keine Wissenschaft.
Pure Phenomenology, 1917

„Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.“

— Rosalind Franklin British chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer 1920 - 1958

in answer to her father, who accused her of making science her religion, as related by [Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA‎, Perennial, 2003, 0060985089, 61]

Life

„We need, in a special way, to work twice as hard to make all people understand that animals are fellow creatures, that we must protect them and love them as we love ourselves… The basis for peace is respecting all creatures… That's the basis, the beginning for peace. …We know we cannot defend or be kind to animals until we stop exploiting them - exploiting them in the name of science, exploiting animals in the name of sport, exploiting animals in the name of fashion, and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.“

— Cesar Chavez American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist 1927 - 1993

Accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award from In Defense of Animals in 1992.

Animals, Sport, Understanding, Fashion

„Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.“

— Donald Ervin Knuth, Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About

Foreword to the book A=B http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html (1996)
Source: Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About

Understanding, Art

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„Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.“

— Avicenna medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher 980 - 1037

"On Medicine, (c. 1020) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1020Avicenna-Medicine.html
Context: The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

Study, Knowledge

„When we inquire about the general forms of economic phenomena, about their uniformities, or about a key to understanding them, we ipso facto indicate that we wish at that moment to consider them as something to be investigated, to be sought for, as the “unknown”; and that we wish to trace them to the relatively “known,” just as any science deals with its object of inquiry.“

— Joseph Alois Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development

The Theory of Economic Development (1934), Ch. 1 : The Circular Flow of Economic Life as Conditioned by Given Circumstances

Understanding

„More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.“

— Ronald Fisher English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist 1890 - 1962

Natural selection from the genetical standpoint. Australian Journal of Science 22, 16-17, 1959.
1950s

Past, Understanding, Idea, History

„He has made contributions to many areas of science; among them are agronomy, anthropology, astronomy, bacteriology, botany, economics, forestry, meteorology, psychology, public health, and-above all-genetics, in which he is recognized as one of the leaders. Out of this varied scientific research and his skill in mathematics, he has evolved systematic principles for the interpretation of empirical data; and he has founded a science of experimental design. On the foundations he has laid down, there has been erected a structure of statistical techniques that are used whenever people attempt to learn about nature from experiment and observation.“

— Ronald Fisher English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist 1890 - 1962

W. Allen Wallis (1952) at the University of Chicago while honoring Fisher with the Honorary degree of Doctor of Science; cited in: George E. P. Box (1976) " Science and Statistics http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Ian.Jermyn/philosophy/writings/Boxonmaths.pdf" Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 71, No. 356. (Dec., 1976), pp. 791-799.

Mathematics, Nature, Health, Learning

„Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences. … Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world. And what is worse, men who are thus Ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.“

— Roger Bacon, book Opus Majus

cited in: Morris Kline (1969) Mathematics and the physical world. p. 1
Opus Majus, c. 1267

Knowledge, Mathematics, World, Men

„Human behavior is predictable, but, as in physical science, accurate prediction hinges on the correctness of underlying theoretical assumptions. There is, in fact, no prediction without theory; all managerial decisions and actions rest on assumptions about behavior. If we adopt the posture of the ostrich with respect to our assumptions under the mistaken idea that we are thus “being ‘practical,” or that “management is an art,” our progress with respect to the human side of enterprise will indeed be slow. Only as we examine and test our theoretical assumptions can we hope to make them more adequate, to remove inconsistencies, and thus to improve our ability to predict.“

— Douglas McGregor American professor 1906 - 1964

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 11 (2006; 13)

Decision, Idea, Behavior, Art

„As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.“

— Max Planck German theoretical physicist 1858 - 1947

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max‑ Planck‑ Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

Study, Intelligence, Life

„There is no conflict between science and religion.“

— Georges Lemaître Belgian scientist and priest 1894 - 1966

New York Times, February 19, 1933 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A02E7DA1539E033A2575AC1A9649C946294D6CF&nytmobile=0&legacy=true

Religion

„Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.“

— Jean Rostand French writer 1894 - 1977

[Jean Rostand, The substance of men, Doubleday, 1962, 19]

Men

„Calculations are to the economic science what bones are to the human body. Without them it will always be a vague and confused science, at the mercy of error and prejudice.“

— François Quesnay French economist 1694 - 1774

François Quesnay in letter to Mirabeau (Archives Nationales, Ms. 779, 4 bis, p.2 note); as cited in: Richard Van Den Berg and Albert Steenge. "Tableaux and Systèmes. Early French Contributions to Linear Production Models." Cahiers d'économie Politique/Papers in Political Economy 2 (2016): 11-30.

Error

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