Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 1
Context: It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chances of survival. However, provided the universe has evolved in a regular way, we might expect that the reasoning abilities that natural selection has given us would be valid also in our search for a complete unified theory, and so would not lead us to the wrong conclusions.
“Many discoveries must have been stillborn or smothered at birth. We know only those which survived.”
Source: The Art of Scientific Investigation (1950), p. 65.
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William Ian Beardmore Beveridge 3
British zoologist 1908–2006Related quotes
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