“Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them… But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. In fact even understanding insects is an extremely complicated problem in the sciences. So the actual sciences tell us virtually nothing about human affairs.”

— Noam Chomsky

Science in the Dock, Discussion with Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Krauss & Sean M. Carroll (2011), 2, Chomsky.info, March 1, 2006, August 16, 2011 http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060301.htm,
Quotes 2010s, 2011

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Noam Chomsky 334

american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

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“As you study science, and really try to understand what is happening behind the curtain, not just reading the predigested press releases but actually talking to scientists or reading technical papers, you realize that … it's always more complicated than you think. … No measurement is simple. … The way you make the comparison will address different issues.”

Steven Novella (1964) American neurologist, skepticist

SGU, Podcast #528, August 22nd, 2015 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/528
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, Podcast, 2010s

“College education tends to make simple things complicated and hard to understand. What we should do is to teach our children the most essential and simple principles of life and ways to handle problems.”

Zheng Yuanjie (1955) Chiese writer

Zheng Yuanjie (2004) in: "Zheng Yuanjie's 19 years in fairy tales" on chinadaily.com.cn, May 10, 2004 ( online http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-05/10/content_329434.htm).

“Understanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.”

Roger Penrose (1931) English mathematical physicist, recreational mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in The Golden Ratio : The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (2002) by Mario Livio, p. 201.

“The true line is not between “hard” natural science and “soft” social sciences, but between precise science limited to highly abstract and simple phenomena in the laboratory and inexact science and technology dealing with complex problems in the real world.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: 1980s and later, Models of my life, 1991, p. 302.

“A better understanding of what science tells us about human genetic diversity is of immense importance, particualrly because it dispels false notions of what race is.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 12.

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

“The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.”

Paul Dirac (1902–1984) theoretical physicist

As quoted in Dirac: A Scientific Biography (1990), by Helge Kragh, p. 258
Source: [Kragh, Helge, Dirac: A Scientific Biography, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zXm1Bso1VREC&pg=PA258&lpg=PA258&dq=%22The+aim+of+science+is+to+make+difficult+things+understandable+in+a+simpler+way;+the+aim+of+poetry+is+to+state+simple+things+in+an+incomprehensible+way.+The+two+are+incompatible%22&source=bl&ots=OLeGFpZGCh&sig=VRga1I7FVl9UBpXi_oAq_-8u_ls&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBwLbbwdvVAhXIIMAKHZ_pCZQQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22The%20aim%20of%20science%20is%20to%20make%20difficult%20things%20understandable%20in%20a%20simpler%20way%3B%20the%20aim%20of%20poetry%20is%20to%20state%20simple%20things%20in%20an%20incomprehensible%20way.%20The%20two%20are%20incompatible%22&f=false, March 30, 1990, 258, December 6, 2017]

“Science has often presented itself, intentionally or unintentionally as a "truer" or even the true way of talking about the world. In science classrooms, except for rare occasions, this is the way science is taught and presented. Not as a way of talking about the world, but as the way the world is.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 126

“Guilford thought he knew what science was. It was nothing more than curiosity…tempered by humility, disciplined with patience.
Science meant looking—a special kind of looking. Looking especially hard at the things you didn’t understand. Looking at the stars, say, and not fearing them, not worshiping them, just asking questions, finding the question that would unlock the door to the next question and the question beyond that.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Darwinia

Prologue (pp. 10-11)
Darwinia (1998)

“Science is […] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553, May 27, 1996.
Context: Science is [... ] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.

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