“Science is the one human activity that is totally progressive.”

The Realm of the Nebulae (1936)

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Edwin Hubble7

American astronomer 1889–1953

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“To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity's progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat's progress. It only hinders it… The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

“Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other.”

Michael Crichton book Next

Source: Next

“But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.”

Karl Popper book Conjectures and Refutations

Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations"
Context: The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.

“Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

“Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

It appears in multiple anti-vaccination books, all by Trung Nguyen and a co-writer, circa 2018. In September 2021 it is echoed everywhere, including medical-journal articles (on various subjects), with no source given. Right above the Aldous Huxley "quote", these books quote a much earlier anti-vax author. Coincidentally, that author says (elsewhere in his book) this: <br class="br">Let us admire all-powerful Nature, which is not so easily brought into this serious and lasting disorder by our perverse intrusions; for otherwise, there would hardly have remained a human being alive. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Christian Charles Schieferdecker, in Dr. C. G. G. Nittinger's EVILS OF VACCINATION https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dr_C_G_G_Nittinger_s_Evils_of_Vaccinatio/6CUaAAAAYAAJ, 1856, p.40

“Technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity…”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Context: Technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity... What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school.

“In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education