“The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance.”

— Ivars Peterson

Source: The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997), Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (p. 201; quoting Hegel)

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Ivars Peterson 9

Canadian mathematician 1948

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“Science can only arrange ethical propositions logically and furnish the means for the realization of ethical aims, but the determination of aims is beyond its scope.”

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Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

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“They think that the cure to big government is to have bigger government… the only effective cure is to reduce the scope of government - get government out of the business.”

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“You may ask — you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity: gnothi seauton… get to know yourself!”

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Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

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“Research into motion was not to the liking (or perhaps not within the scope) of the ancients, so that we may consider it as a completely new science. How could the ancients have discovered the laws of moiton, given that some philosophers reduced all their speculations about motion to sophistic disputes, whereas others denied that motion existed at all?”

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Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

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“The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance.”

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Ivars Peterson 9

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