Science Quotes - Page 206

It was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable.

We know less about the ocean's bottom than about the moon's back side.

Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives-of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process.

All science requires mathematics. [Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.]

[I]f in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics, in so far as disposed through it we are able to reach certainty in other sciences and truth by the exclusion of error.

We should greatly err, if we endeavoured to force all ancient nature into a close comparison with existing operations.

Physical geography and geology are inseparable scientific twins.

Be the master of your will but the servant of your conscience.

The simple rule about weapons is that if thery can be built, they will be built.

I would like to emphasize strongly my belief that the era of computing chemists, when hundreds if not thousands of chemists will go to the computing machine instead of the laboratory for increasingly many facets of chemical information, is already at hand. There is only one obstacle, namely that someone must pay for the computing time.

The aim is freedom conscience and truth

Genius finds its own road and carries its own lamp.

... it is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case.

That is the logical tight-rope on which we have to walk if we wish to interpret nature.

This is not very important what I'm doing. I'm just proving something.

[About a conference on Systematic Biology] Many interesting statements were made that apply directly to the work of taxonomists. In some cases the interest lay in the value of the suggestion and sometimes in the obvious need for rebuttal.

The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity.

Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.

It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way?

Combinatorial analysis, in the trivial sense of manipulating binomial and multinomial coefficients, and formally expanding powers of infinite series by applications ad libitum and ad nauseamque of the multinomial theorem, represented the best that academic mathematics could do in the Germany of the late 18th century.

When I was in graduate school in Princeton, I was told to take three courses. One of them to work on really hard, another to work on moderately hard, and the third one just to absorb. In my case, I never showed up to the latter class, taught by Robert Gunning, on Several Complex Variables. Several Complex Variables (Cn) was starting to get vary fashionable then, but I decided to specialize in n=1/2.

For many doctors the achievement of a published article is a tedious duty to be surmounted as a necessary hurdle in a medical career.

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove.

The idiot, the Indian, the child and unschooled farmer's boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.