Science Quotes - Page 82

When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?

The first telescope opened the heavens; the first microscope opened the world of the microbes; radioisotopic methodology, as exemplified by RIA, has shown the potential for opening new vistas in science and medicine.

I love crystals, the beauty of their forms and formation; liquids, dormant, distilling, sloshing! The fumes, the odors good or bad, the rainbow of colors; the gleaming vessels of every size, shape and purpose.

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.

Patience is what you need in the Antarctic. Wait-Give wind and tide a chance to change.

Scientists themselves readily admit that they do not fully understand the consequences of our many-faceted assault upon the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life in all its biological diversity. But things could also turn out to be worse than the current scientific best guess. In military affairs, policy has long been based on the dictum that we should be prepared for the worst case. Why should it be so different when the security is that of the planet and our long-term future?

The simplicity of nature is not to be measured by that of our conceptions. Infinitely varied in its effects, nature is simple only in its causes, and its economy consists in producing a great number of phenomena, often very complicated, by means of a small number of general laws.

In science, as in love, a concentration on technique is likely to lead to impotence.

There are no creeds in mathematics.

To remember simplified pictures is better than to forget accurate figures.

The recurrence of a phenomenon like Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity.

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.

If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... [J]ust a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

Modern mathematics, that most astounding of intellectual creations, has projected the mind's eye through infinite time and the mind's hand into boundless space.

Physical changes take place continuously, while chemical changes take place discontinuously. Physics deals chiefly with continuous varying quantities, while chemistry deals chiefly with whole numbers.

We are in a position similar to that of a mountaineer who is wandering over uncharted spaces, and never knows whether behind the peak which he sees in front of him and which he tries to scale there may not be another peak still beyond and higher up.

It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

We may say that life has borrowed from inanimate processes the same basic mechanism used in producing those striking structures that are crystals, with their beautiful plane faces.

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

I cannot think of a single field in biology or medicine in which we can claim genuine understanding, and it seems to me the more we learn about living creatures, especially ourselves, the stranger life becomes.

Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument for good of inestimable value; but in the hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a drunkard or an insane man, it may cause havoc, misery, suffering and crime. Science and religion have this in common, that their noble aims, their power for good, have often, with wrong men, deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race.

If you confine yourself to this Skinnerian technique, you study nothing but the learning apparatus and you leave out everything that is different in octopi, crustaceans, insects and vertebrates. In other words, you leave out everything that makes a pigeon a pigeon, a rat a rat, a man a man, and, above all, a healthy man healthy and a sick man sick.

Observation is like a piece of glass, which, as a mirror, must be very smooth, and must be very carefully polished, in order that it may reflect the image pure and undistorted.