quotations about science
The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
"The Great God Flux", The Art of Being Ruled
Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a helpless infant... is a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man
Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.
LISA RANDALL
interview, The Morning News, February 9, 2006
Science has an important part to play in our everyday existence, and there is far too much neglect of science; but its intention is to supplement not to supplant the familiar outlook.
ARTHUR EDDINGTON
Science and the Unseen World
What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religion and Science
The growing knowledge of science does not refute man's intuition of the mystical. Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or in time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Autobiography of Values
In vain would science scan and trace
Firmly her aspect. All the while,
There gleams upon her far-off face
A vague unfathomable smile.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Nature and the Book", At the Gate of the Convent and Other Poems
'Twas thus by the glare of false science betray'd,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.
JAMES BEATTIE
The Hermit
Science is for the laboratory. Other men, who stand alone and face the elemental forces of nature, know that science as a shining, world-conquering hero, is a myth. Science lives in concrete structures full of bright factory toys, insulated from the earth's great forces. The priesthood of this new cult are seldom called upon to stand and face the onslaught.
HAMMOND INNES
Atlantic Fury
Science is not possible without faith in our perceptions, yet science itself tells us how limited those unaided perceptions are. Knowing within our sliver of reality, therefore, comes naturally; all the rest is rather harder.
DAVID L. KATZ
"Science And Sense In A Post-Truth World: How Do We Know?", Huffington Post, September 29, 2017
We recognize, then, the absolute authority of science, because the sole object of science is the mental reproduction, as well-considered and systematic as possible, of the natural laws inherent in the material, intellectual, and moral life of both the physical and the social worlds, these two worlds constituting, in fact, but one and the same natural world. Outside of this only legitimate authority, legitimate because rational and in harmony with human liberty, we declare all other authorities false, arbitrary and fatal.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple indeterminate, relative ones.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
To the man who studies to gain an insight into science, books and study are merely the steps of the ladder by which he climbs to the summit; as soon as a step has been advanced, he leaves it behind; the majority of mankind, however, who study to fill their memory with facts, do not make use of the steps of the ladder to mount upwards, but take them off and lay them on their shoulders, in order that they may take them along, delighting in the weight of the burden they are carrying; they remain ever below, as they carry what they should cause to carry them.
SCHOPENHAUFER
attributed, Day's Collacon