Quotes About Science

In science, all sensibly phrased questions are at least potentially answerable, while answers to the questions of faith are, by their very definition, unknowable. With The Sparrow, I hoped to show that both kinds of questions are worth asking, and worth thinking deeply about.

Emilio] felt once more the strangely visceral thrill of trying to disprove a hypothesis he suspected was robust.

I believe in God the way I believe in quarks, she said coolly. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did.

I believe in God the way I believe in quarks,' she said coolly. 'People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did.

The idea that being scientific simply means being irreligious is a particularly naive one. It has caused a lot of confusion and will get us nowhere.

Fatalism is now offered, not as just one possible philosophical attitude among others with reasons given for and against it, but as a fact backed by the tremendous authority of science.

That burning lava is miles deep," said Nancy. "Its temperature is over seventeen hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

In the words of the late Francis Crick...You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. (13)

I challenge you to find a more innocuous sentence containing the words sperm, suction, swallow, and any homophone of seaman. And then call me up on the homophone and read it to me.

Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per anum?' is zero (one hopes).

The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken.

Gravity is why there are suns and planets in the first place. It is practically God.

This book is a salute to the scientists and the surgeons, running along in the wake of combat, lab coats flapping. Building safer tanks, waging war on filth flies. Understanding turkey vultures. T

On top of its other charms, the maggot breathes through its ass. It

All good research—whether for science or for a book—is a form of obsession.

Please beware, came his reply, There are a lot of people who believe that just because we don't have an explanation for something, it's quantum mechanics.

There wasn't an anhydrous lacrimal gland in the room...

Under the section heading "Experiments with Human Subjects" – a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased –

I remember watching Morin walk away from me, the endearing gait and the butt that got lubed for science, and thinking, 'Oh my god, they're just people.

Silletti and I, for instance, chewed out cotton wads for the same amount of time. I produced .78 milliliters of stimulated saliva; she produced 1.4. She tried to reassure me. It doesn't say anything about how good you are or how good I am with saliva. Erika, I'm a dried up husk. Don't say that, Mary.

They have this idea that they can send astronauts up and the bone loss will level off in a few months, but the evidence that has come back doesn't support that view. If you look at a two-year mission to Mars, it's kind of a scary prospect.

As on Earth, weight-bearing exercise is the best way to hang on to your bone. In zero gravity, of course, you have to create your weight.

To understand the cautious respect for the dead that pervades the modern anatomy lab, it helps to understand the extreme lack of it that pervades the field's history. Few sciences are as rooted in shame, infamy, and bad PR as human anatomy.

I guess I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science. Certainly most things can--including the vast majority of what people ascribe to fate, ghosts, ESP, Jupiter rising--but not all