Quotes About Science

If taken at face value, the miraculous explanation would tell us that science is not worth the trouble, that it will never yield the answers we seek, and that nature will forever be beyond all human understanding. Sterile and nonproductive in its consequences, the claim of miracle would put a lid on curiosity, experimentation, and the human creative imagination.

The successful mapping of the human genome was only a first big step, it turns out, one that would become the foundation for yet another quantum leap in biology. More advanced research, especially in the last decade, points to the advent of a new field called epigenetics, which studies the human epigenome.

we are justifying poetry by 'proving' that it is something else, just as, I believe, we have justified religion with the discovery that it is science."4

In order for America to remain a global leader in innovation and opportunity, we must give our children a solid foundation in math and science.

While we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means.

We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will boggle the imagination, that will test our limits to dream. And the fascination generated by further exploration will inspire our young people to study math, and science, and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers.

Embryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards.

iPhones compute more than what we had for Apollo but if I throw them in the air will they do a star sighting?

I am hopeful that Antarctica in its symbolic robe of white will shine forth as a continent of peace as nations working together there in the cause of science set an example of international cooperation.

Rudolf Steiner, whose synthesis of science, consciousness, and social innovation continues to inspire my work and whose methodological grounding in

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

I think actually if you take the analogy with other areas of engineering, and increasingly of science and even mathematics, you can see people do not have to learn the vast number of formulae they used to learn. Instead, they have to learn to use the computer effectively. This frees them, I feel, to understand concepts and the foundations while they're learning the mechanics of the application of the theory.

Even a scientist is a human being. So it is natural for him, like others, to hate the things he cannot explain. It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself.

Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or "normal" man to whom the scientific statements refer.

Is that which science calls the "psyche" not merely a question-mark arbitrarily confined within the skull, but rather a door that opens upon the human world from a world beyond, now and again allowing strange and unseizable potencies to act upon him and to remove him, as if upon the wings of the night, from the level of common humanity to that of a more personal vocation?

Moderns consider themselves wholly rational, unemotional, scientific, and atheistic. Where earlier humanity had realized its unconscious through religion, moderns dismiss both religion and the unconscious as prescientific delusions. Instead, moderns proudly identify themselves with their ego and thereby boast of their omnipotence: "nowadays most people identify themselves almost exclusively with their consciousness, and imagine that they

There are people, of course, who think it unscientific to take anything seriously; they do not want their intellectual playground disturbed by graver considerations. But the doctor who fails to take account of man's feelings for values commits a serious blunder, and if he tries to correct the mysterious and well-nigh inscrutable workings of nature with his so-called scientific attitude, he is merely putting his shallow sophistry in place of nature's healing processes.

all the higher grades of science, imagination and intuition play an increasingly important role over and above intellect and its capacity for application.

The critical philosophy of science became as it were negatively metaphysical--in other words, materialistic--on the basis of an error of judgement; matter was assumed to be a tangible and recognizable reality. Yet this is a thoroughly metaphysical concept hypostatized by uncritical minds. Matter is an hypothesis. When you say "matter," you are really creating a symbol for something unknown, which may just as well be "spirit" or anything else; it may even be God.

It consisted essentially in a dialectical gymnastics which gave the symbol of speech, the word, an absolute meaning, so that words came in the end to have a substantiality with which the ancients could invest their Logos only by attributing to it a mystical value. The great achievement of scholasticism was that it laid the foundations of a solidly built intellectual function, the sine qua non of modern science and technology.

Even a scientist is a human being, and it is quite natural that he, like others, hates the things he cannot explain and thus falls victim to the common illusion that what we know today represents the highest summit of knowledge.

We find this in everyday life, where dilemmas are sometimes solved by the most surprising new propositions; many artists, philosophers, and even scientists owe some of their best ideas to inspirations that appear suddenly from the unconscious. The ability to reach a rich vein of such material and to translate it effectively into philosophy, literature, music, or scientific discovery is one of the hallmarks of what is commonly called genius.

A rapprochement between empirical science and religious experience would in my opinion be fruitful for both.

I must, unfortunately, stress this point, since psychology is the youngest of all the sciences, and therefore the one that suffers most from preconceived opinions. The fact that we have only recently discovered psychology shows plainly enough that it has taken us all this time to make a clear distinction between ourselves and the contents of our minds.