Quotes About Science

But by the term 'scientific' is understood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious': just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that is called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable.

German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.

The worst mistake which was ever made in this world was the separation of political science from ethics. —PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Levin knew his brother and the workings of his mind: he knew that his scepticism came not because life was easier for him without faith. His religious beliefs had been shaken step by step by the theories of modern science concerning the phenomena of the universe; and so Levin knew that this present return was not a valid, reasoned one but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a desperate hope of recovery.

sample size. Sample sizes can be calculated not only for randomized trials but

Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion.

There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.

There is a lot of hype and fear about this much-talked-about prospect of designer babies.

It's very hard to make arguments about the effects of cloning on family relations if family relations are in tatters.

Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money.

The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects.

Leon M. Lederman

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

Wolfgang Pauli, to seriously consider quitting in 1925. "For me," he wrote in exasperation to a colleague, "physics is too difficult and I wish that I were a film comedian or something similar and had never heard of physics.

Aristotle is generally credited (probably unreasonably) with holding up the progress of physics for about 2,000 years—until Galileo had the courage and the conviction to call him out.

The public sees science as some monolithic edifice of unbending rules and beliefs, and—thanks to the media's portrayal of scientists as uptight nerds in white coats—sees scientists as stodgy old artery-hardened defenders of the status quo.

topic: Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe [Amherst, NY: Prometheus

Nature hides the simplicity in a thicket of complicating circumstances, and the experimenter's job is to prune away these complications.

Quantum mechanics can be said to have three remarkable qualities: (1) it is counterintuitive; (2) it works; and (3) it has aspects that made it unacceptable to the likes of Einstein and Schrödinger and that have made it a source of continuing study in the 1990s.

The physicists defer only to the mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

It wasn't until 1822 that a reigning pope officially declared that the sun could be at the center of the solar system. And it took until 1985 for the Vatican to acknowledge that Galileo was a great scientist and that he had been wronged by the Church.

A single photon seems to "know" if there are two slits open or only one slit open and it behaves differently accordingly!

The speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers per second.

has been to make each chapter factually accurate, interesting to read, and relevant to readers' lives. In the process, the book has been completely reorganized, updated, and rewritten for this fifth edition. In making these revisions, I have tried to keep in mind that scienc