Quotes About Science

At any particular stage in the development of science, our concepts concerning the causal relationships will then be true only relative to a certain approximation and to certain conditions.

On the contrary, when one works in terms of the implicate order, one begins with the undivided wholeness of the universe, and the task of science is to derive the parts through abstraction from the whole, explaining them as approximately separable, stable and recurrent, but externally related elements making up relatively autonomous sub-totalities, which are to be described in terms of an explicate order.

it must also be realized that a paradigm has the power to keep a whole community of scientists working on a more or less common area. In a sense, it could be taken as an unconscious or tacit form of consent. At first sight, the paradigm would be of obvious use to the scientific community. However, it also exacts a price in that the mind is kept within certain fixed channels that deepen with time until an individual scientist is no longer aware of his or her limited position.

Even in science to raise fundamental questions can be very disturbing. Somebody could feel, 'I'd like to have the answer to this right away, and get out of this unpleasant state of disturbance', and he would never get anywhere.

If one computes the amount of energy that would be in one cubic centimeter of space, with this shortest possible wavelength, it turns out to be very far beyond the total energy of all the matter known in the universe.

If facts are inconvenient, well, damn those who live and work with facts.

Science gives man what he needs, but magic gives man what he wants.

The scientists pushing Global Warming are all in it for climate study grants. Seriously, you never realized you can judo-kill that with just four words? Show… us… the… 'grants.

The health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie.

Analog, or Asimov's Magazine, or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Like human lovers, electrons are unpredictable, fickle, and always open to better offers.

All knowledge systems, from modern science to those embedded in the most ancient of creation myths, can be thought of as maps of reality. They are never just true or false. Perfect descriptions of reality are unattainable, unnecessary, and too costly for learning organisms, including humans.

Quantum physics shows that it is in the nature of reality to be unpredictable.

Entropy is the loyal servant of the second law of thermodynamics. So, if we think of entropy as a character in our story, we should imagine it as dissolute, lurking, careless of others' pain and suffering, not interested in looking you in the eye. Entropy is also very, very dangerous, and in the end it will get us all.

know about the brain's hardware and software. How does the firing of a nerve or a series of nerves get translated into a thought or a feeling? This is one of the deepest mysteries of science, as amazing to me as questions about the origin of the universe.

All over the galaxy, men with the best gifts of Science and no skills but those of murder looked for patrons who would hire them to bring down civilization. Business was good.

The whole quantum setup ends up being embarrassing in the special way something pretentious is embarrassing when it's also wrong. Better

The closest conventional analogue I could derive for this figure was a cycloid, L'Hôpital's solution to Bernoulli's famous Brachistochrone Problem, the curve traced by a fixed point on the circumference of a circle rolling along a continuous plane.

1962 that "No data processing system, whether artificial or living, can process more than 2 × 1047 bits per second per gram of its mass," which means that a hypothetical supercomputer the size of the earth (= c. 6 × 1027 grams) grinding away for as long as the earth has existed (= about 1010 years, with c. 3.14 × 107 seconds/year) can have processed at most 2.56 × 2092 bits, which number is known as Bremermann's Limit.

We may say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is 'significant' if it can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas. Thus a serious mathematical theorem, a theorem which connects significant ideas, is likely to lead to important advances in mathematics itself and even in other sciences.

I am not offering God as a theory to compete with scientific theories about the universe. Rather I am saying that those self-contained, secular theories provide evidence for theologically neutral premises in philosophical arguments leading to a conclusion that has theistic significance.

I certainly didn't set out to create something famous there. I just set out to find some answers to questions that were nagging me. As in life, so in science: One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you find yourself someplace you never imagined going.

Art soaked it in alcohol to toughen it up and draw out the water. (If he'd had the opposite problem—if the skin had been dry and stiff—he'd have soaked it in Downy fabric softener; I'm sure the makers of Downy would be pleased to know that their product makes even mummified human skin soft and fragrant.)

Give me something about bacteria. Give me something that won't make me feel so inferior