Quotes About Science

Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1926), is still in print eighty years after it was written. I

In a letter to the editor of the (now, sadly, defunct) magazine The Sciences (vol. 35

Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979; reprinted with new postscript and index in 1986).

Steve Woolgar develops his views in confrontational style in Science: The Very Idea (London: Tavistock Publications, 1988

Those of us who pursue science studies are the Darwins of science, showing how the exquisite beauty of facts, theories, instruments and machines can be accounted for without ever resorting to teleological principles or arguments by design

One very good introduction to the topic of scientific explanation is the chapter "Scientific Explanation" by Wesley C. Salmon in Salmon et al., Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992).

John Hedley Brooke's Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991

A superbly written, insightful, and beautifully illustrated history of evolution is David Young's The Discovery of Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992

Susan Haack make a similar point with her crossword-puzzle analogy. She develops the analogy and offers many other insights in a book I recommend to the reader with no reservations, Defending Science—Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003

Another very clear and helpful overview of the topic of explanation is in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, third edition, by Karel Lambert and Gordon G. Brittan Jr. (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing, 1987)

Perhaps the best-known example of social-constructivist history of science is the 1985 book Leviathan and the Air-Pump by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. Shapin and Schaffer's book focused on an important controversy from the mid-seventeenth century, the nasty dispute between scientist Robert Boyle and irascible philosopher Thomas Hobbes

Aristotle and Bacon can therefore be seen respectively as the grandfather and the father of the modern branch of the philosophy of science called "confirmation theory," that is, the study of how scientific hypotheses and theories are confirmed by evidence. Evidence clearly has a very significant bearing on the decisions of scientific communities to accept or reject certain theories, but spelling out the precise nature of that relationship is difficult

Why, then, did Boyle win? Shapin and Schaffer answer that Boyle won because he played the political game much better than Hobbes, and because Hobbes was swimming against the tide of history. They argue that the emergence of a new way of organizing science was an integral part of the emergence of the new social order of Restoration society

The only way to argue this in a comprehensive way would be to adopt a universal skepticism about method. The most famous case for such skepticism is the 1975 book Against Method by maverick philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend appeals to the history of science to argue that no methodological prescription has ever been consistently followed in science

Science is objective not because scientists are just naturally more objective thinkers—or due to any other quirk of the scientific brain (including intelligence)—but because scientists acknowledge their biases, and construct methods to counteract them

Mill's Methods, as they are called, have indeed proven useful in the conduct of science. Journals such as Nature and Science, and popular magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American regularly report studies based on versions of these methods

Such, then, are the basics of Popper's methodology for science: You make bold guesses and try your best to show that they are wrong

Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can't tell you whether someone will fit into a company's culture.

In the past a theory could get by on its beauty; in the modern world a successful theory has to work for a living.

La science et la religion ne règnent pas sur le même domaine. La première apprend, la seconde enseigne. Le doute est le moteur de l'une, l'autre a la foi pour ciment.

La science actualise les débats, elle les rafraîchit. Elle ne les tue pas. A chacun de faire son choix.

Pourtant les analogies entre le récit scientifique et ces mythes sont indéniables... S'agit-il d'une coïncidence ? Ou d'un savoir intuitif ? nous sommes nous memes composés de la poussière du Big Bang. Peut-être portons-nous en nous la mémoire de l'univers ?

Le long sentier vers l'humanisation de l'humanité est éclairé par trois lumières : le désir de comprendre le monde (la science), de l'embellir (l'art) et d'aider les êtres vivants à vivre (l'empathie). Trois mots à retenir : « connaîtras », « créer », « compatir ».

Deux plus deux faisaient-ils quatre au temps des dinosaures?