Quotes About Science

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, "So? Did you learn anything today?" But not my mother. "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?" That difference — asking good questions — made me become a scientist.

The Creator has – I say it in all reverence - drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.

In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.

although science interests me just because of its efforts to escape from anthropomorphic knowledge, I am nonetheless convinced that our imagination cannot be anything but anthropomorphic.

There is still, in fact, in Calvino's archive a drawer full of newspaper cuttings concerning scientific discoveries. As

In the infinite universe of literature there are always other avenues to explore, some brand-new and some exceedingly ancient, styles and forms that can change our image of the world. And when literature fails to assure me that I'm not merely chasing dreams, I look to science to sustain my visions in which all heaviness dissolves . . .

Lucretius wants to write the poem of matter, but he warns us from the start that the reality of matter is that it's made of invisible particles. He

Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods.

What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to science? ...Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching.

Those who concentrate on the subject's "real relationships" to the exclusion of phantasy and the internal world have of course abandoned psychoanalysis as a "science of the unconscious".

The scientistic faith in a science that will one day not only fulfill, but eliminate, personal self-conception through objectifying self-description is not science, but bad philosophy.

En el punto de partida de las ciencias empírico-analíticas hay un interés técnico, en el de las histórico-hermenéuticas un interés práctico, y en el de las ciencias orientadas críticamente aquel interés emancipatorio del conocimiento que, sin concederlo, estaba ya como base de las teorías tradicionales.

If it really were impossible to derive an ought from the is of the human design, then the practice of medicine would make no sense. Natural

Putting on the spectacles of science in expectation of finding an answer to everything looked at signifies inner blindness.

In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend.

From every point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be maintained in a scientific age?

that it is not the Christianity of the New Testament which is in conflict with science, but the supposed Christianity of the modern liberal Church, and that the real city of God, and that city alone, has defences which are capable of warding off the assaults of modern unbelief. However

From every point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be maintained in a scientific age? It is this problem which modern liberalism attempts to solve.

Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.

I'm not someone who quite understands the science of the Force. To me Star Wars was never about science fiction -- it was a spiritual story.

Death is just a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.

I also like to look at the dynamic that takes place between religion and science because, in a way, both are asking the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? The methodologies are diametrically opposed, but their motivation is the same the wellspring is the same in both cases.

One evening, the story goes, the two men were looking out of their laboratory window in Heidelberg at a fire raging in the nearby town of Mannheim. Curious about what might be burning, they pointed their spectroscope at the flames. They were able to detect the presence of the elements barium and strontium in the fire, whose spectra they had previously identified in their laboratory. The question struck them immediately: if they could analyse flames in Mannheim, why not the surface of the Sun?