Quotes About Science

Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn't know it was missing." —PAOLA ANTONELLI, curator of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art

Our current business operating system— which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators—doesn't work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: (1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery—the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Vigilance breaks prevent deadly mistakes. Restorative breaks enhance performance. Lunches and naps help us elude the trough and get more and better work done in the afternoon. A growing body of science makes it clear: Breaks are not a sign of sloth but a sign of strength.

Maybe, seen through the fresh lens of twenty-first-century behavioral and biological science, the explanation for one of the most consequential disasters in maritime history is less sinister. Maybe Captain Turner just made some bad decisions. And maybe those decisions were bad because he made them in the afternoon.

The good news is that the science demonstrates that once people relearn the fundamental practices and attitudes, and unlearn the negative ones, their motivation, and their ultimate performance, often soars. Any Type X can become a Type I.

Science and Buddhism are very similar," the Dalai Lama told some of us at a press conference before the main event, "because they are exploring the nature of reality, and both have the goal to lessen the suffering of mankind.

What is true is that mixing rewards with inherently interesting, creative, or noble tasks—deploying them without understanding the peculiar science of motivation—is a very dangerous game. When used in these situations, "if-then" rewards usually do more harm than good. By neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—they limit what each of us can achieve.

Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired (2012) By Till Roenneberg If you're going to read one book about chronobiology, make it this one. You'll learn more from this smart, concise work—organized into twenty-four chapters to represent the twenty-four hours of the day—than from any other single source.

Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation (2017) By Alan Burdick A wonderful and witty work of science journalism that captures the complexity, frustration, and exhilaration of trying to understand the nature of time.

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.

Over the past 50 years we got versions of X-ray specs and space vacations, and even death rays. But the X-ray specs don't fit on your face - they're big things that screen your luggage for guns. Space vacations are real, but they cost $20 million. We have death rays, but you have to be a triple Ph.D. to play with them.

Science fiction inspires scientists, but it doesn't exist to dictate what our future should look like. Great science fiction is fun to read and it makes you think, period. Claiming anything more than that is dicey. Grand visions of the future were more prevalent in the golden-age science fiction, but all fiction is a reflection of the current times. As science moves more quickly, the horizon of science fiction tends to recede closer to the present.

Dealing with the Andromeda microparticle had gone from a purely scientific undertaking to a secret arms race with the sort of global repercussions not encountered since the height of the Cold War. As a result, Project Wildfire had grown to consume a disproportionate amount of resources. It had become a gargantuan feat just to hide its dozens of subprojects from the public view, costing billions of dollars and millions of man-hours.

It's all just chemicals.

I do engineering, not religion.

Through the lens of his socialism, Haldane saw—and was offended by—the sociopolitical presumptions, so many of them increasingly contrary to his own, hidden in mainline doctrine. Little was yet known about human heredity and, as Haldane put it, "many of the deeds done in America in the name of eugenics are about as much justified by science as were the proceedings of the inquisition by the gospels."54

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. —Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, p. xii

It is difficult to appreciate the complexity of the brain because the numbers are so huge. The average brain consists of 100 billion neurons.

Daniel J. Levitin

Alternative medicine is simply medicine for which there is no evidence of effectiveness. Once

we can hear music under water or in other fluids if the water (or other fluid) molecules are caused to vibrate. But in the vacuum of space, with no molecules to vibrate, there is no sound. (The next time you're watching Star Trek and hear the roar of the engines in space, you'll have some good Trekkie Trivia to share.)

But science and experience reveal that with self-reflection and understanding, non-ideal patterns we've adopted from our own pasts can be transformed. Be patient with yourself and with your family members. With kindness and understanding, to yourself and to others, change can be nurtured and good things can emerge.

synthesizing the quantitative rigor of scientific discoveries with the subtlety of our subjective lives. When