Quotes About Scientific

A secular approach to politics first took root in the universities, the seedbed where worldviews are planted and nurtured. As William Galston of the Brookings Institution explains, in the modern age, scholars decided that the study of politics must be "scientific"—by which they meant value free.1 As a consequence, political theory was no longer animated by a moral vision. It became purely pragmatic.

These men, committed as they were to freedom—liberty as they understood it, and viewing themselves as the guardians of it—were therefore also committed capitalists. But their scientific colleagues were increasingly finding evidence that capitalism was failing in a crucial respect: it was failing to protect the natural environment upon which all life—free or not—ultimately depends.

The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest,"36 Soros wrote. Like its bête noire, Marxism, laissez-faire economics claimed to be scientific, based upon immutable laws of nature, and also like Marxism, it has not stood the test of experience. If it were a scientific theory, it would have long ago been rejected.

The tobacco, processed food, and chemical industries face an essential conflict of interest when discussing scientific results that bear on the safety, efficacy, or healthfulness of their products.

They would not sit idly by while their product was vilified; instead, they would create a Tobacco Industry Committee for Public Information to supply a "positive" and "entirely 'pro-cigarette'" message to counter the anti-cigarette scientific one. As the U.S. Department of Justice would later put it, they decided "to deceive the American public about the health effects of smoking.

When posed to journalists, however, the loaded questions did the trick: they convinced people who didn't know otherwise that there was still a lot of doubt about the whole matter. The industry had realized that you could create the impression of controversy simply by asking questions, even if you actually knew the answers and they didn't help your case.41 And so the industry began to transmogrify emerging scientific consensus into raging scientific "debate.

If a State has reliable scientific information that demonstrates that a warning is needed for a particular food, then in the interest of public health, it should share that information with the FDA and petition for a new national standard.

I made the necessary gestures and vocalizations Stell required of me. It felt weird. Mostly because my Baptist upbringing suddenly kicked in, saying any magic you didn't see in the old Lord of the Rings was completely taboo, and even that was only liked by people like my parents. I relaxed when the process began to feel like a scientific formula I was performing with my body, instead of forming a pact with Hell that exchanged my soul for dark power.

I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.

Weber insists that the value of science is always to be questioned and not simply presupposed... He is... critical of the presupposition which underlies Strauss' position, namely that scientific reason is necessarily of value.

One of the worst intellectual catastrophes is found in the appropriation of scientific concepts and vocabulary by mediocre intelligences.

Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign.

Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.

If enough people in society could be convinced that history was governed by scientific laws: that Soviet-style Socialism was the inevitable product of historical progress: and that the Soviet Union embodied all the finest socialist ideals of peace, equality, and justice, then rational people would be incapable of defying the rule of the Soviet government and its chosen allies.

This tendency, greatly amplified, characterizes many of the more uncompromising biophilic thinkers who, in trying to construe love of nature as an ethical, rather than merely an esthetic, imperative, become ensnared in the constraints of their own subjectivity.21 These they mistake for sacred law. The most damning thing about this brand of nature worship is that it leads to outright contempt for scientific rationality.

Unfortunately, the reach of resentful anti-elitism is not limited to bureaucratic documents and ed-school screeds, which (at least it could be argued) are destined to repose unread and ignored.'; The same animosity has made inroads into the training of supposed scientific professionals.

In the thirteenth century, however, a really great scientific man appeared, who may be said to herald the dawn of modern science in Europe. This man was Roger Bacon. He

If they had been, explained Falk, they would have had to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis. For instance, if the hypothesis is that all tomatoes are red, you can disprove the hypothesis by finding a yellow tomato. "What I said in my paper," Falk told us, "that [the Hobbit] is not a microcephalic, can be falsified with one specimen from a proven microcephalic whose virtual endocast looks identical. And that is scientific.

A good education teaches us to hold contradictions reflectively rather than reactively, a habit of the heart that lies behind all social, cultural, and scientific breakthroughs.

A seance?" asked Demeter. "Not quite as scientific as reading entrails, but it couldn't hurt.

The concept of multivitamins was sold to Americans by an eager nutraceutical industry to generate profits. There was never any scientific data supporting their usage.

Disraeli's perceptive remark that: 'The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.' The

The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.

The appeal by twentieth-century pluralists to scientific method was also ideologically—and even messianically—driven. It ignored scientific data that interfered with environmentalist assumptions and misrepresented socialist faith as "scientific planning.