Quotes About Discovery

When the first giant bones were found in the 1820s and 1830s, scientists felt obliged to explain the bones as belonging to some oversize variant of a modern species. This was because it was believed that no species could ever become extinct, since God would not allow one of His creations to die. Eventually it became clear that this conception of God was mistaken, and the bones belonged to extinct animals.

Whoever you are, some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well. Enormous space is near.

Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.

Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.

Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.

They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job

People aren't studying the natural world any more, they're mining it. It's a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.

something." Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he'd read about them in magazines.

Dr. Grant, my dear Dr. Sattler... Welcome to Jurassic Park.

We are finding wonderful dinosaurs!' Exulted Cope. 'Wonderful, marvelous dinosaurs

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. —MARK TWAIN

but one never really understood life in the New World until confronted with the actual rude experience.

You know you can't expect to observe the animals without changing anything. It's a scientific impossibility." "Of course it is," Malcolm said. "That's the greatest single scientific discovery of the twentieth century. You can't study anything without changing it.

that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest;

Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time. We live today in an era of discovery that far outshadows the discoveries of the New World five hundred years ago.

Michael Crichton

They were making scientific history

1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards.

Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.

The meaning of these discoveries has not yet been sorted out, but it is certainly now impossible to regard the prehistoric Europeans as savages idly awaiting the blessings of Eastern civilization.

Welcome to Jurassic Park

Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. "The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate.

After all, the trouble with what the scientists said was that they were always saying something different. This year one idea, next year something else. Scientific opinion was ever changing

Young Johnson Joins the Field Trip West