Quotes About Discovery

For every problem in a given discipline of science, there exists a species or other entity or phenomenon ideal for its solution. (Example: a kind of mollusk, Aplysia, proved ideal for exploring the cellular base of memory.) Conversely, for every species or other entity or phenomenon, there exist important problems for the solution of which it is ideally suited. (Example: bats were logical for the discovery of sonar.)

What counts in science is the importance of the discovery. What matters in literature is the originality and power of the metaphor.

I am now convinced that it is better to work from science into literature than to try the reverse, though many have done so with distinction. To understand the scientific culture deeply and, even more, to express the emotions that attend scientific exploration require that the writer inhabit science for a substantial part of his life, intent upon making important discoveries and placing them within the canon.

What happened, what we think happened, in distant memory, is built around a small collection of dominating images. In one of my own from the age of seven, I stand in the shallows off Paradise Beach, staring down at a huge jellyfish in water so still and clear that its every detail is revealed as though it were trapped in glass. The creature is astonishing. It existed outside my previous imagination.

ALMOST ALL MY LIFE I HAVE DREAMED OF THE TROPICS. MY fantasies drifted far beyond the benign temperate zone of Thoreau and Muir.

For every problem in a given discipline of science, there exists a species or other entity or phenomenon ideal for its solution. (Example: a kind of mollusk, Aplysia, proved ideal for exploring the cellular base of memory.) Conversely, for very species or other entity or phenomenon, there exist important problems for the solution of which it is ideally suited. (Example: bats were logical for the discovery of sonar.)

An estimated hundred billion star systems make up the Milky Way galaxy, and astronomers believe that all are orbited by an average of at least one planet.

The idea and its supporting logic came in pieces

The unknown and prodigious are drugs to the scientific imagination, stirring insatiable hunger with a single taste.

The longing for odysseys and faraway adventure is in our genes.

A great deal remains to be learned about the genetic control of brain development

Whoever created the world went to a lot of trouble. It would be downright rude not to go out and see as much of it as possible.

Nobody can find me here, he thought. And then he thought, what if nobody can find me here?

I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

Today's science is tomorrow's technology.

Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate...Hydrogen bombs will not produce themselves.

There is nothing at the end of any road better than may be found beside it.

It takes most a lifetime to discover this great truth... we find our greatest joy in God. After years of fighting the world, the tortured adult is ready to surrender. Ready to 'give up.' Ready to... come home.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

There was the greatest store of fowl that ever we saw.

Away from the safety of your home, the universe was not made for your convenience.

The hardest part of research is always to find a question that's big enough that it's worth answering, but little enough that you actually can answer it.

The world is not a prison house, but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.