Science Quotes
Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understands reality?
"Well, I don`t think rocks would be very interesting to God," I said. "They just sit on the ground and erode." "You think that way because you are unable to see the storm of activity at the rock`s molecular level or the level beneath that, and so on. And you are limited by your perception of time. If you watched a rock your entire life it would never look different. But if you were God and could observe the rock over fifteen billion years as though only a second had passed, the rock would be frantic with activity. It would be shrinking and growing and trading matter with its environment. Its molecules would travel the universe and become a partner to amazing things that we could never imagine. By contrast, the odd collection of molecules that make a human being will stay in that arrangement for less time than it takes the universe to blink.
Archaeology is the only discipline that seeks to study human behavior and thought without having any direct contact with either.
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I`ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
Science and art belong to the world, and the barriers of nationality vanish before them.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure.