And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.

Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence.

We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.

I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.

We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography.

No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry.

These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science.