The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
Peter MedawarThe fact that scientists do not consciously practice a formal methodology is very poor evidence that no such methodology exists. It could be said-has been said-that there is a distinctive methodology of science which scientists practice unwittingly, like the chap in Moliere who found that all his life, unknowingly, he had been speaking prose.
Peter MedawarThe Phenomenon of Man stands square in the tradition of Naturphilosophie, a philosophical indoor pastime of German origin which does not seem even by accident (though there is a great deal of it) to have contributed anything of permanent value to the storehouse of human thought.
Peter Medawar[A certain class of explanations in science are] analgesics that dull the ache of incomprehension without removing the cause.
Peter MedawarScientific reasoning is a dialogue between the possible and the actual, between proposal and disposal between what might be true, and what is in fact the case.
Peter MedawarIn no sense other than an utterly trivial one is reproduction the inverse of chemical disintegration. It is a misunderstanding of genetics to suppose that reproduction is only 'intended' to make facsimiles, for parasexual processes of genetical exchange are to be found in the simplest living things.
Peter Medawar