So much of science proceeds by telling stories.

Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.

The median isn't the message.

Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.

How did scientists get money in the past? They were either lucky and independently wealthy, like Darwin, or they had patrons, like Galileo. Universities or governments have become patrons only in the last few generations. Many of the great scientists of the past were in debt to their patrons in the same sense that modern scientists are influenced by what their granting agencies want.

World views are social constructions and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully.

Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.