Quotes About Science

I come back to the science that is in it to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and climate change. It's about science, science, science and science, innovation, as we rebuild America, create jobs, invest in our people and turn this economy around.

When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.

There is no science in global warming. "Mr. Limbaugh, that's typical of what you! That's the most outrageous statement I've ever heard anybody ever make! No science in global warming?" Do you know how I know there's no science in global warming, folks? Because they tell us a "consensus of scientists" agrees that X. There is no consensus in science.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.

I would teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world and that for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology - from medicine to industry.

It had also been my belief since I started writing fiction that science fiction is never really about the future. When science fiction is old, you can only read it as being pretty much about the moment in which it was written. But it seemed to me that the toolkit that science fiction had given me when I started working had become the toolkit of a kind of literary naturalism that could be applied to an inherently incredible present.

Science, pure science, is leading us in a sense astray. Leading us astray with the idea that everybody has got to have everything that they want even if it means polluting the entire environment. It is a case of lets just keep one or two canisters of the smallpox virus because we'll never know when we might need it. Science is becoming very much a Dark Power, in many ways.

I guess...on one hand, I spent way too much time watching science fiction and reading science fiction when I was growing up. But a part of it is I also never felt much of a connection to the world in which I lived while I was growing up, and so, oddly enough, I think I felt a lot more connected to the worlds that I read about in science fiction.

There is something wrong with using faith - belief without evidence - as a political weapon. I wouldn't say there is something similar about using science. Science - or the products of science like technology - is just a way of achieving something real, something that happens, something that works.

The private motives of scientists are not the trend of science. The trend of science is made by the needs of society: navigation before the eighteenth century, manufacture thereafter; and in our age I believe the liberation of personality. Whatever the part which scientists like to act, or for that matter which painters like to dress, science shares the aims of our society just as art does.

The science behind Interstellar is interesting, because some of it is absolutely real astrophysics and orbital mechanics, some of it is theoretical physics, and some of it is completely Hollywood. When a science fiction movie is based on plausible science, it's really good.

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: "Let us be friends."

No doubt science cannot admit of compromises, and can only bring out the complete truth. Hence there must be controversy, and the strife may be, and sometimes must be, sharp. But must it even then be personal? Does it help science to attack the man as well as the statement? On the contrary, has not science the noble privilege of carrying on its controversies without personal quarrels?

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

Common sense … has the very curious property of being more correct retrospectively than prospectively. It seems to me that one of the principal criteria to be applied to successful science is that its results are almost always obvious retrospectively; unfortunately, they seldom are prospectively. Common sense provides a kind of ultimate validation after science has completed its work; it seldom anticipates what science is going to discover.

There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.

There are certain kinds of people who write science fiction. I think a lot of us married late. A lot of us are mama's boys. I lived at home until I was 27. But most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.

The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

Science is wonderful, science is important, and so are children, so are young people, and so what could be better than to write a science book for young people?

An enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful. As I have said above, these defences generally exhibit themselves most emphatically in the form of appeals to physical science. And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular as the singular invention of the theory of races.

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitiousfabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance

Restoration ecology is experimental science, a science of love and altruism. In its attempts to reverse the processes of ecosystem degradation it runs exactly counter to the market system, to land speculation, to the whole cultural attitude of regarding the Earth as commodity rather than community. It is a soft-souled science.

And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife?

I tried to get the word out to people who are information hubs in their communities, because they could propagate the call quickly. One challenge is that breaking science fiction means, well, breaking science fiction. Many communities of colour have a different approach to narratives of science.

I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence.

Since I was really little, I've just always had an obsession with, not just science fiction, but science and space. And also because as time passes and the more advanced science becomes, the more interesting it becomes.

Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical.

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief. See how much belongs to the word "Explosion" alone, of which the ancients knew nothing.

A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity

The finest and healthiest thing about science is, as in the mountains, the brisk air blowing around in it.--The spiritually delicate (such as artists) shun and slander science owing to this air.

Most people...are put off science because maths is the gateway and they can't handle it. What we should be teaching is operational maths because, in general, the maths we need to carry out science is pretty straightforward.

Science really creates wealth and opportunity which did not exist before. Whereas the old order was based on competition, the new order of science makes possible, for the first time, a cooperative creative effort in which every one is the gainer and no one the loser.

It is an end with priests and gods, if man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself - it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alones is mortality: Thou shalt not know.

Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.

It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.

It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)

At the heart of science is experimentation. Science doesn't care what you think. What's important is experimenting and actually working stuff out.

Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom.

It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good.

Brian and I were both science students. You know science sort of math and physics side, you know.

I grew up in England and we spent most of the time on Latin and Greek and very little on science, and I think that was good because it meant we didn't get turned off. It was... Science was something we did for fun and not because we had to.

It is hard to rationalise or explain why you love what you love. But I have always been interested in science and maths, and in high school I was struck that you could use maths to understand nature and science.

I'm not a magician. I'am an alchemyst, a man of science, though perhaps not the science you would be familiar with.

I see no conflict between science and religion. When you take truth in either one of these realms, science or religion, they match perfectly.

Skeptics, who flatly deny the existence of any unexplained phenomenon in the name of 'rationalism,' are among the primary contributors to the rejection of science by the public. People are not stupid and they know very well when they have seen something out of the ordinary. When a so-called expert tells them the object must have been the moon or a mirage, he is really teaching the public that science is impotent or unwilling to pursue the study of the unknown.

The older generation had greater respect for land than science. But we live in an age when science, more than soil, has become the provider of growth and abundance. Living just on the land creates loneliness in an age of globality.