Quotes About Science

Science always interested me, and science, real science, was more science fiction than science fiction.

Science is like society and trade, in resting at bottom upon a basis of faith. There are some things here, too, that we can not prove, otherwise there would be nothing we can prove. Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end. It is a mistake to contrast religion and science in this respect, and to think of religion as taking everything for granted, and science as doing only clean work, and having all the loose ends gathered up and tucked in. We never reach the roots of things in science more than in religion.

I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction. I like science fiction where there's a scientific lesson, for example - when the science fiction book changes one thing but leaves the rest of science intact and explores the consequences of that. That's actually very valuable.

Industrial Society is not merely one containing 'industry,' large-scale productive units capable of supplying man's material needs in a way which can eliminate poverty: it is also a society in which knowledge plays a part wholly different from that which it played in earlier social forms, and which indeed possesses a quite different type of knowledge. Modern science is inconceivable outside an industrial society: but modern industrial society is equally inconceivable without modern science. Roughly, science is the mode of cognition of industrial society, and industry is the ecology of science.

Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.

The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.

What patients want is not rocket science, which is really unfortunate because if it were rocket science, we would be doing it. We are great at rocket science. We love rocket science. What we’re not good at are the things that are so simple and basic that we overlook them.

Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science.

Arthur Clarke says that I am first in science and second in science fiction in accordance with an agreement we have made. I say he is first in science fiction and second in science.

I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.

Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

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.

The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, 'Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science.

Science is taught like the history of science, and it's boring. Doing science fair, anything that's project-based learning, that involves field trips, that's really valuable.

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.

We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.

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.

Science and its practice are no longer free and willing today but instead are constantly terrorized by research funding gravy trains and group thinking. This is why science needs defending and it takes courage to cleanse science from those cancerous elements and to bring her forward in its rightful place again. I am humbled and honored by this recognition.

Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are any miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers.

I think you know that I classify science as British science, American science, and everybody else.

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.

It is clear that Economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science ... simply because it deals with quantities... As the complete theory of almost every other science involves the use of calculus, so we cannot have a true theory of Economics without its aid.

My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat--a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.

Both pure and applied science have gradually pushed further and further the requirements for accuracy and precision. However, applied science, particularly in the mass production of interchangeable parts, is even more exacting than pure science in certain matters of accuracy and precision.

I'm not a scientist, I was not a good science student, I felt effectively alienated from science throughout my young life, and it was only when I became an adult that I began to really appreciate from a completely different angle the power of science.

Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes.

We have lost the art of living, and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead.

I was never as focused in math, science, computer science, etcetera, as the people who were best at it. I wanted to create amazing screensavers that did beautiful visualizations of music. It's like, "Oh, I have to learn computer science to do that."

The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

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 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.

Time passed. Art came off the walls and became rituals. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present, mindless trajectory, could land those lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.

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.

There's nothing in the actual Bible that limits a Christian in their appreciation of or interest in science. Anti-science is purely a function of ignorant fundamentalism.

Reliable scientific knowledge is value free and has no moral or ethical value. Science tells us how the world is. ... Dangers and ethical issue arise only when science is applied as technology.

Philosophy is this amazing technique we've devised for getting reality to answer us back when we're getting it wrong. Science itself can't make those arguments. You actually have to rely on philosophy, on philosophy of science.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

A snappy label and a manifesto would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list. That label enabled mainstream science fiction to safely assimilate our dissident influence, such as it was. Cyberpunk could then be embraced and given prizes and patted on the head, and genre science fiction could continue unchanged.

I recommend, for many people, the study of computer science. Our natural resource in America is the mind. The mindset in computer science is very similar to the mindset in Zen.

History without the history of science, to alter slightly an apothegm of Lord Bacon, resembles a statue of Polyphemus without his eye-that very feature being left out which most marks the spirit and life of the person. My own thesis is complementary: science taught ... without a sense of history is robbed of those very qualities that make it worth teaching to the student of the humanities and the social sciences.

You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature.

The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

Belief cannot be reckoned with in terms of science, for science and faith are mutually exclusive.

Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes . . . The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses.

The brightest minds in our field have been trying to find a definition of science fiction for these past seventy years. The short answer is, science fiction stories are given as possible, not necessarily here and now, but somewhere, sometime.

The real truth about a lot of life's mysteries can be explained by science but people don't want to get in bed with science because it's cold. They prefer religion, myth, drama.