• Question: What is your favourite ever quote about science?

    Asked by mtrewern to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi mtrewen,

      Goodness, my memory’s like a sieve when it comes to quotes! One that I do like comes not from a scientists, but a science fiction writer – Arthur C Clarke. He famously said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Working with new and emerging technologies, I’m constantly reminded of this!

      This is actually one of three “laws” that he came up with which are pretty good – you can see all three here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Not possible, you’ll just have to fail me. I love science quotes.

      The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. Sir William Bragg

      Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
      – Bertrand Russell
      There’s so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all.
      – Robert Orben
      “Listen, this is gonna be one hell of a bowel movement. Afterwards he’ll be lucky if he has any bones left!”
      – Prof. H.J. Farnsworth on the Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion
      It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
      – Konrad Lorenz
      An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
      – Friedrich Engels
      I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
      – Carl Sagan

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I quite like, “there are lies, damn lies and statistics”.
      Stats is the bane of many lives, including mine at times.

      Then as I’ve mentioned before,

      Carl Sagan: ‘We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting starlight’

      Also Sagan: ‘The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together’

      And a few more for good measure:

      Aldous Huxley: Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored

      Richard Dawkins: By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out

      Dalai Lama: If science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts.

      James Watson: I don’t think we are here for anything, we’re just products of evolution. You can say “Gee, your life is meaningless if you don’t think there’s a purpose” but I’m anticipating a good lunch

      Richard Dawkins: [Evolution is] a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen’s use of language, it’s a fact, … Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it’s a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they’re theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved

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