Archimedes
(ca. 235 bc) b. Syracuse Concerning levers Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth. Asimov, Isaac ... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov,The Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 226. (1) Available from Amazon.com Asimov, Isaac Isaac Asimov, Sail On! Sail On! In The Relativity of
Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 220. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Bacon, Francis Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, J.M. Dent and Son,
London, England, 1973, pp 71-72. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Bacon, Francis Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Liberal Arts Press, Inc., New
York, p 93. (5) Available
from Amazon.com Bierce, Ambrose Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, Dover Publications,
NY, 1958, p 70. (3) Available
from Amazon.com Binet, Alfred Quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, W.W.
Norton and Co., Ltd, NY, 1996, p 181. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Boltzman, Ludwig Ludwig Boltzmann. Populaere Schriften Essay 19, Ludwig Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, B. McGuinness (ed) Reidel, Dordrecht, 1974, p 64. (7) Boltzman, Ludwig D. Flamm. Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 14: 257 (1983). (7) Curie, Marie Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research. Eve Curie (translated by Vincent Sheean), Madame Curie, Pocket books, Simon and Schuster, New york, 1946, pp 352-253. (7) Newer edition available from Amazon.com Churchill, Winston, Spencer Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, Fontana, London, 1972, pp 123-124. (1) Newer edition available from Amazon.com Churchill, Winston S. Quoted in: Irving Klotz, Bending perception, a book review, Nature, 1996, Volume 379, p 412 (1). Crick, Francis Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit, Basic Books, New York, 1988, pp 15-16. (1) Available from Amazon.com Cuppy, Will Will Cuppy, How to Become Extinct, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 13. (1) Available from Amazon.com Darwin, Charles Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, John Murray, London, 1859. (1) Newer edition available from Amazon.com Davy, Sir Humphrey Thomas Hager, Force of Nature, Simon ans Schuster, New York, 1995, p 86. (1) Available from Amazon.com Drake, Frank Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? Dell Publishing, New York, 1994, p.232. (1) Available from Amazon.com Dyson, Freeman(On the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration) The essential fact which emerges ... is that the three smallest and most active reservoirs ( of carbon in the global carbon cycle), the atmosphere, the plants and the soil, are all of roughly the same size. This means that large human disturbance of any one of these reservoirs will have large effects on all three. We cannot hope either to understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.
Freeman Dyson, From Eros to Gaia, Penguin Books, London, New York, 1993, pp 132-133. Newer edition available from Amazon.com Dyson, Freeman Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions, Harper and Row, New York, 1988, p 135. Available from Amazon.com Eddington, Sir
Arthur Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, pp 9-10. Available from Amazon.com Eddington,
Sir Arthur In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science. An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, "what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or--to translate the analogy--"If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!" Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, p 16. Available from Amazon.com Einstein, Albert Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, The Wisdom Library, New York, 1949, pp 21-22. (1) Newer edition available from Amazon.com Einstein, Albert When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives. Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig. Quoted in C.P. Snow, Variety of Men, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, U.K. 1969, p 77. (1) Available from Amazon.com Feynman, Richard P. Richard P. Feynman, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p 9. (1) Different edition available from Amazon.com Frisch, Max Rollo May, The Cry for Myth, Norton, New York, p 57. (4) Available from Amazon.com Gell-Mann, Murray Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, W.H. Freeman, New York, 1994, pp 180-181. (1) Hawking, Stephen W. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam, NY, 1988, p 174. Available from Amazon.com Hawking, Stephen W. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam, NY, 1988, p 157. Available from Amazon.com Ingram, Jay W. An article in Bioscience in November 1987 by Julie Ann Miller claimed the cortex was a "quarter-metre square." That is napkin-sized, about ten inches by ten inches. Scientific American magazine in September 1992 upped the ante considerably with an estimated of 1 1/2 square metres; thats a square of brain forty inches on each side, getting close to the card-table estimate. A psychologist at the University of Toronto figured it would cover the floor of his living room (I haven't seen his living room), but the prize winning estimate so far is from the British magazine New Scientist's poster of the brain published in 1993 which claimed that the cerebral cortex, if flattened out, would cover a tennis court. How can there be such disagreement? How can so many experts not know how big the cortex is? I don't know, but I'm on the hunt for an expert who will say the cortex, when fully spread out, will cover a football field. A Canadian football field. Jay Ingram, The Burning House, Unlocking the Mysteries of the Brain Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, U.K., 1995 p 11. John Paul II,
Pope (Karol Wojtyla) James Reston, Galileo, A Life, HarperCollins, NY, 1994, p 461. (1) Available from Amazon.com Johnson, George George Johnson Fire in the Mind, Vintage Books, New York, 1996, p 326. (1) Available from Amazon.com Johnson, Samuel, Dr. James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 3rd Edn., Malone, London, 1799 (Abridged Edn., The New American Library, NY, 1968, p 192.) Available from Amazon.com Kauffman, Stuart Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp 47-48. Available from Amazon.com Kauffman, Stuart Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 112. Available from Amazon.com Kauffman, Stuart Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find
eight spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the
right, or 13 left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The
striking fact is that these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the
famous Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Here, each term is
the sum of the previous two terms. The phenomenon is well known and called
phyllotaxis. Many are the efforts of biologists to understand why
pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants exhibit this remarkable
pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all these odd things need
not reflect selection or historical accident. Some of the best efforts to
understand phyllotaxis appeal to a form of self-organization. Paul Green,
at Stanford, has argued persuasively that the Fibonacci series is just
what one would expects as the simplest self-repeating pattern that can be
generated by the particular growth processes in the growing tips of the
tissues that form sunflowers, pinecones, and so forth. Like a snowflake
and its sixfold symmetry, the pinecone and its phyllotaxis may be part of
order for free Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 151. (1) Available from Amazon.com Kaku, Michio Michio Kaku Hyperspace, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 263. (1)Available from Amazon.com Kaku, Michio Michio Kaku Hyperspace, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 263. (1) Available from Amazon.com Kealey, Terence Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects--to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976. Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concord had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country. Terence Kealey Wasting Billions, the Scientific Way, The Sunday Times, October 13, 1996. (1) Keynes, John Maynard Quoted in: K. Eric Drexler Engines of Creation: the
Coming Era of Nanotechnology, Bantam, New York, 1987, p 231. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Lewis, C.S. If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's
Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that
Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality he hardly mentions it. It
is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. In the
same spirit, Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in
itself... The true object is to extend Man's power to the performance of
all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work; but his
goal is that of the magician...
No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those
whose love of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement
the efficacy comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the
presence of bad elements in not irrelevant to the direction the efficacy
takes. It might be going too far to say that the modern scientific
movement was tainted from its birth; but I think it would be true to say
that it was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious
hour. Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a
price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required.
Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man, Collins,
Fount Paperback, 1978, p. 46. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Leakey, Richard and Roger
Lewin Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, 1995, The Sixth
Extinction, Anchor, New York, pp 122-123. Available
from Amazon.com Lippmann, Walter In the course of a debate with Lewis Terman: quoted in Stephen Jay
Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, W.W. Norton and Co., Ltd, NY, 1996,
p 181. (1) Lucretius Lucretius On the nature of things (De Rerum Natura),
Sphere Books, London, 1969, p. 233. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken, H.L., Reprinted in A Mencken Crestomathy,
Vintage Books, New York, 1982, p. 12, first printed in the Smart Set,
Aug. 1919, pp 60-61. (1)
Michelson,
Albert, Abraham Quoted by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield in The
Arrow of Time, Flamingo, London 1991, p 67. Available
from Amazon.com Mill, John Stuart Quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, W.W.
Norton and Co., Ltd, NY, 1996, p 181. (1) Monod, Jacques Jacques Monod Chance and Necessity Alfred A.
Knopf, New York, 1971, p xi. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Newton, Isaac E.N. da C. Andrade, Sir Isaac Newton, His Life and
Work, Doubleday Anchor, New York, 1950, p. 35. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Pasteur, Louis René Dubos, Pasteur and Modern Science,
Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1960, p. 145. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Quoted in H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Prindle,
Wever and Schmidt, Boston, 1988. (2) Available
from Amazon.com Pauling, Linus Linus Pauling, The Meaning of Life, Edited by
David Friend and the editors of Life, Little Brown, New York,
1990, p. 69. (6) Polanyi, John C. John C. Polanyi. Excerpt from the keynote address to the
Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Toronto June 2,
1996. Polanyi, John C. John C. Polanyi In Martin Moskovits (Ed.), Science
and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures, Anansi
Press, Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Postman, Neil Neil Postman, The End of Education, Alfred
Knopf, New York, 1995, p 107. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Postman, Neil Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics,
biology, or chemistry--is not even a "subject"--but a moral
imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give
perspective, balance, and humility to learning. Neil Postman, The End of Education, Alfred A.
Knopf, New York, 1995, p 68. Available
from Amazon.com Russell, Bertrand, Arthur, William Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy,
Meridian Books, Cleveland and New York, 1960, pp 31-32. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Russell, Bertrand,
Arthur, William Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy,
Allen and Unwin, London, 1979, p 512. (6) Available
from Amazon.com Snow, C(harles) P(ercy) This last paper contains no references and quotes no authority. All of
them are written in a style unlike any other theoretical physicist's. They
contain very little mathematics. There is a good deal of verbal
commentary. The conclusions, the bizarre conclusions, emerge as though
with the greatest of ease: the reasoning is unbreakable. It looks as
though he had reached the conclusions by pure thought, unaided, without
listening to the opinions of others. To a surprisingly large extent, that
is precisely what he had done.
It is pretty safe to say that, so long as physics lasts, no one will
again hack out three major breakthroughs in one year.
C.P. Snow, Variety of Men, Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth, U.K. 1969, pp 85-86. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Szent-Györgyi, Albert Albert Szent-Györgyi, The Crazy Ape, Grosset
and Dunlap, New York, 1971, p 72. (6) Available
from Amazon.com Szent-Györgyi, Albert When the human brain took its final shape, say, 100,000 years ago,
problems and solutions must have been exceedingly simple. There were no
long-range problems and man had to grab any immediate advantage. The world
has changed but we are still willing to sell more distant vital interests
for some minor immediate gains. Our military industrial complex, which
endangers the future of mankind, to a great extent owes its stability to
the fact that so may people depend on it for their living.
This holds true for all of us, including myself. When I received the
Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do
something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest
it, to buy shares. I knew World War II was coming and I was afraid that if
I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked
my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I
lost my money and saved my soul.
Albert Szent-Györgyi, The Crazy Ape, Grosset
and Dunlap, New York, 1971, p 72. (6) Available
from Amazon.com Turing, Alan, Mathison Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing the Enigma of
Intelligence, Unwin Hyman, London, 1983, p 251. (1) Twain, Mark (Clemens, Samuel, Langhorne) Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and
as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen.
Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an
Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a
Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then
I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the
cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a
chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and
flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on
a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, A Fawcett
Crest Book, Greenwich, Conn., 1962, pp 180-181. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Watson, Thomas
(Founder of IBM) Quoted by Charles Hard Townes In Martin
Moskovits (Ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel
Lareates Lectures, Anansi Press, Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Woolley, Richard
(U.K. Astronomer Royal) Quoted by Charles Hard Townes In Martin
Moskovits (Ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel
Lareates Lectures, Anansi Press, Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Available
from Amazon.com The number in parenthesis following a quotation identifies the
contributor in the following numbered list. (1) The Editor (2) James K. Love (jklove@compassnet.com) and William D. Ross
(billross@deepcove.com)
(3) Bruce Miller (Bruce.Miller@hq.gte.com)
(4) Cited by Neil Postman in The End of Education, Alfred
Knopf, NY, 1995, p 10.
(5) Dr. John Hetherington, Department of Psychology, Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale, IL 62901-6502, USA, "sawtooth@siu.edu."
(6) Cited by Thomas Hager in Force of Nature, Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1995.
(7) Cited by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield in The Arrow of Time,
Flamingo, London 1991 |
Arquímedes
(California 235 bc) b. Syracuse Acerca de palancas Déme un lugar para estar de pie, y moveré la Tierra. Asimov,
Isaac ... Mi respuesta a él era, "... Cuando la gente pensó que la Tierra era plana, ellos se equivocaron. Cuando la gente pensó que la Tierra era esférica ellos se equivocaron. Pero si Ud piensa que el pensamiento de la Tierra es esférico es tan incorrecto como el pensamiento de la Tierra es plano, entonces su vista(opinión) es wronger que ambos reunidos. " Isaac Asimov, la Relatividad de los Incorrectos, Kensington Libros, Nueva York, 1996, p 226. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Asimov, Isaac ˇIsaac Asimov, Vaya en barco Sobre! ˇVela Sobre! En la
Relatividad de los Incorrectos, Kensington
Libros, Nueva York, 1996, p 220. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Tocino, Francisca Francisca Bacon, el Avance de Estudio, J.M.
Abolladura e Hijo, Londres, Inglaterra, 1973, pp
71-72. (1) edición
Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Bacon, Francisca Francisca Bacon, Novum Organum,
Prensa de Artes Liberal, sociedad anónima., Nueva York, p 93. (5) Disponible
de Amazon.com Ambrosio Bierce, el Diccionario del Diablo, Dover
Publicaciones, NUEVA YORK, 1958, p 70. (3) Disponible
de Amazon.com Cotizado(citado) en Stephen Jay Gould, el Mismeasure
de Hombre, W.W. Norton y Compańía, Ltd,
NUEVA YORK, 1996, p 181. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com
Ludwig Boltzmann. Populaere Schriften Ensayo 19, Ludwig Boltzmann, Física Teórica y Problemas Filosóficos, B. McGuinness (editor Reidel), Dordrecht, 1974, p 64. (7) Boltzman,
Ludwig D. Flamm. Tachón. Hist. Phil. Sci. 14: 257 (1983). (7) Curie, Marie Sin la duda, estos sońadores no merecen de riqueza, porque ellos no lo desean. Aún así, una sociedad bien organizada debería asegurar a tales trabajadores el medio eficiente de lograr su tarea, en una vida liberada del cuidado material y libremente consagrado para investigar. Víspera Curie (traducido por Vincent Sheean), Seńora Curie, libros De bolsillo, Simon y Schuster, Nueva York, 1946, pp 352-253. (7) edición Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Churchill, Winston,
Spencer Winston S. Churchill, Mi Temprana Vida, Fontana, Londres, 1972, pp 123-124. (1) edición Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Churchill, Winston
S. Cotizado(citado) en: Irving Klotz, Doblando percepción, una revisión de libro, Naturaleza, 1996, Volumen 379, p 412 (1). Calambre, Francisca Francisca Crick, Que Búsqueda Loca, Libros Básicos, Nueva York, 1988, pp 15-16. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Cuppy, Van
a Va a Cuppy, Como Extinguirse, Universidad de Chicago Prensa, Chicago, 1984, p. 13. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Darwin, Carlos Carlos Darwin, el Origen de Especie, Juan Murray, Londres, 1859. (1) edición Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Davy,
Seńor Humphrey Thomas Hager, Fuerza de Naturaleza, Simon ans Schuster, Nueva York, 1995, p 86. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Pato, Frank żFrank Drake y Dava Sobel, Están Alguien Ahí? Industria editorial de Valle pequeńo, Nueva York, 1994, p.232. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Dyson, Ciudadano de honor( Sobre el anthropogenic aumentan en la concentración de dióxido atmosférica de carbón) El hecho esencial que surge... Son esto los tres depósitos más pequeńos y más activos (de carbón en el ciclo global de carbón), la atmósfera, las plantas y el suelo, son todos aproximadamente el mismo tamańo. Esto significa(piensa) esto la perturbación grande humana de alguien de estos depósitos tendrá efectos grandes sobre todos tres. No podemos esperar o sea entender o sea manejar el carbón en la atmósfera a no ser que nosotros entendamos y manejemos los árboles y el suelo también.
Ciudadano de honor Dyson, de Eros a Gaia, Libros de Pingüino, Londres, Nueva York, 1993, pp 132-133. Edición más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Dyson, Ciudadano de honor Infinito de Ciudadano de honor Dyson en Todas las Direcciones, Harper y Fila, Nueva York, 1988, p 135. Disponible de Amazon.com Eddington,
Seńor Arthur Seńor Arthur Eddington, la Filosofía de Ciencia Física, Ana Arbor(anuncio Arbor) Libros en rústica, la Universidad de Michigan Prensa, 1958, pp 9-10. Disponible de Amazon.com Eddington,
Seńor Arthur En la aplicación de esta analogía, el coger significa(aguanta,apoya) el cuerpo de conocimiento que constituye la ciencia física, y la red para el equipo sensorial e intelectual el que usamos en la obtención de ello. El bastidor de la red se corresponde a la observación; para el conocimiento que no ha sido o no podían ser obtenido por la observación no es admitido en la ciencia física. Un espectador puede oponerse que primer generalisation se equivoque. " Hay muchas criaturas de mar bajo dos pulgadas de largo, sólo su red no es adaptada para cogerlos. " El icthyologist despide esta objeción con desprecio. " Todo incapturable por mi red es ipso facto fuera el alcance de conocimiento icthyological. En breve " que mi red no puede coger no es el pescado. " O - para traducir la analogía - " Si Ud simplemente no adivina, Ud reclama un conocimiento del universo físico descubierto de algún otro modo que por los métodos de ciencia física, y reconocidamente incomprobable por tales métodos. Ud es un metaphysician. ˇBah! " Seńor Arthur Eddington, la Filosofía de Ciencia Física, Ana Arbor(anuncio Arbor) Libros en rústica, la Universidad de Michigan Prensa, 1958, p 16. Disponible de Amazon.com Einstein, Albert Albert Einstein, el Mundo como Veo Ello, la Biblioteca de Sabiduría, Nueva York, 1949, pp 21-22. (1) edición Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Einstein, Albert Cuando yo era todavía un hombre bastante precoz jóven, ya realicé(comprendí) el más vistosamente la inutilidad de las esperanzas y aspiraciones las que la mayor parte hombres persiguen en todas partes de sus vidas. El bienestar y la felicidad nunca me aparecieron como un objetivo absoluto. Hasta soy inclinado para comparar tales objetivos morales a las ambiciones de un cerdo. Cotizado(citado) en C.P. Nieve, Variedad de Hombres, Libros de Pingüino, Harmondsworth, Reino Unido 1969, p 77. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Feynman,
Richard P. Richard P. Feynman, QED, la Teoría Extrańa de Luz y Materia(asunto), Libros de Pingüino, Londres, 1990, p 9. (1) edición Diferente disponible de Amazon.com Frisch, Max(1911-) B. Suiza La tecnología es la destreza de tan para arreglar el mundo que no lo experimentamos.
Rollo Puede, el Grito para Mito, Norton, Nueva York, p 57. (4) Disponible de Amazon.com Gell
- Mann, Murray Murray Gell-Mann Gell-Mann Gell-Mann, el Quark y el Jaguar, W.H. Ciudadano de honor, Nueva York, 1994, pp 180-181. (1) Halconería, Stephen W. Stephen W. Halconería, una Historia Breve de Tiempo: del Golpe Grande a Agujeros Negros, Bantam, NUEVA YORK, 1988, p 174. Disponible de Amazon.com Halconería,
Stephen W. Stephen W. Halconería, una Historia Breve de Tiempo: del Golpe Grande a Agujeros Negros, Bantam, NUEVA YORK, 1988, p 157. Disponible de Amazon.com Ingram,
Arrendajo W. Un artículo en Bioscience en noviembre 1987 por la Ana Miller(anuncio Miller) de Julia demandó que la corteza era " un cuadrado(plaza) de metro cuarto. " Esto es clasificado de servilleta, aproximadamente diez pulgadas por diez pulgadas. Revista científica Americana en septiembre 1992 upped la apuesta inicial bastante con un estimado de 1 metros de cuadrado(plaza) de 1/2; thats un cuadrado(plaza) de cerebro cuarenta pulgadas sobre cada lado, poniendo cerca de la estimación de mesa de juego. Un psicólogo en la Universidad de Toronto calculó esto cubriría el piso de su sala de estar (no he visto su sala de estar), pero el premio ganando la estimación hasta ahora es de la revista Británica el cartel del Científico Nuevo del cerebro publicado en 1993 que demandó que la corteza cerebral, si aplanado de, cubriría una pista de tenis. żCómo allí puede estar tal desacuerdo? żCómo puede tantos expertos no saben como grande la corteza es? No sé, pero estoy sobre la caza para un experto quien dirá la corteza, cuando totalmente extender, cubrirá un campo de fútbol. Un campo de fútbol canadiense. Arrendajo Ingram, la Casa que se Quema, Ab los Misterios de los Libros de Pingüino Cerebrales, Harmondsworth, Reino Unido, 1995 p 11. Juan Paul II,
Papa (Karol Wojtyla) James Reston, Galileo, una Vida, HarperCollins, NUEVA YORK, 1994, p 461. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Johnson,
Jorge Jorge Johnson Enciende(despide) en la Mente, Libros Ańejos, Nueva York, 1996, p 326. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Johnson, Samuel,
Doctor. James Boswell la Vida de Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 3r Edn., Malone, Londres, 1799 (Abreviado Edn., la Biblioteca Nueva Americana, NUEVA YORK, 1968, p 192.) Disponible de Amazon.com Kauffman,
Estuardo Estuardo Kauffman En casa en el Universo, Prensa de Universidad de Oxford, 1995, pp 47-48. Disponible de Amazon.com Kauffman, Estuardo Estuardo Kauffman En casa en el Universo, Prensa de Universidad de Oxford, 1995, p 112. Disponible de Amazon.com Kauffman, Estuardo Recoja una pińa y cuente las filas espirales de balanza(escalas). Ud
puede encontrar ocho espirales la terminación a la izquierda y 13
espirales la terminación a la derecha, o 13 izquierdo y 21 espirales
derechas, u otros pares de números. El hecho asombroso es que estos pares
de números son números adyacentes en la serie famosa Fibonacci:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Aquí, cada término es la suma de anteriores
dos términos(condiciones). El fenómeno es conocido y llamó phyllotaxis.
Mucho son los esfuerzos de biólogos para entender por qué las pińas,
girasoles, y muchas otras plantas exponen este modelo notable. Los
organismos las cosas más extrańas, pero todas estas cosas impares no
necesitan(tienen que) reflejar la selección o el accidente histórico.
Unos esfuerzos de lo mejor de entender phyllotaxis
apelan a una forma de auto-organización. Paul Green, en Stanford,
ha discutido persuasivamente que la serie Fibonacci
es solamente(justo) que uno esperaría como el modelo de auto-repetir
simple que puede ser generado por los procesos de crecimiento particulares
en las puntas(consejos) crecientes de los tejidos lo que forman girasoles,
pińas, etcétera, etcétera. Como un copo de nieve y su simetría séxtupla,
la pińa y su phyllotaxis pueden ser la
parte de orden(pedido) gratis Estuardo Kauffman En casa en el Universo, Prensa de Universidad de Oxford, 1995, p 151. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Kaku,
Michio Michio Kaku Hiperespacio, Prensa de Universidad de Oxford, 1995, p 263. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Kaku, Michio Michio Kaku Hiperespacio, Prensa de Universidad de Oxford, 1995, p 263. (1) Disponible de Amazon.com Kealey,
Terence La política de ciencia Británica de la posguerra ilustra la locura de dinero gastador sobre la investigación. El gobierno decidió, como esto inspeccionó las ruinas de Europa rasgada por guerra en 1945, que el futuro pone en computadoras, la potencia nuclear y el avión de motor, tan administraciones sucesivas el dinero vertido en estos proyectos - al éxito enorme técnico. La primera computadora de unidad central del mundo comercial era Británica, vendida por Ferrranti en 1951; el primer avión del mundo comercial de motor era Británico, el Cometa, en el servicio en 1952; la primera central nuclear era Británica, Calder el Pasillo, comisionado en 1956; y el del mundo primero y sólo el avión supersónico comercial de motor estaba Francés de angloamericano, Concorde, en el servicio en 1976. Aún los que técnicos avanzan nos mutilaron económicamente, porque ellos eran tan incomerciales. La generación nuclear de electricidad, por ejemplo, había perdido 2.1 mil millones de libras a 1975 (2.1 mil millones de libras era muy entonces); la concordia nos había perdido, solo, 2.3 mil millones de libras a 1976; el Cometa se estrelló y América ahora domina computadoras. Tenían estas sumas enormes de dinero no sido gastado sobre la investigación, nosotros ahora seríamos un país considerablemente más rico. Terence Kealey Gasto de Mil millones, el Camino(manera) Científico, el domingo Veces, el 13 de octubre de 1996. (1) Keynes,
Juan Maynard Cotizado(citado) en: K. Eric
Drexler los Motores de Creación: la Era
que Viene de Nanotechnology, Bantam,
Nueva York, 1987, p 231. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Lewis, C.S. Si comparamos al trompetista principal de la era nueva (el Tocino) con Faustus
de Marlowe, la semejanza es asombrosa. Ud leerá en algunos críticos que Faustus
tiene una sed para el conocimiento. En realidad él apenas lo menciona.
Esto no es la verdad la que él quiere de los diablos, pero el oro y caza
y muchachas. En el mismo espíritu, el Tocino condena los que valoran el
conocimiento como un final en sí mismo... El verdadero objeto es de
ampliar el poder del Hombre con el funcionamiento de todas las cosas
posibles. Él rechaza la magia porque esto no trabaja; pero su objetivo es
el del mago...
Sin duda los que realmente fundaron la ciencia moderna eran por lo
general los que el cuyo amor de verdad excedió su amor de poder; en cada
movimiento surtido(mixto) la eficacia viene de los elementos buenos no del
malo. Pero la presencia de los elementos malos en no no pertinente a la
dirección la eficacia toma. Esto podría ir demasiado lejos a decir que
el movimiento moderno científico ha sido corrompido de su nacimiento;
pero pienso sería verdadero decir que esto nació en una vecindad malsana
y en una hora desfavorable. Sus triunfos podrían estar demasiado rápidos
y comprados en un precio demasiado alto: la reconsideración, y algo algo
como el arrepentimiento, puede ser requerida.
Lewis, C.S. La Abolición
de Hombre, Collins, Libro en rústica de Fuente, 1978, p. 46. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Leakey,
Richard y Lewin Roger Richard Leakey y Lewin Roger,
1995, la Sexta Extinción, Ancla, Nueva York, pp
122-123. Disponible
de Amazon.com Lippmann,
Walter En el curso de un debate con Lewis Terman:
cotizado(citado) en Stephen Jay Gould, el Mismeasure
de Hombre, W.W. Norton y Compańía, Ltd,
NUEVA YORK, 1996, p 181. (1) Lucretius Lucretius En la
naturaleza de cosas (de Nuevo ron Natura), Libros de Esfera, Londres,
1969, p. 233. (1) edición
Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Mencken, H
(enry) L (ouis) Mencken, H.L.,
Reimprimido en un Mencken Crestomathy,
Libros Ańejos, Nueva York, 1982, p. 12, primero impreso en el Juego
Simpático, agosto 1919, pp 60-61. (1)
Michelson,
Albert, Abraham Cotizado(citado) por Peter Coveney y Roger
Highfield en la Flecha de Tiempo,
Flamenco, Londres 1991, p 67. Disponible
de Amazon.com Molino, Juan Estuardo Monod, Jacques Jacques Monod Posibilidad
y Necesidad Alfred A. Knopf, Nueva York, 1971, p xi. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Newton, Isaac E.N. da
C. Andrade, seńor Isaac Newton, Su Vida
y Trabajo, Doubleday Ancla, Nueva York,
1950, p. 35. (1) edición
Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Pasteur, Louis René Dubos, Pasteur y Ciencia Moderna, Doubleday,
Ciudad de Jardín, NUEVA YORK, 1960, p. 145. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Cotizado(citado) en H. Vísperas Vuelta a Círculos
Matemáticos, Prindle, Wever
y Schmidt, Boston, 1988. (2) Disponible
de Amazon.com Pauling,
Linus Linus Pauling,
el Significado de Vida, Corregida por David Friend y los
redactores de Vida, Poco Marrón, Nueva York, 1990, p. 69. (6) Polanyi,
Juan C. Juan C. Polanyi. Extracto del discurso programa a la
Sociedad canadiense para el Instituto de Weizmann
de Ciencia, Toronto el 2 de junio de 1996. Polanyi,
Juan C. Juan C. Polanyi En Martin Moskovits (Editor)., Ciencia
y Sociedad, Juan C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates
Conferencias, Anansi Prensa, Concordia,
Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Cartero, Neil Neil Postman, el Final de Educación, Alfred
Knopf, Nueva York, 1995, p 107. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Postman, Neil Tomando este punto de vista, podemos concluir que la ciencia no es la física,
la biología, o la química - no es hasta "un sujeto" - pero un
imperativo moral dibujado de una narrativa más grande el cuyo objetivo es
de dar la perspectiva, el equilibrio, y la humildad al estudio. Neil Postman, el Final de Educación, Alfred A.
Knopf, Nueva York, 1995, p 68. Disponible
de Amazon.com Russell,
Bertrand, Arthur, Guillermo Bertrand Russell, un
Contorno de Filosofía, Libros de Meridiano, Cleveland y Nueva York,
1960, pp 31-32. (1) edición
Más nueva disponible de Amazon.com Russell,
Bertrand, Arthur, Guillermo Bertrand Russell, Historia
de Filosofía Occidental, Allen e Intriunfo, Londres, 1979, p 512.
(6) Disponible
de Amazon.com Nieve, C (harles)
P (ercy) Este papel pasado no contiene ningunas referencias y no cotiza(cita)
ninguna autoridad. Todos ellos son escritos en un estilo a diferencia de
cualquier otro físico teórico. Ellos contienen muy pocas matemáticas.
Hay mucho comentario verbal. Las conclusiones, las conclusiones extrańas,
surgen como si con el más grande de facilidad: el razonamiento es
irrompible. Mira como si él había alcanzado las conclusiones por el
pensamiento puro, habían inayudado, sin escuchar a las opiniones de
otros. A un grado sorprendentemente grande, que es con precisión que él
había hecho.
Esto es la bonita caja fuerte para decir que, mientras que la física
dura, nadie otra vez cortará de tres brechas principales en un ańo.
C.P. Nieve, Variedad
de Hombres, Libros de Pingüino, Harmondsworth,
Reino Unido 1969, pp 85-86. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Szent
- Gy ö rgyi,
Albert Albert Szent-Gy Szent-Gy Szent-Gy ö rgyi,
el Mono Loco, Grosset y Dunlap,
Nueva York, 1971, p 72. (6) Disponible
de Amazon.com Szent-Gy Szent-Gy Szent-Gy
ö rgyi, Albert Cuando el cerebro humano tomó su forma final, digamos, hace 100,000 ańos,
problemas y las soluciones deben haber sido sumamente simples. No había
ningunos problemas de largo alcance y el hombre tuvo que agarrar cualquier
ventaja inmediata. El mundo se ha cambiado pero estamos todavía
dispuestos de vender intereses más distantes vitales para algunas
ganancias menores inmediatas. Nuestro complejo militar industrial, que
pone en peligro el futuro de humanidad, en mayor grado debe su estabilidad
al hecho que entonces puede la gente depender de ello para su vida.
Esto sostiene verdadero para todos de nosotros, incluyéndome. Cuando
recibí el premio Nobel, la única suma global grande de dinero alguna vez
he visto, tuve que hacer algo con ello. El modo fácil de dejar caer esta
patata caliente era de invertirlo, comprar partes. Yo sabía que la
segunda Guerra Mundial venía y tuve miedo que si yo tuviera las partes
que se elevan en caso de la guerra, yo desearía para la guerra. Entonces
pedí a mi agente comprar las partes que bajan(disminuyen) en caso de la
guerra. Esto él hizo. Perdí mi dinero y salvé(ahorré) mi alma.
Albert Szent-Gy Szent-Gy Szent-Gy ö rgyi,
el Mono Loco, Grosset y Dunlap,
Nueva York, 1971, p 72. (6) Disponible
de Amazon.com Turing,
Alan, Mathison Hodges de Andrés, Alan
Turing el Enigma de Inteligencia, Ingana Hyman,
Londres, 1983, p 251. (1) Twain, Seńal
(Clemens, Samuel, Langhorne) Después, en otra jaula limité a un Católico irlandés de Tipperary,
y en cuanto él pareció domesticado agregué a un whisky escocés
Presbiteriano de Aberdeen. Después un turco
de Constantinople; Christian Griego de
Creta; un Armenio; un Metodista del wilds de
Arkansas; un budista de China; un Brahman de
Benares. Finalmente, un Coronel de Ejército
de Salvación de Wapping. Entonces estuve
lejos durante dos días enteros. Cuando volví para notar resultados, la
jaula de los Animales Más altos estaba buena, pero en el otro había sólo
un caos de los trozos sangrientos de turbantes y feces y mantas de viaje y
huesos y la carne - no un espécimen se marchó vivo. Este Razonamiento de
Animales no había discrepado sobre un detalle teológico y había llevado
la materia(asunto) a un Tribunal Más alto. Mark Twain, Cartas de la Tierra, un Libro de
Cresta Fawcett, Greenwich, Conn.,
1962, pp 180-181. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Watson,
Thomas (Fundador de IBM) Cotizado(citado) por Ciudades de Carlos Hard En
Martin Moskovits (Editor)., Ciencia y Sociedad, Juan C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates
Conferencias, Anansi Prensa, Concordia,
Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com Woolley,
Richard (Astrónomo de Reino Unido Real) Cotizado(citado) por Ciudades de Carlos Hard En
Martin Moskovits (Editor)., Ciencia y Sociedad, Juan C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates
Conferencias, Anansi Prensa, Concordia,
Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Disponible
de Amazon.com |
Asimov, Isaac
(1920-1992) b. Petrovichi, Russia.
(With reference to a correspondent)
The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in
every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last,
and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the
one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.
... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Isaac Asimov,The Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 226. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Asimov, Isaac Isaac Asimov, Sail On! Sail On! In The Relativity of Wrong,
Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 220. (1) Available
from Amazon.com
(1920-1992) b. Petrovichi, Russia.
At two-tenths the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage
even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is--space
begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light,
hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew. ...So
60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space
travel.
Bacon, Francis Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, J.M. Dent and Son,
London, England, 1973, pp 71-72. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com
(1561-1626) b. London, England
For it is esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to inquiry or
meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought
secrets, rarities, and special subtilities, which humour of vain supercilious
arrogancy is justly derided in Plato... But the truth is, they be not the
highest instances that give the securest information; as may well be expressed
in the tale... of the philosopher, that while he gazed upwards to the stars fell
into the water; for if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the
water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the stars. So it cometh
often to pass, that mean and small things discover great, better than great can
discover the small.
Bacon, Francis Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Liberal Arts Press, Inc., New York, p
93. (5) Available
from Amazon.com
The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners
resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes
the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and
field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is
the true business of philosophy (science); for it neither relies solely or
chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers
from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the memory whole,
as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and disgested.
Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the
experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped.
Bierce, Ambrose Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, Dover Publications, NY,
1958, p 70. (3) Available
from Amazon.com
(1842-?1914) b. Meggs Co., Ohio
An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and
springs, and believes it civilization.
Binet, Alfred Quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, W.W. Norton and
Co., Ltd, NY, 1996, p 181. (1) Available
from Amazon.com
(1857-1911) b. France
On his intelligence scale
The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of the intelligence,
because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be
measured as linear surfaces are measured.
Boltzman, Ludwig
(1844-1906) b Vienna, Austria
The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles. With
infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept of space or time and then finds it
absolutely impossible that there be objects in this space or that processes
occur during this time... the source of this kind of logic lies in excessive
confidence in the so-called laws of thought.
Ludwig Boltzmann. Populaere Schriften Essay 19, Ludwig Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, B. McGuinness (ed) Reidel, Dordrecht, 1974, p 64. (7)
Boltzman, Ludwig
To go straight to the deepest depth, I went for Hegel; what unclear thoughtless
flow of words I was to find there! My unlucky star led me from Hegel to
Schopenhauer ... Even in Kant there were many things that I could grasp so
little that given his general acuity of mind I almost suspected that he was
pulling the reader's leg or was even an imposter.
D. Flamm. Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 14: 257 (1983). (7)
Curie, Marie
(1867-1934) b. Warsaw, Poland (née Maria Sklodowska)
Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without
forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also
needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so
captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their
own material profit.
Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
Eve Curie (translated by Vincent Sheean), Madame Curie, Pocket books, Simon and Schuster, New york, 1946, pp 352-253. (7) Newer edition available from Amazon.com
Churchill, Winston, Spencer
(1874-1965) b. Malborough, England
Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to
tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we
think of it. ... These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with.They
are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. ... I always rested on the
following argument... We look up to the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are
dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing
apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there
is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality
of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of
mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to
calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black
spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense
of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here
you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence
of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is
called in military map-making "a cross bearing." ... When my
metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their
calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the
senses, I say, "no." They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by
automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them
without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When it is persisted that we
should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose,
I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and
that once discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at
this point accustomed to reaffirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is
real, and also that it is hot--in fact hot as Hell, and that if the
metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.
Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, Fontana, London, 1972, pp 123-124. (1) Newer edition available from Amazon.com
Churchill, Winston S.
...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick
himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
Quoted in: Irving Klotz, Bending perception, a book review, Nature, 1996, Volume 379, p 412 (1).
Crick, Francis
(1916-) b. Northampton, England
When the war finally came to an end, I was at a loss as to what to do... I took
stock of my qualifications. A not-very-good degree, redeemed somewhat by my
achievements at the Admiralty. A knowledge of certain restricted parts of
magnetism and hydrodynamics, neither of them subjects for which I felt the least
bit of enthusiasm. No published papers at all... Only gradually did I realize
that this lack of qualification could be an advantage. By the time most
scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They
have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely
difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the
other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned
physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things... Since I
essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice...
Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit, Basic Books, New York, 1988, pp 15-16. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Cuppy, Will
1884-1949
Some fishes become extinct, but Herrings go on forever. Herrings spawn at all
times and places and nothing will induce them to change their ways. They have no
fish control. Herrings congregate in schools, where they learn nothing at all.
They move in vast numbers in May and October. Herrings subsist upon Copepods and
Copepods subsist upon Diatoms and Diatoms just float around and reproduce. Young
Herrings or Sperling or Whitebait are rather cute. They have serrated abdomens.
The skull of the Common or Coney Island Herring is triangular, but he would be
just the same anyway. (The nervous system of the Herring is fairly simple. When
the Herring runs into something the stimulus is flashed to the forebrain, with
or without results.)
Will Cuppy, How to Become Extinct, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 13. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Darwin, Charles
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the
focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for
the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by
natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, John Murray, London, 1859. (1) Newer edition available from Amazon.com
Davy, Sir Humphrey
Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a
new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times are not
so much the causes of the different success of their labours, as the peculiar
nature of the means and artificial resources in their possession.
Thomas Hager, Force of Nature, Simon ans Schuster, New York, 1995, p 86. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Drake, Frank
(1930-) b. Chicago, Illinois
"I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening
to us," Jean Giraudoux wrote in The Madwoman of Chaillot, "and that
every word we say echoes to the remotest star." That poetic paranoia is a
perfect description of what the Sun, as a gravitational lens, could do for the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? Dell Publishing, New York, 1994, p.232. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Dyson, Freeman
Freeman Dyson, From Eros to Gaia, Penguin Books, London, New York, 1993, pp 132-133. Newer edition available from Amazon.com
Dyson, Freeman
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are
usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical
consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in
the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows
alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown
to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many
other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the
so-called Dark Ages. According the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay
was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization
from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire
did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough
in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on
horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that
allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of
Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later
to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions, Harper and Row, New York, 1988, p 135. Available from Amazon.com
Eddington, Sir Arthur
(1882-1944) b. England
For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme
Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept
as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence
is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does
follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be
submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be
impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide
whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation
unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of
physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be
the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.
Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, pp 9-10. Available from Amazon.com
Eddington,
Sir Arthur
(1882-1944) b. England
Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He
casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his
catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it
reveals. He arrives at two generalisations:
(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.
(2) All sea-creatures have gills.
These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will
remain true however often he repeats it.
In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science.
An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, "what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or--to translate the analogy--"If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!"
Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, p 16. Available from Amazon.com
Einstein, Albert
(1879-1955) b. Germany
(To a student)
Dear Miss ---
I have read about sixteen pages of your manuscript ... I suffered exactly the
same treatment at the hands of my teachers who disliked me for my independence
and passed over me when they wanted assistants ... keep your manuscript for your
sons and daughters, in order that they may derive consolation from it and not
give a damn for what their teachers tell them or think of them. ... There is too
much education altogether.
Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, The Wisdom Library, New York, 1949, pp 21-22. (1) Newer edition available from Amazon.com
Einstein, Albert
(Written in old age) I have never belonged wholeheartedly to a country, a
state, nor to a circle of friends, nor even to my own family.
When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives.
Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.
Quoted in C.P. Snow, Variety of Men, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, U.K. 1969, p 77. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Feynman, Richard P.
(1918-1988) b. Far Rockaway, New York
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the
third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not
to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't
understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.
Richard P. Feynman, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p 9. (1) Different edition available from Amazon.com
Frisch, Max
(1911-) b. Switzerland
Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.
Rollo May, The Cry for Myth, Norton, New York, p 57. (4) Available from Amazon.com
Gell-Mann, Murray
In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental
constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which
could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans
Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the
phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark"
(meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with
"Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to
find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the
dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are
typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau
words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases
occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar.
I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry
"Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister
Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be
totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way
quarks occur in nature.
Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, W.H. Freeman, New York, 1994, pp 180-181. (1)
Hawking, Stephen W.
(1942-) b. Oxford, England
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and
equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe
for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a
mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe
for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of
existing?
Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam, NY, 1988, p 174. Available from Amazon.com
Hawking, Stephen W.
There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe
search for the ultimate laws of nature.
Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam, NY, 1988, p 157. Available from Amazon.com
Ingram, Jay W.
I once read that if the folds in the cerebral cortex were smoothed out it would
cover a card table. That seemed quite unbelievable but it did make me wonder
just how big the cortex would be if you ironed it out. I thought it might just
about cover a family-sized pizza: not bad, but no card-table. I was astonished
to realize that nobody seems to know the answer. A quick search yielded the
following estimates for the smoothed out dimensions of the cerebral cortex of
the human brain.
An article in Bioscience in November 1987 by Julie Ann Miller claimed the cortex was a "quarter-metre square." That is napkin-sized, about ten inches by ten inches. Scientific American magazine in September 1992 upped the ante considerably with an estimated of 1 1/2 square metres; thats a square of brain forty inches on each side, getting close to the card-table estimate. A psychologist at the University of Toronto figured it would cover the floor of his living room (I haven't seen his living room), but the prize winning estimate so far is from the British magazine New Scientist's poster of the brain published in 1993 which claimed that the cerebral cortex, if flattened out, would cover a tennis court. How can there be such disagreement? How can so many experts not know how big the cortex is? I don't know, but I'm on the hunt for an expert who will say the cortex, when fully spread out, will cover a football field. A Canadian football field.
Jay Ingram, The Burning House, Unlocking the Mysteries of the Brain Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, U.K., 1995 p 11.
John Paul II, Pope
(Karol Wojtyla)
(1920-) b. Wadowice, Poland
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify
science from idolatry and false absolutes.
James Reston, Galileo, A Life, HarperCollins, NY, 1994, p 461. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Johnson, George
The weapons laboratory of Los Alamos stands as a reminder that our very power as
pattern finders can work against us, that it is possible to discern enought of
the universe's underlying order to tap energy so powerful that it can destroy
its discoverers or slowly poison them with its waste.
George Johnson Fire in the Mind, Vintage Books, New York, 1996, p 326. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Johnson, Samuel, Dr.
(1709-1784) b. Lichfield, England
Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by
flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and
lye in the bed of a river.
James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 3rd Edn., Malone, London, 1799 (Abridged Edn., The New American Library, NY, 1968, p 192.) Available from Amazon.com
Kauffman, Stuart
Life emerged, I suggest, not simple, but complex and whole, and has remained
complex and whole ever since—not because of a mysterious élan vital, but
thanks to the simple, profound transformation of dead molecules into an
organization by which each molecule's formation is catalyzed by some other
molecule in the organization. The secret of life, the wellspring of
reproduction, is not to be found in the beauty of Watson-Crick pairing, but in
the achievement of collective catalytic closure. So, in another sense,
life—complex, whole, emergent—is simple after all, a natural outgrowth of
the world in which we live.
Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp 47-48. Available from Amazon.com
Kauffman, Stuart
If biologists have ignored self-organization, it is not because self-ordering is
not pervasive and profound. It is because we biologists have yet to understand
how to think about systems governed simultaneously by two sources of order, Yet
who seeing the snowflake, who seeing simple lipid molecules cast adrift in water
forming themselves into cell-like hollow lipid vesicles, who seeing the
potential for the crystallization of life in swarms of reacting molecules, who
seeing the stunning order for free in networks linking tens upon tens of
thousands of variables, can fail to entertain a central thought: if ever we are
to attain a final theory in biology, we will surely, surely have to understand
the commingling of self-organization and selection. We will have to see that we
are the natural expressions of a deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in
our creation myth that we are expected after all.
Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 112. Available from Amazon.com
Kauffman, Stuart
Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find eight
spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13
left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The striking fact is that
these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series: 1,
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms.
The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis. Many are the efforts of
biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants
exhibit this remarkable pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all
these odd things need not reflect selection or historical accident. Some of the
best efforts to understand phyllotaxis appeal to a form of self-organization.
Paul Green, at Stanford, has argued persuasively that the Fibonacci series is
just what one would expects as the simplest self-repeating pattern that can be
generated by the particular growth processes in the growing tips of the tissues
that form sunflowers, pinecones, and so forth. Like a snowflake and its sixfold
symmetry, the pinecone and its phyllotaxis may be part of order for free
Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 151. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Kaku, Michio
It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the
silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum
theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.
Michio Kaku Hyperspace, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 263. (1)Available from Amazon.com
Kaku, Michio
There are many examples of old, incorrect theories that stubbornly persisted,
sustained only by the prestige of foolish but well-connected scientists. ...
Many of these theories have been killed off only when some decisive experiment
exposed their incorrectness. .. Thus the yeoman work in any science, and
especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the
theoreticians honest.
Michio Kaku Hyperspace, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 263. (1) Available from Amazon.com
Kealey, Terence
There is a central myth about British science and economic growth, and it goes
like this: science breeds wealth, Britain is in economic decline, therefore
Britain has not done enough science. Actually, it is easy to show that a key
cause of Britain's economic decline has been that the government has funded too
much science...
Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects--to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976.
Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concord had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country.
Terence Kealey Wasting Billions, the Scientific Way, The Sunday Times, October 13, 1996. (1)
Keynes, John Maynard
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which
ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our
minds.
Quoted in: K. Eric Drexler Engines of Creation: the Coming
Era of Nanotechnology, Bantam, New York, 1987, p 231. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Lewis, C.S. If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's
Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus
has a thirst for knowledge. In reality he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he
wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. In the same spirit, Bacon
condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself... The true object is to
extend Man's power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic
because it does not work; but his goal is that of the magician...
No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose
love of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement the efficacy
comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the presence of bad elements
in not irrelevant to the direction the efficacy takes. It might be going too far
to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth; but I
think it would be true to say that it was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and
at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at
too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be
required.
Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man, Collins, Fount
Paperback, 1978, p. 46. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Leakey, Richard and Roger Lewin Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, 1995, The Sixth Extinction,
Anchor, New York, pp 122-123. Available
from Amazon.com Lippmann, Walter In the course of a debate with Lewis Terman: quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The
Mismeasure of Man, W.W. Norton and Co., Ltd, NY, 1996, p 181. (1) Lucretius Lucretius On the nature of things (De Rerum Natura),
Sphere Books, London, 1969, p. 233. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken, H.L., Reprinted in A Mencken Crestomathy,
Vintage Books, New York, 1982, p. 12, first printed in the Smart Set,
Aug. 1919, pp 60-61. (1)
Michelson, Albert,
Abraham Quoted by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield in The Arrow of
Time, Flamingo, London 1991, p 67. Available
from Amazon.com Mill, John Stuart Quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, W.W. Norton and
Co., Ltd, NY, 1996, p 181. (1) Monod, Jacques Jacques Monod Chance and Necessity Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 1971, p xi. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Newton, Isaac E.N. da C. Andrade, Sir Isaac Newton, His Life and Work,
Doubleday Anchor, New York, 1950, p. 35. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Pasteur, Louis René Dubos, Pasteur and Modern Science, Doubleday,
Garden City, NY, 1960, p. 145. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Quoted in H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Prindle,
Wever and Schmidt, Boston, 1988. (2) Available
from Amazon.com Pauling, Linus Linus Pauling, The Meaning of Life, Edited by David
Friend and the editors of Life, Little Brown, New York, 1990, p. 69.
(6) Polanyi, John C. John C. Polanyi. Excerpt from the keynote address to the
Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Toronto June 2, 1996. Polanyi, John C. John C. Polanyi In Martin Moskovits (Ed.), Science
and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures, Anansi Press,
Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Postman, Neil Neil Postman, The End of Education, Alfred Knopf, New
York, 1995, p 107. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Postman, Neil Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics,
biology, or chemistry--is not even a "subject"--but a moral imperative
drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and
humility to learning. Neil Postman, The End of Education, Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 1995, p 68. Available
from Amazon.com Russell, Bertrand, Arthur, William Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, Meridian
Books, Cleveland and New York, 1960, pp 31-32. (1) Newer
edition available from Amazon.com Russell, Bertrand,
Arthur, William Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy,
Allen and Unwin, London, 1979, p 512. (6) Available
from Amazon.com Snow, C(harles) P(ercy) This last paper contains no references and quotes no authority. All of them
are written in a style unlike any other theoretical physicist's. They contain
very little mathematics. There is a good deal of verbal commentary. The
conclusions, the bizarre conclusions, emerge as though with the greatest of
ease: the reasoning is unbreakable. It looks as though he had reached the
conclusions by pure thought, unaided, without listening to the opinions of
others. To a surprisingly large extent, that is precisely what he had done.
It is pretty safe to say that, so long as physics lasts, no one will again
hack out three major breakthroughs in one year.
C.P. Snow, Variety of Men, Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth, U.K. 1969, pp 85-86. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Szent-Györgyi, Albert Albert Szent-Györgyi, The Crazy Ape, Grosset and
Dunlap, New York, 1971, p 72. (6) Available
from Amazon.com Szent-Györgyi, Albert When the human brain took its final shape, say, 100,000 years ago, problems
and solutions must have been exceedingly simple. There were no long-range
problems and man had to grab any immediate advantage. The world has changed but
we are still willing to sell more distant vital interests for some minor
immediate gains. Our military industrial complex, which endangers the future of
mankind, to a great extent owes its stability to the fact that so may people
depend on it for their living.
This holds true for all of us, including myself. When I received the Nobel
Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something
with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy
shares. I knew World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares
which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy
shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved
my soul.
Albert Szent-Györgyi, The Crazy Ape, Grosset and
Dunlap, New York, 1971, p 72. (6) Available
from Amazon.com Turing, Alan, Mathison Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing the Enigma of Intelligence,
Unwin Hyman, London, 1983, p 251. (1) Twain, Mark (Clemens, Samuel, Langhorne) Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as
soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk
from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from
the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a
Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When
I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in
the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and
plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals
had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, A Fawcett Crest
Book, Greenwich, Conn., 1962, pp 180-181. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Watson, Thomas
(Founder of IBM) Quoted by Charles Hard Townes In Martin Moskovits
(Ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures,
Anansi Press, Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Available
from Amazon.com Woolley, Richard
(U.K. Astronomer Royal) Quoted by Charles Hard Townes In Martin Moskovits
(Ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures,
Anansi Press, Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8. (1) Available
from Amazon.com The number in parenthesis following a quotation identifies the contributor in
the following numbered list. (1) The Editor (2) James K. Love (jklove@compassnet.com) and William D. Ross
(billross@deepcove.com)
(3) Bruce Miller (Bruce.Miller@hq.gte.com)
(4) Cited by Neil Postman in The End of Education, Alfred Knopf, NY,
1995, p 10.
(5) Dr. John Hetherington, Department of Psychology, Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale, IL 62901-6502, USA, "sawtooth@siu.edu."
(6) Cited by Thomas Hager in Force of Nature, Simon and Schuster,
New York, 1995.
(7) Cited by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield in The Arrow of Time,
Flamingo, London 1991
(1898-1963) b. Ireland
There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both
from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem
had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been
knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. for magic and applied science alike the
problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a
technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things
hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious--such as digging up and mutilating
the dead.
It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters
of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million, as Erwin
(Terry Erwin, the Smithsonian Institute) estimates, then, working as they have
in the past, insect taxonomists have ten thousand years of employment ahead of
them. Ghilean Prance, director of the Botanical Gardens in Kew, estimates that a
complete list of plants in the Americas would occupy taxonomists for four
centuries, again working at historical rates.
Without offering any data on all that occurs between conception
and the age of kindergarten, they announce on the basis of what they have got
out of a few thousand questionnaires that they are measuring the hereditary
mental endowment of human beings. Obviously, this is not a conclusion obtained
by research. It is a conclusion planted by the will to believe. It is, I think,
for the most part unconsciously planted ... If the impression takes root that
these tests really measure intelligence, that they constitute a sort of last
judgment on the child's capacity, that they reveal "scientifically"
his predestined ability, then it would be a thousand times better if all the
intelligence testers and all their questionnaires were sunk in the Sargasso Sea.
(99 B.C.-55 B.C.) b. Rome
(On the temperature of water in wells)
The reason why the water in wells becomes colder in summer is that the earth is
then rarefied by the heat, and releases into the air all the heat-particles it
happens to have. So, the more the earth is drained of heat, the colder becomes
the moisture that is concealed in the ground. On the other hand, when all the
earth condenses and contracts and congeals with the cold, then, of course, as it
contracts, it squeezes our into the wells whatever heat it holds.
(1880-1956) b. Baltimore, MD
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate.
Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to
do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that
moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific
investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service,
but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover
the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not
the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a
dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.
(1852-1931) b. Germany
(In 1903)
The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been
discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of
their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly
remote.
The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name
must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if
no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason
suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly
abstruse and mysterious.
Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central.
Marginal because--the living world constituting but a tiny and very
"special" part of the universe--it does not seem likely that the study
of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the
biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I
believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be
accorded a central position...
(1642-1727) b. Woolsthorpe, England
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of
giants.
On how he made discoveries
By always thinking unto them. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait
till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light.
(1822-1892) b. Dôle, France
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the
torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the
nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the
works of thought and intelligence.
(1901-1994) b. Portland, Oregon
I recognize that many physicists are smarter than I am--most of them theoretical
physicists. A lot of smart people have gone into theoretical physics, therefore
the field is extremely competitive. I console myself with the thought that
although they may be smarter and may be deeper thinkers than I am, I have
broader interests than they have.
(1929-) b. Berlin, Germany
(Concerning the allocation of research funds) It is folly to use as one's
guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not
because (scientists)... despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are
best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.
Faced with the admitted difficulty of managing the creative process, we are
doubling our efforts to do so. Is this because science has failed to deliver,
having given us nothing more than nuclear power, penicillin, space travel,
genetic engineering, transistors, and superconductors? Or is it because
governments everywhere regard as a reproach activities they cannot
advantageously control? They felt that way about the marketplace for goods, but
trillions of wasted dollars later, they have come to recognize the efficiency of
this self-regulating system. Not so, however, with the marketplace for ideas.
Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and
unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious
narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science.
Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much
like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution
in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific
idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that
a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient
confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point
is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are
constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes.
Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it
is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
(19??-) b. New York, USA
"The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is
nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the
mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its
mistakes.
(1872-1970) b. England
Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as
possible of its environment into itself... When we compare the (present) human
population of the globe with... that of former times, we see that "chemical
imperialism" has been... the main end to which human intelligence has been
devoted.
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is
attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the
seventeenth century.
(1905-1980) b. Leicester, England
...Einstein, twenty-six years old, only three years away from crude privation,
still a patent examiner, published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 five
papers on entirely different subjects. Three of them were among the greatest in
the history of physics. One, very simple, gave the quantum explanation of the
photoelectric effect--it was this work for which, sixteen years later he was
awarded the Nobel prize. Another dealt with the phenomenon of Brownian motion,
the apparently erratic movement of tiny particles suspended in a liquid:
Einstein showed that these movements satisfied a clear statistical law. This was
like a conjuring trick, easy when explained: before it, decent scientists could
still doubt the concrete existence of atoms and molecules: this paper was as
near direct proof of their concreteness as a theoretician could give. The third
paper was the special theory of relativity, which quietly amalgamated space,
time and matter into one fundamental unity.
(1893-1984) b. Hungary
Basic research may seem very expensive. I am a well-paid scientist. My hourly
wage is equal to that of a plumber, but sometimes my research remains barren of
results for weeks, months or years and my conscience begins to bother me for
wasting the taxpayer's money. But in reviewing my life's work, I have to think
that the expense was not wasted. Basic research, to which we owe everything, is
relatively very cheap when compared with other outlays of modern society. The
other day I made a rough calculation which led me to the conclusion that if one
were to add up all the money ever spent by man on basic research, one would find
it to be just about equal to the money spent by the Pentagon this past year.
Our nervous system developed for one sole purpose, to maintain our lives and
satisfy our needs. All our reflexes serve this purpose. this makes us utterly
egotistic. With rare exceptions people are really interested in one thing only:
themselves. Everybody, by necessity, is the center of his own universe.
(1912-1954) b. London, England
(1943, New York: the Bell Labs Cafeteria) His high pitched voice already stood
out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming
themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard
to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.
All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of
the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
(1835-1910) b. Florida, Missouri
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.
Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In
truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn,
he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught
a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught
them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a
fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together
in peace; even affectionately.
I think there's a world market for about five computers.
(In 1956, one year before Sputnik)
Space travel is utter bilge.
Compiled and edited by Alfred Burdett
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