His sin was something that scientists had done for thousands of years. Scientists didn’t usually change data… — Charles Sheffield
His sin was something that scientists had done for thousands of years. Scientists didn’t usually change data, not unless they were outright charlatans. But when facts didn’t agree with theory, there was an awful temptation to find reasons for rejecting the offending data and and hanging on to the theory. Ptolemy had done it. Newton had done it. Darwin had done it. Einstein had done so explicitly.
p. 353Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
When a person was so consistently wrong, it was time to give up having opinions.
p. 488
Happy endings were for children’s stories and fool. You live in misery, and then you die. Life, by definition, was not designed to end happily.
Louis continued aft. No happy ending, then. That was a fact, certain as death itself. He was living at the moment in a dream, an imagined world where everything went right.
But—dreams are real while they last. Could you say more of life?
A dream sequence was no more than a happy interlude, but maybe a happy interlude could last for an awful long time.
p. 529
Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death.
p. 516
