Quotes about science

This is what we field biologists live for: the chance to be outside in the vital presence of other species, who are generally way more interesting than we are. We get to sit at their feet and listen.

Science can be a way of forming intimacy and respect with other species that is rivaled only by the observations of traditional knowledge holders. It can be a path to kinship.

A theory, to scientists, means something rather different from its popular use, which suggests something speculative or untested. A scientific theory is a cohesive body of knowledge, an explanation that is consistent among a range of cases and can allow you to predict what might happen in unknown situations.

Getting scientists to consider the validity of indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water. They’ve been so conditioned to be skeptical of even the hardest of hard data that bending their minds toward theories that are verified without the expected graphs or equations is tough. Couple that with the unblinking assumption that science has cornered the market on truth and there’s not much room for discussion.

Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.

We are all the product of our worldviews—even scientists who claim pure objectivity.

To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don’t speak the same language, I can’t ask them directly and they won’t answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask.

Science and traditional knowledge may ask different questions and speak different languages, but they may converge when both truly listen to the plants.

To name and describe you must first see, and science polishes the gift of seeing.

You'd think that biologists, of all people, would have words for life. But in scientific language our terminology is used to define the boundaries of our knowing. What lies beyond our grasp remains unnamed.

Science in the twenty-first century does not encourage scientists to take risks in their pursuit of "the facts"—particularly when those facts call into question long-established notions.

I suppose it might be argued that, for the amateur watcher seeking a meaningful connection with birds, this attention to remote detail is just another form of scientific reductionism, that harried foe of poetry and wonder. In my experience, it is so much the opposite. The tinier the details I come to comprehend, the more bewildered I become, the richer, it seems, the more inspiring of awe, is the biological life I manage to encounter.

The minutiae offer a focus that bridges the aesthetic and scientific worlds.