Quotes about science

Science was a systematic way to avoid fooling yourself, after all.

The barely awake public, trained to the attention span of a commercial, thought that science had two children: either consumer yummies, served up by the handmaiden of technology, or else awesome wonders like the beauties of astronomy. The unsettling side they largely ignored, unless for the momentary shock value of, say, swollen insects doing disgusting things. But the root promise of science was of a world unshaped by humans. The expanses of time and space that stretched out from the human community were terrifying, and most avoided even thinking of them.

Physicists had abandoned God long ago and hoped that firing repeated questions at nature would get to the truth. What scientists really believed in was that the think-check-think-again style of scientific method would yield some species of Truth.

“Boy, do I hate these holier-than-thou types.”

“Clerics.”

“Anybody who tries to hem science in, tell it what it can and cannot do. Boundaries are best defined by pushing against them. Expanding our horizons, our sense of wonder.”

She smiled. “There’s nothing holier than wow!?”

There were the usual anxieties, starkly revealing the uneasiness that ordinary intellectuals had with science.

Not sure. When don’t know, do experiment.

Science’s success did not need a God to explain it; the world was enough.

Teaching was all very fine, but research made the heart sing.

A damned big clue, but pointing at what? When in doubt, get some numbers.

Only senators and simpletons thought science took place in neatly drawn boxes.

Ours is not to reason why, ours is to measure and report—the experimenter’s credo.

She sighed. “We’re just guessing.”

“When you have a Ph. D., you call them hypotheses, not guesses.”