#science

"It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, there's a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopediea Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more 'numinous' than the Ressurection. Do they know how to have a good time, or don't they?"

"Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious."

"God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs."

"The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take advantage of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame.)"

"If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true."

"Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice."

"The four stages of acceptance:1. This is worthless nonsense.2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.3. This is true, but quite unimportant.4. I always said so."(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464)"

"There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance."

"Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers."

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

"Why is it so difficult for us to think in relative terms? Well, for the good reason that human nature loves absoluteness, and erroneously considers it as a state of higher knowledge."

"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it."

"…Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed."

"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

"Le savant doit ordonner ; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres ; mais une accumulation de faits n'est pas plus une science qu'un tas de pierres n'est une maison.The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."

"The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality."

"It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."

"There are no things man was not meant to know. There are, perhaps, things man is too dumb to figure out, but that's a different problem."

"Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves."

"Nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope."