Natural Science Quotes - Page 2

• Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.

  Ronald Fisher

  Math, Degrees, Statistics

  "Evolution in Action". Book by Julian S. Huxley, 1953.

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• In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

  Carl Sagan

  Change, Science, Theoretical Physics

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference, 1987.

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• As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?

  George Greenstein

  Science, Agency, Origin Of Life

  George Greenstein (1988). “The symbiotic universe: life and mind in the cosmos”

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• If we suppose that many natural phenomena are in effect computations, the study of computer science can tell us about the kinds of natural phenomena that can occur.

  Rudy Rucker

  Study, Kind, Computer

  "Adventures In Gnarly Computation". www.rudyrucker.com. October 2005.

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• We have guided missiles and misguided men.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, War, Science

  Strength to Love ch. 7 (1963)

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• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  Address to Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 27 Jan. 1921

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• There is no natural phenomenon that is comparable with the sudden and apparently accidentally timed development of science, except perhaps the condensation of a super-saturated gas or the explosion of some unpredictable explosives.

  Eugene Wigner

  Development, Natural, Explosions

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• Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

  Stephen Hawking

  Passion, Romance, Reason

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• Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.

  Wilhelm Wundt

  Science, Psychology, Analysis

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1904). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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• Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

  Richard P. Feynman

  Stars, Science, Night

  Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2013). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1 for tablets”, Basic Books

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• Darwin was a biological evolutionist, because he was first a uniformitarian geologist. Biology is pre-eminent to-day among the natural sciences, because its younger sister, Geology, gave it the means.

  Charles Lapworth

  Mean, Science, Firsts

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• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Hilarious, Education

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Peace

  Strength to Love ch. 7 (1963)

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• But there is another reason for the high repute of mathematics: it is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.

  Albert Einstein

  Math, Reason, Natural

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• The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts - and not absolute and general.

  Jiang Zemin

  Believe, Science, Rights

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• I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.

  Michael Polanyi

  Data, Natural, Definite

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• The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Important, History Of Life, Roles

  Phillip E. Johnson (2000). “Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law and Culture”, Intervarsity Press

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• The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Expectations, Progress, Limits

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", p. 30, 1978.

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• Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

  H. L. Mencken

  Science, Intellectual, Demand

  'Minority Report'. Collected in Notebooks (1956).

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• As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.

  Charles Scott Sherrington

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

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• Mathematics is the queen of sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics. She often condescends to render service to astronomy and other natural sciences, but in all relations she is entitled to the first rank.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Queens, Numbers, Firsts

  "Gauss zum Gedächtniss". Book by Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, 1856.

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• If you ask ... the man in the street ... the human significance of mathematics, the answer of the world will be, that mathematics has given mankind a metrical and computatory art essential to the effective conduct of daily life, that mathematics admits of countless applications in engineering and the natural sciences, and finally that mathematics is a most excellent instrumentality for giving mental discipline... [A mathematician will add] that mathematics is the exact science, the science of exact thought or of rigorous thinking.

  Cassius Jackson Keyser

  Art, Science, Thinking

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• Astronomy was the cradle of the natural sciences and the starting point of geometrical theories.

  Cornelius Lanczos

  Astronomy, Natural, Cradle

  Cornelius Lanczos (1970). “Space through the ages: The evolution of geometrical ideas from Pythagoras to Hilbert and Einstein”

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• Eugene Wigner wrote a famous essay on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. He meant physics, of course. There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology.

  Israel Gelfand

  Effectiveness, Physics, Biology

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• A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Philosophy, Past, Names

  "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal". Lecture by Peter Kropotkin, translated by Harry Lyman Koopman, dwardmac.pitzer.edu. 1898.

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