Scientific Progress Quotes

• Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.

  Madame de Stael

  Men, Progress, Moral

  18 Copy quote

• Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Change, Science, History

  Bertrand Russell, Robert Edward Egner (1961). “The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Science, Knowing, Progress

  10 Copy quote

• I think mistakes are the essence of science and law. It's impossible to conceive of either scientific progress or legal progress without understanding the important role of being wrong and of mistakes.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Mistake, Thinking, Law

  14 Copy quote

• All scientific progress requires a climate of strong skepticism.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Strong, Progress, Climate

  6 Copy quote

• The incorrectness and weaknesses of a theory cause other minds to formulate the problems more exactly and in this way scientific progress is made.

  Robert Barany

  Mind, Progress, Weakness

  6 Copy quote

• One can not impede scientific progress.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Progress, Can Not

  6 Copy quote

• The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved.

  John Bardeen

  Awards, Giving, Progress

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1972.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.

  Ernst Mayr

  Progress, Society, Development

  Ernst Mayr (1982). “The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance”, p.43, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.

  Marie Curie

  Children, Science, Thinking

  "Madame Curie: A Biography". Book by Eve Curie Labouisse translated by Vincent Sheean, 1937.

  220 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ethical progress is the only cure for the damage done by scientific progress.

  Freeman Dyson

  Progress, Done, Damage

  Freeman Dyson (1999). “Imagined World”, p.200, Universities Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation.

  Norman Lockyer

  Science, Civilization, Community

  Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, Sir Norman Lockyer (1906). “Education and National Progress”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mankind's survival is dependent on man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man's squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Art, War, Men

  6 Copy quote

• Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.

  Albert Einstein

  Errors, Long, Progress

  6 Copy quote

• Contrary to what I once thought, scientific progress did not consist simply in observing, in accurately formulating experimental facts and drawing up a theory from them. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment thereof, which was then compared by experimentation with the real world. And it was this constant dialogue between imagination and experiment that allowed one to form an increasingly fine-grained conception of what is called reality.

  Francois Jacob

  Real, Drawing, Imagination

  26 Copy quote

• If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why - unlike scientific progress - is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophical, Views, Intuition

  3 Copy quote

• Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.

  Edmund Hillary

  Hero, Men, Names

  37 Copy quote

• In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas- and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Ideas, Progress, Scientist

  Werner Heisenberg (1971). “Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.

  Vannevar Bush

  War, Team, Achievement

  United States. Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush (1945). “Science, the endless frontier: A report to the President”, p.6

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• vivisection is not the same thing as scientific progress. There is such a thing as scientific progress. But this wholesale dedication of scientists to vivisection, which is the easy and cheap way, actually prevents them from scientific progress, for true progress is difficult and requires genius and imagination in its devoted workers.

  Brenda Ueland

  Animal, Dedication, Imagination

  Brenda Ueland (1993). “Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings”, Holy Cow Press

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity.

  Irving Langmuir

  Curiosity, Progress, Important

  11 Copy quote

• Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling.

  George Pattison

  Thinking, Years, Taught Us

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are huge areas where the human mind is apparently incapable of forming sciences, or at least has not done so. There are other areas - so far, in fact, one area only [physics] - in which we have demonstrated the capacity for true scientific progress.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mind, Progress, Done

  Source: chomsky.info

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The important thing is that over time, scientific progress transforms things that used to have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode down to the pattern-recognition space; and from pattern recognition into the rules-based mode. This is the mechanism by which less-trained people are enabled to do more sophisticated things. This is always the way disruption happens. It enables a larger population of less-experienced people to do more sophisticated things.

  Clayton Christensen

  Space, People, Progress

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence.

  Paul Dirac

  Progress, Units

  57 Copy quote