If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility. Peter Medawar, JBS 1968
If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs. Peter Medawar, cited New Statesman 19th June 1964
During the 1950s, the first great age of molecular biology, the English Schools of Oxford and particularly of Cambridge produced more than a score of graduates of quite outstanding ability – much more brilliant, inventive, articulate and dialectically skilful than most young scientists; right up in the Watson class. But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about. Peter Medawar
The bells which toll for mankind are – most of them, anyway – like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound. Peter Medawar, The Future of Man, 1959
There is no such thing as a Scientific Mind. Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics. What sort of mind or temperament can all these people be supposed to have in common? Obligative scientists must be very rare, and most people who are in fact scientists could easily have been something else instead. Peter Medawar, article Times Literary Supplement 25th October 1963, ‘Hypothesis and Imagination’
Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another’s work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt. Peter Medawar, Hypothesis and Imagination: Art of the Soluble, 1967
The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature. Peter Medawar, Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought 1969
We cannot point to a single definitive solution of any one of the problems that confront us – political, economic, social or moral, that is, having to do with the conduct of life. We are still beginners, and for that reason may hope to improve. To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind. There is no need to be dismayed by the fact that we cannot yet envisage a definitive solution of our problems, a resting-place beyond which we need not try to go. Peter Medawar, presidential address BAAS 3rd September 1969
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a narrow field. Niels Bohr
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. Niels Bohr
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. Terry Pratchett, Mort
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. Friedrich Nietzsche
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions. Claude Levi-Strauss
If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves. Thomas A Edison
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Thomas A Edison
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power. Bertrand Russell
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know. Bertrand Russell
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. George Bernard Shaw
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe. Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
It’s so hard to believe in anything any more. I mean, it’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary ... but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything any more if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch. Steve Martin
Science is organized knowledge. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth. Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of sceptically and dictatorially. E B White
It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you. Bill Bryson, A Short History of Everything
There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person. ibid.
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. Edwin Hubble
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Adam Smith, ‘The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming. J B S Haldane, Possible Worlds
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. Hippocrates
That’s the whole problem with science. You’ve got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder. Bill Watterson
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. George Washington
Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice. Noam Chomsky