I think the best SF writers are very aware of what we, in the scientific community, are doing, thinking, and discovering.
In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for ‘Scientific American Frontiers.’
Creation is not taking place now, so far as can be observed. Therefore, it was accomplished sometime in the past, if at all, and thus is inaccessible to the scientific method.
I wanted to give everything that I lacked in my childhood to young children of my village. I had only talent but no scientific training, facilities or infrastructure to help.
There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is – in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It’s a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel.
Jesus walking on water is an allegory, not fluid mechanics. God destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, not a historical battle. Doubting Thomas is an example, not a person. The story of Noah, with all of its scientific and historical impossibilities, can be read the same way.
Let me tell you – when I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble. You don’t think about breaking records anymore, you don’t think about gaining scientific data – the only thing that you want is to come back alive.
Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind.
A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.
In short, it is not that evolutionary naturalists have been less brazen than the scientific creationists in holding science hostage, but rather that they have been infinitely more effective in getting away with it.
People are not the only interesting organism on earth. From the point of view of scientific or commercial value, there are lots of interesting organisms.
The Burgess Shale is not unique, but for those who study evolution and fossils it has become something of an icon. It provides a reference point and a benchmark, a point of common discussion and an issue of universal scientific interest.
Coming from an athletic background, the scientific aspect is a really big part of understanding beauty and how the body works.
Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit.
It really gets on my goat that people keep quoting Dorothea Mackellar’s ‘My Country’ as proof that there is no such thing as climate change. A poem written more than 100 years ago by a homesick 19 year old versus an ever-increasing body of refereed scientific thought… hmm, hard to know which way to jump, really.
Men want children later, but women can’t rely on being able to. So I’m all for scientific advances and the help they can give people.
The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
These days, the scientific community accepts me. But getting to that point was tremendously hard, and I think it required a big perception shift. When people have dedicated their lives to something – and spent eight years in college – they just expect that a kid wouldn’t be up to doing it.
I know about technology, about research, scientific applications, culture, civilization, differences between nations of the world, the nature of history.
Professor Hawking is heralded as ‘the genius of Britain,’ yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life. Why should anyone believe Mr. Hawking’s writings if he cannot provide evidence for his unscientific belief that out of nothing, everything came?
My provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious, scientific theory of cities and scientific theory means quantifiable, relying on underlying generic principles that can be made in a – put into a predictive framework. That’s the quest.
Industrial technologies that allowed for increased mechanization in 19th-century armed forces also spurred Frederick Winslow Taylor to develop his ‘Scientific Management’ doctrine in Philadelphia steel mills.
Spiritual process means approaching your well-being in a scientific manner as a technology for well-being.
We shall have to remove everything that strangles artistic and scientific creativeness.
It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.
I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.
People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.
When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated.
As pro-life advocates continue to expose the scientific and ethical reality of abortion, we must also console the millions of Americans who carry the heavy burden of an enormous sin.
I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.
At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly.
Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field.
Since when did scientific evidence become a reason to shy away from ecological action just because it wasn’t popular?
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
This means that to entrust to science – or to deliberate control according to scientific principles – more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.
By calling GMOs ‘poison’ and ‘evil,’ Bill Maher poisons the well of reasoned scientific discussion with ideologically driven fear mongering.
Many Christians are raised believing that to be true to God’s Word means to accept that the universe, Earth, and life were created in six 24-hour days, only a few thousand years ago. Most people lack the theological and scientific tools to think through the implications of this teaching.
Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn’t mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It’s about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
I’m so much more gratified by my life now that I have an expertise. I wake up every day thinking about a fairly small set of scientific questions all related to the psychology of achievement, and I’ll never get bored of those questions. That’s something I couldn’t say to you when I was 22 or 25 or probably even 31.
Americans broadly consent to funding clinical research because they believe in the promise of medical research. But people support scientific work only if they trust that it serves societal interests, respects patient dignity and operates with guardrails.
Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.
The EPA’s climate change regulations are based on compromised scientific reports and heavily flawed data.
What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Scientific thought and the miraculous unconscious are two waves in the same ocean.
With scientific advances, Congress must now make changes to reflect new therapeutic options.
We have to be aware that the scientific community throws up tons of different hypotheses and at a certain point we’ll find out who was right and who was wrong. But we have to go with the best information right now, which I would claim to be the IPCC reports.
If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie, you can start a debate. We like to create a bridge between those two worlds – film and science.
We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don’t want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.
