Science Quotes – Insightful Reflections on Research and Knowledge

"Usually in science, if we're off by a factor of 2 or a factor of 10, we call that horrible. We say, something's wrong with the theory. We're off by a factor of 10! However, in cosmology, we're off by a factor of 10 to the 120th. That is one with 100 and 20 zeroes after it. This is the largest mismatch between theory and experiment in the history of science."

Michio Kaku

"In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' Let there be light uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists. Although it is neither explicit nor complete, this is the reply we were awaiting from science, and which the present human generation is awaiting from it."

Papst Pius XII

"Some have asked me where scientists turn after science has yielded no clear solution. I tell these people what my grandfather Charles Darwin told me: roll back your eyes, contort your body, and let the dark lord Satan show you the way"

Neil deGrasse Tyson

"One forgets that the sciences have an intrinsic purpose and loses sight of the truly literary interest, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Mathematics loses none of its dignity when regarded merely as an object of speculation, as inapplicable to solving practical problems."

Alexander von Humboldt

"The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong... There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated."

Thomas Kuhn

"No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others."

Thomas Kuhn

"We also tried this for a long time, to isolate viruses in cell cultures. We never succeeded. That's how it is for many labs around the world that have tried. Zhengli Shi is actually the only lab back in Wuhan that managed to do that, to isolate a virus for once.[....] I know Zhengli Shi used the ones in the lab for that as well. Here you have to say, when you do this, practically the first thing that happens with the SARS-2 virus is that this furin site in the virus is destroyed. So when we isolate SARS-2 virus in Vero cells from patients, that furin site goes away immediately because that's a selection disadvantage for the virus in cell culture."

Christian Drosten

"But what does a scientist do when he suddenly realizes that what is considered the foundation of natural science – namely matter, which we can all grasp – does not actually exist?"

Hans-Peter Dürr

"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. And so it is with science."

Richard P. Feynman

"Already in the 18th century, not to mention the present, the course of science as well as of faith was motivated less by the will to do good than by the interest of power."

Max Horkheimer

"I’m aware this two page backgrounder & experimental proposal aims to show whether or not viruses exist, focussing on SARS-CoV-2. I’m a signatory because, having given a lot of thought to the entire proposition, I now believe it’s yet another of the lies to which we’ve been subject. In the case of scientists, even those in commercial drug discovery, have taken as fact that viruses exist without ever reviewing the original papers."

Dr Mike Yeadon

"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination."

Daniel Dennett

"The difference between a priest and a scientist? The color of the robe."

yoice.net

"Cosmology is different from other sciences in a fundamental way. The sheer scope of the subject matter covers the largest extent imaginable - literally - and it does so based only on observations from our own local place within it."

Bjørn Ekeberg & Louis Marmet

"Education Research: This is a process whereby serious educators discover knowledge that is well known to everybody, and has been for several centuries. Its principal characteristic is that no one pays any attention to it."

Neil Postman

"I mean science, as an institution, is interested in gaining the power — to gain control over the world — to be able to gain control over diseases, over the human body, over the environment, over rivers and animals and forests. You have to submit a grant to somebody to fund, it all comes down to money, in many cases. It’s also an institution- If you’re a freelance scientist, you just explore the truth. Okay. But in an institution, a university, you need money to finance so you submit a research grant, and you have to convince the authority not of the truth. You have to convince the authority that what you want to do will somehow make us more powerful. Will somehow enable us to produce a new weapon. Will somehow enable us to produce more food. Will somehow enable us to gain control over previously uncontrollable, or deadly disease. And this is really what gets the money. Of course, it means to also be truth to some extent. Does it work and who wants it?"

Yuval Noah Harari

"Science and science fiction are essentially the same."

William Shatner

"Physics has lost its grip on the ground. For every anomaly, scientists pull a new parameter out of a hat instead of trying to understand the underlying principles. They have accumulated more than 30 "natural constants": all values that no one can explain."

Alexander Unzicker