#sci

The four stages of acceptance: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so." (Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) ↗

— J.B.S. Haldane

#dispute #haldane #opportunism #science #self-contradiction

There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#death #life #science #death

Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do. ↗

— Joyce Meyer

#conscience #duty #character

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#philosophy #scientific-process #truth #perception

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct. ↗

— Michio Kaku

#science #science

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives. ↗

— William A. Dembski

#biology #id #intelligent-design #optimisation #optimization

You know, when I was in Paris, seeing Linter for the first time, I was standing at the top of some steps in the courtyard where Linter's place was, and I looked across it and there was a little notice on the wall saying it was forbidden to take photographs of the courtyard without the man's permission. [..] They want to own the light! ↗

— Iain Banks

#human-nature #observation #science-fiction #art

Conceited little mega-puppy. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#science-fiction #humor

Science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical well-explained packages. The fey are magical capricious illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries so naturally we do not exist. That type of nonbelief is fatal to faries. ↗

— Julie Kagawa

#magic-bleeds #science #nature

The young specialist in English Lit, ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#science #science