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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #scienc
هناك علاقة طردية بين تصور بعينه للدين وبين حجم القوة التي يوفرها للقائمين علي توظيفه سياسياً؛ وأعني أنه كلما كان الدين حرفياً وقطعياً يكون مقدار القوة التي يقدمها لهؤلاء الساعين إلي التخفي وراءه أكبر- بما لا يقاس- من تلك التي يوفرها لهم حين يكون موضوعاً لتفكير مفتوح. ويرتبط ذلك بحقيقة أن قطعية الدين وحرفيته تكون هي الأكثر مثالية في إخضاع الجمهور وقهره؛ وأعني من حيث لا يكون متاحاً له، في إطارها، إلا محض التسليم والامتثال من دون جدل أو سؤال. وإذ يقوم دعاة الإسلام السياسي بتثبيت هذا التصور القطعي للدين علي أحد المفاهيم الشائعة المستقرة في وعي الجمهور؛ وهو مفهوم القطعي الثبوت والدلالة، فإنه يلزم التنويه بما يقوم عليه هذا المفهوم من مراوغة تسوية قطعية الثبوت مع قطعية الدلالة، وذلك فيما ينتمي الثبوت إلي مجال التاريخ الذي يغاير بالكلية مجال المعني الذي تنتمي إليه الدلالة. وبالطبع فإنه لا يمكن التسوية أبداً بين ما ينتمي إلي مجال الثبوت التاريخي، وبين ما ينتمي إلي مجال المعني الدلالي؛ وبمعني أنه في حين أن أحدا لا يجادل في يقينية ثبوت القرآن؛ وبما يعنيه ذلك من إمكان- بل وجوب- التأكيد علي قطعية ثبوته، فإنه لا يمكن القول بقطعية دلالته ومعناه، لأن ذلك يعني وجوب القول بأحادية الدلالة والمعني؛ وهو ما لا يمكن لمسلم أن يقبله بخصوص القرآن. ↗
أسرت النسبية العامة معظم من درسوها برشاقتها الجميلة. فقد قام آينشتاين بإحلال وجهة نظر نيوتن الميكانيكية الجافة عن الفضاء والزمان والجاذبية بوصف هندسي ديناميكي يتضمن الزمان المحدب. وقد غزل آينشتاين الجاذبية في النسيج الأساسي للعالم، وبدلا من فرض الجاذبية كبنية إضافية، فقد أصبحت جزءا من العالم في أكثر مستوياته الأساسية، وقد نتج من بعث الحياة في الفضاء والزمان أن سمحنا لهما بأن يتحدبا ويعوجا ويتموجا، ما أصبحنا نشير إليه بصورة عامة باسم الجاذبية ↗
Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find eight spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13 left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The striking fact is that these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms. The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis. Many are the efforts of biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants exhibit this remarkable pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all these odd things need not reflect selection or historical accident. Some of the best efforts to understand phyllotaxis appeal to a form of self-organization. Paul Green, at Stanford, has argued persuasively that the Fibonacci series is just what one would expects as the simplest self-repeating pattern that can be generated by the particular growth processes in the growing tips of the tissues that form sunflowers, pinecones, and so forth. Like a snowflake and its sixfold symmetry, the pinecone and its phyllotaxis may be part of order for free ↗
I came into the unknown and stayed there unknowing rising beyond all science. I did not know the door but when I found the way, unknowing where I was, I learned enormous things, but what I felt I cannot say, for I remained unknowing, rising beyond all science. It was the perfect realm of holiness and peace. In deepest solitude I found the narrow way: a secret giving such release that I was stunned and stammering, rising beyond all science. I was so far inside, so dazed and far away my senses were released from feelings of my own. My mind had found a surer way: a knowledge of unknowing, rising beyond all science. And he who does arrive collapses as in sleep, for all he knew before now seems a lowly thing, and so his knowledge grows so deep that he remains unknowing, rising beyond all science. The higher he ascends the darker is the wood; it is the shadowy cloud that clarified the night, and so the one who understood remains always unknowing, rising beyond all science. This knowledge by unknowing is such a soaring force that scholars argue long but never leave the ground. Their knowledge always fails the source: to understand unknowing, rising beyond all science. This knowledge is supreme crossing a blazing height; though formal reason tries it crumbles in the dark, but one who would control the night by knowledge of unknowing will rise beyond all science. And if you wish to hear: the highest science leads to an ecstatic feeling of the most holy Being; and from his mercy comes his deed: to let us stay unknowing, rising beyond all science. ↗
GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust --to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools. ↗
The important question isn't how to keep bad physicians from harming patient; it's how to keep good physicians from harming patients. Medical malpractice suits are a remarkably ineffective remedy. (In reference to a Harvard Medical Practice Study)... fewer than 2 percent of the patients who had received substandard care ever filed suit. Conversely, only a small minority among patients who did sue had in fact been victims of negligent care. And a patient's likelihood of winning a suit depended primarily on how poor his or her outcome was, regardless of whether that outcome was caused by disease or unavoidable risks of care. The deeper problem with medical malpractice is that by demonizing errors they prevent doctors from acknowledging & discussing them publicly. The tort system makes adversaries of patient & physician, and pushes each other to offer a heavily slanted version of events. ↗
The Himalayas are the crowning achievement of the Indo-Australian plate. India in the Oligocene crashed head on into Tibet, hit so hard that it not only folded and buckled the plate boundaries but also plowed into the newly created Tibetan plateau and drove the Himalayas five and a half miles into the sky. The mountains are in some trouble. India has not stopped pushing them, and they are still going up. Their height and volume are already so great they are beginning to melt in their own self-generated radioactive heat. When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in a warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as 20,000 feet below the sea floor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat, I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence; this is the one I would choose: the summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone. ↗
Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me. ↗
My doggy ate my homework. He chewed it up," I said. But when I offered my excuse My teacher shook her head. I saw this wasn't going well. I didn't want to fail. Before she had a chance to talk, I added to the tale: "Before he ate, he took my work And tossed it in a pot. He simmered it with succotash Till it was piping hot. "He scrambled up my science notes With eggs and bacon strips, Along with sautéed spelling words And baked potato chips. "He then took my arithmetic And had it gently fried. He broiled both my book reports With pickles on the side. "He wore a doggy apron As he cooked a notebook stew. He barked when I objected. There was nothing I could do." "Did he wear a doggy chef hat?" My teacher gave a scowl. "He did," I said. "And taking it Would only make him growl." My teacher frowned, but then I said As quickly as I could, "He covered it with ketchup, And he said it tasted good." "A talking dog who likes to cook?" My teacher had a fit. She sent me to the office, And that is where I sit. I guess I made a big mistake In telling her all that. 'Cause I don't have a doggy. It was eaten by my cat. ↗
Yeye shifted in her seat as Roma stared down at her angrily. “There are inter-realm laws I must abide by, that the soul must abide by as well when it comes to an appointed manifestation. Whoever was in the world before can not go into the new world. That identity must be forsaken. It must—” “Forsaken or forgotten?” Roma barked. “Forsaken,” Yeye answered. “Unless you’re putting this soul into a blank state like that of a child, it can not be forgotten. It has to be forsaken. That’s the rule or you get no soul.” “So you’re telling me that this soul will remember but will never be able to be that person it was?” Roma asked. “I’m telling you a new memory must be formed with absolutely no reference to the previous.” “What the freak is that?” Roma asked, visibly agitated. “You can form new memories while holding on to preexisting ones.” Yeye stood. “Yes Roma, you’re right. But you can also form new memories while you are unable to access the previous ones.” “Such it would have a drive that belongs to it but would never be able to access or be forbidden to access it?” Roma asked. Yeye’s voice was low. “I’m afraid that’s the way it is going to have to be.” Roma shook his head vehemently. “Exactly which way is that Yeye. Exactly which way is that in common terms?” Yeye spoke in her most resolute tone yet. “You will never be able to know whether or not this soul is Mara.” Roma gained silence, breathing in and out rapidly. “We’re getting out of this damned Zharfar,” he said as he stormed out. ↗
