#scienc

But no. That was analogy rather than homology. What in the humanities they would call a heroic simile, if he understood the term, or a metaphor, or some other kind of literary analogy. And analogies were mostly meaningless — a matter of phenotype rather than genotype (to use another analogy). Most, of poetry and literature, really all the humanities, not to mention the social sciences, were phenotypic as far as Sax could tell. They added up to a huge compendium of meaningless analogies, which did not help to explain things, but only distorted perception of them. A kind of continuous conceptual drunkenness, one might say. Sax himself much preferred exactitude and explanatory power, and why not? If it was 200 Kelvin outside why not say so, rather than talk about witches’ tits and the like, hauling the whole great baggage of the ignorant past along to obscure every encounter with sensory reality? It was absurd. ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#obfuscation #science

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#capitalism #corruption #government #history #oppression

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. ↗

— Omar Nelson Bradley

#humanism #humanity #imperialism #nuclear-weapons #peace

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#magic #possibility #science #technology #science

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #technology #science

Americans worship technology. It's an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist. ↗

— Max Brooks

#max-brooks #science-fiction #technology #world-war-z #zombie

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#science #religion

When push comes to shove, it ain't the science that's going to lift you up-it's the belief, the spiritual side of life, that's going to lift you up, no matter what religion you are. ↗

— Kirstie Alley

#comes #going #life #lift #matter

I was a daydreamer, and there is a lot of history and geography and science I missed out on because I was in my head. And I regret that. ↗

— Gillian Anderson

#daydreamer #geography #head #history #i

I was always fascinated by science-fiction shows, shows like 'Star Trek' and 'Lost in Space.' ↗

— Michael P. Anderson

#fascinated #i #like #lost #science-fiction