#science

There are certain questions that scientists may not ask, or, more accurately, for some questions, there are certain answers that scientists must a priori preclude from consideration. ↗

— Satoshi Kanazawa

#research #science #society #sociology #sociology

Ethics that focus on human interactions, morals that focus on humanity's relationship to a Creator, fall short of these things we've learned. They fail to encompass the big take-home message, so far, of a century and a half of biology and ecology: life is- more than anything else- a process; it creates, and depends on, relationships among energy, land, water, air, time and various living things. It's not just about human-to-human interaction; it's not just about spiritual interaction. It's about all interaction. We're bound with the rest of life in a network, a network including not just all living things but the energy and nonliving matter that flows through the living, making and keeping all of us alive as we make it alive. We can keep debating ideologies and sending entreaties toward heaven. But unless we embrace the fuller reality we're in- and reality's implications- we'll face big problems. ↗

— Carl Safina

#environmentalism #nature #science #life

Workable solutions for Earth are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers, or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. ↗

— Lawrence Anthony

#endangered-species #environmentalism #science #science

Many conscientious environmentalists are repelled by the word "abundance," automatically associating it with irresponsible consumerism and plundering of Earth's resources. In the context of grassroots frustration, insensitive enthusing about the potential for energy abundance usually elicits an annoyed retort. "We have to conserve." The authors believe the human family also has to _choose_. The people we speak with at the recycling depot or organic juice bar are for the most part not looking at the _difference_ between harmony-with-nature technologies and exploitative practices such as mountaintop coal mining. "Destructive" was yesterday's technology of choice. As a result, the words "science and technology" are repugnant to many of the people who passionately care about health, peace, justice and the biosphere. Usually these acquaintances haven't heard about the variety of constructive yet powerful clean energy technologies that have the potential to gradually replace oil and nuclear industries if allowed. Wastewater-into-energy technologies could clean up waterways and other variations solve the problem of polluting feedlots and landfills. ↗

— Jeane Manning and Joel Garbon

#electricity #energy #environment #environmentalism #life

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#experience #logic #reason #science #then

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. ↗

— Richard Adams

#belief #contingent #forces #heart #human

The national security state has many unfair and cruel weapons in its arsenal, but that of junk science is one which can be fought and perhaps defeated. ↗

— Aldrich Ames

#cruel #defeated #fought #junk #many

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science. ↗

— Michelangelo Antonioni

#as far as #culture #exactly #far #hasn

Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice. ↗

— Thomas Aquinas

#friendship #justice #moral #occupied #science

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part. ↗

— Jean M. Auel

#chooses #definition #fantasy #fiction #heard