#speculation

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#bet #betting #faith #i #kind

Yeah, I think speculation keeps things really interesting. ↗

— Adam Lambert

#i think #interesting #keeps #really #speculation

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross. ↗

— Thomas Malthus

#friend #gross #order #political #present

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture. ↗

— Jerry A. Coyne

#confessions-of-the-darwinists #conjecture #darwin #darwinism #darwinist-confessions

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#brain #conjecture #consciousness #darwinism #evolution

We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still go that other moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered, whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or a star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it. And if it's a cockroach? Well, that will be the happiest ****ing cockroach on the planet. I can tell you that. ↗

— Libba Bray

#happiness #memories #puzzles #afterlife

Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. ↗

— Hal Clement

#only #perfectly #right #science #speculation

Goddamn Summerset. I've told him to leave my car when I park it." "I think he did." Peabody flipped on her sunshades, pointed. "It's blocking the drive, see?" "Oh, yeah." Eve cleared her throat. The car was just as she'd left it, and fluttering in the mild breeze were a few torn articles of clothing. "Don't ask," she muttered and started to hoof it down the drive. "I wasn't going to." Peabody's voice was smooth as silk, "Speculation's more interesting. ↗

— J.D. Robb

#peabody #speculation #death

This is pure speculation, but for a period of time, a lot of getting into a party was through fundraising and volunteer work, and Republican women had more time to do that than democratic women, who were out there getting jobs. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#fundraising #getting #had #into #jobs

Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around. ↗

— Jean M. Auel

#around #back #books #fact #far