Science and Reason

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more

As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.

 

“Normal science” means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice.

 

For the rational study of the law the black-letter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.

 

What a satire, by the way, is that machine [Charles Babbage’s calculating machine] on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them!

 

We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep the real and the true.

At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to^reak the bank of our answers.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

Equations are more important to me because politics is for the present but an equation is something for eternity.

 

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. J. R.R.

 

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but science makes God unnecessary.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Economics is the painful elaboration of the obvious.

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads.

Technology . . . is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.