Science and Reason

Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point.

 

The two cultures and the scientific revolution.

 

If we find the answer to that [why it is that we and the universe exist], it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.

 

What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe … Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

 

Poets, you know, are always ahead of science; all the great discoveries of science have been stated before in poetry.

Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two very differentthings, as the history of a science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisivemoments.

[ After Randolph Churchill’s lung was removedand found not to have malignancies :] A typicaltriumph of modern science to find the onlypart of Randolph that was not malignant andremove it.

Every passing hour brings the Solar Systemforty-three thousand miles closer to GlobularCluster M13 in Hercules—and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

[ Of Lucretius :] Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas .

Science, my lad, has been built upon manyerrors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

We have not the reverent feeling for therainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. . . . We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Gonzo journalism . . . is a style of “reporting” based on William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism—and the best journalists have always known this.

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles ofa real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, butthrough television and telephony we shall seeand hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instrumentsthrough which we shall be able to do thiswill be amazingly simple compared with ourpresent telephone. A man will be able to carryone in his vest pocket.

Ere many generations pass, our machinery willbe driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. . . . Throughout space there is energy . . . it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable(improbable according to our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.

I have taken great care not to deride, bewail, or execrate human actions, but to understand them.

Deus, sive Natura .

Every active force produces more than one change—every cause produces more than one effect.

If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.