Quotes Tagged "scientists"

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

The void is 'not-being,' and no part of 'what is' is a 'not-being,'; for what 'is' in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not 'one': on the contrary, it is a 'many' infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk.

On Titan the molecules that have been raining down like manna from heaven for the last 4 billion years might still be there largely unaltered deep-frozen awaiting the chemists from Earth

Look, I don't know what you are, but you're more than a geologist, if you are one at all. I've met lots of geologists on different projects like this, and they're all tiny sunburned men with fetishes for geodes. They wear floppy hats and carry baggies for soil samples around with them. ... And geologists don't make rocks disappear like you did the other night. They keep them and build little shrines to them.

We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher Columbus do not tell much about the builders of the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria or about the principle of the caravel. These spacecraft their designers builders navigators and controllers are examples of what science and engineering set free for well-defined peaceful purposes can accomplish. Those scientists and engineers should be role models for an America seeking excellence and international competitiveness. They should be on our stamps.

I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.

I venture into research areas that corporate controlled scientists are forbidden from.

As one ancient politician said: Any fool could make up a small lie, but to make a big and plausible one . . . such business can be done only by a real genius of science!

We were not aware of how autonomous cars could go wrong. But once the science behind the technology is implemented in real life, the issues with it became an engineering problem. Slowly, we learn about all the things that could go wrong.

Think of facts and figures as bricks and cement, and science or scientific understanding as a building. Without the vision of the architect, it's impossible to construct the building no matter how much bricks and cement you have.

Science is the most influential tool of progress in the world, not one among many, but most, yet no scientist had tried to use it as a primary tool for harmony. And I desired to accomplish precisely that. I didn’t want to popularize science, for there were and are already tons of scientists doing it. I wanted to use science in a way that would have direct humanitarian consequences in interhuman relationships.

From a historical perspective, the persons whom lived noble lives were not kings, generals, or fabulously wealthy merchants, but scientists, physicians, philosophers, and artists whose enduring contributions changed the world. The greatest scientists in the world including Albert Einstein were philosophical and artistic in their own unique method.

Ни ученые, ни фантасты никогда не умели как следует предсказывать будущее, думал старик. К две тысячи тридцать четвертому году человек давно бы уже должен был стать властителем если и не половины Галактики, то хотя бы Солнечной системы. Гомеру это обещали еще в детстве. Но и фантасты, и ученые исходили из того, что человечество рационально и последовательно. Как будто оно не состояло из нескольких миллиардов ленивых, легкомысленных, увлекающихся личностей, а было неким ульем, наделенным коллективным разумом и единой волей.

Scientists, for their part, need to be far more engaged with current public debates. They “should not be afraid of making their voice heard when the debate wanders into their field of expertise, be it medicine or history. Silence isn’t neuatrality; it is supporting the status quo. Of course, it is extremely important to go on doing academic research and to publish the results in scientific journals that only a few experts read. But it is equally important to communicate the latest scientific theories to the general public through popular-science books, and even through the skilful use of art and fiction.

Science works through replication, rectification and modification.

Scientists aren’t necessarily good communicators, because they aren’t trained to be good communicators.

Scientists and creationists are always at odds, of course.

Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.