1–6 of 6
The fruitful pursuit of scientific truth and its application, once discovered, is not just a matter of talented individuals well trained in foreign universities and supplied with the equipment they desire. These are very important, but the cultivation of science is a collective undertaking [written as 'understanding'!…
It is against the background of conflict and confusion in the relations of science and society that we find ourselves confronted with a crisis in the history of mankind, and particularly in the history of human government. It is a crisis arising from the rapidly increasing power given to man by science. It is a crisis…
Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide of action; that the truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment of human progress, but human progress…
In 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent. In 1989, when “climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, 63 percent of Americans understood it was a problem…
Scientific truth, like puristic truth, must come about by controversy. Personally this view is abhorrent to me. It seems to mean that scientific truth must transcend the individual, that the best hope of science lies in its greatest minds being often brilliantly and determinedly wrong, but in opposition, with some…
When we are asked to swear in courts of law that we will tell 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth', we are being asked the impossible. It is simply beyond our powers. Our memories are fallible; even scientific truth is merely an approximation; and we are ignorant about nearly all of the Universe…