Science & Technology

“A problem well put is half solved.”

“The scientific revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the scientific revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.”

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.”

“An act of observation is itself part of the phenomenon observed and is analytically inseparable from it.”

“If there is something in nature you don’t understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as opposed to ‘guilty until proven innocent’, let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”

“Simplicity rarely loses to complexity in battles in the public square.”

“For measurement to be meaningful, knowing the resolution is crucial and integral to the entire process.”

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

“The difference between theory and practice is far greater in practice than in theory.”

“What good is knowing unless it is coupled with caring? Science can give us knowing, but caring comes from some place else… While science could be a source of and a repository for knowledge, the scientific world view is all too often an enemy of ecological compassion. It is important in thinking about this lens to separate two ideas that are too often synonymous in the mind of the public: the practice of science and the scientific worldview that it feeds. Science is the process of revealing the world through rational inquiry. The practice of doing real science brings the questioner into an unparalleled intimacy with nature, fraught with wonder and creativity as we try to comprehend the mysteries of the more than human world…Contrasting with this is the scientific worldview…that uses science and technology to reinforce reductionist, materialist economic and political agendas. I maintain that the destructive lens… is not science itself but [this]… The illusion of dominance and control. The separation of knowledge from responsibility.”