Quotessence
Home / Authors / Peter Medawar
Peter Medawar

Peter Medawar Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceScientistMedawarIfsGenç Bilim Adamına öğüTlerHas BeensNermin ArıkDiscoveryFactsTercüme

Famous Peter Medawar Quotes

“We cannot point to a single definitive solution of any one of the problems that confront us — political, economic, social or moral, that is, having to do with the conduct of life. We are still beginners, and for that reason may hope to improve. To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind. There is no need to be dismayed by the fact that we cannot yet envisage a definitive solution of our problems, a resting-place beyond which we need not try to go.”

NeedsTryingMindMayStillsReasonFactsProblemLastsPoliticalSpiritSocialMoralPovertyProgressEconomicSolutionsUltimateLast WordsMeannessBeginnersDismayed
Author:Peter Medawar
Create image

“Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.”

MayMadePastScienceDiscoveryScientistExpectedMade ItRemarkableDestinationPhenomenonInherentCommonplaceRaritySimultaneousImprobability
Book:The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science
Create image

“If the task of scientific methodology is to piece together an account of what scientists actually do, then the testimony of biologists should be heard with specially close attention. Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding. Biology is complex, messy and richly various, like real life; it travels faster nowadays than physics or chemistry (which is just as well, since it has so much farther to go), and it travels nearer to the ground. It should therefore give us a specially direct and immediate insight into science in the making.”

IfsGivingShouldWellsRealTogetherScienceUnderstandingAttentionPiecesHeardDevelopmentTasksDirectScientistAccountsComplexesVariousInsightPhysicsReal LifeFasterBiologyChemistryTestimonyFrontiersMessyBiologistMethodologyBewilderment
Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought
Create image

“For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very preceisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping.”

ScienceImaginationCreativeImagineScientistAccountsCriticsImaginativeSkepticalBookkeeping
Book:The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science
Create image

“Deductivism in mathematical literature and inductivism in scientific papers are simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us. The theatrical illusion is shattered if we ask what goes on behind the scenes. In real life discovery and justification are almost always different processes.”

IfsDifferentRealScienceAsksLiteratureProcessDifferencesBehindsGoes OnScenePaperIllusionDiscoveryMathematicsTheatreReal LifeMathematicalJustificationPapersCurtainsShatteredTheatricalPostureBehind The Scenes
Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought
Create image

“It is a common failing-and one that I have myself suffered from-to fall in love with a hypothesis and to be unwilling to take no for an answer. A love affair with a pet hypothesis can waste years of precious time. There is very often no finally decisive yes, though quite often there can be a decisive no.”

YearsScienceFallAnswersCommonFailingWasteFalling In LoveAffairPetHypothesisUnwillingLove AffairPrecious Time
Book:Advice to a young scientist
Create image

“It is ... a sign of the times-though our brothers of physics and chemistry may smile to hear me say so-that biology is now a science in which theories can be devised: theories which lead to predictions and predictions which sometimes turn out to be correct. These facts confirm me in a belief I hold most passionately-that biology is the heir of all the sciences.”

MaySometimesFactsScienceTimeTurnsBeliefBrotherTheoryAccountsHearingPhysicsBiologyChemistryPredictionsHeirs
Author:Peter Medawar
Create image

“You have ... been told that science grows like an organism. You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this [Nobel Prize Presentation] is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm ... colleagues in so much of my work.”

IfsShouldHas BeensTodayRememberScienceGrowsArmsAccountsShouldersOccasionsGiantsPrizeOrganismsColleaguesPresentationNobelNobel PrizePredecessors
Author:Peter Medawar
Create image

“The fact that scientists do not consciously practice a formal methodology is very poor evidence that no such methodology exists. It could be said-has been said-that there is a distinctive methodology of science which scientists practice unwittingly, like the chap in Moliere who found that all his life, unknowingly, he had been speaking prose.”

Has BeensSaidFactsScienceFoundPoorPracticeEvidenceScientistProseFormalDistinctiveMethodologyChaps
Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought
Create image

“Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to be groundless; times such as these are hard for scientists-days of leaden gray skies bringing with them a miserable sense of oppression and inadequacy.”

YearsTwoHardScienceSkyEvidenceScientistSeekingOppressionMiserableGrayWearyHypothesisInadequacyGray Skies
Book:Advice to a young scientist
Create image