“The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the world put together.” WorldSchoolTogetherBeliefReligiousWonderSpecialCollegeHumorousEnormousUsaDevotedHarvestReligious BeliefUnorthodox Author:Peter Medawar
“The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.” ThinkingWorldShouldLawPurposeBeliefNaturalEventsInformationStructureForbiddenNatural LawScientific MethodFactualCompulsoryInventoryEnquiry Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought Source: Induction and intuition in scientific thought
“To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. Religious beliefs give a spurious spiritual dimension to tribal enmities.” GivingReasonSpiritualBeliefReligiousAtheismDegreesConvictionDimensionsDestructiveSubstitutesReligious BeliefEnmitySpiritual Dimensions Author:Peter Medawar
“It goes with the passionate intensity and deep conviction of the truth of a religious belief, and of course of the importance of the superstitious observances that go with it, that we should want others to share it - and the only certain way to cause a religious belief to be held by everyone is to liquidate nonbelievers. The price in blood and tears that mankind generally has had to pay for the comfort and spiritual refreshment that religion has brought to a few has been too great to justify our entrusting moral accountancy to religious belief.” WayWantShouldHas BeensSpiritualCertainCoursesBeliefCausesReligiousPayMoralBloodShareAtheismMankindTearsComfortImportancePassionateConvictionJustifyIntensityReligious BeliefSuperstitiousObservanceRefreshmentsEntrusting Book:The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science Source: The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science
“It is high time that laymen abandoned the misleading belief that scientific enquiry is a cold dispassionate enterprise, bleached of imaginative qualities, and that a scientist is a man who turns the handle of discovery; for at every level of endeavour scientific research is a passionate undertaking and the Promotion of Natural Knowledge depends above all on a sortee into what can be imagined but is not yet known.” MenScienceTurnsBeliefNaturalLevelsQualityKnownColdDependsResearchDiscoveryScientistPassionateHandleEnterpriseAbandonedImaginativePromotionMisleadUndertakingsEndeavourScientific ResearchEnquiryLaymanDispassionate Author:Peter Medawar
“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
