“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
“Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of order into incoherence; it, too, hangs together, makes sense, leaves no loose ends, and is never (but never) at a loss for explanation. In a state of bewilderment it may therefore bring comfort and relief.... give its subject a new and deeper understanding of his own condition and of the nature of his relationship to his fellow men. A mythical structure will be built up around him which makes sense and is believable-in, regardless of whether or not it is true.” MenGivingWellsKindMayEndsStatesTogetherOrderUnderstandingNatureLossAnswersRelationshipConditionsSubjectsTheoryComfortBuiltFellowsStructureDeeperMythMythologyMake SenseExplanationReliefDescriptionFellow ManPsychoanalysisBelievableBewildermentDeeper UnderstandingIncoherenceLoose EndsBelievabilityLevi Strauss Author:Peter Medawar
“I shall borrow two words used for a slightly different purpose by the great demographer Alfred Lotka to distinguish between the two systems of heredity enjoyed by man: endosomatic or internal heredity for the ordinary or genetical heredity we have in common with animals; and exosomatic or external heredity for the non-genetic heredity that is peculiarly our own - the heredity that is mediated through tradition, by which I mean the transfer of information through non-genetic channels from one generation to the next.” MenMeanTwoDifferentUsedPurposeNextAnimalCommonGenerationsInformationOrdinaryTraditionEnjoyedInternalsTransfersHeredity Book:The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists Source: The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists
“How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind [pseudoscience/'woo'], for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.” PeopleMenWellsKindHas BeensPhilosophyScienceFictionTakenTasteCapacitySizePopulationSpreadEducatedPrimariesPhenomenonUnderestimatePseudoscienceCompulsoryScholarlyCompulsory EducationPrimary Education Author:Peter Medawar
“The Phenomenon of Man stands square in the tradition of Naturphilosophie, a philosophical indoor pastime of German origin which does not seem even by accident (though there is a great deal of it) to have contributed anything of permanent value to the storehouse of human thought.” MenHumansDoeSeemsValuesDealsTraditionPhilosophicalAccidentsPermanentPhenomenonSquaresPastimeHuman Thought Author:Peter Medawar
“A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.” MenFactsBattleMajorsDiscoveryScientistHistorianCollectorsChronologyGreat Battle Author:Peter Medawar
