“I assume the same problem exists in Australia as in America of back-biting and jealousy and parochialism among disciplines - there are the scientists, and there are the humanities people, and there are chemists and the physicists and everybody snipes at everybody else and inter-disciplinary communication is rare. But it's very precious and necessary.” PeopleProblemAmericaHumanityCommunicationDisciplineScientistAssumingAustraliaPhysicistBitingChemistParochialism Author:Richard Lewontin
“The general public doesn't know and probably doesn't care about punctuated equilibria nor indeed should they, or the greenhouse effect on some other planet - they barely have the ability to cope with the greenhouse effect on their own planet. So I think you have to distinguish between the broad visibility of a scientist when he or she is speaking to a general public and trying to address general issues and the continued position that a scientist may have into the history of a particular subject.” ThinkingKnowsShouldTryingMayCareAbilityIssuesSubjectsEffectsPositionParticularPlanetsScientistAddressesBroadsEquilibriumGreenhousesGeneral PublicVisibility Author:Richard Lewontin
“Scientists are educated from a very early time and a very early age to believe that the greater scientist is the scientist who makes discoveries or theories that apply to the greatest ambit of things in the world. And if you've only made a very good theory about snails, or a very good theory about some planets but not about the universe as a whole, or about all the history of humankind, then you have in some sense accepted a lower position in the hierarchy of the fame of science as it's taught to you as a young student.” IfsWorldBelieveMadeWholeAgeYoungUniverseGreaterPositionStudentsTaughtPlanetsTheoryFameDiscoveryScientistVery GoodAcceptedEducatedHumankindHierarchySnailYoung Students Author:Richard Lewontin
“If I ask you who is the most famous scientist who ever lived, or the greatest scientist who ever lived you'll say either Einstein or Newton or something like that because their claims were supposed to apply universally. But the claim of somebody who is studying a particular feature of the evolutionary process like whether it's very fast or very slow, or occurs in steps and so on, that's not a universal claim, that's a rather specialised claim and so you can't claim to great fame and great success.” IfsAsksProcessStepsStudyParticularFameScientistUniversalClaimsFeaturesNewtonGreat Success Author:Richard Lewontin
“In my mind the job of a natural scientist is to bend over backwards to say something which can be demonstrated to be true or at least which is not of such a nature that there's no way to demonstrate that it's false.” WayMindJobsNaturalScientistBeing TrueBackwards Author:Richard Lewontin
“The social scientist is in a difficult, if not impossible position. On the one hand there is the temptation to see all of society as one's autobiography writ large, surely not the path to general truth. On the other hand, there is the attempt to be general and objective by pretending that one knows nothing about the experience of being human, forcing the investigator to pretend that people usually know and tell the truth about important issues, when we all know from our own lives how impossible that is.” PeopleIfsKnowsHumansImportantHandsSocialDifficultPathIssuesImpossiblePositionExperienceScientistObjectivesTemptationTelling The TruthPretendingBeing HumanAutobiographyImportant IssuesInvestigators Author:Richard Lewontin
“When the wrong question is being asked, it usually turns out to be because the right question is too difficult. Scientists ask questions they can answer. That is, it is often the case that the operations of a science are not a consequence of the problematic of that science, but that the problematic is induced by the available means.” MeanTurnsAsksDifficultAnswersCasesConsequenceScientistAvailableOperationsRight Questions Author:Richard Lewontin
