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Scientific Progress Quotes

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Scientific Progress Quotes

“The evils of life spring partly from natural causes, partly from men’s hostility to each other. In former times, competition and war were necessary for the securing of food, which could only be obtained by the victors. Now, owing to the mastery of natural forces which science has begun to give, there would be more comfort and happiness for all if all devoted themselves to the conquest of Nature rather than of each other. The representation of Nature as a friend, and sometimes as even an ally in our struggles with other men, obscures the true position of man in the world, and diverts his energies from the pursuit of scientific power, which is the only fight that can bring long-continued well-being to the human race.”

ScienceHumanityEvilNatureProgressHumanismScientific ProgressConqueringScientific Thinking
Book:Sceptical Essays
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“Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest. To be this ploughman, to see my labours result in the furtherance of scientific progress, was the height of my ambition, and now the Swedish Academy of Sciences has come, at this harvest, to add the most brilliant of crowns.”

ScienceAmbitionScientistMetaphorImprovementScientific TheoryFallibilityScientific ProgressDestructibilitySwedish Academy Of Sciences
Author:Paul Sabatier
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“Since the notion of quality, as understood by [the Swedish Research Council], is supposed to ignore practical applicability, quality as the sole selection criterion means that we value the production of new knowledge and its own right, rather than just a means towards attaining other goals. I have long been – and still am – highly sympathetic to this romantic view of knowledge and intellectual achievements. To improve our understanding of the world we live in really is one of the most magnificent and worthy the goals of human activity one can think of. And yet, it is not the only worthy goal. A bright future for humanity, where everyone has the best possible prospects of leading a happy and prosperous life, and where such things as poverty, pain and misery are reduced to a minimum, seems like another goal worth striving for, at least as important as the quest for ever-increasing knowledge.”

Scientific KnowledgeIntrinsic ValueScientific ProgressExistential RiskGlobal Catastrophic RiskCatastrophic Risk
Book:Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity
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“many scientists have interfered with science in precisely the way courts always worried tissue donors might do. “It’s ironic,” she told me. “The Moore court’s concern was, if you give a person property rights in their tissues, it would slow down research because people might withhold access for money. But the Moore decision backfired—it just handed that commercial value to researchers.” According to Andrews and a dissenting California Supreme Court judge, the ruling didn’t prevent commercialization; it just took patients out of the equation and emboldened scientists to commodify tissues in increasing numbers. Andrews and many others have argued that this makes scientists less likely to share samples and results, which slows research; they also worry that it interferes with health-care delivery.”

Health CareProperty RightsMedical ResearchScientific ProgressGene PatentsJohn MooreMyraid Genetics
Author:Rebecca Skloot
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“When it repudiates a past paradigm, a scientific community simultaneously renounces, as a fit subject for professional scrutiny, most of the books and articles in which that paradigm had been embodied. Scientific education makes use of no equivalent for the art museum or the library of classics, and the result is a sometimes drastic distortion in the scientist's perception of his discipline's past. More than the practitioners of other creative fields, he comes to see it as leading in a straight line to the discipline's present vantage. In short, he comes to see it as progress. No alternative is available to him while he remains in the field.”

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Book:The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
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“Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism.”

ViewsProgressEnlightenmentScientistReasoningOptimistPantheismDeismLiberalScientific ProgressSpinozaLeibnizBaruch SpinozaGottfried LeibnizGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Book:Marketing Theory: Foundations, Controversy, Strategy, and Resource-Advantage Theory
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“It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever.”

JudgingExpectationsBiasPublic HealthAssumptionsErrorScientific DiscoveryDisease ControlScientific ProgressYellow FeverYellow Fever EradicationMedical Progress
Book:Sanitation in Panama
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“Silicon Psychos (The Sonnet) If we cared more about the hard problem of real inhumanity, And less about the fictitious hard problem of consciousness, We'd have filled the world with human consciousness already, Instead of still fighting for basic rights against base biases. What kind of a moron goes walkabout when their home is on fire, What kind of a moron abandons the living chasing life on silicon! We really gotta take a hard look at our habits and priorities, Dreaming is good, but dream devoid of life is but degeneration. Chimps driving teslas are still chimps no matter the demagoguery, All intelligence is disgrace if it's unaware of human condition. A heartless organism living on silicon is no different, From a heartless organism living in a carbon based human. Be it crucifix or code, in savage hands every tool is weapon. The wise use AI to design prosthetics, savages for transhumanism.”

Artificial IntelligenceIntellectualismSingularityTranshumanismTechnology AddictionTechnology Existential RisksScientific ProgressTranshumanistProstheticEngineering Poetry
Book:Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None
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“We urgently need to find ways to push scientific and technological progress in directions that are likely to bring us good, and away from those directions that spell doom. This cannot be done if we stick to the erroneous view that all such progress is good for us. The first thing we need is to be able to distinguish those advances whose potential is most in the direction of prosperity and human flourishing from those whose potential is more in the direction of destruction and doom, and we need to find safe ways to handle those technologies that come with elements of both. Our ability to do so today is very limited, my ambition with this book is to draw attention to the problem, so that we can work together to improve, and avoid running blindfolded at full speed into a dangerous future.”

Scientific ProgressExistential RiskGlobal Catastrophic RiskCatastrophic RiskDifferential Progress
Book:Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity
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“We Are The Scientists (Sonnet 1214) Justifying human rights violation as necessary evil may be habit of politicians. Scientists must be wiser than that, otherwise, Science is just a weapon of mass destruction. Scientist without humanity is anything but scientist, Science without humanity is anything but science. Civilized scientists work for the progress of humanity, Primitive scientists work for the progress of science. Progress of science is not necessarily progress of humanity, Particularly when science advances trampling human life. World leaders may brush off such matter as collateral, To a scientist with spine nothing is higher than human life. Whole world is in our care, beyond all law and politics. We are capable, we are accountable - we are the scientists!”

ScienceScientistScientific ResearchScientific DiscoveryScientistsScience And ChangeScientific ProgressEthics And ScienceScience PoetryHumanitarian Science
Book:Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science
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“Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given.”

GivenProgressSocietyResearchEncountersPushingSooner Or LaterScientific ResearchDerivativesScientific Progress
Book:The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method
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“Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.”

MenSpiritNamesLanguageProgressHeroAchievementHeroicGeographyMoldNothing NewScientific ProgressMt Everest
Author:Edmund Hillary
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“Science can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.”

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Book:Science, the endless frontier: A report to the President
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“vivisection is not the same thing as scientific progress. There is such a thing as scientific progress. But this wholesale dedication of scientists to vivisection, which is the easy and cheap way, actually prevents them from scientific progress, for true progress is difficult and requires genius and imagination in its devoted workers.”

WayEasyDifficultImaginationAnimalProgressGeniusScientistWorkersAnimal RightsDedicationDevotedWholesaleVivisectionScientific Progress
Book:Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings
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“Mankind's survival is dependent on man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man's squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.”

MenArtWarProblemTurnsAbilityMoralPovertyProgressMankindSurvivalSolutionsHarmonyInjusticeSolvePracticalsDependentArt Of LivingScientific Progress
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“The important thing is that over time, scientific progress transforms things that used to have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode down to the pattern-recognition space; and from pattern recognition into the rules-based mode. This is the mechanism by which less-trained people are enabled to do more sophisticated things. This is always the way disruption happens. It enables a larger population of less-experienced people to do more sophisticated things.”

PeopleWayImportantProblemHappensUsedSpaceProgressImportant ThingsPatternsPopulationRecognitionMechanismSophisticatedProblem SolvingDisruptionScientific Progress
Author:Clayton Christensen
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“Of course, it's always difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in relation to, e.g., the singularity project. Many scientists I know are dismissive of transhumanist claims, BUT the last 100 years has surely taught us never to underestimate the pace and scope of scientific progress. However, even if much of this turns out to be science-fiction, it also reveals a way of thinking about human life that I find deeply troubling.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWayYearsHumansFactsLastsTurnsCoursesDifficultFictionProgressTaughtProjectsScientistClaimsRelationScience FictionHuman LifePaceUnderestimateScopeWay Of ThinkingTaught UsSingularityScientific Progress
Author:George Pattison
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“If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why - unlike scientific progress - is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance.”

IfsForgetViewsProgressArgumentPhilosophicalComplexesObviousIntuitionPoint Of ViewInvisibleForget ItSecuredScientific Progress
Author:Rebecca Goldstein
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“I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.”

ThinkingShouldChildrenScienceNaturalProgressMachinesScientistAccountsTalesFairyMechanismFairy TaleImpressMachineryLaboratoryMarieTechniciansNatural PhenomenaScientific Progress
Author:Marie Curie
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“In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.”

MenWorldBelieveImportantCharacterSuccessScienceI BelieveQualitySupportProgressBrotherBalanceAccountsWingsSimplicityIntellectSensesLiftsContributionMutualBalancedModestyHawksKittiesPioneeringScientific ProgressSucessWright BrothersMutual Support
Author:Charles Lindbergh
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“The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation.”

FirstsImportantSeemsScienceNationsCommunityKnownProgressInfluenceCenturyCivilizationAccountsRealisedNineteenth CenturySuccessorsCivilisedScientific Progress
Book:Education and National Progress
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“Contrary to what I once thought, scientific progress did not consist simply in observing, in accurately formulating experimental facts and drawing up a theory from them. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment thereof, which was then compared by experimentation with the real world. And it was this constant dialogue between imagination and experiment that allowed one to form an increasingly fine-grained conception of what is called reality.”

WorldRealFactsRealityFormImaginationProgressTheoryFineConstantContraryDrawingExperimentsInventionDialogueConceptionReal WorldFragmentsObservingExperimentationScientific Progress
Author:Francois Jacob
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“What happens then is like what happens when we separate a jigsaw puzzle into its fuve hundred pieces: The over-all picture disappears. This is the state of modern medicine: It has lost the sense of the unity of man. Such is the price it has paid for its scientific progress. It has sacrificed art to science.”

MenArtStatesHappensLostPiecesProgressModernHundredPaidMedicineUnityDisappearMedicalPuzzlesJigsawScientific ProgressModern MedicineJigsaw Puzzles
Book:The Healing of Persons
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“We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.”

ProblemSpiritSufferingMoralPovertyProgressMankindCreationBridgesAbundanceContrastTechnologicalScientific Progress
Book:In a Single Garment of Destiny
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