Goethean Science Quotes

This is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition. ~ Philip K. Dick

Science without religion is dangerous because it necessarily entails a mechanization of humanity and consequent loss of individual autonomy and spirituality. On the other hand, religion without science is powerless because it lacks an effective means through which to actualize the ultimate reality. Science and religion must work together harmoniously. ~ Masao Abe

Trust is kind of this economic lubricant. When trust is high, morale is high ... Higher trust environments produce individuals who are happier. ~ Paul J. Zak

Such a person has no place. He can't be found. He's like one of those unphysical things they talk about in science now–like one of those things that's moving, you know, always moving on, but through no space. ~ William H. Gass

An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington

What can he tell them? He, who knows nothing. Ibn al Mohammed has not planned atrocities nor committed them. He has never been in the presence of terrorists. Yet Satan's agents suspect him. He is dark-complected. His hair and beard are black. His name is Muslim. Body tall and slender, hands large, their fingers long and tapered. Dark eyes sunken in a narrow face. Irises like obsidian. He prays on hands and knees, forehead touching the floor. Thoughtlessly aligned, his cage obliges him to face a white plastic wall to bow toward Mecca. No matter; Ibn al Mohammed requires no sight of ocean or sky to know his place in the universe. He knows himself as one chosen, beloved of God. A man whose devotion will allow him to be saved.

Standing at the bars, he stares at the plastic wall. Modesty panel, they call it. The detainee wills nothing, attempts nothing, merely stares at blankness as his mind opens toward such signs as might appear. Something, nothing. However little, however great, whatever God vouchsafes is sufficient. The least sign is enough. A crease in the plastic. A shadow cast against its insensate skin, then fleeing, gone. A raindrop: trickling through the roof, one small drop might touch the wall, leave a transparent streak, a tear without sorrow to confirm his understanding of what is and must be. Recognition. Acceptance. By such a sign he will know he is not forsaken. That God notices and prepares a place.

He will not serve in the harvest. He will ~ John Lauricella I 2094 I

Broadly conceived, however, ecology deals with the balance of nature. Inasmuch as nature includes man, the science basically deals with the harmonization of nature and man. This focus has explosive implications. The explosive implications of an ecological approach arise not only from the fact that ecology is intrinsically a critical science--in fact, critical on a scale that the most radical systems of political economy failed to attain--but it is also an integrative and reconstructive science. ~ Murray Bookchin

But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a motor skims by), he found himself tackling, in still vague and idle fashion, the science that was to obsess his mature years - problems of space and time, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as space - and space breaking away from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because I die. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I enjoy, and always have enjoyed, disturbing scientists. ~ John Tuzo Wilson

Chance" is just a word expressing ignorance ~ Richard Dawkins

Hitler emphasized again and again his belief that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on modern science. Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition. 'Put a small telescope in a village, and you destroy a world of superstitions.'24 ~ Richard J. Evans

Although the cooking of food presents some unsolved problems, the quick warming of cooked food and the thawing of frozen food both open up some attractive uses ... There is no important reason why the the housewife of the future should not purchase completely frozen meals at the grocery store just as she buys quick frozen vegetables. With a quick heating, high-frequency unit in her kitchen, food preparation from a pre-cooked, frozen meal becomes a simple matter. ~ Chauncey Guy Suits

Chiropractic, which celebrated its centennial in 1995, is a curious mixture of science and pseudoscience, sense and nonsense. Much of it is based on the theory that misaligned spinal bones produce nerve interference that causes disease. Many chiropractors claim that correcting these misalignments ("subluxations") can restore health and that regular spinal adjustments are essential to maintain it. ~ Samuel Homola

I find the attempt to find things out, which scientists are possessed by, to be as human as breathing, or feeding, or sex. And so the science has to be in the novels as science and not just as metaphors. ~ A.S. Byatt

Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally believed to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petrie dish of melodrama and distortion. I remember well, for instance, the blind animal terror which ensued when some townie set off the civil defense sirens as a joke. Someone said it was a nuclear attack; TV and radio reception, never good there in the mountains, happened to be particularly bad that night, and in the ensuing stampede for the telephones the switchboard shorted out, plunging the school into a violent and almost unimaginable panic. Cars collided in the parking lot. People sceamed, wept, gave away t heir possessions, huddled in small groups for comfort and warmth. Some hippies barricaded themselves in the Science Building, in the lone bomb shelter, and refused to let anyone in who didn't know the world to "Sugar Magnolia." Factions formed, leaders rose from the chaos. Though the world, in fact, was not destroyed, everyone had a marvelous time and people spoke fondly of the event for years afterward. ~ Donna Tartt

The idea of whole brain emulation - which was, in effect, the liberation from matter, from the physical world - seemed to me an extreme example of the way in which science, or the belief in scientific progress, was replacing religion as the vector of deep cultural desires and delusions. ~ Mark O'Connell

Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts. ~ Charles Stross

Life is a physics problem. Bodies in motion. ~ Robin Wasserman

SF is an opportunity to have an intense relationship with your own imagination. It's a kind of drive-by poetry, trashy and addictive; it's fun. After that, for me, it's an opportunity to explore that kind of imaginative artifact from inside, and use a little camped-up contemporary science as a way of generating new metaphors around my typical obsessions. ~ M. John Harrison

We have no means of understanding a fraction of the thought and science and philosophy and law that have gone to make that outside world. We simply accept it. We have grown up paying tribute to it, and that is all the most of us can do. We feel of the great world that it is simply there, something for the lucky ones to explore, and then only at the edges. It never occurs to us that we might make some contribution to it ourselves. And that is why we miss everything. ~ Vs Nailpaul

The impulse to all movement and all form is given by [the golden ratio], since it is the proportion that summarizes in itself the additive and the geometric, or logarithmic, series. ~ Schwaller De Lubicz

Biochemistry is the science of life. All our life processes - walking, talking, moving, feeding - are essentially chemical reactions. So biochemistry is actually the chemistry of life, and it's supremely interesting. ~ Aaron Ciechanover

I have called this phenomenon of stealing common knowledge and indigenous science "biopiracy" and "intellectual piracy." According to patent systems we shouldn't be able to patent what exists as "prior art." But the United States patent system is somewhat perverted. First of all, it does not treat the prior art of other societies as "prior art." Therefore anyone from the United States can travel to another country, find out about the use of a medicinal plant, or find a seed that farmers use, come back here, claim it as an invention or an innovation. ~ Vandana Shiva

Distance is meaningless, as is time, when minds and souls intertwine."

-Gerome in CHANGELING- ~ Vaun Murphrey

Oh, Rachel, Rachel," Leah said. "Let me give you a teeny little lesson in political science. Democracy and dictatorship are political systems; they have to do with who participates in the leadership. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems. It has to do with who owns the wealth of the nations, and who gets to eat. Can you grasp that? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and, when lost, is likely to be restored back to health. In other words, it is the art whereby health is conserved and the art whereby it is restored after being lost. While some divide medicine into a theoretical and a practical [applied] science, others may assume that it is only theoretical because they see it as a pure science. But, in truth, every science has both a theoretical and a practical side. ~ Avicenna

To save wildlife and wild places the traction has to come not from the regurgitation of bad-news data but from the poets, prophets, preachers, professors, and presidents who have always dared to inspire. ~ J. Drew Lanham

Some writers, rejecting the idea which science had reached, that reefs of rocks could be due in any way to "animalcules," have talked of electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance. ~ James Dwight Dana

One of the most useful skills advocates can develop is a sincere satisfaction in changing their mind, putting the goal of effectiveness before the goal of having been correct. ~ Jacy Reese Anthis

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?' ~ Erwin Chargaff

It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia. ~ Aristotle.

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. ~ Herman Melville

For half a century now, a new consciousness has been entering the human world, a new awareness that can only be called transcendent, spiritual. If you find yourself reading this book, then perhaps you already sense what is happening, already feel it inside. It begins with a heightened perception of the way our lives move forward. We notice those chance events that occur at just the right moment, and bring forth just the right individuals, to suddenly send our lives in a new and important direction. Perhaps more than any other people in any other time, we intuit higher meaning in these mysterious happenings.

We know that life is really about a spiritual unfolding that is personal and enchanting an unfolding that no science or philosophy or religion has yet fully clarified. And we know something else as well: know that once we do understand what is happening, how to engage this allusive process and maximize its occurrence in our lives, human society will take a quantum leap into a whole new way of life one
that realizes the best of our tradition and creates a culture that has been the goal of history all along.

The following story is offered toward this new understanding. If it touches you, if it crystalizes something that you perceive in life, then pass on what you see to another for I think our new awareness of the spiritual is expanding in exactly this way, no longer through hype nor fad, but personally, through a kind of positive psychological con ~ James Redfield

If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money. ~ Guy McPherson

Science to me is sufficiently weird and interesting, and stranger than fiction. ~ Leonard Susskind

...She wasn't anyone special. She wasn't that brave, that clever or that strong. She was just somebody that felt cramped by the confines of her life. She was just somebody who had to get out. And she did it! She went out past Vega, out past Moulquet and Lambard! She saw places that aren't even there anymore! And do you know what she said? Her most famous quotation? "Anybody could have done it ~ Alan Moore

She was a magnificent creature created in a science lab, the bride of Frankenstein. He, of course, comprehended that he was the monster. Freddy was Frankenstein, the creator. ~ Emmie White

When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions. ~ H. P. Blavatsky

As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize. ~ Murray Gell-Mann

Science fiction, particularly visionary fiction, is where I go when I need the medicine of possibility applied to the trauma of human behavior. ~ Adrienne Maree Brown

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern. ~ Daniel Dennett

Philosophy is regarded by many as inseparable from speculation ... Philosophy has proceeded from speculation to science. ~ Hans Reichenbach

Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system ... We find such systems within living organisms. ~ Scott A. Minnich

Set aside the many competing explanations of the Big Bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing. It is this realization-that something transcendent started it all-which has hard-science types ... using terms like 'miracle.' ~ Gregg Easterbrook

For those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis. This quasi-religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind many of the extreme statements that you have doubtless encountered from some scientists opposing any critical analysis of neo-Darwinism in the classroom. It is also why many scientists make public statements about the theory that they would not defend privately to other scientists like me. ~ James A. Shapiro

The shell model, although proposed by theoreticians, really corresponds to the experimentalist's approach. It was born from a thorough study of the experimental data, plotting them in different ways, and looking for interconnections. ~ Maria Goeppert-Mayer

Because this is the world that science built, with the henchmen of capitalism and Christianity. ~ Terence McKenna