Scientific Revolution Quotes

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
― Michael Crichton

“I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
― Michael Crichton

“The controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design has the characteristics of major scientific revolutions in the past. Darwinists are losing power because they treat with contempt the very people on whom they depend the most: American taxpayers. The outcome of this scientific revolution will be decided by young people who have the courage to question dogmatism and follow the evidence wherever it leads.”
― Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

“Ewww... intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed, Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads. There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90 percent of the responses to the ID position... This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults... The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or whether it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end.
— Tech Central Station contributor Douglas Kern, 2005”
― Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

“For the purposes of science, information had to mean something special. Three centuries earlier, the new discipline of physics could not proceed until Isaac Newton appropriated words that were ancient and vague—force, mass, motion, and even time—and gave them new meanings. Newton made these terms into quantities, suitable for use in mathematical formulas. Until then, motion (for example) had been just as soft and inclusive a term as information. For Aristotelians, motion covered a far-flung family of phenomena: a peach ripening, a stone falling, a child growing, a body decaying. That was too rich. Most varieties of motion had to be tossed out before Newton’s laws could apply and the Scientific Revolution could succeed. In the nineteenth century, energy began to undergo a similar transformation: natural philosophers adapted a word meaning vigor or intensity. They mathematicized it, giving energy its fundamental place in the physicists’ view of nature.

It was the same with information. A rite of purification became necessary.

And then, when it was made simple, distilled, counted in bits, information was found to be everywhere.”
― James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

“The current technological and scientific revolution implies not that authentic individuals and authentic realities can be manipulated by algorithms and TV cameras, but rather that authenticity is a myth. People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don’t realise that they are already trapped inside a box – their brain – which is locked within a bigger box – human society with its myriad fictions. When you escape the matrix the only thing you discover is a bigger matrix. When the peasants and workers revolted against the tsar in 1917, they ended up with Stalin; and when you begin to explore the manifold ways the world manipulates you, in the end you realise that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“When it comes to revolutionizing science, what matters is quality of thought, not quantity of true believers.”
― Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next

“We're presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today’s third revolution, were coming to realize that even minds and societies emerge from interacting laws that can be regarded as computations. Everything is a computation.”
― Rudy Rucker

“Before the scientific revolution, [man] did not feel himself isolated by his skin from the world outside to quite the same extent that we do. He was integrated, or mortised into it, each different part of him being united to a different part of it by some invisible thread. In his relation to his environment, the man of the middle ages was rather less like an island, rather more like an embryo.”
― Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry

“The Scientific Revolution proposed a very different formula for knowledge: Knowledge = Empirical Data × Mathematics. If we want to know the answer to some question, we need to gather relevant empirical data, and then use mathematical tools to analyse the data. For example, in order to gauge the true shape of the earth, we can observe the sun, the moon and the planets from various locations across the world. Once we have amassed enough observations, we can use trigonometry to deduce not only the shape of the earth, but also the structure of the entire solar system. In practice, that means that scientists seek knowledge by spending years in observatories, laboratories and research expeditions, gathering more and more empirical data, and sharpening their mathematical tools so they could interpret the data correctly.
The scientific formula for knowledge led to astounding breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, medicine and countless other disciplines. But it had one huge drawback: it could not deal with questions of value and meaning. Medieval pundits could determine with absolute certainty that it is wrong to murder and steal, and that the purpose of human life is to do God’s bidding, because scriptures said so. Scientists could not come up with such ethical judgements. No amount of data and no mathematical wizardry can prove that it is wrong to murder. Yet human societies cannot survive without such value judgements.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Memorizing and regurgitating are not science. Real science is a constant investigation of the unknown.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“It is interesting to note that the quantum-mechanical revolution was made by a virtually orphaned generation of scientists. Many members of the generation above them had been slaughtered in World War I. There simply weren't many senior scientists around to tell them they were crazy.”
― Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next

“The inability of the traditional system of education to respond adequately to a changing world may well have been the most critical factor which denied to Muslims the chance of spearheading the Scientific Revolution.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Powerless heart and heartless power,
are both equally meaningless.
Dataless mind and mindless data,
are both equally dangerous.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science

“The inventions of microscopy and telescopy shattered the boundaries of ordinary human perception and fueled the scientific revolution.”
― Richard J. Borden, Ecology and Experience: Reflections from a Human Ecological Perspective

“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
― Thomas S. Kuhn

“Don't study science. Play with it.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Science doesn't define the scientist, scientist defines the science.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gentalist: There's No Social Work, Only Family Work

“What is Science? Science means Sapient Conscientious Investigation of Eternity with No Compromise on Empathy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“Science without warmth is intellectual con.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“SCIENCE means Sapient Conscientious Investigation of Eternity with No Compromise on Empathy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“Science is much more than intelligence,
Those who know not what science is,
boast about the supremacy of science,
While real scientists are ever consumed
in the humanitarian application of science.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“More than a scientist,
I'm a compass to science.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“Whole world is in our care, beyond all law and politics. We are capable, we are accountable - we are the scientists!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science

“SCIENCE means Sapient, Conscientious, Infinite Exploration, Never Compromising Empathy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“Using the tools developed by physicists in the last century, biologists in this century are poised to enact their own scientific revolution. Time will tell whether years from now another book will describe how "biologists changed the future." But on thing is for sure---we will not be able to embrace and participate in that future without the discipline, curiosity, questioning, and reasoning that science requires.”
― James Kakalios, The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World