Anthony Standen Quotes

United Kingdom, Chemist
September 9, 1906 – June, 22, 1993.

Anthony Standen was a respected chemist and entomologist who wrote the popular book Science is a Sacred Cow (1950). He was born in 1906 to an American mother and a British father. He was educated at Oxford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of New Hampshire.

Evolution ... is really two theories, the vague theory and the precise theory. The vague theory has been abundantly proved.... The precise theory has never been proved at all. However, like relativity, it is accepted on faith.... On getting down to actual details, difficulties begin.

Anthony Standen
- Evolution
- Theory
- Vague
Education, like everything else, goes in fads, and has the normal human tendency to put up with something bad for just so long, and then rush to the other extreme.

Anthony Standen
- Education
- Tendency
- Rush

Scientists are convinced that they, as scientists, possess a number of very admirable human qualities, such as accuracy, observation, reasoning power, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and even humility.

Anthony Standen
Physicists, being in no way different from the rest of the population, have short memories for what is inconvenient.

Anthony Standen
Psychologists pay lip service to the scientific method, and use it whenever it is convenient; but when it isn't they make wild leaps of their uncontrolled fancy.

Anthony Standen
Scientists define these terms in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it.

Anthony Standen
Our advanced and fashionable thinkers are, naturally, out on a wide swing of the pendulum, away from the previous swing of the pendulum.... They seem to have an un-argue-out-able position, as is the manner of sophists, but this is no guarantee that they are right.

Anthony Standen
- Right
- Thinkers
- Pendulum
Insight is not the same as scientific deduction, but even at that it may be more reliable than statistics.

Anthony Standen

Survival of the fittest led to "nature red in tooth and claw" and this is not sufficiently wishy-washy for modern scientists.

Anthony Standen
There's many a true word spoken in jest; scientists are abominably solemn; therefore scientists miss many a true word.

Anthony Standen
- True
- Word
- Scientists