Scientific discovery Quotes

“The truth is that science has not disproved the existence of God. Many eminent scientists find that their work and their faith are complementary. Though science cannot give us the meaning of life, morality, love, or any of the other things that mean most to us, we can all learn a great deal about God’s world through scientific discovery. The real tension lies in the way discoveries are reported. How the data are shared reveals something about the presupposition of the one writing the report - whether that person has a particular bias or whether the report is simply a neutral observation of data. Due to differences in worldview, it is understandable that atheistic and theistic scientists will interpret data differently. They will draw from other fields such as psychology, philosophy, or theology. We must all be aware of the biases we bring into all of our work, science included. The church may have a reputation for suppressing scientific discovery but I am confident that this is being corrected today with the high level scholarly work being done by eminent Christians in all fields of science.”

“Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.”

“Creation signifies, above all, emotion, and that not in literature or art alone. We all know the concentration and effort implied in scientific discovery. Genius has been defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains.”

“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”

“The medicines of today are based upon thousands of years of knowledge accumulated from folklore, serendipity and scientific discovery. The new medicines of tomorrow will be based on the discoveries that are being made now, arising from basic research in laboratories around the world.”

“I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.”

“I think a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art. This is best seen in the theoretical aspects of Physical Science. The mathematical theorist builds up on certain assumptions and according to well understood logical rules, step by step, a stately edifice, while his imaginative power brings out clearly the hidden relations between its parts. A well constructed theory is in some respects undoubtedly an artistic production. A fine example is the famous Kinetic Theory of Maxwell. ... The theory of relativity by Einstein, quite apart from any question of its validity, cannot but be regarded as a magnificent work of art.”

“Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.”

“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”