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[aao-science]

Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Isaac Newton, via journalofanobody

[aao-science]

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

—Albert Einstein (German-born theoretical physicist, 1879-1955)

[aao-science]

Art is more godlike than science. Science discovers, art creates.

—John Opie (English historical and portrait painter, 1761-1807)

[aao-science]

“Why is geometry often described as ‘cold’ and ‘dry?’ One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline, or a tree. Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line … Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity.”

Benoit Mandelbrot (via heartmindspirit)

[aao-science]

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

Richard Feynman, American physicist (1918-1988),  in 1985, cited in G. Laurence Nickard, Phenomenal surfaces and noumenal depths: Philosophy and quantum theory, ProQuest, 2006, p. 5. (via amiquote)

[aao-science]

Science does not purvey absolute truth, science is a mechanism. It’s a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature, it’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match.

Isaac Asimov, American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books (1920-1992), interviewed by Bill Moyers in 1988, cited in  Maria Popova, Isaac Asimov on Science and Creativity in Education, Brain Pickings (via amiquote

[aao-science]

Nothing is too wonderful to be true.

Michael Faraday (via astonishments)

[aao-science]

The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.

Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize laureate (1887-1961)

[aao-science]

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.

—George Washington Carver (American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor, c. 1864-1943)

[aao-science]

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

— John Muir (via teaintheafternoon)

[aao-science]

Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.

—Jules Verne (French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre, 1828-1905)

[aao-science]

N.C. Wyeth, A New World, 1938, via stilllifequickheart

[aao-science]

I confess that I shall expound many things differently from my predecessors, although I shall do so thanks to them, and with their aid, for it was they who first opened the road of inquiry into these very questions.

Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer, the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe (1473-1543), in introduction to Book, ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’, 1543 cited in Dava Sobel, Copernicus: the man who changed the world, FT.com, September 2, 2011 (via amiquote)

[aao-science]

We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead—like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe—far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.

David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Pantheon Books, 2011

[aao-science]

Science requires the most vigorous and uncompromising skepticism, because the vast majority of ideas are simply wrong, and the only way to winnow the wheat from the chaff is by critical experiment and analysis. If you’re open to the point of gullibility and have not a microgram of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the promising ideas from the worthless ones. Uncritically accepting every proffered notion, idea, and hypothesis is tantamount to knowing nothing. Ideas contradict one another; only through skeptical scrutiny can we decide among them. Some ideas really are better than others.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (via doubtingmarcus)

[aao-science]

Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.

Linus Pauling

[aao-science]

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Alan Perlis