Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
Erwin ChargaffRead
You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Scientific advancements can be reversed, but the creation of new life is irreversible.
Erwin Chargaff's quote emphasizes the profound impact of scientific discovery, particularly in genetics and biotechnology. While humanity has the ability to control and even undo certain technological and space exploration endeavors, the creation of new forms of life is a significant act that cannot be undone. This mirrors the gravity of our actions in science and underscores the responsibility that comes with such power.
Themes
ScienceLifeResponsibilityAdvancementCreation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would resonate well at a science conference when discussing the ethical considerations of genetic engineering.
More from Erwin Chargaff
All quotes βScience is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.
Erwin ChargaffRead
One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.
Erwin ChargaffRead
Similar quotes
As a scientist, objectivity is one of my most deeply held values. If we could just try harder, I once thought, surely we could each see the world as others see it and learn to respect one another's views more readily. But I learned from the Pirahas, our expectations, our culture, and our experiences can render even perceptions of the environment nearly incommensurable cross-culturally.
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Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.
Richard HammingRead
There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory.
Kenneth R. MillerRead
I don't believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already!
Stephen HawkingRead
I would still very much love to change the world, and there are three or four neurological diseases that I've got a personal grudge against. I wouldn't mind mopping them up in one amazing experiment to come out of my lab, and I certainly wouldn't mind transforming hundreds of thousands of people's lives overnight with some discovery.
Robert SapolskyRead
Well, biology today as I see it has an amiable look - quite different from the 19th-century view that the whole arrangement of nature is hostile, 'red in tooth and claw.' That came about because people misread Darwin's 'survival of the fittest.'
Lewis ThomasRead