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
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.
In practice
This quote would resonate well at a science conference when discussing the ethical considerations of genetic engineering.
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'
Science 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.
One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.
When somebody discovers something like the quadratic formula or the Pythagorean theorem, the convention in science is that he can't control that idea. He has to give it away. He publishes it. What's rewarded in science is dissemination of ideas.
Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. Medicine, as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligation to point out problems and to attempt their theoretical solution: the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their actual solution. The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and social problems fall to a large extent within their jurisdiction.
Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.
Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.
Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing - a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.
Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.
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