A discovery is like falling in love and reaching the top of a mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy not induced by drugs but by the revelation of a face of nature that no one has seen before and that often turns out to be more subtle and wonderful than anyone had imagined.
Interpretation
Discovery combines exhilaration and profound realization, akin to love and achieving a major life goal.
This quote by Max Perutz illustrates the deep emotional and intellectual joy that comes with making a discovery, comparing it to falling in love and achieving a challenging goal. It emphasizes that true revelations provide a sense of ecstasy and wonder that surpasses anything synthetic, highlighting the beauty and subtlety found in nature's truths that were previously unseen and often beyond our imagination.
In practice
This quote can be used in a scientific conference to emphasize the joy of new findings.
Clearly, we are a species that is well connected to other species. Whether or not we evolve from them, we are certainly very closely related to them. A series of mutations could change us into all kinds of intermediate species. Whether or not those intermediate species are provably in the past, they could easily be in our future.
It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress.
One of the things that science fiction gets to do is thought experiments about the human condition that would be impractical or unethical to conduct in real life.
A scientist is as weak and human as any man, but the pursuit of science may ennoble him even against his will.
Go out and collect data and, instead of having the answer, just look at the data and see if the data tells you anything. When we're allowed to do this with companies, it's almost magical.
Science is the search for the truth--it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, and not an effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible. I believe in morality, in justice, in humanitarianism.
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