The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
Sam HarrisRead
We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production.
Interpretation
We should not cling to outdated practices in food production just as we wouldn’t want outdated medical treatments.
Nina Fedoroff's quote highlights the inconsistency in our expectations of food production versus medical practices. While we eagerly embrace advancements in medicine, we often resist changes in the way our food is produced, clinging to outdated methods that may not serve us well in the modern context. The comparison draws attention to the necessity for innovation and progress in agricultural practices, just as we have seen in healthcare.
In practice
During a seminar on agricultural practices, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for modern methods.
The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
Although the theory of relativity makes the greatest of demands on the ability for abstract thought, still it fulfills the traditional requirements of science insofar as it permits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) and, hence, a clear formulation of the law of causality.
The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.
If you take 100 breast-cancer samples, 100 types of cancer have 100 different hallmarks of mutated genes. You could be nihilistic and say, 'Oh, God, we'll never be able to tackle this!' But there are deep, systematic, organizational principles at work in all that diversity.
How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds
Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.
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