Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
This field is not necessarily glamorous, nor does it often produce immediate results, but it seeks to increase our basic understanding of living processes.
Interpretation
The pursuit of scientific knowledge may be unglamorous and slow, but it is vital for understanding life.
Aaron Klug emphasizes that the journey of scientific inquiry may not always be exciting and does not yield instant gratification. However, this journey is crucial as it enhances our fundamental comprehension of life processes, ultimately contributing to profound advancements in knowledge and capability.
In practice
In a lecture about the importance of scientific research.
Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.
Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.
Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.
I don't believe in technological determinism, especially not in biology and medicine. We have strong laws to keep doctors from monkeying around with humans that will remain in place. It's simply not true that everything that is technologically possible gets done.
Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort.
We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.
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