I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite colony is an enormous brain on millions of legs; the individual termite is a mobile neurone.
Lewis ThomasRead
The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that one of the most significant achievements of modern science is recognizing what we don't know about human knowledge.
Lewis Thomas highlights the idea that science has thrived not just through its discoveries but through the acknowledgment of the vast areas of ignorance that remain. This realization inspires a continuous quest for learning and understanding, illustrating that the journey of knowledge is never-ending and that true wisdom comes from recognizing the limits of our current understanding.
Themes
IgnoranceKnowledgeScienceAchievementHumility
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a lecture about the philosophy of science.
More from Lewis Thomas
All quotes βI suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.
Lewis ThomasRead
I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection.
Lewis ThomasRead
Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.
Lewis ThomasRead
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.
Lewis ThomasRead
In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable of changing course - often with a great lurch - every few years.
Lewis ThomasRead
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Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
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