No matter how counter-intuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine.
Arthur KornbergRead
Half of what we know is wrong, the purpose of science is to determine which half.
Interpretation
Science helps us discern truth from misconception.
This quote emphasizes the idea that our current understanding of the world is often flawed and incomplete. Science serves as a tool to sift through this knowledge, highlighting what is accurate and what is not, encouraging a continuous quest for truth and understanding in a world full of uncertainties.
In practice
In a scientific conference to emphasize the importance of questioning our assumptions.
No matter how counter-intuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine.
As in biomedical science, pioneering industrial inventions have not been mothered by necessity. Rather, inventions for which there was no commercial use only later became the commercial airplanes, xerography and lasers on which modern society depends.
All policies should be guided by science, not just whose voice is the loudest.
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.
Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.
But it will be found... that one universal law prevails in all these phenomena. Where two portions of the same light arrive in the eye by different routes, either exactly or very nearly in the same direction, the appearance or disappearance of various colours is determined by the greater or less difference in the lengths of the paths.
If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
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