There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.
Bill BrysonRead
Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human ingenuity often leads to incredible inventions while we overlook fundamental questions about our own existence.
This quote by Bill Bryson highlights the irony of human innovation, suggesting that we are capable of creating complex technologies and advancements, yet we struggle to comprehend the basic aspects of our own world, such as the Earth's age. It reflects on the priorities of humanity, emphasizing our tendency to focus on technological progress rather than fundamental understanding.
Themes
KnowledgeScienceInnovationExistenceTechnology
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a scientific discussion about the balance between technology and basic research.
More from Bill Bryson
All quotes βFor most of us the rules of English grammar are at best a dimly remembered thing. But even for those who make the rules, grammatical correctitude sometimes proves easier to urge than to achieve. Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right, is it reasonable to expect the rest of us to?
Bill BrysonRead
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
Bill BrysonRead
Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
Bill BrysonRead
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose
Bill BrysonRead
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
Bill BrysonRead
Similar quotes
The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.
Hermann Von HelmholtzRead
Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.
Al GoreRead
Just as computer technology and the Internet created whole new industries and extraordinary benefits for people that extend into almost every realm of human endeavor from education to transportation to medicine, genetics will undoubtedly benefit people everywhere in ways we can't even imagine but know will surely occur.
Anne WojcickiRead
When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.
Charles LyellRead
Nature - how, we don't know - has technology that works in every living cell and that depends on every atom being precisely in the right spot. Enzymes are precise down to the last atom. They're molecules. You put the last atom in, and it's done. Nature does things with molecular perfection.
Richard SmalleyRead
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
Terry PratchettRead