There can sometimes be this fear among laypeople: 'I don't understand everything in science perfectly, so I just can't say anything about it.' I think it's good to know that we scientists are also confused some of the time.
Lisa RandallRead
People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The conflict between science and religion can create mistrust in scientific understanding.
In this quote, Lisa Randall highlights the danger of prioritizing religious beliefs over scientific inquiry. She argues that individuals who dismiss scientific findings in favor of their religious views may misunderstand the rigorous processes involved in scientific discovery, leading to a harmful mistrust of scientists and the knowledge they provide, ultimately obstructing a comprehensive understanding of the world.
Themes
ScienceReligionMistrustUnderstandingKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the role of science in society, this quote could illustrate the dangers of rejecting scientific thought.
More from Lisa Randall
All quotes →There could be more to the universe than the three dimensions we are familiar with. They are hidden from us in some way, perhaps because they're tiny or warped. But even if they're invisible, they could affect what we actually observe in the universe.
Lisa RandallRead
We have this very clean picture of science, you know, these well-established rules with which we make predictions. But when you're really doing science, when you're doing research, you're at the edge of what we know.
Lisa RandallRead
Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.
Lisa RandallRead
It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.
Lisa RandallRead
Similar quotes
From a genomic perspective, we are all Africans.
Svante PaaboRead
Do you realize that the 850 billion dollar bank bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA. And so when someone says, 'We don't have enough money for this space probe.' No, it's not that you don't have enough money. It's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.
David SuzukiRead
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.
Garrett HardinRead
The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in water supply.
Florence NightingaleRead