One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.
Freeman DysonRead
Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Scepticism is essential for both journalists and scientists to ensure accuracy and truth in their work.
This quote emphasizes the critical role that scepticism plays in the practices of journalism and scientific inquiry. Both fields rely on rigorous questioning and evaluation of information to uncover the truth, challenge assumptions, and prevent the dissemination of falsehoods. Scepticism encourages a mindset that seeks evidence and understanding rather than accepting claims at face value.
Themes
ScepticismJournalismScienceTruthEvidence
In practice
Example use cases
In a journalism seminar, a speaker quoted Dyson to illustrate the importance of questioning sources.
More from Freeman Dyson
All quotes βBiology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.
Freeman DysonRead
As a working hypothesis to explain the riddle of our existence, I propose that our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so
Freeman DysonRead
It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe.
Freeman DysonRead
The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.
Freeman DysonRead
For some days I quietly worked out in my own mind the metaphysics of Cosmic Unity. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it was the living truth. It was logically incontrovertible. It provided for the first time a firm foundation for ethics. It offered mankind the radical change of heart and mind that was our only hope of peace at a time of desperate danger. Only one small problem remained. I must find a way to convert the world to my way of thinking.
Freeman DysonRead
Similar quotes
My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.
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Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?
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Humans are natural-born scientists. When we're born, we want to know why the stars shine. We want to know why the sun rises.
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If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
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I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric.
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Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.
Charles H. TownesRead