Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for apprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge.
Interpretation
Science is a comprehensive approach to understanding the world, beyond just specialized knowledge.
In this quote, Alexis Carrel emphasizes the importance of viewing science not merely as a tool for gaining specific information, but as a fundamental method of comprehending the entirety of observable reality. This broader perspective encourages an appreciation for the interconnectedness of knowledge and the relevance of scientific inquiry in various aspects of life.
In practice
During a lecture on scientific methodology, one might use this quote to illustrate the broader implications of scientific research.
Man offers himself to God. He stands before Him like the canvas before the painter or the marble before the sculptor. At the same time he asks for His grace, expresses his needs and those of his brothers in suffering. Such a type of prayer demands complete renovation. The modest, the ignorant, and the poor are more capable of this self-denial than the rich and the intellectual.
Hard conditions of life are indispensable to bringing out the best in human personality.
A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.
Discipline brings us effort, sacrifice and suffering. Later it brings us something of an inestimable value: something of which those who live only for pleasure, profit or amusement will always be deprived. This peculiar indefinable joy which one must have felt oneself to understand is the sign with which life marks its moment of triumph.
Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.
Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
The role of radiologists will evolve from doing perceptual things that could probably be done by a highly trained pigeon to doing far more cognitive things.
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
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