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.
If you've been wondering where the next gold rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.
My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection.
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
It is a curious historical fact that modern quantum mechanics began with two quite different mathematical formulations: the differential equation of Schroedinger and the matrix algebra of Heisenberg. The two apparently dissimilar approaches were proved to be mathematically equivalent.
So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.
Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
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