Some Poor grad student pressing on the flanks of a hamster and out comes a doctorate on the other side
Robert M. SapolskyRead
I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.
Interpretation
Science can coexist with compassion and appreciation for the arts and nature.
In this quote, Robert M. Sapolsky expresses his passion for science while acknowledging a common fear surrounding the subject. He advocates for the idea that embracing science does not exclude appreciation for compassion, beauty in the arts, or the wonders of nature; rather, science should enhance our sense of mystery and wonder about the world.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of integrating arts and sciences in education.
So if the worth of the arts were measured by the matter with which they deal, this art-which some call astronomy, others astrology, and many of the ancients the consummation of mathematics-would be by far the most outstanding. This art which is as it were the head of all the liberal arts and the one most worthy of a free man leans upon nearly all the other branches of mathe matics. Arithmetic, geometry, optics, geodesy, mechanics, and whatever others, all offer themselves in its service.
Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.
The time has come to recognize that food, how we produce it, process it, package it, sell it, cook it and eat it, is as important as any other issue.
A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.
The main reason why people should care about research in fundamental physics is the same reason they care about astronomy and cosmology. People, children, want to know what we're made out of, how it works, and why the universe is the way it is.
If your result needs a statistician then you should design a better experiment.
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