Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.
Noam ChomskyRead
Science now finds itself in paradoxical strife with society: admired but mistrusted; offering hope for the future but creating ambiguous choice; richly supported yet unable to fulfill all its promise; boasting remarkable advances but criticized for not serving more directly the goals of society.
Interpretation
Science is simultaneously respected and feared, providing solutions while also generating complex dilemmas.
This quote from J. Michael Bishop highlights the complex relationship between science and society. While science is lauded for its advancements and the promise it holds for the future, it also faces skepticism and criticism, particularly when its developments do not align neatly with societal needs or ethical considerations. This paradox reflects the challenges of balancing scientific progress with public trust and moral responsibility.
In practice
Discussing the role of science in shaping public policy during a conference.
Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.
Perhaps scientists have been the most international of all professions in their outlook... Every time you scientists make a major invention, we politicians have to invent a new institution to cope with it-and almost invariably, these days, it must be an international institution.
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.
The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements.
Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.
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