The imposing edifice of science provides a challenging view of what can be achieved by the accumulation of many small efforts in a steady objective and dedicated search for truth.
Charles H. TownesRead
Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that science relies on fundamental assumptions that cannot be proven but are accepted based on faith.
Charles H. Townes highlights the underlying faith that scientists must have in their foundational assumptions or postulates. Even though these postulates cannot be conclusively proven, they serve as the bedrock upon which scientific inquiry and discovery are built. This indicates that science is not purely about proof but also about belief in the principles that guide exploration and understanding.
In practice
In a science class discussing the foundations of scientific law.
The imposing edifice of science provides a challenging view of what can be achieved by the accumulation of many small efforts in a steady objective and dedicated search for truth.
I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand.
One of the things my family taught me - I think very important in religion and science - is that you must be ready to stand up for what you think. Decide what you really think is best, and stick with it.
I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Which kind of scientist was the question.
The development of science is basically a social phenomenon, dependent on hard work and mutual support of many scientists and on the societies in which they live.
It was strange, in a way, because there were no ideas involved in the laser that weren't already known by somebody 25 years before lasers were discovered. The ideas were all there; just, nobody put it together.
The Europeans and the Americans are not throwing $10 billion down this gigantic tube for nothing. We're exploring the very forefront of physics and cosmology with the Large Hadron Collider because we want to have a window on creation, we want to recreate a tiny piece of Genesis to unlock some of the greatest secrets of the universe.
A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.
My ambition was to bring to bear on medicine a chemical approach. I did that by chemical manipulation of viruses and chemical ways of thinking in biomedical research.
Species evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.
Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination
Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist, like nickels someone picked up on the street. But science at the cutting edge, conducted by sharp minds probing deep into nature, is not about self-evident facts. It is about mystery and not knowing. It is about taking huge risks.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.