Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.
Interpretation
Science holds intrinsic value through its capacity for application, but its goodness or badness depends on the intent behind its use.
In this quote, Richard P. Feynman emphasizes that the essence of science lies not solely in its discoveries, but in the power it provides to humanity to take action. This power can lead to beneficial outcomes or harmful ones, contingent upon how society chooses to wield the knowledge gained through science. Therefore, while science itself is valuable, the ethical implications of its application are crucial to consider.
In practice
During a science conference to highlight the importance of ethical considerations in research.
The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
You stop planetary exploration, those people who do that extraordinary work are going to have to go do something else.
Science is among the most profoundly human of our activities. Far from being subsumed by the dehumanising effects of technology, science, in fact, remains our last stand against it.
Regardless of any deviations, it was clear I was supposed to end up in math and physics.
My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.
From a genomic perspective, we are all Africans.
In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose.
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