I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.
Peter MedawarRead
It is ... a sign of the times-though our brothers of physics and chemistry may smile to hear me say so-that biology is now a science in which theories can be devised: theories which lead to predictions and predictions which sometimes turn out to be correct. These facts confirm me in a belief I hold most passionately-that biology is the heir of all the sciences.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Biology has evolved into a scientific discipline capable of generating and testing theories.
In this quote, Peter Medawar emphasizes the advancement of biology as a legitimate and predictive science. He highlights that biological theories, much like those in physics and chemistry, can lead to predictions about natural phenomena, and observes that these predictions can indeed be accurate, showcasing the scientific rigor and importance of biology as a discipline that builds upon foundational scientific principles.
Themes
BiologyScienceTheoriesPredictionsResearch
In practice
Example use cases
During a university lecture on scientific theories in biology.
More from Peter Medawar
All quotes →Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.
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Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.
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Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge.
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A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.
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You have ... been told that science grows like an organism. You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this [Nobel Prize Presentation] is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm ... colleagues in so much of my work.
Peter MedawarRead
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