May I not seem to have lived in vain.
Tycho BraheRead
When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes.
Interpretation
Tycho Brahe expresses the confusion and doubt that can arise in the face of extraordinary discoveries.
In this quote, Tycho Brahe reflects on the moment he realized he had witnessed a celestial event unlike any before. The overwhelming nature of this discovery led him to question the reliability of his observations, highlighting the tension between empirical evidence and belief. This suggests that even the most astute observers can experience doubt when confronted with the unknown or extraordinary phenomena in nature.
In practice
In a discussion about the challenges of scientific discovery, you might quote Brahe to illustrate how remarkable findings can lead to skepticism.
May I not seem to have lived in vain.
Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.
Now it is quite clear to me that there are no solid spheres in the heavens, and those that have been devised by the authors to save the appearances, exist only in the imagination.
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.
I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons - and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.
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