In today’s vastly expanded scientific enterprise, obsessed with impact factors and competition, we will need much more night science to unveil the many mysteries that remain about the workings of organisms.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of deep exploration in science beyond superficial metrics of success.
Francois Jacob highlights the growing trend in the scientific community to focus on quantifiable metrics, such as impact factors, which may overshadow the need for thorough and in-depth exploration of complex biological phenomena. He advocates for a more patient and contemplative approach to scientific inquiry, aptly termed 'night science', which encourages researchers to delve into the unknowns of organismal biology rather than getting caught up in competition and superficial achievements.
In practice
Use this quote in a scientific conference to encourage researchers to pursue long-term projects.
The game was that of continually inventing a possible world, or a piece of a possible world, and then of comparing it with the real world... a race without end... What mattered more than the answers were the questions... For me, this world of questions and the provisional, this chase after an answer that was always put off to the next day, all that was euphoric. I lived in the future... I had turned my anxiety into my profession.
When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction - like space travel - the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.
I had as much time to prepare for that moon landing as NASA did, and I still was speechless when it happened. It just was so awe-inspiring to actually be able to see the thing through the television that was a miracle in itself.
The universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I'm pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don't believe we're alone.
The Earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides, is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.
Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.
A lot of the things you see in science fiction revolve around black holes because black holes are strong enough to rip the fabric of space and time.
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