Understanding truth is the primary objective of science, not doing good for the world.
Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing - a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.
I was graduated in 1940 with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Social Science but a major in Mathematics, a paradoxical combination that was prognostic of my future interests.
Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.
Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.
It is possible to argue that our present conception of revolution was staked out more securely in science than in political action.
We've been surrounded by images of space our whole lives, from the speculative images of science fiction to the inspirational visions of artists to the increasingly beautiful pictures made possible by complex technologies. But whilst we have an overwhelmingly vivid visual understanding of space, we have no sense of what space sounds like.
If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie, you can start a debate. We like to create a bridge between those two worlds - film and science.
Many a fine SF story uses science or technology merely as backdrop. Many a fine SF story presumes a technological breakthrough and explores its implications without attempting to predict how the thing might actual work.
The American people need no course in philosophy or political science of church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.
I cannot live on myths; somehow, science convinces me more easily. I am prone to lean towards science, ethics, and philosophy rather than myth, religion, and rituals.
Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that.
I think science has begun to demonstrate that aging is a disease. If it is, it can be cured.
We live in an age of technology and science that demands proof, and yet we desire mystery. But when God gives us mystery, we seek to destroy it by gross indifference or childish reasoning.
Science is about unravelling nature.
One of the dangers of science fiction, particularly bad science fiction, is that you have these scenes where the characters turn to a blackboard and start explaining how this faster-than-light drive works, or something like that. We never really have those conversations in real life. That's not part of the way we interact as human beings.
None of the standard high school science courses made much of an impression on me, but I did enjoy the Advanced Placement Chemistry course I took in my senior year. This course had only eleven students and was taught by a rarity for our school, an exchange teacher from England, Mr. Leslie Sturges.
Whenever I think of how much pleasure I have interviewing scientists, I remember that they're having the real fun in actually being able to do the science.
Nowhere in this country should we have laws that permit drinking and driving or drinking in vehicles that are on American highways. This is not rocket science. We know how to prevent this, and 36 states do.
My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.
When a writer is already stretching the bounds of reality by writing within a science fiction or fantasy setting, that writer must realize that excessive coincidence makes the fictional reality the writer is creating less 'real.'
We absolutely do some of the best science in the world in Canada, across a broad spectrum of disciplines: quantum computing in Waterloo, paleontology in Alberta, neuroscience at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health in Vancouver, and many more.
It is easier for a libertarian to attack the science of global warming than to alter one's core libertarian beliefs.
If you want to go beyond that small percentage of people who are already environmentally and scientifically aware, you have to make your work somehow link with a passion, interest, or profession of someone who isn't interested in science or nature.
I had two different degrees: One in International Relations/Political Science and another degree in Radio and Television Production.
The paradigm of the 'Aquarian Conspiracy' sees humankind embedded in nature. It promotes the autonomous individual in a decentralized society... The new perspective respects the ecology of everything: birth, death, learning, health, family, work, science, spirituality, the arts, the community, relationships, politics.
Many of the top-grossing movies of all time are science fiction.
While I was at community college, I studied industrial design because I thought maybe I'd be an automotive designer - I grew up in Detroit - and I also studied, geology because I was interested in science, a little bit.
Contrary to widespread belief, I do know something about science.
Social progress is a big thing for me. Although science fiction is traditionally concerned with the hard sciences, which is chemistry, physics, and, some might argue, biology, my father was and still is a social scientist at the University of Toronto.
What's going to happen when I die? I may be buried, or I may be cremated, I may give my body to science. I haven't decided yet.
A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.
A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life, studying them could revolutionise biology, medicine and biotechnology.
In 1986, I was asked by the then-Dean of Science at the University of British Columbia, Dr. R.C. Miller, Jr., to establish a new interdisciplinary institute, the Biotechnology Laboratory. I decided that it was time for me to start paying back for the thirty years of fun that I had been able to have in research.
I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it.
