A Quote by Peter Medawar

[A certain class of explanations in science are] analgesics that dull the ache of incomprehension without removing the cause.

Peter Medawar

Quote Topics

Ache Cause Certain Class Dull Explanations Incomprehension Science Without

Quote Author

Peter Medawar
Brazilian - Scientist
February 28, 1915 - October 2, 1987

They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

There are three kinds of explanation in science: explanations which throw a light upon, or give a hint at a matter; explanations which do not explain anything; and explanations which obscure everything.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

All scientists should be skeptics. The reason why is that, even with the best of scientific measurements, we can come up with all kinds of explanations of what those measurements mean in terms of cause and effect, and yet most of those explanations are wrong. It's really easy to be wrong in science ... it's really hard to be right.

Roy Spencer

In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.

Bruce Alberts

Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp.

Richard Dawkins

Peter was dull; he was at first Dull; - Oh, so dull - so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed - Still with his dulness was he cursed - Dull -beyond all conception - dull.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alternative explanations are always welcome in science, if they are better and explain more. Alternative explanations that explain nothing are not welcome... Note how science changed those beliefs when new data became available. Religions stick to the same ancient beliefs regardless of the data.

Victor J. Stenger

Insomnia is an indication, not a chaos. Its like ache. Youre not going to provide a patient ache medicine without figuring out whats reasoning the pain.

Judith Owen

I started to understand what the song could be about. The ache of nostalgia even for things we don't like, the commitment to keep moving despite that ache. It made me think of how I relate to my privilege - as a white person, as someone who grew up upper middle class.

Erin McKeown

Toska - noun /?t?-sk?/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.

Vladimir Nabokov

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.

Edward de Bono

The president said that this is not removing a mole. You know, removing a mole, that's an outpatient sort of an operation. This was removing a cancer, removing a cancer takes more time.

Gordon England

Science class is traditionally taught as science history class - you learn all these facts that someone else discovered, which you need to know, but that's not really an inspiring way to learn science.

Megan Smith

It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes.

George Carlin

my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and waiting for it to pass. And it would pass -- but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.

Haruki Murakami

Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other-only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.

Talcott Parsons

A Quote by Peter Medawar

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors