A Quote by Robert M. Pirsig

The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules.

Robert M. Pirsig

Quote Topics

Assumed Infallible Logic Mistaken Only Rules Science Scientists Sometimes Were

Quote Author

Robert M. Pirsig
American - Philosopher
Born: September 6, 1928

We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.

R. Buckminster Fuller

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

Carl Sagan

I don't think any administration, when they come in, thinks that their job is to tell the scientists what the science looks like or to be quiet about the science. Scientists need to remain true and not allow science to be politicized. Scientists are not politicians, and no politician should consider themselves to be a scientist.

Gina McCarthy

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

Carl Sagan

Historians of a generation ago were often shocked by the violence with which scientists rejected the history of their own subject as irrelevant; they could not understand how the members of any academic profession could fail to be intrigued by the study of their own cultural heritage. What these historians did not grasp was that scientists will welcome the history of science only when it has been demonstrated that this discipline can add to our understanding of science itself and thus help to produce, in some sense, better scientists.

I. Bernard Cohen

I end with a word on the new symbols which I have employed. Most writers on logic strongly object to all symbols. ... I should advise the reader not to make up his mind on this point until he has well weighed two facts which nobody disputes, both separately and in connexion. First, logic is the only science which has made no progress since the revival of letters; secondly, logic is the only science which has produced no growth of symbols.

Augustus De Morgan

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A fundie claimed "God invented science". All of science is tentative and approximate, also sometimes mistaken. Is that the best God can do?

Graham Kendall

Science is a set of rules that keep the scientists from lying to each other.

Kenneth Stafford Norris

If it were true that Christianity and science were incompatible, there would be no Christians who were respected scientists. If fact, about forty percent of professional natural scientists are practicing Christians, and many others are theists of other kinds. Fewer than thirty percent are atheists.

Jeffrey Burton Russell

When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed. That was horrifying beyond words, and that's where science - in my opinion, this is just an opinion - that's where science leads you.

Ben Stein

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists throughout the world with a general idea of the history and development of their particular science: there is none who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work.

Simone Weil

Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view.

Walter Gilbert

Among all the liberal arts, the first is logic, and specifically that part of logic which gives initial instruction about words. ... [T]he word "logic" has a broad meaning, and is not restricted exclusively to the science of argumentative reasoning. [It includes] Grammar [which] is "the science of speaking and writing correctly-the starting point of all liberal studies."

John of Salisbury

People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And that was essential that the discourse of science or logic related directed to the external world. The other was mythos, what the Greeks called myth, which didn't mean a fantasy story, but it was a narrative associated with ritual and ethical practice but it helped us to address problems for which there were no easy answers, like mortality, cruelty, the sorrow that overtakes us all that's part of the human condition. And these two were not in opposition, we needed both.