A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould
Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.
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Being an ordinary scientist and an ordinary Christian seems perfectly natural to me. It is also perfectly natural for the many scientists I know who are also people of deep religious faith.
I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.
I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child.
That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.
People often think of artists and scientists as being diametrically opposed, but we both believe something is possible. We have a hypothesis and then we do everything to make it possible, but we don't know if it's possible! All the scientists I've worked with have a natural, easy fit with me. The solutions they find are truly creative. All scientists, in some way, are artists.
I think if you touch ordinary people, they're simply ordinary people, the way they've always been. They work hard, they don't have really as much as they should.
Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they are specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed, and unreasonable as everybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.
Scientists are entitled to be proud of their accomplishments, and what accomplishments can they call 'theirs' except the things they have done or thought of first? People who criticize scientists for wanting to enjoy the satisfaction of intellectual ownership are confusing possessiveness with pride of possession. Meanness, secretiveness and, sharp practice are as much despised by scientists as by other decent people in the world of ordinary everyday affairs; nor, in my experience, is generosity less common among them, or less highly esteemed.
Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary. The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn't clap yet, because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back.
My experience in work, even going to work with Scorsese, is that people always think there's some magic trick. There's no magic trick. The people who are really good at what they do do simple things really, really well.
Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic - and I'm not exaggerating - that people feel like a decent, ordinary, fun life is no longer enough.
I think science has a better story to tell than anyone else has been able to tell and that's because it's based on the rigorous winnowing that science and scientists are always doing in order to find out what's really happening. I think it's really good to encourage generally our ability to tell stories and that's a great skill that we come by naturally, so I'm excited about that.
Scientists are the easiest to fool. ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident.
I think I got a complete picture of what the lives of scientists are like. My father is of the opinion that if scientists are allowed to follow their nose, eventually it results in something. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen. What I came out of it with, in a non-cynical way, was that the scientific process is as messy as anything else. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just the way it is.
I'm satisfied to have an ordinary success and an ordinary life and an ordinary income. Later, I don't know.
You find there's no magic trick, sometimes in the shower, sometimes you're just lying in bed calm, sometimes you're just enjoying life and just have a notepad, it's never far away. Always have a notepad on you, because you never know what's going to happen, take a moment and write it down the minute that comes in your head. Even if you can't deal with it until later, I've had that experience where I was in a wedding party and I'm on stage, I'm like, "I hope I don't forget this, something just occurred to me."
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