John Desmond Bernal - Science Quotes

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One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement.

John Desmond Bernal
Published papers may omit important steps and the memory of men of science, even the greatest, is sadly fallible.

John Desmond Bernal
The very bulk of scientific publications is itself delusive. It is of very unequal value; a large proportion of it, possibly as much as three-quarters, does not deserve to be published at all, and is only published for economic considerations which have nothing to do with the real interests of science.

John Desmond Bernal
In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal.

John Desmond Bernal
The problem of the re-organization of science will not be solved by administrative or financial changes. It will also be necessary to reorganise in a most comprehensive way the whole apparatus of scientific communication.

John Desmond Bernal
Hogben's Science for the Citizen would be an admirable text-book for such teaching.

John Desmond Bernal
In England, more than in any other country, science is felt rather than thought...A defect of the English is their almost complete lack of systematic thinking. Science to them consists of a number of successful raids into the unknown.

John Desmond Bernal
If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?

John Desmond Bernal
But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary.

John Desmond Bernal
Science, in one aspect, is ordered technique; in another, it is rationalized mythology.

John Desmond Bernal
It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

John Desmond Bernal
The cardinal rule in science is that a statement must be provable — but that does not mean that it has to be proved now.

John Desmond Bernal
The role of God in the material world has been reduced stage by stage with the advance of Science, so much so that He only survives in the vaguest mathematical form in the minds of older physicists and biologists.

John Desmond Bernal
It is not possible in any published book to speak freely and precisely about the way science is run. The law of liable, reasons of State, and still more the unwritten code of the scientific fraternity itself forbid particular examples being held up alike for praise or blame.

John Desmond Bernal