John Ziman Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

Many philosophers have now sadly come to the conclusion that there is no ultimate procedure which will wring the last drops of uncertainty from what scientists call their knowledge.

John Ziman
The physics of undergraduate text-books is 90% true; the contents of the primary research journals of physics is 90% false.

John Ziman
Physics defines itself as the science devoted to discovering, developing and refining those aspects of reality that are amenable to mathematical analysis.

John Ziman
It is not enough to observe, experiment, theorize, calculate and communicate; we must also argue, criticize, debate, expound, summarize, and otherwise transform the information that we have obtained individually into reliable, well established, public knowledge.

John Ziman
Theoretical physicists are like pure mathematicians, in that they are often interested in the hypothetical behaviour of entirely imaginary objects, such as parallel universes, or particles traveling faster than light, whose actual existence is not being seriously proposed at all.

John Ziman
The cliché of scientific prose betrays itself "Hence we arrive at the conclusion that...." The audience to which scientific publications are addressed is not passive; by its cheering or booing, its bouquets or brickbats, it actively controls the substance of the communications that it receives.

John Ziman
As has been said of some experiments in high-energy physics: the process to be observed has never occurred before in the history of the Universe; God himself is waiting to see what will happen!

John Ziman
Any research organization requires generous measures of the following: (1) Social space for personal initiative and creativity; (2) Time for ideas to grow to maturity; (3) Openness to debate and criticism; (4) Hospitality towards novelty; and (5) Respect for specialized expertise.

John Ziman
The most astonishing achievements of science, intellectually and practically, have been in physics, which many people take to be the ideal type of scientific knowledge. In fact, physics is a very special type of science, in which the subject matter is deliberately chosen so as to be amenable to quantitative analysis.

John Ziman
The sooner we all face up to the fact that theory and practice are indissoluble, and that there is no contradiction between the qualities of usefulness and beauty, the better.

John Ziman
A significant fraction of the ordinary scientific literature in any field is concerned with essentially irrational theories put forward by a few well-established scholars who have lost touch with reality.

John Ziman
... the 'size' of science has doubled steadily every 15 years. In a century this means a factor of 100. For every single scientific paper or for every single scientist in 1670, there were 100 in 1770, 10,000 in 1870 and 1,000,000 in 1970.

John Ziman
"Disorder" is not mere chaos; it implies defective order.

John Ziman
In science, to echo Beethoven's dictum about music, "Everything should be both surprising and expected."

John Ziman
He goal of science is a consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field.

John Ziman
The verb "to theorize" is now conjugated as follows: "I built a model; you formulated a hypothesis; he made a conjecture."

John Ziman
Penicillin is not Science, any more than a cathedral is Religion or a witness box is Law.

John Ziman
A philosopher is a person who knows less and less about more and more, until he knows nothing about everything.
A scientist is a person who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing.

John Ziman
A new scientific theory is seldom stated with such clarity by its original author, and usually takes many years to creep into public conciousness.

John Ziman
Ethics is not just an abstract intellectual discipline. It is about the conflicts that arise in trying to meet real human needs and values.

John Ziman
The communication of modern science to the ordinary citizen, necessary, important, desirable as it is, cannot be considered an easy task. The prime obstacle is lack of education. … There is also the difficulty of making scientific discoveries interesting and exciting without completely degrading them intellectually. … It is a weakness of modern science that the scientist shrinks from this sort of publicity, and thus gives an impression of arrogant mystagoguery.

John Ziman