Lewis Wolpert - The unnatural nature of science (1992)

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Lewis Wolpert Quotes
If Watson and Crick had not discovered the nature of DNA, one can be virtually certain that other scientists would eventually have determined it. With art—whether painting, music or literature—it is quite different. If Shakespeare had not written Hamlet, no other playwright would have done so.

Lewis Wolpert
One of the strongest arguments for the distance between common sense and science is that the whole of science is totally irrelevant to people's day-to-day lives.

Lewis Wolpert
The physics of motion provides one of the clearest examples of the counter-intuitive and unexpected nature of science.

Lewis Wolpert
The image of the disinterested, dispassionate scientist is no less false than that of the mad scientist who is willing to destroy the world for knowledge.

Lewis Wolpert
Both Newton and Darwin were driven by the data and were forced to recognize that they couldn't explain everything. It may be a characteristic of great scientists to know what to accept and what to leave out.

Lewis Wolpert
There is a relevant story about Charles II, who once invited fellows of the Royal Society to explain to him why a fish when it is dead weighs more than when it was alive. The fellows responded with ingenious explanations, until the King pointed out that what he had told them was just not true.

Lewis Wolpert
The revolution in molecular biology changed the paradigm from metabolism to information.

Lewis Wolpert
No one method, no paradigm, will capture the process of science. There is no such thing as the scientific method.

Lewis Wolpert
When it was suggested to Pasteur that many of his great achievements depended on luck, he replied - I'm sure with more than a little irritation - 'In the field of observation in science, fortune only favours the prepared mind.' It is not by chance that it is always the great scientists who have the luck.

Lewis Wolpert