Scientists

The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it furnished him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, or playwiths, but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1772-1834).

A given problem may attract a scientist for any number of reasons. In turn, those reasons, or interests, influence the manner in which he or she deals with the problem.
— Evelyn Fox Keller (1936 – 2023), Reflections on Gender and Science, Yale University Press, 1985, 150.

Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong;
Was Everything by starts, and Nothing long:
But, in the course of one revolving Moon,
Was Chymist, Fidler, States-man, and Buffoon.
— John Dryden (1631 – 1700) Absalom and Achitophel, 1, 545.

We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist.
— William Whewell, (1794-1866), writing in 1840.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
— Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968).

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882), Self-Reliance.

If you had scientists who were completely psychologically normal, balanced human beings, they wouldn’t be scientists. They would be objective then, but would there be real progress?
— Ian Mitroff, The Subjective Side of Science. New York: Elsevier, 1974, 70.

… one of my teachers, G. H. Hardy, justified his great life work on the ground that it could do no one the least harm — or the least good. But Hardy was a mathematician; will humanists really let him opt out of the conspiracy of scientists? Or are scientists to forgive Hardy because, protest as he might, most of them learned their indispensable mathematics from his books?

— Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974), Science and Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.

And when statesmen or others worry him [the scientist] too much, then he should leave with his possessions. With a firm and steadfast mind one should hold under all conditions, that everywhere the earth is below and the sky above, and to the energetic man, every region is his fatherland.
— Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601).

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
— Arthur C. Clarke, Profile of the Future, 1973.

[Robert Hooke is] of midling stature, something crooked, pale faced, and his face but little belowe, but his head is lardge, his eie full and popping, and not quick; a grey eie. He haz a delicate head of haire, browne, and of an excellent moist curle.
— John Aubrey (1625 – 1697), Brief Lives, Penguin edition, 326.

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.
— Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744).

It did not last: the Devil howling ‘Ho,
Let Einstein be,’ restored the status quo.
— Sir John Squire.

… to explain the complicated and visible by the simple and invisible.
— Jean Perrin (1870 – 1942), quoted by Francois Jacob in The Logic of Life (1973), 16.

La Republique n’a pas besoin de Savants [The Republic has no need of scientists]
— Jean Baptiste Coffinhal, before ordering the execution of Antoine Lavoisier, May 1794.

… the wise work for the welfare of the world, without thought for themselves. By abstaining from work you will confuse the ignorant, who are engrossed in their actions. Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion.
— Bhagavad Gita, 3:25-26, in the translation of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.

… the whole literature of the traditional culture doesn’t seem relevant … They are of course, dead wrong. As a result, their imaginative understanding is less than it could be. They are self-impoverished.

But what about the other side? They are impoverished too — perhaps more seriously, because they are vainer about it. They still like to pretend that the traditional culture is the whole of “culture”, as though the natural order didn’t exist. As though the exploration of the natural order was of no interest either in its own value or its consequences …

As with the tone-deaf, they don’t know what they miss. they give a pitying chuckle at the news of scientists who have never read a major work of English literature. They dismiss them as ignorant specialists. Yet their own ignorance is just as startling. A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought to be highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking them something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language.
— Charles Percy Snow (1905 – 1980), The Two Cultures, 19 – 21.

Theoretical physicists tend to talk only to each other, and, like so many Cabots, to God. Either in scientific politics or open politics, organic chemists much more often than not turn out to be conservative: the reverse is true of biochemists.
— C. P. Snow (1905 – 1980), The Two Cultures: a Second Look, 1963.

If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.
— Aldous Huxley, Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.

I recognize that many physicists are smarter than I am—most of them theoretical physicists. A lot of smart people have gone into theoretical physics, therefore the field is extremely competitive. I console myself with the thought that although they may be smarter and may be deeper thinkers than I am, I have broader interests than they have.
— Linus Pauling (1901 – 1994), The Meaning of Life, 1990, 69.

Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Dr. Watson, in The Five Orange Pips (1892), describing Sherlock Holmes.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia (1892).

Whoever believes that Aristotle was a god, must also believe that he never erred. But if one believe that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to error just as we are.
— Albertus Magnus (1200 – 1280).

Basic research may seem very expensive. I am a well-paid scientist. My hourly wage is equal to that of a plumber, but sometimes my research remains barren of results for weeks, months or years and my conscience begins to bother me for wasting the taxpayer’s money. But in reviewing my life’s work, I have to think that the expense was not wasted. Basic research, to which we owe everything, is relatively very cheap when compared with other outlays of modern society. The other day I made a rough calculation which led me to the conclusion that if one were to add up all the money ever spent by man on basic research, one would find it to be just about equal to the money spent by the Pentagon this past year.
— Albert Szent-Györgyi, (1893-1984) The Crazy Ape, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, 1971, 72.

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