Damage Quotes (2)
I have no patience with attempts to identify science with measurement, which is but one of its tools, or with any definition of the scientist which would exclude a Darwin, a Pasteur or a Kekulé. The scientist is a practical man and his are practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder. On the whole, he is satisfied with his work, for while science may never be wholly right it certainly is never wholly wrong; and it seems to be improving from decade to decade.
The Anatomy of Science (1926), 6-7.
See also: | Analysis (37) | Approximation (4) | Collapse (3) | Definition (25) | Flaw (4) | Foundation (10) | Improvement (7) | (Friedrich) August Kekulé (13) | Measurement (62) | Sir Isaac Newton (82) | Louis Pasteur (8) | Practical (10) | Progress (117) | Right (7) | Satisfaction (5) | Structure (33) | Ultimate (3) | Wrong (9)
[Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness.
Exposition du Système du Monde (1796), 2, 312, trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 175.
See also: | Dangerous (8) | Deceive (2) | Error (97) | Ignorance (62) | Immutable (2) | Justice (3) | Law (134) | Mankind (34) | Maxim (2) | Nature (243) | Relationship (10) | Science (444) | Social Order (3) | Truth (241) | Usefulness (16)