ON SCIENCE & PSEUDOSCIENCE |
the intention is to update this page substantially in next the 12 months
The Skeptics Society: Devoted to the Promotion of Science & Critical Thinking
Science is simply common sense at its best that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic...Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist.
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science...Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician.
Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them... Joseph Fourier ()
The art of asking the right questions in mathematics is more important than the art of solving them - Georg Cantor
Philosophy is written in this immense book that stands ever open before our eyes (I speak of the universe), but it cannot be read if one does not first learn the language and recognise the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without the means of which it is humanly impossible to understand a word; without these philosophy is confused wandering in a dark labyrinth. - Galileo Galilei
Best non-fiction : The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
Best Fiction: The Baroque Cycle - Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
extract from Quicksilver (Daniel Waterhouse pays tribute to Hooke): But consider: Newton has thought things that no man before has ever thought. A great accomplishment to be sure. Perhaps the greatest achievement any human mind has ever made. Very well - what does that say of Newton, and of us? Why, that his mind is framed in such a way that it can out-think anyone else's. So all hail Isaac Newton! Let us give him his due, and glorify and worship whatever generative force can frame such a mind. Now consider Hooke. Hooke has perceived things that no man before us has ever perceived. What does that say of Hooke, and of us? That Hooke was framed in some special way? No, for just look at you, Robert - by your leave, you are stooped, asthmatic, fitful, beset by aches and ills, your eyes and ears are no better than those of men who've not perceived a thousandth part of what you have. Newton makes his discoveries in geometrickal (sic) realms, where our minds cannot go, he strolls in a walled garden filled with wonders, to which he has the only key. But you Hooke, are cheek-by-jowl with all of humanity in the streets of London. Anyone can look at the things you have looked at. But in those things you see what no one else has. You are the millionth human to look at a spark, a flea, a raindrop, the moon, and the first to see it. For anyone to say that this is less remarkable than what Newton has done, is to understand things in but a hollow and jejune way, 'tis like going to a Shakespeare play and remembering only the sword fights".
this page was last updated May 2006