Talcott Parsons Quotes

Science to me is sufficiently weird and interesting, and stranger than fiction.

I'm very interested in science.

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

There really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out.

The scientific discovery appears first as the hypothesis of an analogy; and science tends to become independent of the hypothesis.

Without science, there would be no such hope.

Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder.

I think that it's good for us to be able to travel in space and do research in space, and I emphasize the research, because space travel to me is far more than just seeing how far we can go.

If someone could actually prove scientifically that there is such a thing as a supernatural force, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. So the notion that somehow scientists are resisting it is ludicrous.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

Theory said one thing and the experiment said something different, so that was the stimulus that started me going, that there was something there to be explained, which wasn't understood and to try to see why that experiment gave the answer it did, so it was a big opportunity for a young student starting to have actually an experiment which contradicted the theory, so that's was my chance to understand that.

Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.

It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be "interesting".

In matters of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. (not literal translation) - Dan's les champs de observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.

That's, of course, the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.

In the long run, there are no secrets. in science. The universe will not cooperate in a cover-up.

Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were intially at a loss as to what the proper context of the new postulate really was.

Science, you don't know, looks like magic.

An experiment disproving a prediction is discovery.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

Science, Nature,-O, I've yearned to open some page.

The major credit I think Jim and I deserve ... is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold. Both of us had decided, quite independently of each other, that the central problem in molecular biology was the chemical structure of the gene. ... We could not see what the answer was, but we considered it so important that we were determined to think about it long and hard, from any relevant point of view.

That's the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.