Loren Eiseley Quotes

Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.

Scientific Progress goes boink?

There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned tomorrow.

Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people.

Opening a door to the mysteries, hoping to shed a little dark on all the stuff we think we know.

The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had seemed unlike.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.

Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not ... science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning.

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.

Science is progressing at such a rapid rate that when you make a prediction and think you are ahead of your time by 100 years you may be ahead of your time by 10 at most.

The world moves, but we seem to move with it. When I studied physiology beforethere were two hundred and eight bones in the body. Now there are two hundred and thirty- eight.

Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

Science was the known and then people would place God in the unknown, like God explained the unknown.

Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

The influences that have lifted the race to a higher moral level are education, freedom, leisure, the humanizing tendency of a better-supplied and more interesting life. In a word, science and liberalism . . . have accomplished the very things for which religion claims the credit.

A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.

Scientific power is like inherited wealth; attained without discipline. You read about what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast.

So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn’t have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.

Right now people think God is dark energy and dark matter, the spirit. Go ahead and think that, but the day we can tell you exactly what it is - that it's gremlins in the vacuum of space or whatever - then what's your recourse at that point?

To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery-into something that no mortal eye hath yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.

Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.