Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
For scientists, reality is not optional.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. Harper, 2012.
Belief and/or ideology of even teh vast majority or the world has no influence on the vaidity and truth of science. A particualr scientific statement is true or not based an many factors, none of which have anything to do with beliefs, world views, custims, cultures, or religious doctrine.
This quotation from 1888 is apropos many of the major scientific advances which are counter-intuitive. Relativity was one; another was Quantum Mechanics where we have to learn to accept the fact that something can be in two (or more) places at once or that the exact same forces acting on an object can produce more than one result. Most non-scientists would see these as absurd, but they are basic characteristics of modern physics.
Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally.