Peter D. Mitchell Quotes
Reason can be used only when looking critically back.
Mitchell, Peter D. "David Keilin's Respiratory Chain Concept and Its Chemiosmotic Consequences." Science, vol. 206, no. 4423, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 7 Dec. 1979, pp. 1148-1159.
Attacking Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce:
This is a modern summary of the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza who developed the modern philosophical foundation of science and scientific thinking. When the authorities are clerics and religious leaders, their authority gets undermined which is why the Jews, Christians, and Muslims all excommunicated Spinoza. For the scientists, they themselves are to be rejected as determiners of knowledge and truth so they tend to do poorly in political disputes because the good scientists would never assert a belief that the politicians should listen to them just because they are great scientists and they “know.” It is the ideologues and junk scientists who are sure of their testimony and can advise with certainty. See linked quote(s).
This principle, so important to the philosophy of science, was a major component of the philosophy of Spinoza—the part that had him excommunicated by the 3 major religions of the era.
Peter Dennis Mitchell, FRS was a British biochemist who was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his discovery of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis.
