Steven Pinker Quotes

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.

Biology has tended to be an observational science, and deriving things from first principles has not been possible in the past, but I hate to predict the future on that.

Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Germany has a duty to make war.... War is a biological necessity of the first importance.

In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired

We have politicians running for office—for school boards—in parts of the country who are denying the fundamental principle of biology. They are trying to equate the fact that Evolution is a theory with the idea that Evolution might not be true…. The teaching of Evolution should not be a political issue…. Evolution was discovered, not invented.

I knew I wasn't going to be a scientist; I knew that early. When they started talking about dissecting frogs, I knew I wasn't going to be a scientist.

I was a science guy in school, numbers and science and formula: what made things work and how to bring them forward - not what happened.

From spending my decades thinking about behavior and the biological influences on it, I'm convinced by now free will is what we call the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. It's just another way of stating that we're biological organisms determined by the physical laws of the universe.

One thing scientists do is to find order among a large number of facts, and one way to do that across fields as diverse as biology, geology, physics and astronomy is through classification.

My father was a physicist, while I am a biogeochemist. I live to study plants, and he has never had more than a generic interest in biology.

I used to very politely say that if there is free will then it's in all sorts of boring places, like whether you're going to pick up this or that fork as you begin your meal. There really is none: It's all biology.

By shrewdly linking procreation to an act likely to make you stupid with excitement, God has seen to it that Life does indeed go on. It's possible, by the way, that this is why God's name comes up so often in the middle of the act; it's a salute to the author: Hey, whoever made this up - thanks.

When Da Vinci wanted an effect, he willed, he planned the means to make it happen: that was the purpose of his machines. But the machines of Newton ... are means not for doing but for observing. He saw an effect, and he looked for its cause.

There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.

The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.

Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. ... All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It's an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no "why&rdqo"; in those examples. We don't understand why electricity travels. We don't know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.

Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.