Science Culture Quotes

I've been thinking about the distorted view of science that prevails in our culture. I've been wondering about this, because our civilization is completely dependent on science and high technology, yet most of us are alienated from science.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.

Science as an intellectual exercise enriches our culture, and is in itself ennobling.

It is not clear to anyone, least of all the practitioners, how science and technology in their headlong course do or should influence ethics and law, education and government, art and social philosophy, religion and the life of the affections. Yet science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.

Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.

The scientists I looked up to at the beginning were not Latino. They were famous scientists of many years ago, like Madame Curie. Later, I realized that there were also, but a very few, Latino scientists. There were good ones, but very few, because there wasn't as much a tradition to be a scientist in our culture. But this is changing.

Scientists have egos, and scientists like to name dinosaurs. They like to name anything. Everybody likes to have their own animal that they named.

When the honour is given to that scientist personally the happiness is sweet indeed. Science is, on the whole, an informal activity, a life of shirt sleeves and coffee served in beakers.

Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.

We have been talking about public engagement for a decade. For me it is about recognising that the mission of science has to be embedded within our culture - the direction in which science is going has to be determined by all of us, and so we need a dialogue with the public.

Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male.

Success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture - a culture that teaches girls math isn't cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics.

We need to make science cool again.

Only when creative people take ownership of cosmic discovery will society accept science as the cultural activity that it is.

If you look at other countries, you'll find lots of girls doing physics, engineering, and science. It's something to do with the kind of culture we have in the English-speaking world about what's appropriate for each of the two sexes.