Facts Quotes - page 33
We are... bound to attach the greatest importance to the preliminary step taken by Lavoisier, who is even more justly called the father of modern chemistry than Kepler is called the father of modern astronomy. The exact claims of Lavoisier to this important place in the history of chemistry have been variously stated: ...since his time, and greatly through his labours, the quantitative method has been established as the ultimate test of chemical facts; the principle of this method being the rule that in all changes of combination and reaction, the total weight of the various ingredients-be they elementary bodies or compounds-remains unchanged. The science of chemistry was thus established upon an exact, a mathematical basis. By means of this method Lavoisier, utilising and analysing the results gained by himself and others before him, notably those of Priestley, Cavendish, and Black, succeeded in destroying the older theory of combustion, the so-called phlogistic theory.
Antoine Lavoisier
There is no other species on the Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
Carl Sagan
Will the misogynists and the nut jobs on the internet continue to circulate them? Yes, they will. And it wouldn't matter what I said and it wouldn't matter what documents were produced and it wouldn't matter what anybody else said, they will pursue this claim for motivations of their own which are malicious and not in any way associated with the facts.
Julia Gillard
Proponents of doctrinal religions-ones in which a particular body of belief is prized and infidels scorned-will be threatened by the courageous pursuit of knowledge. We hear from such people that it may be dangerous to probe too deeply. Many people have inherited their religion like their eye color: they consider it not a thing to think very deeply about, and in any case beyond our control. But those with a set of beliefs they profess to feel deeply about, which they have selected without an unbiased sifting through the facts and the alternatives, will feel uncomfortably challenged by searching questions. Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body's warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.
Carl Sagan
[O]ur purpose is to give a presentation of geometry... in its visual, intuitive aspects. With the aid of visual imagination we can illuminate the manifold facts and problems... beyond this, it is possible... to depict the geometric outline of the methods of investigation and proof, without... entering into the details... In this manner, geometry being as many-faceted as it is and being related to the most diverse branches of mathematics, we may even obtain a summarizing survey of mathematics as a whole, and a valid idea of the variety of problems and the wealth of ideas it contains. Thus a presentation of geometry in large brushstrokes... and based on the approach through visual intuition, should contribute to a more just appreciation of mathematics by a wider range of people than just the specialists.
David Hilbert
Even more than religious belief, acceptance or denial of evolution is a test of character. For if you deny evolution is true, you are either pandering to the public even though you know better (showing that you're ambitious but lack character), are truly ignorant of the facts (which means you can't be trusted to be informed about crucial issues), or are a flat-out creationist (showing that you're batshit crazy).
Jerry Coyne
We needn't take things like reasoning on faith. We use reason because it works. And science isn't really based on axioms: it's not math. It's based on a method that, refined over time, leads us to widely accepted facts about the universe: the facts that we can rely on to do things like establish the genealogy of species, cure disease, and land probes on comets. You can't accomplish such things through prayer.
Jerry Coyne
In the end, religious investigations of "truth,” unlike those of science, are deeply dependent on confirmation bias. You start with what you were taught to believe, or what you want to believe, and then accept only those facts that support your prejudices. This is the basis for the theological practice of "apologetics,” designed to defend religion against counterarguments and disconfirming evidence....In contrast, science has no apologetics, for we test our conclusions by trying to find counterevidence.
Jerry Coyne
What is at issue here is not: What are the facts? but rather: How are the facts to be described in order to sanction one mode of explaining them rather than another? Some historians will insist that history cannot become a science until it finds the technical terminology adequate to the correct characterization of its objects of study, in the way that physics did in the calculus and chemistry did in the periodic tables. Such is the recommendation of Marxists, Positivists, Cliometricians, and so on. Others will continue to insist that the integrity of historiography depends on its use of ordinary language, its avoidance of jargon. These latter suppose that ordinary language is a safeguard against ideological deformations of the ‘facts.' What they fail to recognize is that ordinary language itself has its own forms of terminological determinism, represented by the figures of speech without which discourse itself is impossible.
Hayden White
