Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Michael Shermer] Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world
works. [Antonio Lazcano] Science is part of culture
and without science we cannot understand ourselves and we cannot understand the modern world.
[Brian Green] You know it’s unfortunate I think many people still see science as a
subject they studied in school but left behind when they took their final exam. Too me science
is really a way of life it’s a perspective, it’s an outlook, it’s a way of engaging
with the world so that one can employ rational reasoning, deductive logic to really understand
what’s true, what’s right, what’s actually accurate about the world around us and that’s
not a subject, that’s a perspective. [PZ Myers] I think that science changes the
way your mind words, that what science does is it teaches you to think critically and
to think a little more deeply about things, that no longer is it sufficient to go by superficial
impressions. [Alex Halliday] Science has to provide the
answer to some huge problems that we’re facing, and of course climate change is the
one we’re all thinking of, and the energy problem and coming up with alternative sources
of energy. But there are a vast range of other things to do with communicable diseases and
what we need to do in terms of thinking about computation and the way our economy is going
to be driven in the future. All these things relate to science and the scientific method.
[Brian Green] When you look at the 21st century, at the opportunities that we have, at the
challenges that we face from things like stem cells and climate change, from nanoscience
to space travel, to nuclear proliferation, to all manner of things that will have a dramatic
impact on life, they’re all scientific and if you don’t have a public that’s willing
to engage with the scientific ideas it’s nearly impossible to have informed decision
making. So in order that we can really participate in the ongoing development of life and culture,
in order that we can play a part in the global dialog about where our planet’s going to
go in the 21st century we all have to speak at some level the language of science.
[Michael Shermer] When we’re growing up we just believe almost anything that people
tell us, especially authorities and adults, textbooks and politicians, and YouTube, the
internet. I mean there’s just this sea of information coming at us and how can you tell
the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, how do you know?
[Richard Dawkins] If he added an extra egg they were often able to rear the chick.
[Richard Dawkins] Cultural evolution is a new kind of evolution, and the world of science
too feels a new sense of hope.