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    The Wisdom of Science
    The Wisdom of Science
    The Wisdom of Science
    Ebook72 pages51 minutes

    The Wisdom of Science

    By Robert W. Fuller

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    About this ebook

    What is science?

    What is it not?

    Why does it work?

    How does science relate to morality and religion?

    The Wisdom of Science is a collection of aphorisms and quotations that conveys the beauty and mystery of science as experienced by some of its most successful practitioners.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert W. Fuller
    Release dateSep 11, 2014
    ISBN9781310090899
    The Wisdom of Science
    Author

    Robert W. Fuller

    ROBERT W. Fuller earned his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University and taught at Columbia, where he co-authored Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics. After serving as president of Oberlin College, he became a “citizen diplomat,” working toward improving international relations during the Cold War. During the 1990s, he served as board chair of the non-profit global corporation Internews and promoted democracy via free and independent media. When the Cold War ended with the collapse of the USSR, Fuller reflected on his career and realized that he had been, at different times in his life, a somebody and a nobody. His periodic sojourns into “Nobodyland” led him to identify rankism—abuse of the power inherent in rank—and ultimately to write SOMEBODIES AND NOBODIES: OVERCOMING THE ABUSE OF RANK. Three years later, he published a sequel that focuses on building a “dignitarian society” titled ALL RISE: SOMEBODIES, NOBODIES, AND THE POLITICS OF DIGNITY. With co-author Pamela Gerloff, he has also published DIGNITY FOR ALL: HOW TO CREATE A WORLD WITHOUT RANKISM. His most recent books are RELIGION AND SCIENCE: A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP?; GENOMES, MENOMES, WENOMES: NEUROSCIENCE AND HUMAN DIGNITY; THE WISDOM OF SCIENCE; BELONGING: A MEMOIR; THE THEORY OF EVERYBODY; and THE ROWAN TREE: A NOVEL.

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      Book preview

      The Wisdom of Science - Robert W. Fuller

      The Wisdom of Science

      Science in Sound Bites

      Robert W. Fuller

      Copyright © 2014 Robert W. Fuller

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

      ISBN: 9781310090899

      Cover Credit: The base image is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. Camille Flammarion, L'Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888). The image has been re-colored for the specific use of the cover of this book.

      Robert W. Fuller's web site: www.robertworksfuller.com

      Dignity Movement: www.breakingranks.net

      Huffington Post: www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller

      For readers who want to explore dignity as a foundation for interpersonal and international relations, Robert W. Fuller's novel The Rowan Tree is now available as an ebook, a paperback, and an audiobook at: www.rowantreenovel.com

      To my father

      Calvin S. Fuller

      who showed how science could illuminate

      not just the world around us,

      but also the world within.

      Live your life as if there are no miracles

      and everything is a miracle.

      – Albert Einstein

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: What is Science?

      Chapter 2: The Creative Process

      Chapter 3: Success and Failure

      Chapter 4: Our Place in the Universe

      Chapter 5: Science and Religion

      Chapter 6: Science and Politics

      Chapter 7: The Uses of Science

      Chapter 8: The Sciences and the Arts

      Chapter 9: Mathematics: Queen of the Sciences

      Chapter 10: Scientists: On Themselves and Their Colleagues

      Chapter 11: Questions, Guesses, and Predictions

      Chapter 12: Simple Truths

      About the Author

      Introduction

      In the few centuries since our understanding of Nature turned scientific, both our lives and our life-spans have changed more than in the previous hundred-thousand years.

      Leave aside the issue of whether science has made our lives better or worse. What's not in dispute is that the percentage of people who reject its fruits—electricity, antibiotics, cars, planes, phones, and all the rest—is vanishingly small.

      I've had a lifelong interest in understanding why objective scientific inquiry works and how it relates to our subjective sense of What's right? and What's beautiful? To those ends, I've collected aphorisms, maxims, and mots justes that shed light on the nature of science. My goal is not to press a particular view of science, but rather to reflect the range of scientists' personalities and the various truth-seeking strategies they employ.

      This collection of aphorisms is offered in the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation that it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another. If these sayings provoke you to ask What is science? What is it not? Why does it work? and How does science relate to morality and religion? then it will have served its purpose.

      In the name of readability, I've taken the liberty of omitting extraneous or redundant language from a few of the quotes, but in no case has the meaning been altered.

      Chapter 1: What is Science?

      Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth.

      – Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), Welsh mathematician and philosopher

      Know you what it is to be a child? ... it is to believe in belief.

      – Francis Thompson, 19th c. British poet

      There are in fact two things—science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

      – Hippocrates (c. 460–377 BCE), Greek physician, father of medicine, author of the Hippocratic Oath: Do No Harm

      I appeal to your own eyes as my witness and judge.

      – William Harvey (1578–1657), English physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood. His simple appeal—that people look for themselves, rather than to authority—was revolutionary in his time. His discovery furthered not only physiology, but also the scientific method in general. The idea that theological dogma be subordinated to the empirical experience of the individual was a crucial step in the birth of science—and of democracy.

      It is a test of true theories not only to account for, but to predict, phenomena.

      – William Whewell (1794–1866), English scholar who taught the scientific method at a time when it was a novelty, and put his finger on a key element—prediction.

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