It can be difficult to even find out who exactly was involved in a discovery, of what their precise roles were

Such massive expansion comes with its problems: in retrospect, it can be difficult to even find out who exactly was involved in a discovery, of what their precise roles were. Very few first-hand records of the scanning girls exist. Graduate students who have left the field don't get detailed biographies. The omega minus discovery paper has thirty-three authors and this didn't any of the accelerator designers, engineers, scanners or theorists - not even Gell-Mann. As a result, today we usually only hear the stories of the few theoretical physicists rather than the teams of experimentalists, engineers and others to actually make discoveries like resonance particles and the omega minus happen.

S. Sheehy, The matter of everything (2022), 175

We even have a different name when we teach the physics that emerged after the turn of the twentieth century

We even have a different name when we teach the physics that emerged after the turn of the twentieth century. We call it modern physics as opposed to classical physics, as if everything that came before the theories of this era was just a little ordinary.

S. Sheehy, The matter of everything (2022), 47

In God we trust. All others must have data.

“The clinician, no matter how venerable, must accept the fact that experience, voluminous as it might be, cannot be employed as a sensitive indicator of scientific validity,” Fisher wrote in an article. He was willing to have faith in divine wisdom, but not in Halsted as divine wisdom. “In God we trust,” he brusquely told a journalist. “All others [must] have data.”

S. Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies (2010), 200

These billions have done more to chart the universe than did Galileo Galilei, Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin

During the last 500 years modern science has achieved wonders thanks largely to the willingness of governments, businesses, foundations and private donors to channel billions of dollars into scientific research. These billions have done more to chart the universe than did Galileo Galilei, Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin. If these particular geniuses had never been born their insights would probably have occurred to others. But if proper funding were unavailable, no intellectual brilliance could he compensated for that.

Y.N. Hariri, Sapiens (2011), 303

Theories are cheap. Anyone can invent one.

In psychology, theories are cheap. Anyone can invent one .Progress happens when theories are tested, supported, and corrected by empirical evidence, especially when a theory proves to be useful - for example, if it helps people to understand why half the people in their country seem to live in a different moral universe.

J, Haidt, The righteous mind (2012), 149

A typical scientific paper has never pretended to be more than another little piece in a larger jigsaw

A regular journal carries from one research worker to another the various... observations which are of common interest.... A typical scientific paper has never pretended to be more than another little piece in a larger jigsaw-not significant in itself but as an element in a grander scheme. This technique, of soliciting many modest contributions to the store of human knowledge, has been the secret of Western science since the seventeenth century, for it achieves a corporate, collective power that is far greater than one individual can exert

J.M. Ziman, cited in L. Thomas, 'On societies as organisms', The Lives of a Cell (1974), 15

You are lucky to get two minutes of the attention of a margrave who lives for killing stags or boar in inventive ways

If you are interested in in optics or mineralogy or funding a dictionary of philosophy, you are lucky to get two minutes of the attention of a margrave who lives for killing stags or boar in inventive ways. You are n some endless corridor of some windy schloss, and there is the clatter of men, scratching themselves, impatient for the off with their noise and weapons and rolling obscenities, and you are trying to tell His Serene Highness that you need money - a great deal of money - for a wind-furnace to test the melting point of iron ore.

E. de Waal, The white road (2015), 139

The only product of the forces of evolution capable of understandingits own origins

He remembered a time at Bart's, holding a human brain in his hands for the first time, being amazed by the weight of it. This blown eggshell had contained the only product of the forces of evolution capable of understanding its own origins.

P. Barker, The ghost road (1995), 238

There aren't many tunes you can hum in the shower.

As a story, the scientific mythos is not very comforting. Probably that's why it hasn't become wildly popular: we humans prefer stories that have a central role in them for us, that preserve some of our dignity, and that implies there might be help at hand if we really need some. The scientific version of our existence on this planet may well be physically true, but we don't like it much. It isn't cuddly. There aren't many tunes you can hum in the shower.

M. Atwood, In other worlds: SF and the human imagination (2011), 55

Language is what you pick up naturally - everyone speaks, no problem - but science has to be learned methodically

My eager schoolteacher abandoned science to nature, assuming we would absorb the essentials through inquisitive play. Language, he used to say, was what made us different from the apes, and that was what he wanted to teach. But from my Mister Salgado I learned the reverse: language is what you pick up naturally - everyone speaks, no problem - but science has to be learned methodically, by study, if one is ever to emerge out of the swamp of our psychotic superstitions. It is what transforms our lives.

R. Gunesekera, Reef (1994), Kindle edn. loc 657