A few nice quotations by this eminent scientist, teacher, and publicist (who lived from 1918 until 1988, as nobody has mentioned yet).
- Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known; what is not known; to what extent things ARE known (for nothing is known absolutely); how to handle doubt and uncertainty; what the rules of evidence are; how to think about things so that judgments can be made; how to distinguish truth from fraud and from show.
- Pretentious "science" such as Creationism is "a claim based upon the stupidity of the author that some obvious and correct fact, accepted and checked for years is, in fact, false (these are the worse: no argument will convince the idiot).
- When you have learned what an explanation really is, you can then go on to more subtle questions.
- The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty.... We take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure--- that it is possible to live and NOT know. But I don't know whether everyone realizes that this is true.
- An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
- The test of science is its ability to predict.
- Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.