Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today--but the core of s...cience fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of s...imple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, techno...logy, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because 'experimental method' used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With this new way of providing a foundation for mathematics, which we may appropriately call a proof theory, I pursue a significan...t goal, for I should like to eliminate once and for all the questions regarding the foundations of mathematics, in the form in which they are now posed, by turning every mathematical proposition into a formula that can be concretely exhibited and strictly derived, thus recasting mathematical definitions and inferences in such a way that they are unshakable and yet provide an adequate picture of the whole of science. I believe I can attain this goal completely with my proof theory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problems...hifts; and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution ...of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is clear that everybody interested in science must be interested in world 3 objects. A physical scientist, to start with, may b...e interested mainly in world 1 objects--say crystals and X-rays. But very soon he must realize how much depends on our interpretation of the facts, that is, on our theories, and so on world 3 objects. Similarly, a historian of science, or a philosopher interested in science must be largely a student of world 3 objects.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any adequate analysis or (if I may use the term) rational reconstruction of the method of science must comprise the statement that... the scientist qua scientist accepts or rejects hypotheses; and further that an analysis of that statement would reveal it to entail that the scientist qua scientist makes value judgments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »