Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all--no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it ...sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself--a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The distinction between the truth of faith and the truth of science leads to a warning, directed to theologians, not to use recent... scientific discoveries to confirm the truth of faith. Microphysics have undercut some scientific hypotheses concerning the calculability of the universe. The theory of quantum and the principle of indeterminacy have had this effect. Immediately religious writers use these insights for the confirmation of their own ideas of human freedom, divine creativity, and miracles. But there is no justification for such a procedure at all, neither from the point of view of physics nor from the point of view of religion. The physical theories referred to have no direct relation to the infinitely complex phenomenon of human freedom, and the emission of power in quantums has direct relation to the meaning of miracles.... The truth of faith cannot be confirmed by latest physical or biological or psychological discoveries--as it cannot be denied by them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made... any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »
Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20...th century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked ...for no spell to cast over nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, th...ey do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human ...imaginative values which science has evolved.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 »