The Central Opposition Between Magic And Science

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.

The Most Remarkable Discovery Ever Made By Scientists Is Science Itself. The Discovery Must Be Compared In Importance With The Invention Of Cave-painting And Of Writing.

Nature Is More Subtle, More Deeply Intertwined And More Strangely Integrated Than Any Of Our Pictures Of Her Than Any Of Our Errors. It Is Not Merely That Our Pictures Are Not Full Enough; Each Of Our Pictures In The End Turns Out To Be So Basically Mistaken That The Marvel Is That It Worked At All.

[john] Dalton Was A Man Of Regular Habits. For Fifty-seven Years He Walked Out Of Manchester Every Day; He Measured The Rainfall, The Temperature-a Singularly Monotonous Enterprise In This Climate. Of All That Mass Of Data, Nothing Whatever Came. But Of The One Searching, Almost Childlike Question About The Weights That Enter The Construction Of These Simple Molecules-out Of That Came Modern Atomic Theory. That Is The Essence Of Science: Ask An Impertinent Question, And You Are On The Way To The Pertinent Answer.

Man Is A Singular Creature. He Has A Set Of Gifts Which Make Him Unique Among The Animals, So That Unlike Them, He Is Not A Figure In The Landscape, He Is The Shaper Of The Landscape.