Massimo Pigliucci QUOTES

1 " It seems to me trivially true that particle physics does in fact deal with the simplest objects in the entire universe: atoms and their constituents. At the opposite extreme, biology takes on the most complex things known to humanity: organisms made of billions of cells, and ecosystems whose properties are affected by tens of thousands of variables. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

3 " British astronomer royal Richard Woolley, who in 1956 said, "All this talk about space travel is utter bilge, really."10 Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit the earth just five years later. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

5 " the nature of science is not that of a steady, linear progression toward the Truth, but rather a tortuous road, often characterized by dead ends and U-turns, and yet ultimately inching toward a better, if tentative, understanding of the natural world. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

7 " one does not need experiments to do science. While this claim may sound strange and counterintuitive at first, a moment's reflection will show that it is obviously true: astronomers do not conduct experiments, and yet we think of astronomy as solidly situated within the sciences, not the humanities or the pseudosciences. Why? Because astronomers can carry out the two fundamental activities that, jointly considered, truly characterize a science: systematic observations and the construction and testing of hypotheses. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

9 " For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert; but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact. —Thomas Sowell, American economist "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

11 " Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

13 " if I think (and I do) that Deepak Chopra talks nonsense when he tells people about quantum mechanical elixirs of youth, I would first have to be an expert in quantum mysticism. But the problem is that quantum mysticism is (I think) quackery, and that therefore there is no such thing as an “expert” on quantum mysticism. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

15 " Or maybe, another explanation goes, we are in fact surrounded by ETs and simply don't know it, perhaps because they decided to make the solar system a natural reserve, a place where other races can go and see what it is like to be in the infancy of civilization (appropriately, this has been nicknamed the "zoo hypothesis"). "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

17 " …the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than Popper (or, for that matter, most scientists) would have us believe. There is, in other words, no litmus test. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

19 " Scientific theories are tested every time someone makes an observation or conducts an experiment, so it is misleading to think of science as an edifice, built on foundations. Rather, scientific knowledge is more like a web. The difference couldn’t be more crucial. A tall edifice can collapse – if the foundations upon which it was built turn out to be shaky. But a web can be torn in several parts without causing the collapse of the whole. The damaged threads can be patiently replaced and re-connected with the rest – and the whole web can become stronger, and more intricate. "

― Massimo Pigliucci , Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk