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In the hands of Science and indomitable energy, results the most gigantic and absorbing may be wrought out by skilful combinations of acknowledged data and the simplest means.
--
Sir George Biddell Airy (1855). Lecture on the pendulum-experiments at Harton Pit: delivered in the Central Hall, South Shields, October 24, 1854. Longman and Co. p. iv. 

 

George Biddell Airy

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Science Of Energetics. Although the mechanical hypothesis just mentioned may be useful and interesting as a means of anticipating laws, and connecting the science of thermodynamics with that of ordinary mechanics, still it is to be remembered that the science of thermodynamics is by no means dependent for its certainty on that or any other hypothesis, having been now reduced, to a system of principles, or general facts, expressing strictly the results of experiment as to the relations between heat and motive power. In this point of view the laws of thermodynamics may be regarded as particular cases of more general laws, applicable to all such states of matter as constitute Energy, or the capacity to perform work, which more general laws form the basis of the science of energetics, — a science comprehending, as special branches, the theories of motion, heat, light, electricity, and all other physical phenomena.

 

William John Macquorn Rankine

 

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

 

Michael Crichton

 

Cosmologists have plenty of ego — how can a person not be ego-driven when it's your job to deduce what brought the universe into existence? But without data, their explanations were just tall tales. In this modern era of cosmology, each new observation, each morsel of data wields a two-edged sword: it enables cosmology to thrive on the kind of foundation that so much of the rest of science enjoys, but it also constrains theories that people thought up when there wasn't enough data to say whether they were wrong or not. No science achieves maturity without it.

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

It is seen as the application of a systematic “scientific method” involving wearing a white coat and being dull. I feel that too many young people come into science with this view, and that too many fields degenerate into the kind of work which results: automatic crank-turning and data-collecting of the sort which Kuhn calls “normal science” and Rutherford “stamp-collecting”. In fact, the creation of new science is a creative act, literally, and people who are not creative are not very good at it.

 

Phillip Warren Anderson

 

The key word for me (my spleen isn't really big enough to explode with all the splenetic juices of fury that drive me when I consider this), but the real key word that triggers my rage is the word 'energy', when people start talking about it in terms of negative or positive types. For instance, "there's very negative energy in here." What are you talking about? What do you mean? I mean, let's think about it. What does energy mean? Well, we know what it means: energy from petrol when it's burned, it moves the car. "This room has positive energy" — well, where the f**k's it going then? It's not moving. It's covering up such woolly thinking, such pathetic nonsense. And astrology: most people will say of astrology, "Well, it's harmless fun." And I should say that for 80% of the cases it probably is harmless fun, but there's a strong way in which it isn't harmless. One, because it is so anti-science. You will hear things like, "Science doesn't know everything." Well, of course science doesn't know everything. But because science doesn't know everything, that doesn't mean science knows nothing. Science knows enough for us to be watched by a few million people now on television, for these lights to be working, for quite extraordinary miracles to have taken place in terms of the harnessing of the physical world and our dim approaches towards understanding it. And as Wittgenstein quite rightly said, "When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart."

 

Stephen Fry