Nature Has Not Fitted Man To Any

The Central Opposition Between Magic And Science Is The Opposition Between Power And Knowledge.

Progress Is The Exploration Of Our Own Error. Evolution Is A Consolidation Of What Have Always Begun As Errors. And Errors Are Of Two Kinds: Errors That Turn Out To Be True And Errors That Turn Out To Be False (which Are Most Of Them). But They Both Have The Same Character Of Being An Imaginative Speculation. I Say All This Because I Want Very Much To Talk About The Human Side Of Discovery And Progress, And It Seems To Me Terribly Important To Say This In An Age In Which Most Non-scientists Are Feeling A Kind Of Loss Of Nerve.

We Gain Our Ends Only With The Laws Of Nature; We Control Her Only By Understanding Her Laws.

A Popular Cliche In Philosophy Says That Science Is Pure Analysis Or Reductionism, Like Taking The Rainbow To Pieces; And Art Is Pure Synthesis, Putting The Rainbow Together. This Is Not So. All Imagination Begins By Analyzing Nature.

The Progress Of Science Is The Discovery At Each Step Of A New Order Which Gives Unity To What Had Seemed Unlike.