Skeptical Science and Technology Quotes
"..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value." - committee advising Ferdinand
and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones
fell from the sky" - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness
report of falling meteorites.
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy." - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." - Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." - Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.
"Such startling announcements as these should be depreciated as being
unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress" - Sir
William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a successful light bulb.
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy." -
Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody
will use it, ever." - Thomas Edison, 1889
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - physicist Albert. A.
Michelson, 1894
"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere."
- Thomas Edison, 1895
"The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known
forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the
air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be." - astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." - Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1911
"Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men
are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war"
- Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks
in war.
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools." - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" - David
Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s.
"All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't know
what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose will it
serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration
of television.
"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists."
-A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932
"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who
expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine" - Ernst Rutherford, 1933
"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents
difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the
notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent
appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility
of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished." Richard
van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets
in Space", Nature, March 14, 1936
"Space travel is utter bilge!" -Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley, astronomer
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won't last out the year." - The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957
"Space travel is bunk" -Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of
Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik
"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the United States." -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961
"But what... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977
July 7th, 2007 - 08:08
“1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Sir Arthur C. Clarke
~I’m surprised no one else has made this comment.
July 7th, 2007 - 12:23
Of course, these are all quotes skeptical about things that have come to pass. What would be interesting is to find skeptical quotes for things that haven’t, and mix them up. Say, claims regarding perpetual motion, or Creationism.
…or has the history of science suffered from a lack of legitimate and correct skepticism?
July 7th, 2007 - 13:34
Superb!! Appalling and hilarious at the same time. THANKS, yet again, to you, Michael, as well as to Eugen Leitl…
July 7th, 2007 - 14:05
And my favorite from the positive side.
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.”
-Michael Faraday
Said to quell the disbelief by many educated people of his simple discovery that moving a magnet in a coil of wire produced an electric current. He was viewed by many as a charlatan. The mind boggles when contaminating the degree to which our modern world hinges on that discovery.
July 7th, 2007 - 18:27
I don’t think this one belongs here. It wasn’t an example of skepticism but profiteering; Edison was the “inventor” of direct current and had a vested interest in keeping AC out of the marketplace, discrediting it.
July 7th, 2007 - 19:31
Nato, of course. In the right circles, I think the level of skepticism is appropriate. The point here is that respected thinkers are still willing to dismiss all sorts of things without much of a real basis to do so.
Ian, Edison disbelieved in AC long before he regarded it as a real threat.
July 8th, 2007 - 04:47
Excellent compilation, thanks!
One conspicuously absent quote (though the attribution for this one is not certain, according to Wikipedia):
“I think there is a world market for about five computers” — Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines), 1943
July 8th, 2007 - 07:22
But there is another side of mistakes. There were so plenty brave predictions concerning space travel, time travel, thermonuclear energy, psychic powers, infrastructure engineering projects, ideal society, that nobody wants to hear about this now, when there is a second, and a more real chance to realise them.
July 9th, 2007 - 02:21
Quoted here: http://www.schismatrix.eu/dagonweb/
July 9th, 2007 - 08:24
By that time he was already invested in DC. But, then, Edison wasn’t really that much of an inventor. He was a good business man, though. The corporatized think-tank is about the only thing he really invented. (Taking minor liberties with that one.)
July 9th, 2007 - 08:56
Just curious … how exactly does Creationism “come to pass” or not “come to pass”? Do you mean that it is proved accurate?
July 10th, 2007 - 21:27
A bias of design
Can always be maligned.
But then again,
By dint of pen,
So can these five lines.
;O)
July 14th, 2007 - 19:57
Nice collection there, Michael. Let me add this one:
“On the subject of stars, … we shall not at all be able to determine their chemical composition or even their density… I regard any notion concerning the true mean temperature of the various stars as forever denied to us.”
— Auguste Comte, 1835
More on this page:
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/oconnell/astr121/comte.html
July 18th, 2007 - 09:51
Nice! Here are a couple that I approve of:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.â€
- William Pollard
“The world leaders in innovation and creativity will also be world leaders in everything else.’
- Harold R. McAlindon
“Prediction is extremely difficult, especially about the future.”
- Niels Bohr
“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.â€
- Scott Adams
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.â€
- Aldous Leonard Huxley
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.â€
- Bertrand Russell
“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.â€
- Martin Fischer
“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.â€
- Arthur Schopenhauer
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.â€
- A. A. Milne
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.â€
- Alan Kay
“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.â€
- Thomas A Edison
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”
- Woody Allen
“Redundancy is good. Redundancy is good. Redundancy is good.â€
- The Department of Overly Superfluous Redundancy Organization Association Group
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka!”, but “That’s funny…”
- Isaac Asimov
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.â€
- Winston Churchill
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
- Lord Keynes
“Criticism is the only known antidote to error.†(CITOKATE)
- David Brin
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.â€
- Michael Faraday
August 22nd, 2007 - 12:36
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Please please please include some authenticity, this blog place is really good, make it better.
December 29th, 2007 - 11:26
Good quotes!
incredible that some of them comes from people who we consider very intelligent.
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