Influenced by him, and probably even more so by my brother Theodore (a year older than me), I soon became interested in biology and developed a respect for the importance of science and the scientific method.
Once upon a time, science, philosophy, and theology were disciplines largely undifferentiated from one another, and proving the existence of God was a fairly commonplace intellectual exercise. But as the scientific method became increasingly refined, particularly through the nineteenth century, science and religion grew apart.
I don't think the scientific method and the science fictional method are really analogous. The thing about them is that neither is really practiced very much, at least not consciously. But the fact that they are methodical does relate them.
The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.
One can not impede scientific progress.
If we choose to ignore science and refuse to fund important scientific research, we voluntarily cede our place as a world leader in innovation.
The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.
Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.
Touch a scientist and you touch a child.
Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed, scolded and beamed at the world.
In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.
I've learned that I've just barely scratched the surface of knowledge of the profession, and I have deep envy of and appreciation for filmmakers who really, truly understand the physics, the design of filmmaking. They can do story and color and composition and geometry and math and science all at once.
Perhaps, if science is clever enough to see, it will realize that religion may not be too far off with its concrete imagery; and that relative to the supreme creator, we humans are much like the microorganisms we scrutinize under the microscope.
I was a Social Science major in college, with an emphasis in secondary education. I took as many courses on the American colonial era and westward expansion as I could. This turned out to be wonderful preparation for writing fantasy novels.
When I started secondary school, it was assumed that the girls would do domestic science and the boys would do science, and I wasn't too happy with that.
One of the first rules of science is if somebody delivers a secret weapon to you, you better use it.
It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.
Politicians or pundits can distort or cherry-pick climate science any way they want to try and gain temporary influence with the public. But any serious industrialist who's facing 'climate exposure' - as it's now called by money managers - cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion.
If you keep telling girls they're less good at science, that will probably be self-fulfilling. But there are quite a lot of women who are good at it.
Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.
