This book's like black holes. It really engulfes you whole.
But you can__ be a scientist if you__e uncomfortable with ignorance, because scientists live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. This is very different from the way journalists portray us. So many articles begin, __cientists now have to go back to the drawing board._ It__ as though we__e sitting in our offices, feet up on our desks__asters of the universe__nd suddenly say, __ops, somebody discovered something!_ No. We__e always at the drawing board. If you__e not at the drawing board, you__e not making discoveries. You__e not a scientist; you__e something else. The public, on the other hand, seems to demand conclusive explanations as they leap without hesitation from statements of abject ignorance to statements of absolute certainty.
Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
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But you can__ be a scientist if you__e uncomfortable with ignorance, because scientists live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. This is very different from the way journalists portray us. So many articles begin, __cientists now have to go back to the drawing board._ It__ as though we__e sitting in our offices, feet up on our desks__asters of the universe__nd suddenly say, __ops, somebody discovered something!_ No. We__e always at the drawing board. If you__e not at the drawing board, you__e not making discoveries. You__e not a scientist; you__e something else. The public, on the other hand, seems to demand conclusive explanations as they leap without hesitation from statements of abject ignorance to statements of absolute certainty.
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The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, a priori, abnormal.
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[Some scientific] experiments_tell us that what we consider the objective world depends in some measure on our own conscious processes. There is no fixed eternal reality_ true understanding is not to be achieved with the rational mind.
This 'web of discourses' as Robyn called it...is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world. (Clothes too, are part of the extended phenotype of Homo Sapiens almost every niche inhabited by that species.An illustrated encyclopedia of zoology should no more picture Homo Sapiens naked than it should picture Ursus arctus-the black bear- wearing a clown suit and riding a bicycle.