Quote

Science is prediction, not explanation.

Fred Hoyle

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Fred Hoyle
Age: 86 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 24
Died: 2001
Died: August 20
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Mathematician
Non-Fiction Writer
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Bingley
West Yorkshire
Prediction
Predictions
Explanation
Science

More quotes by Fred Hoyle

Image
Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.
Fred Hoyle
Image
It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Outstanding examples of genius - a Mozart, a Shakespeare, or a Carl Friedrich Gauss - are markers on the path along which our species appears destined to tread.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.
Fred Hoyle
Image
The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way.
Fred Hoyle
Image
The man who voyages strange seas must of necessity be a little unsure of himself. It is the man with the flashy air of knowing everything, who is always with it, that we should beware of.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.
Fred Hoyle
Image
A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Perhaps the most majestic feature of our whole existence is that while our intelligences are powerful enough to penetrate deeply into the evolution of this quite incredible Universe, we still have not the smallest clue to our own fate.
Fred Hoyle
Image
I do not believe that anything really worthwhile will come out of the exploration of the slag heap that constitutes the surface of the moon...Nobody should imagine that the enormous financial budget of NASA implies that astronomy is now well supported.
Fred Hoyle
Image
When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I'm old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow.
Fred Hoyle
Image
The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.
Fred Hoyle
Image
A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published by a journal today, you will run against a paradigm and the editors will turn it down
Fred Hoyle
Image
Life cannot have had a random beginning. ... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.
Fred Hoyle
Image
He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension.
Fred Hoyle