Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.
Freeman Dyson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Freeman Dyson
Age: 96 †
Born: 1923
Born: December 15
Died: 2020
Died: February 28
Mathematician
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Professor
Theoretical Physicist
Crowthorne
Berkshire
Freeman John Dyson
Freeman J. Dyson
Listen
Observations
Theory
Theories
Public
Gaps
Knowledge
Impressed
Change
Observation
Debate
Enormous
Superficiality
Climate
Debates
More quotes by Freeman Dyson
All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control. Describing John von Neumann's aspiration for the application of computers sufficiently large to solve the problems of meteorology, despite the sensitivity of the weather to small perturbations.
Freeman Dyson
For me, science is just a bunch of tools - it's like playing the violin. I just enjoy calculating, and it's an instrument I know how to play. It's almost an athletic performance, in a way. I was just watching the Olympics, and that's how I feel when proving a theorem.
Freeman Dyson
In religion, you're supposed to be somehow in touch with something deep and full of mysteries.
Freeman Dyson
New directions in science are launched by new tools much more often than by new concepts. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.
Freeman Dyson
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
Freeman Dyson
Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.
Freeman Dyson
If we want to go to space with humans, that's for fun not for science. Human adventures in space are just sporting events.
Freeman Dyson
I grew up in England and we spent most of the time on Latin and Greek and very little on science, and I think that was good because it meant we didn't get turned off. It was... Science was something we did for fun and not because we had to.
Freeman Dyson
Of course, long-distance running has to do with the fact that we're hunters.
Freeman Dyson
If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.
Freeman Dyson
The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.
Freeman Dyson
Ethical progress is the only cure for the damage done by scientific progress.
Freeman Dyson
The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.
Freeman Dyson
The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines.
Freeman Dyson
That's, of course, the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.
Freeman Dyson
I mean science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly.
Freeman Dyson
We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.
Freeman Dyson
If you go to London now, not everything is beautiful, but it's amazingly better than it was. And the Thames is certainly a lot better: There are fish in the Thames.
Freeman Dyson
Nothing is boring if you look at carefully.
Freeman Dyson
We won't really understand the brain until we can make models of it which are analog rather than digital, which nobody seems to be trying very much.
Freeman Dyson
