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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

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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
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More quotes by Freeman Dyson

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Computer models of the climate....[are] a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs.
Freeman Dyson
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Now, as Mandelbrot points out, ... Nature has played a joke on the mathematicians. The 19th-century mathematicians may not have been lacking in imagination, but Nature was not. The same pathological structures that the mathematicians invented to break loose from 19th-century naturalism turn out to be inherent in familiar objects all around us.
Freeman Dyson
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I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.
Freeman Dyson
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Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.
Freeman Dyson
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A model is done when nothing else can be taken out.
Freeman Dyson
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I think science and religion should be separate.
Freeman Dyson
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We simply don't know yet what's going to happen to the carbon in the atmosphere.
Freeman Dyson
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There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.
Freeman Dyson
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We cannot hope to either understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.
Freeman Dyson
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To me, mathematics is like playing the violin. Some people can do it - others can't. If you don't have it, then there's no point in pretending.
Freeman Dyson
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It is better to be wrong than to be vague.
Freeman Dyson
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Mostly I'm just writing books for the public, and so I try to describe for the public what the choices are, what they might have to expect in the future and so by warning people ahead of time maybe you have an effect.
Freeman Dyson
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Of course, long-distance running has to do with the fact that we're hunters.
Freeman Dyson
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The fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn't scare me at all. There's no reason why one should be scared.
Freeman Dyson
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To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough.
Freeman Dyson
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Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them.
Freeman Dyson
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The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.
Freeman Dyson
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I think that what the machines can do, of course, is wonderful, but it's not the same as what the brain can do.
Freeman Dyson
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Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published.
Freeman Dyson
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Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.
Freeman Dyson