These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science.

The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.

The information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond physics and chemistry encoded DNA.

Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence.

Our reliance on the validity of a scientific conclusion depends ultimately on a judgment of coherence and as there can exist no strict criterion for coherence, our judgment of it must always remain a qualitative, nonformal, tacit, personal judgment.

Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence.

To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.

Of course language manifests a belief only if we use its words with the implied acceptance of their appositeness.

We know more than we can tell.

I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.

But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.

Personal participation is the universal principle of knowing.

The first thing to make clear is that scientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are in fact co-operating as members of a closely knit organization.