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Sir Eric Ashby
(24 Aug 1904 - 22 Oct 1992)
English botanist and administrator who at age 46 moved from research as a plant scientistto university administration and subsequently served on government commissions related to education, research, and pollution, and became a noted authority on international education.
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Science Quotes by Sir Eric Ashby (2 quotes)
The engineer is the key figure in the material progress of the world. It is his engineering that makes a reality of the potential value of science by translating scientific knowledge into tools, resources, energy and labor to bring them to the service of man ... To make contribution of this kind the engineer requires the imagination to visualize the needs of society and to appreciate what is possible as well as the technological and broad social age understanding to bring his vision to reality.
— Sir Eric Ashby
In Philip Sporn, Foundations of Engineering: Cornell College of Engineering Lectures, Spring 1963 (1964), 22.
The notion that the “balance of nature” is delicately poised and easily upset is nonsense. Nature is extraordinarily tough and resilient, interlaced with checks and balances, with an astonishing capacity for recovering from disturbances in equilibrium. The formula for survival is not power; it is symbiosis.
— Sir Eric Ashby
In Encounter (Mar 1976), 16. As quoted and cited in Alan Lindsay Mackay , A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2nd Ed., 1991), 13.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
