Destroying Quotes (3 quotes)
Question: If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?
Goodall: Well, in some ways we're not successful at all. We're destroying our home. That's not a bit successful.
Goodall: Well, in some ways we're not successful at all. We're destroying our home. That's not a bit successful.
In Virginia Morell, 'The Discover Interview: Jane Goodall', Discover (Mar 2007), 28, No. 3, 52.
Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So … these despisers of their fellows … make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.
From An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1927, 1957), as translated by Henry Copley Greene (1957), 38. From the original French by Claude Bernard: “Ceux qui croient trop à leurs théories ne croient pas assez à celles des autres. Alors … ces contempteurs d'autrui … font des expériences que pour détruire une théorie, au lieu de les faire pour chercher la vérité.” (1865), 68. A Google translation gives: “Those who believe too much in their theories do not believe enough in those of others. So … these despisers of others … do experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of doing them to seek the truth.”
The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination—not vice versa.
Quoted in Marcello Pera, La Rani Ambigua (1986) as translated by Jonathan Mandelbaum, in The Ambiguous Frog: The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity (1992). (Cited as VO, 7:292, Collezione dell'opere del cavaliere conte Alessandro Volta, Vol. 7, 292). [Note: ratiocination means logical thinking; it is the opposite of taking a wild guess. —Webmaster]
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) -- 
