TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 25 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Scrutiny

Scrutiny Quotes (15 quotes)

[In research on bacteria metabolism] we have indeed much the same position as an observer trying to gain an idea of the life of a household by careful scrutiny of the persons and material arriving or leaving the house; we keep accurate records of the foods and commodities left at the door and patiently examine the contents of the dust-bin and endeavour to deduce from such data the events occurring within the closed doors.
Bacterial Metabolism (1930), Preface. In 'Obituary Notice: Marjory Stephenson, 1885–1948', Biochemistry Journal (1950), 46:4, 380.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Bacteria (50)  |  Closed (38)  |  Data (162)  |  Door (94)  |  Dust (68)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Event (222)  |  Examine (84)  |  Food (213)  |  Gain (146)  |  House (143)  |  Idea (881)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Life (1870)  |  Material (366)  |  Metabolism (15)  |  Person (366)  |  Record (161)  |  Research (753)  |  Trying (144)

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997), 304.
Science quotes on:  |  Attitude (84)  |  Balance (82)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Counterintuitive (4)  |  Deep (241)  |  Essential (210)  |  Heart (243)  |  Idea (881)  |  Matter (821)  |  Most (1728)  |  New (1273)  |  Nonsense (48)  |  Old (499)  |  Openness (8)  |  Ruthless (12)  |  Scepticism (17)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Two (936)  |  Winnow (4)

In science it is no crime to be wrong, unless you are (inappropriately) laying claim to truth. What matters is that science as a whole is a self-correcting mechanism in which both new and old notions are constantly under scrutiny. In other words, the edifice of scientific knowledge consists simply of a body of observations and ideas that have (so far) proven resistant to attack, and that are thus accepted as working hypotheses about nature.
In The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human (2003), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Attack (86)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Claim (154)  |  Consist (223)  |  Crime (39)  |  Edifice (26)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Notion (120)  |  Observation (593)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Resistant (4)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Correcting (5)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Whole (756)  |  Word (650)  |  Wrong (246)

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
In 'The Burden of Skepticism', Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1987), 12, No. 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Balance (82)  |  Call (781)  |  Conflicting (13)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Great (1610)  |  Gullibility (3)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Most (1728)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Open (277)  |  Openness (8)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Sense (785)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Useful (260)  |  Worthless (22)

Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual locks, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny because they seem so obviously, even ineluctably, just. We know ourselves best and tend to view other creatures as mirrors of our own constitution and social arrangements. (Aristotle, and nearly two millennia of successors, designated the large bee that leads the swarm as a king.)
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Bee (44)  |  Best (467)  |  Conceptual (11)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Creature (242)  |  Designation (13)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Escape (85)  |  Factual (8)  |  Impediment (12)  |  Ineluctably (2)  |  King (39)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lack (127)  |  Large (398)  |  Lead (391)  |  Lock (14)  |  Millennia (4)  |  Mirror (43)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Obviously (11)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seem (150)  |  Social (261)  |  Successor (16)  |  Swarm (15)  |  Tend (124)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  View (496)

Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled–while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Arrogant (4)  |  Enough (341)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fool (121)  |  Good (906)  |  Know (1538)  |  Magic (92)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Never (1089)  |  Objective (96)  |  Observe (179)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Particular (80)  |  People (1031)  |  Perfectly (10)  |  Performer (2)  |  Phony (3)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Stage (152)  |  Success (327)  |  Think (1122)  |  Trick (36)  |  Way (1214)

Science is often regarded as the most objective and truth-directed of human enterprises, and since direct observation is supposed to be the favored route to factuality, many people equate respectable science with visual scrutiny–just the facts ma’am, and palpably before my eyes. But science is a battery of observational and inferential methods, all directed to the testing of propositions that can, in principle, be definitely proven false ... At all scales, from smallest to largest, quickest to slowest, many well-documented conclusions of science lie beyond the strictly limited domain of direct observation. No one has ever seen an electron or a black hole, the events of a picosecond or a geological eon.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Battery (12)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Black Hole (17)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Definitely (5)  |  Direct (228)  |  Domain (72)  |  Electron (96)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Eon (12)  |  Equate (3)  |  Event (222)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Factuality (2)  |  False (105)  |  Favor (69)  |  Favored (5)  |  Geological (11)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inferential (2)  |  Large (398)  |  Largest (39)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Objective (96)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observational (15)  |  Often (109)  |  Palpably (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Prove (261)  |  Quick (13)  |  Regard (312)  |  Respectable (8)  |  Route (16)  |  Scale (122)  |  See (1094)  |  Slow (108)  |  Small (489)  |  Strictly (13)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Test (221)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Visual (16)

Scientists [still] refuse to consider man as an object of scientific scrutiny except through his body. The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe—even a positivist one—remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 36. Originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Body (557)  |  Coherent (14)  |  Consider (428)  |  Cover (40)  |  Exterior (7)  |  Inclusion (5)  |  Interior (35)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Man (2252)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Object (438)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Picture (148)  |  Positivist (5)  |  Realize (157)  |  Refuse (45)  |  Remain (355)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Still (614)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time Has Come (8)  |  True (239)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unsatisfying (3)  |  Wholeness (9)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Deep (241)  |  Insight (107)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Nonsense (48)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Winnow (4)

Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them is an essential tool in dealing with the world and especially in dealing with the future. And it is precisely the mix of these two modes of thought [skeptical scrutiny and openness to new ideas] that is central to the success of science.
In 'The Burden of Skepticism', Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1987), 12, No. 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Central (81)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Essential (210)  |  Future (467)  |  Idea (881)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Mix (24)  |  New (1273)  |  Openness (8)  |  Other (2233)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Skepticism (31)  |  Success (327)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tool (129)  |  Two (936)  |  World (1850)

The methods of science aren’t foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered. The methods of science, like everything else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny, as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. Methodology in turn falls under the gaze of epistemology, the investigation of investigation itself—nothing is off limits to scientific questioning. The irony is that these fruits of scientific reflection, showing us the ineliminable smudges of imperfection, are sometimes used by those who are suspicious of science as their grounds for denying it a privileged status in the truth-seeking department—as if the institutions and practices they see competing with it were no worse off in these regards. But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday’s heresies have become today’s new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Arent (6)  |  Badly (32)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Compete (6)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Deny (71)  |  Department (93)  |  Discover (571)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Epistemology (8)  |  Everything (489)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Example (98)  |  Exhibit (21)  |  Face (214)  |  Fall (243)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Foolproof (5)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Ground (222)  |  Heresy (9)  |  History (716)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Important (229)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Indefinitely (10)  |  Institution (73)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Irony (9)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Limit (294)  |  Method (531)  |  Methodology (14)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Practice (212)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Question (649)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Regard (312)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Scientific (955)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Simply (53)  |  Smudge (2)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  Status (35)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suspicious (3)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Today (321)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Yesterday (37)

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best—and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (1997), 57.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Erroneous (31)  |  Error (339)  |  Know (1538)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Question (649)  |  Scrutinize (7)  |  Think (1122)

The student should read his author with the most sustained attention, in order to discover the meaning of every sentence. If the book is well written, it will endure and repay his close attention: the text ought to be fairly intelligible, even without illustrative examples. Often, far too often, a reader hurries over the text without any sincere and vigorous effort to understand it; and rushes to some example to clear up what ought not to have been obscure, if it had been adequately considered. The habit of scrupulously investigating the text seems to me important on several grounds. The close scrutiny of language is a very valuable exercise both for studious and practical life. In the higher departments of mathematics the habit is indispensable: in the long investigations which occur there it would be impossible to interpose illustrative examples at every stage, the student must therefore encounter and master, sentence by sentence, an extensive and complicated argument.
In 'Private Study of Mathematics', Conflict of Studies and other Essays (1873), 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequately (4)  |  Argument (145)  |  Attention (196)  |  Author (175)  |  Book (413)  |  Both (496)  |  Clear (111)  |  Close (77)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Consider (428)  |  Department (93)  |  Discover (571)  |  Effort (243)  |  Encounter (23)  |  Endure (21)  |  Example (98)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Fairly (4)  |  Far (158)  |  Ground (222)  |  Habit (174)  |  High (370)  |  Hurry (16)  |  Important (229)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Language (308)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Occur (151)  |  Often (109)  |  Order (638)  |  Practical (225)  |  Read (308)  |  Reader (42)  |  Repay (3)  |  Rush (18)  |  Scrupulous (7)  |  Seem (150)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Several (33)  |  Sincere (4)  |  Stage (152)  |  Student (317)  |  Studious (5)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Text (16)  |  Understand (648)  |  Value (393)  |  Vigorous (21)  |  Will (2350)  |  Write (250)

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
Quoted in Donald R. Prothero and Carl Dennis Buell, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (2007), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Aperture (5)  |  Correction (42)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Process (439)  |  Right (473)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Correcting (5)  |  Survive (87)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wrong (246)

You should look at the entire Bible as a whole rather then narrowly, if you can, under close scrutiny and with juxtaposition of passages
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bible (105)  |  Close (77)  |  Entire (50)  |  Juxtaposition (3)  |  Look (584)  |  Narrowly (4)  |  Passage (52)  |  Whole (756)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing
on Blue Sky.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.