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Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder
(1 Jul 1906 - 31 Jan 1982)
Scottish science writer who was a pioneer in scientific journalism, with articles and books that presented complex scientific information with intelligible yet accurate simplicity.
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Science Quotes by Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder (3 quotes)
Science at best is not wisdom, it is knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge tempered with judgment.
— Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder
From essay, 'Mortgaging the Old Homestead', in Frank H.T. Rhodes and Richard O. Stone (eds.), Language of the Earth (2013), 361.
Since [World War I] we have seen the atomic age, the computer age, the space age, and the bio-engineering age, each as epochal as the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. And all these have occurred in one generation. Man has stood on the moon and looked back on the earth, that small planet now reduced to a neighbourhood. But our material achievements have exceeded the managerial capacities of our human minds and institutions.
— Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder
As quoted in Colin Bingham (ed.), Wit and Wisdom: A Public Affairs Miscellany (1982), 227.
That is how the atom is split. But what does it mean? To us who think in terms of practical use it means—Nothing!
Deity Htreld (June 27, |»J2)
— Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder
In Daily Herald (27 Jun 1932).
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) -- 
