A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

1."Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference."
– Neil deGrasse Tyson

2. "Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination."
– Jonah Lehrer

3. "Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them."
– Rita Levi-Montalcini

1. I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

- Isaac Newton

2. Life cannot have had a random beginning ... The trouble is that there are about 2000 enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

- Fred Hoyle

"Since one never can absolutely know another, as this would mean knowledge of every particular thought and feeling; since we must rather form a conception of a personal unity out of the fragments of another person in which alone he is accessible to us, the unity so formed necessarily depends upon that portion of the Other which our standpoint toward him permits us to see."

1. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.
- Karl Marx

2. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- Albert Einstein

3. Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
- Max Planck

1. Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.

2. I think that the 'laws of nature' are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws.

3. Contemporary science is based on the philosophy of materialism, which claims that all reality is material or physical.

Haruki Murakami

"According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend, there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that, the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half."
― Kafka on the Shore

Scientific Wisdom

1. Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.
― Sigmund Freud

2. The sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do.
― Galileo Galilei

3. There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
― Albert Einstein

4. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.
― Richard Feynman

5. Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
― Sir Isaac Newton

6. A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
― Charles Darwin

7. Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.
― Richard Feynman

8. The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
― Stephen Hawking

Tom Stoppard

"Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us."
― From The Coast of Utopia

Michel de Montaigne

"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened."

The wisdom of the epic sci-fi fantasy book Dune

1. "The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." - Frank Herbert, 'Dune'.

2. "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."

3. "The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future."

4. "It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult."

  Andy Warhol

"Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what."
"My mother didn't love me." So what.
"My husband won't ball me. So what.
"I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what.
I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget."

― The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

1. "The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb."

2. "Our life is full of empty space."

3. "Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round."

4. "Beauty is boring because it is predictable."

5. "Translation is the art of failure.

6. "But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."

Ernest Hemingway

"There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span."
― For Whom the Bell Tolls

Akira Kurosawa

"People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water."

Mahatma Gandhi

"The... fair friend wants readers of Young India to know, if they do not already, the following seven social sins:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.

Naturally, the friend does not want the readers to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them."

Søren Kierkegaard

"Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world's foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world's foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don't hang yourself, you'll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy."

Thought can fly further than airplanes

To consider the influence and importance of Science and Technology today is a thought-provoking activity. Check out what famous think-tanks have shared with us.

The imagist - Ezra Pound

"And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass"
― Ezra Pound

To know or to believe - that's the question!

There is an old dispute about the relation between faith and knowledge. Naturally, scientific minds usually reject the existence of God and try to explain everything in the terms of logic and evidence, while religious people find the immanence of God even in the natural laws. However, the situation isn't so black and white.

Here are several quotes from famous scientists, which are illustrating the complex interconnection between these two most important branches of human knowledge.

The modern myths: Big Bang Theory

We live in the most amazing universe possible if not the best one. We don't even need to fantasize or devise incredible stories about reality to ignite our fancy. The situation, so far, looks like created by the imaginative pen of a talented science fiction writer. What we know is that a microscopic (I don't know if there is a word coined for such a small thing compared with the sizes of the known Universe) blue bubble - abundant with lifeforms, have somehow appeared after an immeasurable explosion followed by the unbelievable stream of circumstances, which have started from nowhere and have lasted around 13.77 billion years until now. Our planet is supposed to be 4.54 billion years old, so there was a lot of party going on here even before the existence of the only planet with life that we know for the moment. The crude material composing Earth is similar to the other known planets – rocks, metals, gases, and if you had enough chance - water. Using that, Nature made complex organisms like us, and we used the raw elements in such a way that we have access to toasters and computers in our houses. Well, let's imagine that nobody has ever heard of such events, does it sounds like a plausible story? However, the most unbelievable thing is not the plausibility of all the cosmological myths and theories but the fact that anything exists at all. That is the biggest mystery itself. To try to understand this is the most fascinating and exciting challenge in front of humankind. Here lie down the roots of philosophy, science, and knowledge in general. The greatest journey ever taken. It is so infinite and profound that as Albert Einstein once said:

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

So, let free your curiosity and you won't ever be bored of daily life again. It's all miracle. Or maybe you chose the first option? 

Enjoy your Friday!