Anthony Standen Quotes

• We are having wool pulled over our eyes if we let ourselves be convinced that scientists, taken as a group, are anything special in the way of brains. They are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their own trade, just like all other professional men. There are some geniuses among them, just as there are mental giants in any other field of endeavor.

  Anthony Standen

  Taken, Eye, Science

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• There are science teachers who actually claim that they teach "a healthy skepticism." They do not. They teach a profound gullibility, and their dupes, trained not to think for themselves, will swallow any egregious rot, provided it is dressed up with long words and an affectation of objectivity to make it sound scientific.

  Anthony Standen

  Teacher, Science, Thinking

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• There's many a true word spoken in jest; scientists are abominably solemn; therefore scientists miss many a true word.

  Anthony Standen

  Truth, Science, Missing

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• The theory that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance leads by remorseless logic to the conclusion that the path of a planet should be an ellipse .... It is this logical thinking that is the real meat of the physical sciences. The social scientist keeps the skin and throws away the meat.... His theorems no more follow from his postulates than the hunches of a horse player follow logically from the latest racing news. The result is guesswork clad in long flowing robes of gobbledygook.

  Anthony Standen

  Horse, Real, Distance

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• The dreadful cocksureness that is characteristic of scientists in bulk is not only quite foreign to the spirit of true science, it is not even justified by a superficial view.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Views, Spirit

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Education, like everything else, goes in fads, and has the normal human tendency to put up with something bad for just so long, and then rush to the other extreme.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Long, Tolerance

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Science ... must be absorbed in order to inculcate that wonderful humility before the facts of nature that comes from close attention to a textbook, and that unwillingness to learn from Authority that comes from making almost verbatim lecture notes and handing them back to the professor.

  Anthony Standen

  Learning, Humility, Science

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Evolution ... is really two theories, the vague theory and the precise theory. The vague theory has been abundantly proved.... The precise theory has never been proved at all. However, like relativity, it is accepted on faith.... On getting down to actual details, difficulties begin.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Two, Details

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• If you want to understand human beings, there are plenty of people to go to besides psychologists.... Most of these people are incapable of communicating their knowledge, but those who can communicate it are novelists. They are good novelists precisely because they are good psychologists.

  Anthony Standen

  Communication, Science, People

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• If this "critical openminded attitude" ... is wanted, the question at once arises, Is it science that should be studied in order to achieve it? Why not study law? A judge has to do everything that a scientist is exhorted to do in the way of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, and then judging impartially on the merits of the case as well as he can. ... Why not a course in Sherlock Holmes? The detectives, or at least the detective-story writers, join with the scientists in excoriating "dogmatic prejudice, lying, falsification of facts, and data, and willful fallacious reasoning."

  Anthony Standen

  Attitude, Lying, Science

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• Our advanced and fashionable thinkers are, naturally, out on a wide swing of the pendulum, away from the previous swing of the pendulum.... They seem to have an un-argue-out-able position, as is the manner of sophists, but this is no guarantee that they are right.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Thinking, Swings

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• As advertising always convinces the sponsor even more than the public, the scientists have become sold, and remain sold, on the idea that they have the key to the Absolute, and that nothing will do for Mr. Average Citizen but to stuff himself full of electrons.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Keys, Average

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Psychologists pay lip service to the scientific method, and use it whenever it is convenient; but when it isn't they make wild leaps of their uncontrolled fancy.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Use, Pay

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• Physical scientists probably deserve the reputation they enjoy for incorruptibility and unswerving devotion to pure truth. The reason for this is that it is not worth while to bribe them.

  Anthony Standen

  Truth, Reputation, Devotion

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• Chemists are, on the whole, like physicists, only 'less so'.They don't make quite the same wonderful mistakes, and much what they do is an art, related to cooking, instead of a true science. They have their moments, and their sources of legitimate pride. They don't split atoms, as the physicists do. They join them together, and a very praiseworthy activity that is.

  Anthony Standen

  Art, Mistake, Pride

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• Physicists, being in no way different from the rest of the population, have short memories for what is inconvenient.

  Anthony Standen

  Memories, Population, Different

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• It is true that physics gives a wonderful training in precise, logical thinking-about physics. It really does depend upon accurate reproducible experiments, and upon framing hypotheses with the greatest possible freedom from dogmatic prejudice. And if these were the really important things in life, physics would be an essential study for everybody.

  Anthony Standen

  Life, Freedom, Science

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• Such instances of the almost infinite unpredictability of man are known to social scientists, but they are no more affected by them than the asylum inmate is by being told that he is not Napoleon.

  Anthony Standen

  Conocimiento, Ciencia, Hombres

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Los científicos están convencidos de que, como tales, poseen una serie de cualidades humanas muy admirables, como la precisión, la observación, la capacidad de razonamiento, la curiosidad intelectual, la tolerancia e incluso la humildad.

  Anthony Standen

  Humility, Science, Numbers

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Psychologists, like other scientists, pride themselves on being extremely modern, and therefore much better than any group of people that ever were before.

  Anthony Standen

  Pride, Science, People

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• Insight is not the same as scientific deduction, but even at that it may be more reliable than statistics.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, May, Statistics

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• The velocity of light occupies an extraordinary place in modern physics. It is lèse-majesté to make any criticism of the velocity of light. It is a sacred cow within a sacred cow, and it is just about the Absolutest Absolute in the history of human thought.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Light, Criticism

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• The really important questions in human life are hardly touched upon by psychologists. Do liars come to believe their own lies? Is pleasure the same as happiness? Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved, or not to be able to love?

  Anthony Standen

  Lying, Liars, Believe

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• Mr. Hillaire Belloc has pointed out that science has changed greatly, and for the worse, since it became popular. Some hundred years ago, or more, only very unusual, highly original spirits were attracted to science at all; scientific work was therefore carried out by men of exceptional intelligence. Now, scientists are turned out by mass production in our universities.

  Anthony Standen

  Cambio, Ciencia, Hombres

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• [Scientists] define these [terms] in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Understanding, Phrases

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