The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.
Martin ReesRead
The most important advances, the qualitative leaps, are the least predictable. Not even the best scientists predicted the impact of nuclear physics, and everyday consumer items such as the iPhone would have seemed magic back in the 1950s.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Unexpected advancements often lead to significant changes in society and technology.
This quote emphasizes that many of the most transformative breakthroughs in science and technology are unpredictable, often surprising even those who are most knowledgeable in the field. Martin Rees highlights two examples: the unforeseen consequences of nuclear physics and the revolutionary impact of devices like the iPhone, which would have seemed like fantasy to people in the 1950s, illustrating how innovation can radically alter our daily lives in ways we cannot foresee.
Themes
AdvancementsInnovationScienceTechnologyUnpredictabilityChange
In practice
Example use cases
During a technology conference to inspire future innovations.
More from Martin Rees
All quotes →Let me say that I don't see any conflict between science and religion. I go to church as many other scientists do. I share with most religious people a sense of mystery and wonder at the universe and I want to participate in religious ritual and practices because they're something that all humans can share.
Martin ReesRead
It's becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics.
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In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.
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Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
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It is astonishing that human brains, which evolved to cope with the everyday world, have been able to grasp the counterintuitive mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum.
Martin ReesRead
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