Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.
Francois RabelaisRead
Science without conscience is the death of the soul.
Interpretation
The pursuit of scientific knowledge must be governed by moral considerations to prevent harm to humanity.
Francois Rabelais suggests that scientific advances without ethical oversight can lead to detrimental consequences for individuals and society. This quote emphasizes the importance of blending intellectual pursuit with a sense of responsibility and compassion, highlighting that the potential for innovation can become destructive when divorced from humanity's moral compass.
In practice
During a seminar on bioethics, this quote can serve to highlight the importance of moral responsibility in scientific research.
Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.
If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.
We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.
Bring down the curtain, the farce is over
There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation.
If you want to avoid seeing an idiot, break the mirror.
The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.
The artificial products do not have any molecular dissymmetry; and I could not indicate the existence of a more profound separation between the products born under the influence of life and all the others.
If you get asteroids about a kilometer in size, those are large enough and carry enough energy into our system to disrupt transportation, communication, the food chains, and that can be a really bad day on Earth.
Perhaps... some day the precision of the data will be brought so far that the mathematician will be able to calculate at his desk the outcome of any chemical combination, in the same way, so to speak, as he calculates the motions of celestial bodies.
This field is not necessarily glamorous, nor does it often produce immediate results, but it seeks to increase our basic understanding of living processes.
The scientific community should work as hard as possible to address major issues that affect our everyday lives such as climate change, infectious diseases and counterterrorism; in particular, 'clean energy' research deserves far higher priority. And science and technology are the prime routes to tackling these issues.
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