Better understanding of the natural world not only enhances all of us as human beings, but can also be harnessed for the better good, leading to improved health and quality of life.
Paul NurseRead
Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.
Interpretation
Scientific understanding can evoke feelings of beauty and pleasure similar to poetry.
In this quote, Paul Nurse emphasizes the aesthetic experience of engaging with scientific knowledge, suggesting that the beauty found in unraveling the mysteries of the universe can be as pleasurable and profound as enjoying a beautifully written poem. This perspective invites us to appreciate science not just as a method of gaining knowledge, but as an art form that enriches our emotional and intellectual lives.
In practice
In a TED Talk about the intersection of art and science.
Better understanding of the natural world not only enhances all of us as human beings, but can also be harnessed for the better good, leading to improved health and quality of life.
It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.
Nobody ever told us all matter radiated. We just assumed it did.
That's not right. That's not even wrong.
Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way - seeing for them also.
Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect.
From all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics. And that not on the ground that there is any 'new force' or what not, directing the behaviour of the single atoms within a living organism, but because the construction is different from anything we have yet tested in the physical laboratory.
The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man
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