Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.
Interpretation
Theory provides context to facts, making them meaningful and useful in science.
This quote expresses the importance of theory in the scientific process. It suggests that while facts are critical, without a theoretical framework to interpret and understand them, those facts lack significance and direction, rendering scientific knowledge ineffectual.
In practice
During a lecture on scientific methodology, this quote can emphasize the role of theory.
By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions.
I suggest that going to Mars means permanence on the planet - a mission by which we are building up a confidence level to become a two-planet species.
Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.
We carry stores of DNA in our nuclei that may have come in, at one time or another, from the fusion of ancestral cells and the linking of ancestral organisms in symbiosis. Our genomes are catalogues of instructions from all kinds of sources in nature, filed for all kinds of contingencies.
I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.
Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations.Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag.
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