Quote: The scientific method

The following is a rather neat expiation of the scientific method. While it leaves a great deal out (institutions, the social nature of science, etc.), it's damn good nonetheless. The writer is John D. Barrow and the quote is taken from his essay "Simple Reality: From Simplicity to Complexity - And Back Again", published in Seeing Further: The Story of Science & The Royal Society:

Laws reflect the existence of patterns in Nature.We might even define science as the search for those patterns. We observe and document the world in all possible ways; but while this data-gathering is necessary for science, it is not sufficient. We are not content simply to acquire a record of everything that is, or has ever happened, like cosmic stamp collectors. Instead, we look for patterns in the facts, and some of those patterns we have come to call the laws of Nature, while others have achieved only the status of by-laws. Having found, or guessed (for there are no rules at all about how you might find them) possible patters, we use them to predict what should happen if the pattern is also followed at all times and in places where we have yet to look. Then we check if we are right (there are strict rules about how you do this!). In this way, we can update our candidate patterns and improve the likelihood that it explains what we see. Sometimes a likelihood gets so low that we say the proposal is 'falsified', or so high that it is 'confirmed' or 'verified', although strictly speaking this is always provisional, none is ever possible with complete certainty. This is called the 'scientific method'. 

Quote: Cormac McCarthy

As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy's. The following is one (somewhat uncharacteristic) example of the kind of writing that makes him so awesome. From his 1985 masterpiece Blood Meridian:

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But the man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Quotes: Clifford on belief

I posted some quotes from WK Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief" a while back. Here are some more. (I'm not saying I endorse all of these - he's far too strong in places. Though, I like the sentiment and the prose is fun). 

"No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe."

"If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery."

"The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. So closely are our duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."

"'But,' says one, 'I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.' Then he should have no time to believe."

"It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe."

Quote: Clifford on the Ethics of Belief

I'm in the process of editing my piece on deferring to experts for publication somewhere (maybe Skeptical Inquirer), so I've been doing a bit more reading in the area. I just remembered William Clifford's famous 1877 essay, "The Ethics of Belief" (a nice pdf version is here). It's well worth a read, if only for its purple prose and hardnosed conclusion: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Another nice quote: 

Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action.

It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.

Quotes: Galileo and Darwin

While writing my piece on intellectual deference, I came across a lot of awesome related quotes. Two of my favorites didn't make it into the final version of that post. These are they:

"The less people know and understand about [matters requiring thought], the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while… to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new." - Galileo

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin

Quote: Carl Sagan

I just finished reading Carl Sagan's skeptical classic, The Demon-Haunted World and I found a lot of quotable material. Here's just one, in the context of the European witch hunts:

If we’re absolutely sure that our beliefs are right, and those of others wrong; that we are motivated by good, and others by evil; that the king of the universe speaks to us, and not to adherents of very different faiths, that it is wicked to challenge conventional doctrines or to ask searching questions; that our main job is to believe and obey – then the witch mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last man.

Quote: The ideal critical thinker

The American Philosophical Association commissioned a study in 1988 to articulate an expert consensus definition of the ideal critical thinker. The resulting report (pdf of executive summary) provided the following definition that would be hard to improve upon:

The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit.

Quote(s): William James and Winston Churchill on violence

Two blood-curdling (and, in my rather Hobbesian opinion, accurate) quotes about violence from Winston Churchill and William James:

"The story of the human race is war. Except for brief periods and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending."
– Winston Churchill
"Shall we all commit suicide?" (1924)

"We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us ready at any moment to burst into flames, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed."
– William James
Principles of Psychology (1890)

Quote: Lionel Tiger

I dare say that it remains overwhelmingly the case in the social sciences that almost everywhere it is possible to receive a doctoral degree without studying any other species than humans. Even then, the work is likely to involve people and their behavior in the past generation and in a highly limited geographical area. This is wholly understandable, yet intellectually, it is akin to studying the whole of geology but focusing exclusively on Minnesota or doing botany while ignoring photosynthesis.

-- Lionel Tiger, "The Human Nature Project"