6 quotes
You contain a trillion copies of a large, textual document written in a highly accurate, digital code, each copy as voluminous as a substantial book. I'm talking, of course, of the DNA in your cells.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium – in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
You don't have to be a scientist – you don't have to play the Bunsen burner – in order to understand enough science to overtake your imagined need and fill that fancied gap. Science needs to be released from the lab into the culture.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)