scientist quotes

Discover inspiring quotes from brilliant minds in our Scientist category. Learn from the wisdom and curiosity of these innovative thinkers.

Again and again I have heard the statement that learning machines cannot subject us to any new dangers, because we can turn them off when we feel like it. But can we? To turn a machine off effectively, we must be in possession of information as to whether the danger point has come. The mere fact that we have made the machine does not guarantee that we shall have the proper information to do this. This is already implicit in the statement that the checker-playing machine can defeat the man who has programmed it, and this after a very limited time of working in.

- Norbert Wiener

The world is full of signals that we do not perceive. The tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale far exceed the range of our perception of familiar sensations. Bats dodge obstacles by bouncing sound waves of frequencies that I can't hear, though some people can. Many insects see the ultraviolet and follow the invisible 'guides' of flower nectar to what is for them a source of food and pollen that they will carry to the next flower for fertilization (flowers create these color guiding traces in their own benefit, not that of the insects). What little perceptive beings we are! Surrounded by so many fascinating and real things that we don't see (hear, smell, touch, taste) in nature, and yet so gullible and open to the acceptance of new powers that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for perceptions of a world psychic beyond our own. The paranormal can be a fantasy; it is certainly a refuge for many charlatans. But 'parahuman' powers of perception are all around us in birds, bees, and bacteria.

- Stephen Jay Gould