The great tragedy of Science
August 19, 2009The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Biogenesis and abiogenesis” (1870)
Thoughts about the Voynich Manuscript
Qocheedy daiin daiiin!
The Hunger Site:
Would the reverse be:
“The great triumph of science- the slaying of an ugly hypothesis by a beautiful truth.”?
We could add:
“The great sin of science- the support of a safe hypothesis by the hiding of an uncomfortable fact”?
Or:
“The faulty pillar of science- the acceptance of a weak hypothesis through the interpretation of hearsay as fact”?
Or:
“The great hypocrisy of science- the alternate acceptance and rejection of two facts by contrary reasoning.”?
Or:
“The enemies of science- demagogy and sophism”.
But we can be reassured when we realize:
“We can’t alter or invent the truths of science- they are what they are, whatever they are- ugly or beautiful”. Rich SantaColoma
Or…
“The truths of science are to statistics as the truths of history are to probability.”
Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based. — Author Unknown
That theory is worthless. It isn’t even wrong! — Wolfgang Pauli
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. — Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883
(From http://www.quotegarden.com/science.html)
BTW, Nick, when trying to access Ciphermysteries lately, my Firefox keeps throwing fits about the site carrying dangerous software and posing a security risk to visitors. Would you want to look into it?
Hey guys: Yes, Nick… I get the same message… warning of dangerous software. Hope all is well, and you and your blogmaster can sort it out. Rich.
At work, our firewalls won’t let me even touch your site, Nick.
From home, my virus scanner complains about “EXP/Pidief.rso” malware. My guess is it’s got to do with your visitor counter…
All sorted now, BTW – to get rid of it, I edited out the Javascript exploit injected into my .js file. To make sure it can’t come back in, I changed a load of directory permissions and got the exploit scanner WordPress plugin fully working.
Blogging can be hard work! :-)
[...] influence somehow, and find myself needing to quell such beautiful theories with that Ugly Fact of C14. Luther and Mr.f85r1 [...]