Nigel Calder Quotes & Sayings

A thoughtful observer of the scientific betting shop, the biologist Sir Peter Medawar, has said: 'I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.' But as Medawar goes on to note, conviction is an incentive to work. Science is one of the most passionate of human activities: how else would researchers be sustained through the long weeks or years of drudgery, why otherwise should Hoyle and Wickramasinghe spend so much time in correspondence with school matrons? If appearances contradict this, it is because all gamblers pride themselves on keeping their outward cool. — Nigel Calder

The big discoveries raise questions that make astronomers work feverishly and argue with an agitation that verges on rudeness. — Nigel Calder

Recent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek ... Fecklessness might be the main theme of the aliens' report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... that emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve-while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space. — Nigel Calder

Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system. — Nigel Calder

But, when tales of the cosmos are told, this period of ours may always be recalled as that in which men first came to realise what a violent universe we inhabit. — Nigel Calder

The natural pattern of current astronomy is provided by the cryptic unity of nature itself (belief in which is the chief act of faith of the scientist). — Nigel Calder

It's likely that CO2 has some warming effect, but real proof of that hypothesis is tricky. You have to confirm by observation exactly how the CO2 changes the situation at different altitudes in the atmosphere and in different regions of the world. For example, CO2 is supposed to warm the upper air faster than the surface, but the measurements don't show that happening. When the CO2 effect is eventually pinned down, it will probably turn out to be weaker and much less worrisome than predicted by the global warming theorists. — Nigel Calder

The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind. — Nigel Calder