Unscientific Quotes & Sayings

When science starts to be interpretive
it is more unscientific even than mysticism. — D.H. Lawrence

The idea of the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their moral fervor, label anyone a man of limited intelligence who can deny so patent a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human action and thinking. One and the same thing is thus proclaimed, now as the most precious possession of humanity, now as its most fatal illusion. — Rudolf Steiner

This isn't a picture filled with wonder and a sense of fun; it's so jaded and crass that I almost wonder if it's a highly unscientific experiment designed to gauge how little audiences will settle for these days. Manic and multicolored, Speed Racer is an excess of nothingness. — Stephanie Zacharek

In the Life of Darwin by his son, there is related an incident of how the great naturalist once studied long as to just what a certain spore was. Finally he said, "It is this, for if it isn't, then what is it?" And all during his life he was never able to forget that he had been guilty of this unscientific attitude, for science is founded on certitude, not assumption. — Elbert Hubbard

Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time. — Pal Brekke

Worth. A baseball team, of all things, was at the center of a story about the possibilities - and the limits - of reason in human affairs. Baseball - of all things - was an example of how an unscientific culture responds, or fails to respond, to the scientific method. As I say, I fell in love with a story. The story is about professional baseball and the people who play it. At its center is a man whose life was turned upside down by professional baseball, and who, miraculously, found a way — Michael Lewis

Some may claim that is it unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as miracles. But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things subservient to the rule of law. — Elisha Gray

He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education. — Shirley Jackson

It is at least scientifically respectable to postulate that at the centre of a black hole the laws of nature no longer apply. Since most scientists are just a bit religious and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole while his religious intellect believes in them outside it. — William Golding

I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right. As unscientific as it seems, well, it would be nice to lay the responsibilities and pain on someone else's larger shoulders. — Jodi Picoult

At first glance, the idea that some UFOs may be vehicles from outside the Earth seems utterly preposterous, the baseless result of wishful thinking by highly unscientific minds. — Don Berliner

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Yet again, unscientific claims were being circulated broadly, but the scientists' refutation of them was published where only fellow scientists would see it. — Naomi Oreskes

Black magic is not a myth. It is a totally unscientific and emotional form of magic, but it does get results - of an extremely temporary nature. — Aleister Crowley

I think that the theory of evolution is the most unscientific, faith-based, fundamentally brainless idea that ever had the misfortune to come out of a human mind. To compare it to true science is a joke. There is nothing even slightly scientific about it. — Ray Comfort

Scientific People, unscientific mind; why are we dividing the world which could shine? Between religion and science, all what matters is human lives. — Santosh Kalwar

Someday someone is going to create a stir by proposing a radical new tool for the study people. It will be called the face-value technique. It would be based on the premise that people often do what they do for the reasons they think they do. The use of this technique will lead to many pitfalls, for it is undeniably true that people do not always act logically or say what they mean. But I wonder if it would produce findings any more unscientific than the opposite course. — William H. Whyte

While to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think I have become. — Oscar Wilde

The heart [is] an organ that I find, if you have faith and know how to surrender to it, unfolds and unfolds in a most wonderful an unscientific manner, till it becomes the vastest and most pristine wilderness in existence. — David James Duncan

Professor Hawking is heralded as 'the genius of Britain,' yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life. Why should anyone believe Mr. Hawking's writings if he cannot provide evidence for his unscientific belief that out of nothing, everything came? — Kirk Cameron

To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement. — Alfred Korzybski

Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That — Thomas S. Kuhn

He laughs. "No! Aguaje is for girls. If a man eats to much of it, he starts to look like a woman."

"That is the most unscientific thing I've ever heard."

"Then you haven't met my cousin Jacari." Eio swings the string of fruit back and forth. " Too much aguaje. Now the mothers use him as wet nurse."

My mouth freezes in mid-bite, and I stare at him. "You're teasing me."

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "Maybe. — Jessica Khoury

All the most reasonable teachings of human wisdom concerning justice are summed up in that famous adage: Do unto others that which you would that others should do unto you; Do not unto others that which you would not that others should do unto you. But this rule of moral practice is unscientific: what have I a right to wish that others should do or not do to me? It is of no use to tell me that my duty is equal to my right, unless I am told at the same time what my right is. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

In fact, the belief that neurophysiology is even relevant to the functioning of the mind is just hypothesis. Who knows if we're looking at the right aspects of the brain at all. Maybe there are other aspects of the brain that nobody has even dreamt of looking at yet. That's often happened in the history of science. When people say that the mental is the neurophysiological at a higher level, they're being radically unscientific. We know a lot about the mental from a scientific point of view. We have explanatory theories that account for a lot of things. The belief that neurophysiology is implicated in these things could be true, but we have every little evidence for it. So, it's just a kind of hope; look around and you see neurons; maybe they're implicated. — Noam Chomsky

1. Insects and fungi are not the real cause of plant diseases but only attack unsuitable
varieties or crops imperfectly grown. Their true role is that of censors for pointing
out the crops that are improperly nourished and so keeping our agriculture up to the
mark. In other words, the pests must be looked upon as Nature's professors of
agriculture: as an integral portion of any rational system of farming.
2. The policy of protecting crops from pests by means of sprays, powders, and so
forth is unscientific and unsound as, even when successful, such procedure merely
preserves the unfit and obscures the real problem -- how to grow healthy crops." (An Agricultural Testament) — Albert Howard

I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how all the big cosmetics companies get away with the placebo science and unscientific claims. — Chris Toumazou

I believe evidence is overwhelming that chronic Lyme is a terrible, overwhelming disease, and we need to find ways to treat this. To say otherwise is an inaccurate and unscientific opinion. — Chris Smith

How insensitive, inartistic, unscientific, and ungracious it is to take anything for granted! — Muriel Lester

The goal of argumentation is to make a case so forceful (note the metaphor) that skeptics are coerced into believing it - they are powerless to deny it while still claiming to be rational. In principle, it is the ideas themselves that are, as we say, compelling, but their champions are not always averse to helping the ideas along with tactics of verbal dominance, among them intimidation ("Clearly . . ."), threat ("It would be unscientific to . . ."), authority ("As Popper showed . . ."), insult ("This work lacks the necessary rigor for . . ."), and belittling ("Few people today seriously believe that . . ."). Perhaps this is why H. L. Mencken wrote that "college football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students. — Steven Pinker

That I had never heard of such a bird did not surprise me ... But others more experienced also did not know of the Carolina Parakeet. The more I spoke of the bird, the more it seemed that, somehow, its existence had been a chimera. Admittedly, my survey was small and unscientific, but intelligent people who could reel off the names of various dinosaurs and identify sparrows at epic distances could not name the forgotten parakeet. I realized, forcefully, what I suppose I knew abstractly: Histories, like species, can go extinct. — Christopher Cokinos

The ideal is unnatural naturalness, or natural unnaturalness. I mean it is a combination of both.
I mean here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony.
Not if you have one to the extreme, you'll be very unscientific.
If you have another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden, a mechanical man
No longer a human being.
It is a successful combination of both.
That way it is a process of continuing growth.
Be water, my friend. — Bruce Lee

The substance of the attacks on the reality of organized abuse and torture of children always reduce to that old chestnut - it is unscientific. "Give us proof," say the naysayers. "How is this different from reports of alien abduction?" say the clever-clever wags of Private Eye. Indeed. How is it different? In the case of alien abduction, we are asked to believe that visitors to this planet from outer space have kidnapped someone, taken them away, and brought them back. It is not believable.

In the case of ritual abuse, we are asked to believe that people can organize themselves into groups for the purpose of torturing children. There would seem to be a significant difference here in what we are asked to believe. — Valerie Sinason

Moreover it is becoming the Britons, whether scientific or unscientific, who boast at all fitting occasions of their aptitude to rule the waves, should know something of the population of their saline empire, especially of those parts of it immediately in contact with their terrestrial domain, and the coasts of the Continent to which our United Kingdom appertains. — Edward Forbes

Q: But isn't race "just skin deep"? Don't most scientists now agree that race is a social construct, not a biological reality? A: Biological evidence shows that race is not a social construct. Coroners in crime labs can identify race from a skeleton or even just the skull. They can identify race from blood, hair, or semen as well. To deny the existence of race is unscientific and unrealistic. Race is much more than "just skin deep. — J. Philippe Rushton

I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance. — Bertrand Russell

In my totally unscientific yet enthusiastic survey of Communal Experiments Throughout American History, I've discovered that the thing most likely to break up said experiments is: Sex, all that murky, dark, dirty gunk simmering beneath human relations. — Lauren Groff

The suggestion that the body really wanted to go straight but some mysterious agent made it go crooked is picturesque but unscientific. It makes two properties out of one; and then we wonder why they are always proportional to one another - why the gravitational force on different bodies is proportional to their inertia or mass. The dissection becomes untenable when we admit that all frames of reference are on the same footing. The projectile which describes a parabola relative to an observer on the earth's surface describes a straight line relative to the man in the lift. Our teacher will not easily persuade the man in the lift who sees the apple remaining where he released it, that the apple really would of its own initiative rush upwards were it not that an invisible tug exactly counteracts this tendency. (The reader will verify that this is the doctrine the teacher would have to inculcate if he went as a missionary to the men in the lift.) — Arthur Stanley Eddington

As the science of economics ... exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific. — Ludwig Von Mises

I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing. — Kurt Vonnegut

I am as non-accepting of medical quackery and unscientific approaches as anybody else. I've grown up as a card-carrying scientist, and I know the power of science to answer questions, and for many questions I don't know of anything better than scientific approaches to answer them. — Dean Ornish

Foo shuddered. It had been less than an hour since the cops led Abby away and already he missed her like a severed limb. It was embarrassing. How could hormones and hydrostatic pressure make you feel like this? Love was very unscientific. — Christopher Moore

It is embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing. — Ray Comfort

This type of rhetoric is all too common among secularists on the left. They paint a false dichotomy between religion and science. They say that religious people are anti-science, because science makes God irrelevant - therefore, religious people want to stop scientific progress. They point to the fact that many religious people are skeptical about the theory of evolution - as though skepticism of a scientific finding were in and of itself unscientific. — Ben Shapiro

We all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own ... [This] may seem wild, and visionary; all I maintain is that it is not unscientific. — Lord Kelvin

For a modern ruler the laws of conservation and transformation of energy, when the vivifing stream takes its source, the ways it wends its course in nature, and how, under wisdom and knowledge, it may be intertwined with human destiny, instead of careering headlong to the ocean, are a study at least as pregnant with consequences to life as any lesson taught by the long unscientific history of man. — Frederick Soddy

unscientific ways of thinking will dominate scientific thinking among human intellectuals, and lead to the collapse of the entire scientific system of thought. — Liu Cixin

There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo. Nature has introduced a few fool-proof devices into the great majority of elements that constitute the bulk of the world, and they have no energy to give up in the process of disintegration. — Robert Andrews Millikan

The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The 'science' for which the United States is respected has nothing to do with the unscientific and baseless theory of evolution. — Ray Comfort

Only an unscientific ignoramus would hold to the thought that nothing created everything. — Ray Comfort

Some psychologists and philosophers are distrustful of the concept of self. They argue against it because they do not like separating man from the continuum with animals, and they believe the concept of the self gets in the way of scientific experimentation. But rejecting the concept of "self" as "unscientific" because it cannot be reduced to mathematical equations is roughly the same as the argument two and three decades ago that Freud's theories and the concept of "unconscious" motivation were "unscientific." It is a defensive and dogmatic science - and therefore not true science - which uses a particular scientific method as a Procrustean bed and rejects all forms of human experience which don't fit. — Rollo May

At the risk of descending to unscientific generalizations, 90 percent of Texans give the other 10 percent a bad name." - Attributed to John H. "Doc" Holliday — Mary Doria Russell

Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment. — Friedrich Engels

To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong. — Vladimir Lenin

If you say that there was no first cause (a Creator), then you are stuck with the unscientific and thoughtless belief that nothing created everything. So, what is it that you believe? Is it that something created everything? Then you are not an atheist, because you believe in a Creator. — Ray Comfort

Darwinian evolution is unscientific, unobservable, unbelievable, but understandable in a world that hates God. — Ray Comfort

Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. — Paul Davies

If the God of Christianity exists, the evidence for His existence is abundant and plain so that it is both unscientific and sinful not to believe in Him. — Cornelius Van Til

We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something like scientific method in politics is to proceed on the assumption that there can be no political move which has no drawbacks, no undesirable consequences. To look out for these mistakes, to find them, to bring them into the open, to analyse them, and to learn from them, this is what a scientific politician as well as a political scientist must do. Scientific method in politics means that the great art of convincing ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, of ignoring them, of hiding them, and of blaming others from them, is replaced by the greater art of accepting the responsibility for them, of trying to learn from them, and of applying this knowledge so that we may avoid them in future. — Karl Popper

It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is. — Richard P. Feynman

A spiritual path based on unverifiable ideas is stripped of any real accountability to the world we live in. If our spiritual path is not held accountable to the evidence of direct experience in the world, we have no real measuring stick for how our journey is progressing. At the extreme end of this spectrum, we might pay no attention to climate change because we are convinced the Rapture is coming soon. A more subtle instance of an unscientific spirituality might involve thinking that the number of compassion mantras we recite is more important than how well we treat our romantic partner. — Ethan Nichtern

I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is-regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of a political scientist-humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural. — Vaclav Havel

We domesticated pigs to turn food waste back into food. And yet, in Europe, that practice has become illegal since 2001 as a result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. It's unscientific. It's unnecessary. If you cook food for pigs, just as if you cook food for humans, it is rendered safe. It's also a massive saving of resources. — Tristram Stuart

No! Aguaje is for girls. If a man eats to much of it, he starts to look like a woman.

That is the most unscientific thing I've ever heard.

Then you haven't met my cousin Jacari. Too much aguaje. Now the mothers use him as wet nurse. — Jessica Khoury

So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely". At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. — Richard Feynman

The sea is a place of mystery. One by one, the mysteries of yesterday have been solved. But the solution seems always to bring with it another, perhaps a deeper mystery. I doubt that the last, final mysteries of the sea will ever be resolved. In fact, I cherish a very unscientific hope that they will not be. — Rachel Carson

Both the Pollyannas and the Cassandras are wrong, and both stand in the way of social justice, the former by condemning us all to catastrophic climate change and the loss of other vital ecosystem services for the sake of profit; the latter by condemning us all to a hair-shirted existence and refusal of further human development due to a romantic, unscientific belief in a static, unchanging balance of nature. — Leigh Phillips

Think of instinct as an unscientific, unquantifiable tool that can be used along with more concrete evaluations to make a well-rounded decision. — Charisse Montgomery

It turned out to be a young Dasypus novemcinctus, a nine-banded armadillo, about the size of a small loaf of bread. Although they were becoming more common in Texas, I'd never seen one up close before. Anatomically speaking, it resembled the unhappy melding of an anteater (the face), a mule (the ears), and a tortoise (the carapace). I thought it overall an unlucky creature in the looks department, but Granddaddy once said that to apply a human definition of beauty to an animal that had managed to thrive for millions of years was both unscientific and foolish. — Jacqueline Kelly

Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile. — Terry Eagleton

One cannot master set research tasks if one makes a single part the focus of interest. One must, rather, continuously dart from one part to another - in a way that appears extremely flighty and unscientific to some thinkers who place value on strictly logical sequences - and one's knowledge of each of the parts must advance at the same pace.15 The — Frans De Waal

The new supplants the old. Yet men's minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research. — Mary Barnett Gilson

Everywhere science is enriched by unscientific methods and unscientific results, ... the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. — Paul Feyerabend

Just as there are those who accept every UFO report at face value, there are also those who dismiss the idea of alien visitation out of hand and with great passion. It is, they say, unnecessary to examine the evidence, and "unscientific" even to contemplate the issue. I once helped to organize a public debate at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between proponent and opponent scientists of the proposition that some UFOs were spaceships; whereupon a distinguished physicist, whose judgment in many other matters I respected, threatened to sic the Vice President of the United States on me if I persisted in this madness. (Nevertheless, the debate was held and published, the issues were a little better clarified, and I did not hear from Spiro T. Agnew.) — Carl Sagan

Social science and humanities ... have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine ... The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not. — Allan Bloom

You use force, you create fear. Fear destroys trust. Trust is the basis of harmony. The hardliner believes harmony and unity can be brought by force. That's totally unscientific, totally wrong. — Dalai Lama

There are people, of course, who think it unscientific to take anything seriously; they do not want their intellectual playground disturbed by graver considerations. But the doctor who fails to take account of man's feelings for values commits a serious blunder, and if he tries to correct the mysterious and well-nigh inscrutable workings of nature with his so-called scientific attitude, he is merely putting his shallow sophistry in place of nature's healing processes. — C. G. Jung

However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance - so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature. — Graham Greene

Science is not a system of certain, or -established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality ... And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover-discover. Like Bacon, we might describe our own contemporary science-'the method of reasoning which men now ordinarily apply to nature'-as consisting of 'anticipations, rash and premature' and as 'prejudices'. — Karl Popper

Please don't make the mistake of thinking the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent, stupid, and damaging idea. You don't have to be unscientific to make beautiful art, to write beautiful things.
If you need proof: Twain, Adams, Vonnegut, McEwen, Sagan, Shakespeare, Dickens. For a start.
You don't need to be superstitious to be a poet. You don't need to hate GM technology to care about the beauty of the planet. You don't have to claim a soul to promote compassion.
Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief; it is just a term which describes humankind's incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome. — Tim Minchin

When the most learned evolutionists can give neither the how nor the why, the marvels seem to show that adaptation is inexplicable. Yet those who cannot explain it will not admit that it is inexplicable. This is a strange situation, only partly ascribable to the rather unscientific conviction that evidence will be found in the future. It is due to a psychological quirk [in the minds of its advocates]. — Norman Macbeth

An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. — Mark Twain

Sitting calmly on a ship in fair weather is not a metaphor for having faith; but when the ship has sprung a leak, then enthusiastically to keep the ship afloat by pumping and not to seek the harbor
that is the metaphor for having faith. (Concluding Unscientific Postscript) — Soren Kierkegaard

The rule that science is the only way to know something is itself unscientific; it cannot be tested. So the claim
that only science can demonstrate truth actually flunks its own test, since it cannot validate itself! — Gary R. Habermas

Introspection, or 'sitting in the silence,' is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Begin where you are. It would be unscientific to begin anywhere else. — Ernest Holmes

Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically. — Bertrand Russell

The recommended daily allowances are based on arbitrary, unscientific, and tainted standards. — William Proxmire

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific. — Karl Jaspers