The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.

Allow me to define more specifically the inherent limitations of our numerical knowledge which are so often overlooked. I want to do this to avoid giving the i…

The conflict between what in its present mood the public expects science to achieve in satisfaction of popular hopes and what is really in its power is a serio…

To entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects. The …

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Science is a method for testing claims about the natural world, not an immutable compendium of absolute truths. The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers b…

I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of t…