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422fdad
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This, in essence, is the problem with the scientific view of reality. Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something - reality - that may not be understood at all.
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science
scientific-method
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Michael Crichton |
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f084faf
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A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.... And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.
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Michael Crichton |
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5a455a1
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You must first learn patience, if you wish to learn anything at all.
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Michael Crichton |
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0fd9c08
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The kids I see are lazy. Nobody wants to work. I teach physics. It takes years to master. But all the kids want to dress like Charlie Sheen and make a million dollars before they're twenty-eight. The only way you can make that kind of money is in law, investment banking, Wall Street. Places where the game is paper profits, something for nothing. But that's what the kids want to do, these days.
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Michael Crichton |
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4beca3c
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People aren't studying the natural world any more, they're mining it.
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Michael Crichton |
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2f28d57
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But it was one thing to release a population of virtual agents inside a computer's memory to solve a problem. It was another thing to set real agents free in the real world.
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Michael Crichton |
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03c16e7
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roar!!!
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Michael Crichton |
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6fa0b43
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He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of looming authority. They were symbolic parents.
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Michael Crichton |
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3ab9cd8
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yjb 'n ykwn lnsn Hkym b`tdl wlkn lys mfrT lHkm@ Ht~ l y`rf qdrh msbq
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wisdom
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Michael Crichton |
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a36461e
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In the eyes of all of them was the hollow stare of fear, and there was hollowness in their merriment, too.
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Michael Crichton |
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d9746e3
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The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics ... Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?
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Michael Crichton |
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c546e7f
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It isn't a matter of wanting it or not," Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. "It's a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays be..
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Michael Crichton |
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2a09f4d
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There are lots of trips out there. It's even possible to become a conference groupie, going from one seminar to another and being a Beautiful Evolved Human Being until you start making the people around you want to throw up.
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spirituality
trip
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Michael Crichton |
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d3b8ff3
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Photographs provided a tangible reality to men who were far from home, fearful and tired; they were posed proofs of success, souvenirs to send to sweethearts and loved ones, or simply ways of remembering, of grasping a moment in a swift changing and uncertain world.
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Michael Crichton |
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cb786a4
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It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed but what CAN BE observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories. And often those expectations get in the way.
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scientific-theories
theories
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Michael Crichton |
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b7ab384
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Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it.
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Michael Crichton |
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7ac0751
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The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence. You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen. This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the..
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Michael Crichton |
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b53032b
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Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. "The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their inst..
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Michael Crichton |
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af82695
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A crisis is made by men, who enter into the crisis with their own prejudices, propensities, and predispositions. A crisis is the sum of intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored.
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crisis
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Michael Crichton |
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3fd1ea9
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The kids were probably with Grant. And if Grant was out in the park, well ... what better person to get them safely through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert?
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Michael Crichton |
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2a7258e
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Whoever you are, some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well. Enormous space is near.
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Michael Crichton |
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abf58d5
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Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years--the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died. ..
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Michael Crichton |
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8687e3b
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When the first giant bones were found in the 1820s and 1830s, scientists felt obliged to explain the bones as belonging to some oversize variant of a modern species. This was because it was believed that no species could ever become extinct, since God would not allow one of His creations to die. Eventually it became clear that this conception of God was mistaken, and the bones belonged to extinct animals.
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Michael Crichton |
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e6afa0a
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The commercialization of molecular biology is the most stunning ethical event in the history of science, and it has happened with astonishing speed. For four hundred years since Galileo, science has always proceeded as a free and open inquiry into the workings of nature. Scientists have always ignored national boundaries, holding themselves above the transitory concerns of politics and even wars. Scientists have always rebelled against secr..
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copyrights
innovation
paid-government
politicians
science
trademarks
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Michael Crichton |
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c7bd3a6
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La actual preocupacion casi histerica por la seguridad es en el mejor de los casos un derroche de recursos y un obstaculo para el espiritu humano, y en el peor de los casos una invitacion al totalitarismo. Se necesita con urgencia educacion publica.
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insecurity
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Michael Crichton |
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7f835b3
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On the video monitor, they saw Ted Fielding slap the polished sphere and shout, "Open! Open Sesame! Open up, you son of a bitch!" The sphere did not respond."
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Michael Crichton |
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4876590
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What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told--and become upset if they are exposed to any different view.
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Michael Crichton |
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ff05364
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I often hear skeptics say that, if psychic behavior was real, the psychics would be playing the stock markets or the ponies. In my experience, many of them do. There is, in fact, a kind of secret level of activity in which psychics consult to major corporations and businesses. People seem embarrassed to admit this activity but it takes place, just as you'd expect it to.
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psychic
stock-market
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Michael Crichton |
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ac3d41f
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A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The problem of data in conflict with existing theory cannot be overstated. Arthur Eddington once said you should never believe any experiment until it has been confirmed by theory, but this humorous view has a reality that cannot be disc..
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science
skepticism
theory
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Michael Crichton |
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9e7d8d4
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Whether you see the world as emergent or, deteriorating. We have long known that some people favor innovation and look positively toward the future while others are frightened of change and want to halt innovation.
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Michael Crichton |
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e1a7304
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As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.
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consciousness
the-future
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Michael Crichton |
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fa87252
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All this attempt to control... We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old... The basic idea of science - that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational - that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years o..
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higher-law
innovation
life
science
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Michael Crichton |
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993f1d9
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These wafers had entered the mythology of the company, including their names: Tunguska, Vesuvius, Tokyo. The Vesuvius wafer put you on the Bay of Naples at 7:00 a.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, just before burning ash killed everyone. Tunguska left you in Siberia in 1908, just before the giant meteor struck, causing a shock wave that killed every living
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Michael Crichton |
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1b5e318
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And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don't like to be reminded of how frail we are--how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended.
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frailty
humanity
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Michael Crichton |
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af2c9b0
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A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there...And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.
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Michael Crichton |
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a0ca566
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we haven't had any accidents for months now...Everything on that island is perfectly fine.
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fiction
humor
jurassic-park
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Michael Crichton |
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e21ecb8
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He often argued that human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.
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Michael Crichton |
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50949ce
|
It's marked as an object," Wu said. In computer terminology, an "object" was a block of code that could be moved around and used, the way you might move a chair in a room."
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Michael Crichton |
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04c9433
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Universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The very idea is preposterous. Universities are the backwater. Don't look so surprised. I'm not saying anything you don't know. Since World War II, all the really important discoveries have come out of private laboratories.
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Michael Crichton |
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e727130
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The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures.
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Michael Crichton |
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dd5252d
|
Chaos theory treats the behavior of a whole system like a drop of water moving on a complicated propeller surface. The drop may spiral down, or slip outward toward the edge. It may do many different things, depending. But it will always move along the surface of the propeller." "Okay." "Malcolm's models tend to have a ledge, or a sharp incline, where the drop of water will speed up greatly. He modestly calls this speeding-up movement the Ma..
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Michael Crichton |
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c21efaf
|
And now chaos theory proves that unpredictability is built into our daily lives. It is as mundane as the rainstorm we cannot predict. And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old--the dream of total control--has died, in our century. And with it much of the justification, the rationale for science to do what it does. And for us to listen to it. Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventu..
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Michael Crichton |
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612fb2b
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Understanding is a delaying tactic.
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Michael Crichton |
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9108de4
|
Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.
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Michael Crichton |