Science Marches On/Quotes

""The sort of SF that relies directly on state-of-the-art stuff like micro-black-holes or Piltdown Man is the only kind that really suffers when scientists move the goalposts.""

- Justin B. Rye

""A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.""

- Max Planck

""The future is a moving target.""

- Warren Ellis, "I plan to invest in anti-carnivorous robot security"

""Our love is like a brontosaurus. Recognized as a mistaken combination long ago, lingering only out of misplaced affection for a mistaken past.""

- Xkcd

""Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.""

- Commissioner Pravin Lal - "A Social History of Planet", Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

"In those white-heat-of-technology days every astronomy book had an early chapter which was invisibly entitled "Let's have a good laugh at the beliefs of those old farts in togas" (reality in those days being something called Zeta, a nuclear reactor that would soon be producing so much electricity we'd all be paid to use it)."

- Terry Pratchett, The Discworld Companion