Science and technologies

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Typically, defenders of experiments on animals do not deny that animals suffer. They cannot deny the animals'suffering, because they need to stress the similarities between humans and other animals in order to claim that their experiments may have some relevance for human purposes. The experimenter who forces rats to choose between starvation and electric shock to see if they develop ulcers (which they do) does so because the rat has a nervous system very similar to a human being's, and presumably feels an electric shock in a similar way.

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The field of a science is an objectively closed unity: we cannot arbitrarily delimit fields where and as we like. The realm of truth is objectively articulated into fields: researches must orient themselves to these objective unities and must assemble themselves into sciences.

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It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly.

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Everything is made of atoms. Everything that animals do, atoms do... There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

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It is a curious paradox that several of the greatest and most creative spirits in science, after achieving important discoveries by following their unfettered imaginations, were in their later years obsessed with reductionist philosophy and as a result became sterile. Hilbert was a prime example of this paradox. Einstein was another.

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My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do.

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Every second the Universe divides into possibilities and most of those possibilities never happen. It is not a uni-verse, there is more than one reading. The story won't stop, can't stop, it goes on telling itself, waiting for an intervention that changes what will happen next.

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I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.

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Unfortunately a large number of people in many countries are strongly opposed to green technology, for reasons having little to do with the real dangers. It is important to treat the opponents with respect, to pay attention to their fears, to go gently into the new world of green technology so that neither human dignity nor religious conviction is violated. If we can go gently, we have a good chance of achieving within a hundred years the goals of ecological sustainability and social justice that green technology brings within our reach.

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I have, in some of my stories and novels, written about androids or robots or simulacra, the name doesn't matter; what is meant is artificial constructs masquerading as humans. Usually with a sinister purpose in mind. I suppose I took it for granted that if such a construct, a robot, for example, had a benign or anyhow decent purpose in mind, it would not need to so disguise itself. The constructs do not mimic humans; they are, in many deep ways, actually human already.