It's us that's really amazing. As far as I can see, our concentration of different abilities in one species - there's nothing I can see that in this Darwinian evolution that could've done that. So it seems to be a miracle of some sort. Freeman Dyson More Quotes by Freeman Dyson More Quotes From Freeman Dyson If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question. Freeman Dyson voice giving science Science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. Freeman Dyson exploration mystery continuing Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague. Freeman Dyson built progress theory In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over. Freeman Dyson elephants cutting agreement The great question for our time is, how to make sure that the continuing scientific revolution brings benefits to everybody rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. To lift up poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, from poverty, to give them a chance of a decent life, technology is not enough. Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich. Freeman Dyson rich-countries technology country Keynes was chief economic adviser to the British government and largely responsible for keeping the British economy afloat at a time when more than half of our gross national product, and all of our foreign exchange, was being spent on the war. I was lucky to be present at one of his rare appearances in Cambridge, when he gave a lecture with the title "Newton, the Man." Four years later he died of heart failure, precipitated by overwork and the hardships of crossing the Atlantic repeatedly in slow propeller-driven airplanes under wartime conditions. Freeman Dyson airplane heart war We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations. Freeman Dyson best-year education years The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe. Freeman Dyson unsolved-mysteries mystery conscious To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough. Freeman Dyson body mind giving We do not need to have an agreed set of goals before we do something ambitious! Freeman Dyson ambitious ambition goal In the long run, the only solution I see to the problem of diversity is the expansion of mankind into the universe by means of green technology... Green technology means we do not live in cans but adapt our plants and our animals and ourselves to live wild in the universe as we find it... When life invades a new habitat, she never moves with a single species. She comes with a variety of species, and as soon as she is established, her species spread and diversify further. Our spread through the galaxy will follow her ancient pattern. Freeman Dyson running mean moving If you want to have a program for moving out into the universe, you have to think in centuries not in decades. Freeman Dyson moon moving thinking There are three reasons, . . . apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first . . . is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second . . . to escape material impoverishment: the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forego forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third . . . our spiritual need for an open frontier. Freeman Dyson grandchildren moon spiritual It is in the long run essential to the growth of any new and high civilization that small groups of men can escape from their neighbors and from their government, to go and live as they please in the wilderness. A truly isolated, small, and creative society will never again be possible on this planet. Freeman Dyson moon running men Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them. Freeman Dyson pessimism opportunity people Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. Freeman Dyson orchids engineering snakes I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. Freeman Dyson computer becoming path Committees do harm merely by existing. Freeman Dyson committees harm The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet. Freeman Dyson important tools animal The essential fact which emerges ... is that the three smallest and most active reservoirs ( of carbon in the global carbon cycle), the atmosphere, the plants and the soil, are all of roughly the same size. This means that large human disturbance of any one of these reservoirs will have large effects on all three. We cannot hope either to understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too. Freeman Dyson carbon-cycle science mean
