Nigel Calder > Quotes

“A thoughtful observer of the scientific betting shop, the biologist Sir Peter Medawar, has said: ‘I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.’ But as Medawar goes on to note, conviction is an incentive to work. Science is one of the most passionate of human activities: how else would researchers be sustained through the long weeks or years of drudgery, why otherwise should Hoyle and Wickramasinghe spend so much time in correspondence with school matrons? If appearances contradict this, it is because all gamblers pride themselves on keeping their outward cool.”
― Nigel Calder

“second tube. The fuel will continue to flow freely. FIGURE 3-9. A way to siphon fuel without getting a mouthful! (Fritz Seegers)”
― Nigel Calder, Marine Diesel Engines: Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair

“Fortunately we need be in no great hurry to set up the anti-comet batteries. In a world where the nuclear weapons are ready on the instant to defend us against one another by blowing us all up, to fret about cosmic impacts is like worrying about being struck by lightning during the Battle of the Somme. But human beings have only a vague sense of probabilities, and to fear the fall of a comet is no longer entirely irrational, if you say it may be a dead one and point to apollos in the offing like Betulia, six kilometres, and 1978 SB, eight kilometres in diameter.”
― Nigel Calder

“Like human memory, the surface of our planet distorts the record, emphasising more recent events and letting the rest pass into vagueness - or at least into unimpressive joints in worn down mountain chains.”
― Nigel Calder