Quotes by John Desmond Bernal - Page 1

The region of the mysterious is rapidly shrinking.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Mysterious
Shrinking
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All that glitters may not be gold, but at least it contains free electrons.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Glitter
Gold
May
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Men will not be content to manufacture life: they will want to improve on it.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Life
Men
Science
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We are still too close to the birth of the universe to be certain about its death.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Birth
Certain
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We will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Giving Up
Simple
Taking Things For Granted
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The full area of ignorance is not mapped. We are at present only exploring the fringes.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Learning
Funny Inspirational
Ignorance
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The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Bitter
Long
Way
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If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Communism
Ifs
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The beauty of life is, therefore, geometrical beauty of a type that Plato would have much appreciated.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Life
Science
Plato
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Published papers may omit important steps and the memory of men of science, even the greatest, is sadly fallible.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Men
Science
Memories
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There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learned to separate them.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Desire
Fate
Futures
Separate
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Life is a partial, continuous, progressive, multiform and conditionally interactive self-realization of the potentialities of atomic electron states.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Life Is
Realization
Self
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Anticipation of movement, through muscular innervation and memory, by its retention of nerve impulse images, extend the present to the limit of a second or so.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Anticipation
Impulse
Movement
Retention
Extend
Images
Limit
Memory
Present
Muscular
Nerve
Second
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It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Essence
Long
Proof
Scientist
Advance
Explanations
Characteristic
Seized
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But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Character
Force
Unnecessary
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The present aristocracy of western culture, at the moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Aristocracy
Eastern
Western
Western Culture
Clearly
Imitated
Rapidly
Successfully
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The present aristocracy of western culture, at the very moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Country
Gdp
Western Culture
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Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Analyzing
Development
Economic
Economic Development
Advance
Affairs
Judge
Enables
Scientific
Trend
Thinkers
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The greater the man, the more he is soaked in the atmosphere of his time; only thus can he get a wide enough grasp of it to be able to change substantially the pattern of knowledge and action.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Men
Science
Atmosphere
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It is pretty clear that they are ineffective in stopping the course of thought at present, but they have not always been so in the past and we cannot be sure that they will not be so in the future.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Clear
Stopping
Future Always Past
Future Past Will
In The Past
Ineffective
Present
We Cannot
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The relevance of Marxism to science is that it removes it from its imagined position of complete detachment and shows it as a part, but a critically important part, of economy and social development.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Detachment
Development
Economy
Important
Marxism
Position
Relevance
Social Development
Complete
Critically
Imagined
Important Part
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The recognition of the art that informs all pure science need not mean the abandonment for it of all present art, rather it will mean the completion of the transformation of art that has already begun.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Art
Abandonment
Completion
Mean
Needs
Pure
Recognition
Transformation
Begun
Science Art Will
Informs
Present
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The problem is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Army
Disorganized
Temporary
Advance
Communications
Essentially
Rapid
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Naturalism aimed at giving the primitive wishes full play but failed because these wishes are too primitive, too infantile, too inconsistent with themselves to be satisfied even by the greatest license.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Giving
Inconsistent
Infantile
License
Naturalism
Play
Primitive
Satisfied
Wish
Greatest
Full
Failed
Themselves
Wishes
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As a scientist Miss [Rosalind] Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook. Her photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Beautiful
Perfection
Taken
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Her [Rosalind Franklin] devotion to research showed itself at its finest in the last months of her life. Although stricken with an illness which she knew would be fatal, she continued to work right up to the end.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Research
Would Be
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The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Greater
Psychology
Sex
Simple
Complex
Differ
Ours
Perhaps
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The problem [of specialization] is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Communication
Army
Order
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Political and social events must also be effective, but not in a very obvious fashion. But political confusion and prolonged peace undoubtedly affect creative thought but whether they respectively hinder or help it is not at all certain.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Confusion
Hinder
Obvious
Affect
Effective
Prolonged
Respectively
Undoubtedly
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In England, more than in any other country, science is felt rather than thought. ... A defect of the English is their almost complete lack of systematic thinking. Science to them consists of a number of successful raids into the unknown.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Country
Successful
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As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Space
Advantage
Atmosphere
Cold
Conditions
Containing
Dense
Emptiness
Independent
Planets
Scene
Warm
Increasingly
Material
Organic
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Scientific corporations might well become almost independent states and be enabled to undertake their largest experiments without consulting the outside world - a world which would be less and less able to judge what the experiments were about.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Consulting
Corporations
Experiments
Independent
Judging
Outside World
Would Be
Judge
Largest
Scientific
Undertake
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Hunger and sex still dominate the primitive mammalian side of human existence, but at the present time it looks as if humanity were within sight of their satisfaction. Permanent plenty, no longer a Utopian dream, awaits the arrival of permanent peace.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Dream
Existence
Human Existence
Humanity
Permanent
Plenty
Present Time
Primitive
Satisfaction
Sex
Sight
Utopian
Within
Arrival
Awaits
Side
Dominate
Still
Longer
Present
Permanent Peace
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The human mind evolved always in the company of the human body, and of the animal body before it was human. The intricate connections of mind and body must exceed our imagination, as from our point of view we are peculiarly prevented from observing them.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Imagination
Animal
Body
Connections
Human Body
Intricate
Observing
Point Of View
Views
Always Mind Body
Before
Evolved
Point
View
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Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Heartless
Opium
Oppressed
Protest
Religious
Sigh
Soulless
Suffering
Condition
Creature
Sentiment
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A part of sexuality may go to research, and a much larger part must lead to aesthetic creation. The art of the future will, because of the very opportunities and materials it will have at its command, need an infinitely stronger formative impulse than it does now.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Art
Opportunity
Aesthetic
Command
Creation
Impulse
Materials
Research
Sexuality
Stronger
Formative
Infinitely
Larger
Opportunities
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We shall be forced to attempt planned and directed research employing hundreds of workers for many years, and this cannot be done without risking the loss of independence and originality. This is a serious and fundamental obstacle but it may be overcome in two ways.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Independence
Employing
Loss
Originality
Research
Serious
Workers
Overcome
Attempt
Directed
Forced
Fundamental
Hundreds
Obstacle
Planned
Risking
Shall
Ways
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[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Ambitious
Self
Simple
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As experimentation becomes more complex, the need for the co-operation in it of technical elements from outside becomes greater and the modern laboratory tends increasingly to resemble the factory and to employ in its service increasing numbers of purely routine workers.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Elements
Experimentation
Greater
Laboratory
Numbers
Routine
Workers
Co-Operation
Complex
Employ
Factory
Increasing
Purely
Resemble
Service
Technical
Tends
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In fact, we will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things. We have to learn to understand nature and not merely to observe it and endure what it imposes on us. Stupidity, from being an amiable individual defect, has become a social crime.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Giving Up
Simple
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One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Confusion
Philosophy
Thinking
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The central industry of modern civilisation, tending, because of its control over materials, to spread into and ultimately incorporate older industries such as mining, smelting, oil- refining, textiles, rubber, building, and even agriculture in respect to fertilizers and food processing.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Agriculture
Oil
Textiles
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The very bulk of scientific publications is itself delusive. It is of very unequal value; a large proportion of it, possibly as much as three-quarters, does not deserve to be published at all, and is only published for economic considerations which have nothing to do with the real interests of science.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Doe
Real
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The question of the origin of life is essentially speculative. We have to construct, by straightforward thinking on the basis of very few factual observations, a plausible and self-consistent picture of a process which must have occurred before any of the forms which are known to us in the fossil record could have existed.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Origin Of Life
Self
Thinking
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So many of the chemical reactions occurring in living systems have been shown to be catalytic processes occurring isothermally on the surface of specific proteins, referred to as enzymes, that it seems fairly safe to assume that all are of this nature and that the proteins are the necessary basis for carrying out the processes that we call life.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Nature
Science
Enzymes
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Pauling was shocked by the freedom with which the X-ray crystallographers of the time, including particularly Astbury, played with the intimate chemical structure of their models. They seemed to think that if the atoms were arranged in the right order and about the right distance apart, that was all that mattered, that no further restrictions need to be put on them.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Freedom
Science
Distance
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In my own field, x-ray crystallography, we used to work out the structure of minerals by various dodges which we never bothered to write down, we just used them. Then Linus Pauling came along to the laboratory, saw what we were doing and wrote out what we now call Pauling's Rules. We had all been using Pauling's Rules for about three or four years before Pauling told us what the rules were.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Work Out
Writing
Years
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We academic scientists move within a certain sphere, we can go on being useless up to a point, in the confidence that sooner or later some use will be found for our studies. The mathematician, of course, prides himself on being totally useless, but usually turns out to be the most useful of the lot. He finds the solution but he is not interested in what the problem is: sooner or later, someone will find the problem to which his solution is the answer.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Science
Moving
Pride
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In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal.
John Desmond Bernal / Physicist
Men
Common Purpose
Goal
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