Gerald Holton Quote: "Even in the best times, managing science has been ..."

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Even in the best times, managing science has been compared to herding cats; it is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all.
Gerald Holton / Physics Researcher
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Even in the best times, managing science has been compared to herding cats; it is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all.
⇛ Gerald Holton (Physics Researcher)

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In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side-by-side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Gerald Holton Physics Researcher

Persons living in this modern world who do not know the basic facts that determine their very existence, functioning, and surroundings, are living in a dream world. Such persons are, in a very real sense, not sane.

Gerald Holton Physics Researcher

The flight of most members of a profession to the high empyrean, where they can work peacefully on purely scientific problems, isolated from the turmoil of real life, was perhaps quite appropriate at an earlier stage of science; but in today's world it is a luxury we cannot afford.

Gerald Holton Physics Researcher

If the layman cannot participate in decision making, he will have to turn himself over, essentially blind, to a hermetic elite. ... [The fundamental question becomes] are we still capable of self-government and therefore freedom? Margaret Mead wrote in a 1959 issue of Daedalus about scientists elevated to the status of priests. Now there is a name for this elevation, when you are in the hands of-one hopes-a benevolent elite, when you have no control over your political decisions. From the point of view of John Locke, the name for this is slavery.

Gerald Holton Physics Researcher

Looking at a cat, like looking at clouds or stars or the ocean, makes it difficult to believe there is nothing miraculous in this world.

Leonard Michaels Writer

When it comes to knowing how to relax, cats are the original yoga experts.