If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.
quote by Richard Phillips Feynman

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Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
quote by Pope John Paul II

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Scientists make mistakes. Accordingly, it is the job of the scientist to recognize our weakness, to examine the widest range of opinions, to be ruthlessly self-critical. Science is a collective enterprise with the error-correction machinery often running smoothly.
Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an over broad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.
quote by Carl Sagan

Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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The Error
this is not an ordinary error that one corrects
like a grammatical mistake
that with a slight stroke of the pen
everything becomes correct
and acceptable
this is repeated error
one knows it is an error but one does not correct it
it plunges and pushes and pulls
back to the same error again
something delicious
so sweet to the tongue
the mouth salivates
and the heart pounces upon
a thousand breathings
this is the error that one always looks forward to see
one evening and another
in a room the two of you sharing it
you kneel and pray and soar to heights
without so many words wasted
poem by Ric S. Bastasa

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No consensus of men can make an error erroneous. We can only find or commit an error, not create it. When we commit an error, we say what was an error already.
quote by Josiah Royce

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In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.
quote by Hugh Walpole

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The one big strategic error - which was a political error and an economic error of grand proportions - was the prescription drug bill.
quote by David Keene

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Something More
there is a part of me in you,
in every move you make,
every thought you think,
in every sleepless night...
there is a part of you in me,
in every time i do the right thing,
every gentle and good thought,
in everything i believe...
there is a part of us in God,
and a part of God in us;
that cannot be seperated
and still feed the flame of living.
there is a part of love, and the whole,
written by our destinies.
you and i, and something more,
that words cannot define.
poem by Eric Cockrell

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The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
quote by H.L. Mencken

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.
Immanuel Kant in The Science of Right

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Neither with those nor with the others, with all I agree and dissent; in all part of truth and part of error must be seen.
quote by Michael Servetus

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Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe.

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.
quote by Louis Pasteur

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The World Is Not Fair
Error in findings or
Error in perception
Reflects in judgment,
Not to say prejudices.
Error in judgment
Will cost the subject,
Which has no alternative.
Hence, suffering is undue.
The world is not fair.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

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When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
quote by Jean Rostand

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.
quote by Howard Aiken

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In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.
Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.
Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
Bertolt Brecht in The life of Galileo

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
quote by Raymond Chandler

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