Frases de Peter Medawar (45 citas, página 2)

Peter Medawar: 45 frases 4 Me gusta

Frases célebres de Peter Medawar

“Hay algo de verdad en el psicoanálisis, como lo hubo en el mesmerismo y en la frenología (es decir, el concepto de la localización de funciones en el cerebro). Pero, considerado en su conjunto, el psicoanálisis no resulta. Es un producto acabado, como lo fueron un dinosaurio o un Zeppelin; no se puede, ni se podrá jamás erigir una teoría mejor sobre sus ruinas, que permanecerán para siempre como uno de los paisajes más tristes y extraños de la historia del pensamiento del siglo XX.”

Peter Medawar

Fuente: Citado en: Sexo y cultura: análisis del comportamiento sexual http://books.google.es/books?id=ajgA2hLXGf4C&pg=PA235. Aquilino Polaino-Lorente. Ediciones Rialp, 1992. ISBN 84-321-2849-X, pág. 235

“Un virus es un trozo de ácido nucleico rodeado de malas noticias.”

Peter Medawar

Fuente: [Bryson, Bill, Una breve historia de casi todo. «Cap. 20: Un mundo pequeño»., 2004, Rba Libros, ISBN 84-7871-175-9]

“… un científico debe ser de hecho libremente imaginativo y aun así escéptico, creativo y aun así crítico. Existe un cierto sentido en el que debe ser libre, pero otro en el que su pensamiento debe estar muy precisamente reglamentado; existe poesía en la ciencia, pero también una gran cantidad de contabilidad.”

Peter Medawar

Fuente: Peter B. Medawar: The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science (1996), 63.

“No puedo dar a un científico de cualquier edad mejor consejo que éste: la intensidad de la convicción de que una hipótesis es verdadera no influye nada en si es cierta o no.”

Peter Medawar

Fuente: Advice to a young scientist http://books.google.es/books?id=BEhtUTdXtG4C&pg=PA39. Peter Brian Medawar. Basic Books, 1979. ISBN 0-465-00092-4, pág. 39

“Si la política es el arte de lo posible, la investigación es sin duda el arte de lo soluble. Ambas son asuntos de mentalidad inmensamente práctica.”

Peter Medawar

Peter Medawar: Frases en inglés

“I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He was annoyed, and it did not appease him when I went on to ask how he came to attach such a clear meaning to the notion of lack of intelligence. We never spoke again.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

Fuente: 1970s, Advice to a Young Scientist (1979), p. 25, footnote to previous quotation.

“It is the great glory as well as the great threat of science that everything which is in principle possible can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

The Threat and the Glory, 1977
1970s

“A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

with Jean Medawar) Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology (1985
1980s

“I do not propose to criticize the fatuous argument I have just outlined; here, to expound is to expose.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

“In spite of all the obstacles that Teilhard perhaps wisely puts in our way, it is possible to discern a train of thought in The Phenomenon of Man.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

“Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon—provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

Medawar, Peter (1982). Pluto's Republic, p. 99. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1980s

“We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility; but there is one high poetic fancy in the New Atlantis that stays in the mind after all its fancies and inventions have been forgotten. In the New Atlantis, an island kingdom lying in very distant seas, the only commodity of external trade is — light: Bacon's own special light, the light of understanding.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

On Francis Bacon's New Atlantis
1960s, Presidential Address, 1969

“Only human beings guide their behaviour by a knowledge of what happened before they were born and a preconception of what may happen after they are dead; thus only humans find their way by a light that illuminates more than the patch of ground they stand on.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

(with Jean Medawar) The Life Science, 1977
1970s

“But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about.”

Help us translate this quote

Peter Medawar

This is an advantage which scientists enjoy over most other people engaged in intellectual pursuits, and they enjoy it at all levels of capability. To be a first-rate scientist it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) to be extremely clever, anyhow in a pyrotechnic sense. One of the great social revolutions brought about by scientific research has been the democratization of learning. Anyone who combines strong common sense with an ordinary degree of imaginativeness can become a creative scientist, and a happy one besides, in so far as happiness depends upon being able to develop to the limit of one's abilities.
1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968