Hungarian - Scientist | January 23, 1929 -
The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
John Polanyi
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It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.
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If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.
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Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.
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Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
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Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.
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Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.
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In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.
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Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science.
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Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol.
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Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
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What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the Governments of the world.
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