John B. S. Haldane
John B. S. Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, FRS was a British-born Indian scientist known for his work in the study of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and in mathematics, where he made innovative contributions to the fields of statistics and biostatistics. He was the son of the equally famous John Scott Haldane and a professed socialist, Marxist, atheist, and humanist whose political dissent led him to leave England in 1956 and live in India, becoming a naturalised Indian citizen in 1961...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth5 November 1892
If materialism is true, it seems to me that we cannot know that it is true. If my opinions are the result of the chemical processes going on in my brain, they are determined by the laws of chemistry, not those of logic.
Science affects the average man and woman in two ways already. He or she benefits by its application driving a motor-car or omnibus instead of a horse-drawn vehicle, being treated for disease by a doctor or surgeon rather than a witch, and being killed with an automatic pistol or shell in place of a dagger or a battle-axe.
I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal.
Until politics are a branch of science, we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.
The idea of protoplasm, which was really a name for our ignorance, [is] only a little less misleading than the expression "Vital force".
I have come to the conclusion that my subjective account of my motivation is largely mythical on almost all occasions. I don't know why I do things.
[Children] are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science.
I will jump into the river to save two brothers or eight cousins.
It wasn't until I had performed by first autopsy that I realized that even the drabest human exteriors could contain the most beautiful viscera. After that, I would console myself for the plainness of my fellow bus-riders by dissecting them in my imagination.
A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.
The advance of scientific knowledge does not seem to make either our universe or our inner life in it any less mysterious.
I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred.
The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.
There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.