Dimitar Sasselov Quotes

In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable of changing course - often with a great lurch - every few years.

Mainstream science starts as heresy.

... science is the most revolutionary force in the world.

REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE.

Sciences evolve.

The discovery which has been pointed to by theory is always one of profound interest and importance, but it is usually the close and crown of a long and fruitful period, whereas the discovery which comes as a puzzle and surprise usually marks a fresh epoch and opens a new chapter in science.

In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.

The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time.

The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Science has often resisted new ideas and fought bitterly to prevent them coming on board.

Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of the bricks, perhaps even the keystone, of truth's temple. Now most scientists of vision hope to foment revolution. We are, therefore, awash in revolutions, most self-proclaimed.

Where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday's heresies have become today's new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.

What seems impossible today, may half a century hence have become commonplace.

Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing: many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics and society.

This is the age of disruption.

It's easy to think that craft can't change but important to remember that all craft process was at some point new, at some point challenged convention - not to be contrary, but enabled by some breakthrough, some newly discovered principle, or sometimes some wonderful accident.

Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.

I don't think I'm as revolutionary as Galileo, but I don't think I'm not as revolutionary as Galileo.

Those who ultimately shake up an industry are often outsiders who don't know any better.

Progress in science occurs in fits and starts, and paradigm shifts occur when evidence can be marshaled to support a new point of view.

In innovation, you're trying to create something from nothing.

Making progress on longstanding challenges requires a different lens and a new approach.

Some great minds become great by turning the rubble of an exploded paradigm into something consistent and meaningful. Others become great by laying the gunpowder, grain by grain. Every important revolution needs both kinds of minds to complete itself.

It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress.

The greatest of the changes that science has brought is the acuity of change; the greatest novelty the extent of novelty.