It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by FRANKLIN M. HAROLD* "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."—Chinese Proverb "First get your data; then you can distort them at your leisure."—Efraim Racker "The organism in its totality is as essential to an explanation of its elements as its elements are to an explanation of the organism."—Arthur Koestler "An expert seldom gives an objective view. He gives his own view."—Morarji Desai "A decision deferred is not a problem avoided; often it is a crisis invited."—Henry Kissinger "No new truth will declare itself from inside a heap of facts."—Sir Peter Medawar "None attains to the Degree of Truth until a thousand honest people have testified that he is a heretic."—Sufi Proverb "Hypotheses are nets; only he that casts will catch."—Karl Popper "Truth is an excellent thing when it suits one's purpose, but very inconvenient when otherwise."—James Morier "You can prove almost anything with the evidence of a small enough segment of time. How often in the search for truth the answer of the minute is positive, the answer of the hour is qualified, the answer of the year contradictory!"— Edwin Way Teale *Department of Biochemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523. Material appearing under this title is collected with the aim of making the serious a bit less serious, the ponderous a bit less heavy, and the reading hours a bit more fun. Toward this goal we invite a guest editor of this feature for each issue. Will readers volunteer to share their senses of humor by collecting or recollecting items that have brought smiles to their faces? We invite your participation. Originals are also welcomed. 594 Franklin M. Harold · It Has Been Said "Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."—Winston Churchill "Chasing bits of truth is like catching butterflies: pin them down and they die."—Simon Leys "In the main, people do not read. If they read, they do not understand. And those who do, forget."—Henry de Montherlant "The process of experimental science does not consist in explaining the unknown by the known, as in certain mathematical proofs. It aims on the contrary to give an account of what is observed by what is imagined."—Francois Jacob "[Society] was wont to rank science, until far into our century, among the highest and purest pursuits of mankind. Science was the never-ending search for truth about nature, a quest that would help us understand the workings of our world. That era has ended .... A new era has begun: science is now the craft of the manipulation, modification, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature."—Erwin Chargaff "I think there are too few people in our age who choose to use their own wits in an honest endeavour and, with the facts in a tangle before them, sort them out into a pattern of their own."—Freya Stark "How enjoyable, how very enjoyable and luxurious it is, to suddenly emerge from the stern labyrinth of facts unto these dawn-lit uplands of surmise!"— Patrick Leigh Fermor "Science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it's a muddle of conflicting assertions. What gripes my gut is that it has such a miserable vocabulary and such a pallid pack of images to offer to us—the humble laity— for our edification and our faith. . . . [Scientists are] the most overwheening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever had to endure in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination."—Robertson Davies Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 35, 4 ¦ Summer 1992 595 ...