“Science as something existing and complete is the most objective thing known to man. But science in the making, science as an end to be pursued, is as subjective and psychologically conditioned as any other branch of human endeavour – so much so, that the question “what is the purpose and meaning of science?” receives quite different answers at different times and from different sorts of people”.

Albert Einstein

” The self-doubt of the young is nothing compared to the self-doubt of the old”

Shostakovich (before his death in 1975)

The young radical scientist Desmond Bernal wrote that he lived in an age of “tottering civilizations. Seeing waste and ignorance, deliberate wrong from minds twisted by old ideas and ill adjusted lives…[But] I do know that I am happy to be born in my own time (b.1901), a time of stress, but a time of hope and of new born knowledge”

Biographical fragment “Microcosm” (about 1926)

This Zen Buddhist idea appears in science too. Here is what Desmond Bernal said:

“…the important thing is not the death of the individual or species but the effective immortality of life itself, that is the effective reproducibility of genetic carrying nucleic acid molecules”

The Origin of Life