Quote of the Day

The experience of research takes place as a struggle with the mystery of reality, according to the partial but original perspective offered by the scientific method. In various ways, scientists are moved by the hope of grasping the order and direction of the natural world, taking account of it in the cosmic context in which we live, and catching sight of the possible unity of the universe behind the multiplicity of forms. For the scientist in action, the basic questions relate to this struggle; they are implicitly but potentially at work in the very movement of knowledge, in research into the twists and turns and the matter of the material world. In this sense, scientific knowledge, too, is in its way a manifestation of that incurable tendency of the human being to ask why things are as they are, never satisfied with partial answers. That does not mean that the relationship between scientific knowledge and religious sense involves building an improbable bridge between two distant banks; rather, scientific research proves to have its seed and its profound roots in the human need for satisfaction and meaning.

- From Galileo to Gell-Mann: The Wonder that Inspired the Greatest Scientists of All Time: In Their Own Words by Marco Bersanelli and Marco Gargantini