Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of order into incoherence; it,… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won't do. It is an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
It is ... a sign of the times-though our brothers of physics and chemistry may smile to hear me say so-that biology… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
It is naïve to suppose that the acceptance of evolution theory depends upon the evidence of a number of so-called "proofs"; it… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century and a terminal product as well-something akin to a… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
[A certain class of explanations in science are] analgesics that dull the ache of incomprehension without removing the cause. — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs. — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed:… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
I reckon that for all the use it has been to science about four-fifths of my time has been wasted, and I believe this… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility;… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image