Now the whole point about machines is they are designed not to be random. When you call up a word processing program on your computer, you don't want it to be different every time you call it up. You want it to stay the same.

Of the seven experiments, the ones that have been most investigated so far have been the pets. The dogs who know when their masters for coming home, and the sense of being stared at.

Most of nature is inherently chaotic. It's not rigidly determined in the old sense. It's not rigidly predictable.

I'm talking about science on the leading edge, where it's not clear which way things are going be cause we don't know, and I'm dealing with areas which we don't know about.

The idea is that there is a kind of memory in nature. Each kind of thing has a collective memory. So, take a squirrel living in New York now. That squirrel is being influenced by all past squirrels.

Now the whole point about machines is they are designed not to be random. When you call up a word processing program on your computer, you don't want it to be different every time you call it up. You want it to stay the same.

There's a certain kind of scepticism that can't bear uncertainty.

Because a truly skeptical position would be a very uncertain one.

Right now, any opinion anyone has about whether dogs can or cannot really tell when their owner is coming home by some unknown means... nobody knows. The weight of evi dence suggests they can.

All research scientists know that writing in the passive voice is artificial; they are not disembodied observers, but people doing research.

Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.

Contemporary science is based on the philosophy of materialism, which claims that all reality is material or physical.

For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.

I do vote but I don't think that any political party represents my point of view.

I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science.

I learnt about plants from my father, who was a herbalist and an amateur microscopist.

I still say the 'Lord's Prayer' every day. It covers a lot of ground in our relation to the world.

I think hard work is what gets most people to the top.

I think that the 'laws of nature' are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws.

I went through the standard scientific atheist phase when I was about 14. I bought into that package deal of science equals atheism.

In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings.

Physics is based on the assumption that certain fundamental features of nature are constant.

Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.

The sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are set free.

The simplest and cheapest of all reforms within institutional science is to switch from the passive to the active voice in writing about science.

To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn't seem to give a very full picture of the world.

Basically morphic fields are fields of habit and theyve been set up through habits of thought through habits of activity and through habits of speech. Most of our culture is habitual.

If there is no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

I said, 'Okay, it's the year 2000, I'm getting a computer and a Palm Pilot.' I know how to check my e-mail, and I've listed some phone numbers on it. Half the time the battery has gone out so I can't use it.

To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life.

I've got a computer, but I won't go near it.

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.

All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?

In OK Computer, the guitar was already moving towards a tone generator as well as a riff generator.

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.

Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that.

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

I always say that my favorite game was Original Adventure, published by both Microsoft and Apple Computer back in 1980.

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.

It would be nice to design a real briefcase - you open it up and it's your computer but it also stores your books.

I am the farthest thing from a computer genius.

I wish I could have 25,000 years of my personal family history documented in a very powerful computer or a CD-ROM that I could just pop in and my computer would never crash.

The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.

In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking.

Some people may have noticed the new computer shelf at the anchor desk. Rather than phone calls, we want to take real time e-mails, and we'll be starting that very soon.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.