"A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify"
About this Quote
Szilard’s line reads like a gentle rebuke delivered in a lab coat: if you walk into a room of peers trying to “win,” you’ve already lost the plot. The phrasing is surgical. “Aim” signals discipline, not personality; it’s a professional standard. And “clarify” isn’t the soft alternative to persuasion so much as the prerequisite for anything resembling truth. In science, the enemy isn’t disagreement. It’s muddle: sloppy definitions, hidden assumptions, mismatched models that make people argue past each other while thinking they’re debating substance.
The subtext is also an ethics statement about power. Persuasion is what advertisers, politicians, and even grant writers traffic in. Clarification is what keeps a community honest when careers and reputations are on the line. Szilard, who lived through the century’s most catastrophic collision of scientific brilliance and political consequence (and helped set the atomic age in motion), knew how quickly “convincing” can become a substitute for “correct.” He’s drawing a border between rhetoric and inquiry, warning that the tools of debate can distort the process they’re meant to serve.
Context matters: scientific discourse is adversarial by design, but ideally adversarial toward ideas, not people. “With his colleagues” implies a shared project and a shared vocabulary; the goal isn’t conversion but convergence, achieved by making claims legible enough to be tested, replicated, or rejected. It’s a modest sentence that smuggles in a high bar: respect your audience by making your thinking clear, then let reality do the persuading.
The subtext is also an ethics statement about power. Persuasion is what advertisers, politicians, and even grant writers traffic in. Clarification is what keeps a community honest when careers and reputations are on the line. Szilard, who lived through the century’s most catastrophic collision of scientific brilliance and political consequence (and helped set the atomic age in motion), knew how quickly “convincing” can become a substitute for “correct.” He’s drawing a border between rhetoric and inquiry, warning that the tools of debate can distort the process they’re meant to serve.
Context matters: scientific discourse is adversarial by design, but ideally adversarial toward ideas, not people. “With his colleagues” implies a shared project and a shared vocabulary; the goal isn’t conversion but convergence, achieved by making claims legible enough to be tested, replicated, or rejected. It’s a modest sentence that smuggles in a high bar: respect your audience by making your thinking clear, then let reality do the persuading.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Leo
Add to List
