Science Quote by Nils-Axel Morner

Morner is drawing a bright, almost nostalgic line between science as lived experience and science as screen-based abstraction. The exclamation point matters: this is less a method note than a rebuke, aimed at a research culture he sees drifting toward model-first thinking. His “we” is doing rhetorical work, too. It’s a claim of disciplinary identity: geologists as people who dirty their boots, who let stubborn physical evidence set the agenda before equations do. In an era when climate and sea-level debates are fought with competing simulations, Morner is insisting that credibility begins with observation, not computation.

The subtext is a warning about epistemic inversion. Models aren’t condemned; they’re demoted. “Then we can try to make a model” frames computation as a secondary act of synthesis, valuable but contingent. That ordering implies a critique of confirmation bias: if you start with a model, you risk going into the world hunting only for what fits. By putting “computerization” in slightly awkward, almost pejorative phrasing, he signals skepticism toward the institutional prestige of computational outputs and the way they can launder uncertainty into polished authority.

Context sharpens the edge. Morner was a prominent, controversial voice on sea-level change who often challenged mainstream projections. This line functions as a legitimacy play: he grounds dissent not in contrarianism, but in a classic scientific virtue - empiricism. It’s persuasive because it taps a real cultural anxiety: when expertise becomes too mediated by models, the public starts to wonder whether anyone is still looking out the window.