Science & Tech Quote by John Desmond Bernal

Science doesn’t move by courtroom rules, Bernal reminds us; it moves by hunches that are disciplined enough to become theories. The line is a quiet defense of the scientist’s most suspicious-looking activity: arriving at the “real” explanation before the receipts exist. Bernal’s key word is “percipient” - not merely smart, but sharply perceptive, tuned to patterns others can’t yet see. In his framing, insight is not the enemy of rigor; it’s the engine that makes rigor worth doing.

The intent is partly descriptive (how science actually happens) and partly rhetorical (why we should trust a process that routinely starts with intuition). “Seized in their essence” casts discovery as almost physical: the mind grabbing a shape in the dark. That verb choice admits the leap, even the aggression, of creative reasoning. It also implies a hierarchy inside science: a few people see the outline early, while the rest of the enterprise builds the scaffolding of proof.

Subtextually, Bernal is pushing back against the comforting myth that scientific knowledge is simply accumulated fact-by-fact. He’s arguing that explanation precedes verification, which can be read as a warning to outsiders who demand immediate proof before granting legitimacy - and a warning to insiders that proof is a lagging indicator, not a compass.

Context matters: Bernal worked in a century when physics and biology were reshaped by big conceptual bets (quantum theory, molecular structure) that looked like audacity until experiments caught up. He’s validating that audacity while still insisting it eventually has to report to evidence.