Science & Tech Quote by Bill Watterson

Watterson’s jab lands because it’s aimed at a real mismatch: the scale of human awe versus the language we use to pin it down. Calling scientists “a bunch of empiricists” is intentionally deflating, like describing a cathedral as “a building with a roof.” The line carries the cadence of a kid’s complaint (very Calvin), but it’s not anti-science so much as anti-reduction. Empiricism becomes a kind of emotional bureaucracy, turning the cosmos into spreadsheets when what the speaker wants is the vertigo.

The subtext is a quiet defense of wonder as a way of knowing. Watterson’s work often stages a custody battle between imagination and adult rationality, and this quote frames science as the well-meaning adult who shows up with labels and measurements just when the room is starting to feel sacred. The word “problem” is the tell: it’s not that science is wrong, it’s that its strengths (precision, proof, repeatability) can feel like a failure of tone when you’re confronting the “unimaginable.”

Context matters: coming from a cartoonist who built entire universes out of domestic routines, Watterson is sensitive to how language either enlarges experience or shrinks it. He’s also poking at the cultural habit of treating scientific description as the only respectable description. The punchline is that empiricists aren’t ruining wonder; they’re trying to translate it. Watterson’s complaint exposes how translation always leaves something behind - usually the part that makes you look up, shut up, and feel small.