If it were possible to blot entirely out the whole of German metaphysics, the whole of Christian theology, and the whole of the Roman and English systems of technical jurisprudence, and to direct all the minds that expand their faculties in these three pursuits to useful speculation or practice, there would be talent enough set at liberty to change the face of the world.
John Stuart Mill, ‘Diary’ (February 7, 1854), in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 652
Whereas many philosophers and theologians appear to possess an emotional attachment to their theories and ideas which requires them to believe them, most scientists tend to regard their ideas differently. They are interested in formulating many logically consistent possibilities, leaving any judgment regarding their truth to observation. Scientists feel no qualms about suggesting different but mutually exclusive explanations for the same phenomenon.
John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford, 1986, p. 15