Peter Atkins quotes

Peter Atkins is a British chemist and author, prominent for his work in physical chemistry and science communication. His textbooks and popular science books have been widely used in education around the world. He is recognized for making complex scientific concepts accessible to general audiences. Here are 16 of his quotes:

I have presented the periodic table as a kind of travel guide to an imaginary country, of which the elements are the various regions. This kingdom has a geography: the elements lie in particular juxtaposition to one another, and they are used to produce goods, much as a prairie produces wheat and a lake produces fish. It also has a history. Indeed, it has three kinds of history: the elements were discovered much as the lands of the world were discovered; the kingdom was mapped, just as the world was mapped, and the relative positions of the elements came to take on a great significance; and the elements have their own cosmic history, which can be traced back to the stars. (Peter Atkins)
The kingdom is not an amorphous jumble of regions, but a closely organized state in which the character of one region is close to that of its neighbor. There are few sharp boundaries. Rather, the landscape is largely characterized by transitions ... View quote
Peter Atkins
It was a great achievement of the early chemists - with the crude experimental techniques available also with the ever-astonishing power of human reason (as potent then as now) - to discover this reduction of the world to its components, the chemical elements. Such reduction does not destroy its charm but adds understanding to sensation, and this understanding only deepens our delight. View quote
Peter Atkins
This is the kingdom of the chemical elements, the substances from which everything tangible is made. It is not an extensive country, for it consists of only a hundred or so regions (as we shall often term the elements), yet it accounts for everything material in our actual world. From the hundred elements that are at the center of our story, all planets, rocks, vegetation, and animals are made. These elements are the basis of the air, the oceans, and the Earth itself. We stand on the elements, we eat the elements, we are the elements. Because our brains are made up of elements, even our opinions are, in a sense, properties of the elements and hence inhabitants of the kingdom. View quote
Peter Atkins
Chemistry is the science of matter and the changes it can undergo. The world of chemistry therefore embraces everything material around us-the stones we stand on, the food we eat, the flesh we are made of, and the silicon we build into computers. There is nothing material beyond the reach of chemistry, be it living or dead, vegetable or mineral, on Earth or in a distant star. View quote
Peter Atkins
The general disposition of the land is one of metals in the west, giving way, as you travel eastward, to a varied landscape of nonmetals, which terminates in largely inert elements at the eastern shoreline. To the south of the mainland, there is an offshore island, which we shall call the Southern Island. It consists entirely of metals of subtly modulated personality. North of the mainland, situated rather like Iceland off the northwestern edge of Europe, lies a single, isolated region-hydrogen. This simple but gifted element is an essential outpost of the kingdom, for despite its simplicity it is rich in chemical personality. It is also the most abundant element in the universe and the fuel of the stars. View quote
Peter Atkins
Any argument that asserts that 'God did it' is a sign of a lazy mind. View quote
Peter Atkins
Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation. View quote
Peter Atkins
Chemistry begins in the stars. The stars are the source of the chemical elements, which are the building blocks of matter and the core of our subject. View quote
Peter Atkins
Truth is not arrived at by majority vote. View quote
Peter Atkins
Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion? (Peter Atkins)
Science is almost totally incompatible with religion. View quote
Peter Atkins
I regard teaching religion as purveying lies. View quote
Peter Atkins
The emergence of consciousness, like the unfolding of a leaf, relies upon restraint. View quote
Peter Atkins
The challenge of elucidating living processes -- including consciousness and all its baggage which we bundle together as 'the human spirit' -- is only one example of a challenge where hard work is paying off and science does not need to accept the false explanations peddled by religions. View quote
Peter Atkins
My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations. View quote
Peter Atkins