Jeff Goldblum, playing mathematician Ian Malcolm in 1993’s Jurassic Park, delivered one of the films most central and memorable monologs as he lectures Hammond on the hubris and dangers of the dinosaur amusement park.

The problem with scientific power you’ve used is it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don’t take the responsibility for it.

It is also for my money the height of hypocrisy. What Malcolm is describing the process by which science advances. No one reinvents all of the processes, theories, and techniques that came before them All scientists stand on the shoulders of those that came before and if they are lucky add a bit of new knowledge, new understanding for those that come after. Malcolm as a mathematician did not reinvent calculus but learned what others had invented and discovered before adding his own discoveries in the field of chaos.

The questions should have Hammond recreated dinosaurs? Should he have proceeded more cautiously before turning it into a park? Are valid important questions but do not give me this crap that the science didn’t require discipline and it was somehow unearned.