TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index E > Category: Expression

Expression Quotes (181 quotes)

… what is physical is subject to the laws of mathematics, and what is spiritual to the laws of God, and the laws of mathematics are but the expression of the thoughts of God.
In 'The Uses of Mathesis', Bibliotheca Sacra, 32, 523.
Science quotes on:  |  God (776)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Physical (518)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thought (995)

“Social justice”—the expression of universal hatred.
In The Decline and Fall of Science (1976), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Hatred (21)  |  Justice (40)  |  Social (261)  |  Universal (198)

[Describing a freshman seminar titled “How the Tabby Cat Got Her Stripes or The Silence of the Genes”:] The big idea we start with is: “How is the genome interpreted, and how are stable decisions that affect gene expression inherited from one cell to the next? This is one of the most competitive areas of molecular biology at the moment, and the students are reading papers that in some instances were published this past year. As a consequence, one of the most common answers I have to give to their questions is, “We just don't know.”
As quoted by Kitta MacPherson in 'Exploring Epigenetics: President Shirley Tilghman in the Classroom,' Princeton University Undergraduate Admission web page accessed 14 Oct 2013.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Biology (232)  |  Cat (52)  |  Cell (146)  |  Common (447)  |  Competitive (8)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Decision (98)  |  Effect (414)  |  Freshman (3)  |  Gene (105)  |  Genome (15)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inherit (35)  |  Inherited (21)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Molecular Biology (27)  |  Moment (260)  |  Most (1728)  |  Next (238)  |  Paper (192)  |  Past (355)  |  Publication (102)  |  Question (649)  |  Reading (136)  |  Recent (78)  |  Seminar (5)  |  Silence (62)  |  Stable (32)  |  Start (237)  |  Student (317)  |  Year (963)

[In 1909,] Paris was the center of the aviation world. Aeronautics was neither an industry nor even a science; both were yet to come. It was an “art” and I might say a “passion”. Indeed, at that time it was a miracle. It meant the realization of legends and dreams that had existed for thousands of years and had been pronounced again and again as impossible by scientific authorities. Therefore, even the brief and unsteady flights of that period were deeply impressive. Many times I observed expressions of joy and tears in the eyes of witnesses who for the first time watched a flying machine carrying a man in the air.
In address (16 Nov 1964) presented to the Wings Club, New York City, Recollections and Thoughts of a Pioneer (1964), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Aeronautics (15)  |  Air (366)  |  Art (680)  |  Aviation (8)  |  Both (496)  |  Brief (37)  |  Carry (130)  |  Center (35)  |  Dream (222)  |  Exist (458)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Flight (101)  |  Flying (74)  |  Flying Machine (13)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Industry (159)  |  Joy (117)  |  Legend (18)  |  Machine (271)  |  Man (2252)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Paris (11)  |  Passion (121)  |  Period (200)  |  Realization (44)  |  Say (989)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Tear (48)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Watch (118)  |  Witness (57)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

[In the Royal Society, there] has been, a constant Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars.
The History of the Royal Society (1667), 113.
Science quotes on:  |  Amplification (3)  |  Back (395)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Constant (148)  |  Countryman (4)  |  Deliver (30)  |  Digression (3)  |  Easiness (4)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Member (42)  |  Merchant (7)  |  Native (41)  |  Natural (810)  |  Number (710)  |  Plainness (2)  |  Positive (98)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Purity (15)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Return (133)  |  Royal (56)  |  Royal Society (17)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Sense (785)  |  Society (350)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Style (24)  |  Swelling (5)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wit (61)  |  Word (650)

[T]he idea of protoplasm, which was really a name for our ignorance, [is] only a little less misleading than the expression “Vital force”.
Adventures of a Biologist (1940), 118.
Science quotes on:  |  Force (497)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Little (717)  |  Misleading (21)  |  Name (359)  |  Protoplasm (13)  |  Vital (89)  |  Vital Force (7)

[William Gull] sought to teach his students not to think they could cure disease. “The best of all remedies,” he would say, “is a warm bed.” “ I can tell you something of how you get ill, but I cannot tell you how you get well.” “ Healing is accomplished ‘By an operation more divine Than tongue or pen can give expression to.’” “Remedies act best when there is a tendency to get well.”
Stated in Sir William Withey Gull and Theodore Dyke Acland (ed.), A Collection of the Published Writings of William Withey Gull (1896), xxvi.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Act (278)  |  Bed (25)  |  Best (467)  |  Cure (124)  |  Disease (340)  |  Divine (112)  |  Sir William Withey Gull (39)  |  Healing (28)  |  More (2558)  |  Operation (221)  |  Pen (21)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Student (317)  |  Teach (299)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Warm (74)

Temporis fila.
Child of time.
A favourite expression of Linnaeus.
Quoted in Tore Frängsmyr, 'Linnaeus as a Geologist', in Tore Frangsmyr (ed.), Linnaeus: The Man and his Work (1983), 143.
Science quotes on:  |  Child (333)  |  French Saying (67)  |  Time (1911)

Une même expression, dont les géomètres avaient considéré les propriétés abstraites, … représente'aussi le mouvement de la lumière dans l’atmosphère, quelle détermine les lois de la diffusion de la chaleur dans la matière solide, et quelle entre dans toutes les questions principales de la théorie des probabilités.
The same expression whose abstract properties geometers had considered … represents as well the motion of light in the atmosphere, as it determines the laws of diffusion of heat in solid matter, and enters into all the chief problems of the theory of probability.
From Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822), translated by Alexander Freeman in The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Chief (99)  |  Consider (428)  |  Determine (152)  |  Diffusion (13)  |  Enter (145)  |  Geometer (24)  |  Heat (180)  |  Law (913)  |  Light (635)  |  Matter (821)  |  Motion (320)  |  Probability (135)  |  Problem (731)  |  Property (177)  |  Question (649)  |  Represent (157)  |  Same (166)  |  Solid (119)  |  Theory (1015)

A biologist, if he wishes to know how many toes a cat has, does not "frame the hypothesis that the number of feline digital extremities is 4, or 5, or 6," he simply looks at a cat and counts. A social scientist prefers the more long-winded expression every time, because it gives an entirely spurious impression of scientificness to what he is doing.
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 151.
Science quotes on:  |  Biologist (70)  |  Cat (52)  |  Count (107)  |  Digital (10)  |  Doing (277)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Impression (118)  |  Know (1538)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  More (2558)  |  Number (710)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Spurious (3)  |  Time (1911)  |  Toe (8)  |  Wind (141)

A good theoretical physicist today might find it useful to have a wide range of physical viewpoints and mathematical expressions of the same theory (for example, of quantum electrodynamics) available to him. This may be asking too much of one man. Then new students should as a class have this. If every individual student follows the same current fashion in expressing and thinking about electrodynamics or field theory, then the variety of hypotheses being generated to understand strong interactions, say, is limited. Perhaps rightly so, for possibly the chance is high that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But, on the off-chance that it is in another direction—a direction obvious from an unfashionable view of field theory—who will find it?
In his Nobel Prize Lecture (11 Dec 1965), 'The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics'. Collected in Stig Lundqvist, Nobel Lectures: Physics, 1963-1970 (1998), 177.
Science quotes on:  |  Asking (74)  |  Available (80)  |  Being (1276)  |  Chance (244)  |  Class (168)  |  Current (122)  |  Direction (185)  |  Electrodynamics (10)  |  Fashionable (15)  |  Field (378)  |  Find (1014)  |  Follow (389)  |  Generate (16)  |  Good (906)  |  High (370)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  New (1273)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Electrodynamics (3)  |  Range (104)  |  Say (989)  |  Strong (182)  |  Student (317)  |  Theoretical Physicist (21)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Today (321)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unfashionable (2)  |  Useful (260)  |  Variety (138)  |  View (496)  |  Viewpoint (13)  |  Wide (97)  |  Will (2350)

A historical fact is rather like the flamingo that Alice in Wonderland tried to use as a croquet mallet. As soon as she got its neck nicely straightened out and was ready to hit the ball, it would turn and look at her with a puzzled expression, and any biographer knows that what is called a “fact” has a way of doing the same.
From 'Getting at the Truth', The Saturday Review (19 Sep 1953), 36, No. 38, 11. Excerpted in Meta Riley Emberger and Marian Ross Hall, Scientific Writing (1955), 399.
Science quotes on:  |  Alice In Wonderland (8)  |  Ball (64)  |  Biographer (2)  |  Call (781)  |  Croquet (2)  |  Doing (277)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Flamingo (2)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Know (1538)  |  Look (584)  |  Neck (15)  |  Puzzled (2)  |  Soon (187)  |  Straight (75)  |  Turn (454)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)

Above, far above the prejudices and passions of men soar the laws of nature. Eternal and immutable, they are the expression of the creative power they represent what is, what must be, what otherwise could not be. Man can come to understand them: he is incapable of changing them.
From Cours d’Economie Politique (1896-97), as given in Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences (1993), Issues 131-133, 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Creative (144)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Far (158)  |  Immutable (26)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Otherwise (26)  |  Passion (121)  |  Power (771)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Represent (157)  |  Soar (23)  |  Understand (648)

Again, it [the Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. Supposing for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
In Richard Taylor (ed.), 'Translator’s Notes to M. Menabrea’s Memoir', Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals (1843), 3, Note A, 694. Her notes were appended to L.F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers, 'Article XXIX: Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq.', Bibliothèque Universelle de Gnve (Oct 1842), No. 82.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Analytical Engine (5)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Composition (86)  |  Degree (277)  |  Elaborate (31)  |  Engine (99)  |  Express (192)  |  Extent (142)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Music (133)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Notation (28)  |  Number (710)  |  Object (438)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pitch (17)  |  Relation (166)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sound (187)  |  Supposing (3)  |  Susceptible (8)  |  Thing (1914)

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghost-like character of the real variable.
In Science and Philosophy (1948), 116.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Approach (112)  |  Best (467)  |  Character (259)  |  Convey (17)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Essentially (15)  |  Exemplify (5)  |  Factor (47)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Importance (299)  |  Instance (33)  |  Language (308)  |  Mark (47)  |  Method (531)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Paper (192)  |  Particular (80)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Real (159)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Relative (42)  |  Reverse (33)  |  Structure (365)  |  Thought (995)  |  Variable (37)  |  Write (250)

All your names I and my friend approve of or nearly all as to sense & expression, but I am frightened by their length & sound when compounded. As you will see I have taken deoxide and skaiode because they agree best with my natural standard East and West. I like Anode & Cathode better as to sound, but all to whom I have shewn them have supposed at first that by Anode I meant No way.
Letter (3 May 1834) to William Whewell, who coined the terms. In Frank A. J. L. James (ed.), The Correspondence of Michael Faraday (1993), Vol. 2, 181. Note: Here “No way” is presumably not an idiomatic exclamation, but a misinterpretation from the Greek prefix, -a “not”or “away from,” and hodos meaning “way.” The Greek ἄνοδος anodos means “way up” or “ascent.”
Science quotes on:  |  Anode (4)  |  Best (467)  |  Better (493)  |  Compound (117)  |  Electrolysis (8)  |  First (1302)  |  Friend (180)  |  Name (359)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sound (187)  |  Way (1214)  |  William Whewell (70)  |  Will (2350)

Although few expressions are more commonly used in writing about science than “science revolution,” there is a continuing debate as to the propriety of applying the concept and term “revolution” to scientific change. There is, furthermore, a wide difference of opinion as to what may constitute a revolution. And although almost all historians would agree that a genuine alteration of an exceptionally radical nature (the Scientific Revolution) occurred in the sciences at some time between the late fifteenth (or early sixteenth) century and the end of the seventeenth century, the question of exactly when this revolution occurred arouses as much scholarly disagreement as the cognate question of precisely what it was.
The Newtonian Revolution (1980), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  15th Century (5)  |  16th Century (3)  |  17th Century (20)  |  Alteration (31)  |  Arouse (13)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  Cognate (2)  |  Concept (242)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Debate (40)  |  Difference (355)  |  Disagreement (14)  |  Early (196)  |  End (603)  |  Exceptional (19)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Historian (59)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Late (119)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occurred (2)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Propriety (6)  |  Question (649)  |  Radical (28)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Revolution (13)  |  Term (357)  |  Time (1911)  |  Wide (97)  |  Writing (192)

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
'The Lie of the Truth'. (1938) translated by Phil Powrie (1989). In Carol A. Dingle, Memorable Quotations (2000), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Double (18)  |  Error (339)  |  Face (214)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Phantom (9)  |  Reality (274)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Truth (1109)

Art is an expression of the world order and is, therefore, orderly, organic, subject to mathematical law, and susceptible to mathematical analysis.
In 'The Theosophic View of the Art of Architecture', The Beautiful Necessity, Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture (2nd ed., 1922), Preface to the Second Edition, 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Art (680)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Order (638)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Organic (161)  |  Subject (543)  |  Susceptible (8)  |  World (1850)

As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor] sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene expression.
The Nerve Growth Factor: Thirty-five Years Later, Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1986).
Science quotes on:  |  Evolution (635)  |  Gene (105)  |  Growth (200)  |  Large (398)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Organ (118)  |  Presence (63)  |  Snake (29)

As physicists have arranged an extensive series of effects under the general term of Heat, so they have named another series Light, and a third they have called Electricity. We find ... that all these principles are capable of being produced through the medium of living bodies, for nearly all animals have the power of evolving heat; many insects, moreover, can voluntarily emit light; and the property of producing electricity is well evinced in the terrible shock of the electric eel, as well as in that of some other creatures. We are indeed in the habit of talking of the Electric fluid, or the Galvanic fluid, but this in reality is nothing but a licence of expression suitable to our finite and material notions.
In the Third Edition of Elements of Electro-Metallurgy: or The Art of Working in Metals by the Galvanic Fluid (1851), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Call (781)  |  Capable (174)  |  Creature (242)  |  Effect (414)  |  Electric (76)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Emit (15)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Find (1014)  |  Finding (34)  |  Finite (60)  |  Fluid (54)  |  General (521)  |  Habit (174)  |  Heat (180)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Insect (89)  |  Light (635)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Body (3)  |  Material (366)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notion (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Power (771)  |  Principle (530)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Property (177)  |  Reality (274)  |  Series (153)  |  Shock (38)  |  Talking (76)  |  Term (357)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Through (846)

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty eyed: solemn because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty eyed because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare. If taunted he would probably mumble something about “Induction” and “Establishing the Laws of Nature”, but if anyone working in a laboratory professed to be trying to establish the Laws of Nature by induction, we should think he was overdue for leave.
From a Jayne Lecture (1968), 'Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought', printed in Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society (1969), Vol. 75. Lecture republished as Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (2009), 11. Also included in Peter Medawar, Pluto’s Republic (1984), 80.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Conceal (19)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Declare (48)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feel (371)  |  Induction (81)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Method (531)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Profess (21)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Solemn (20)  |  Something (718)  |  Think (1122)  |  Trying (144)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wondering (3)

At their best, at their most creative, science and engineering are attributes of liberty—noble expressions of man’s God-given right to investigate and explore the universe without fear of social or political or religious reprisals.
From 'Sarnoff Honored by I.R.E.', in Department of Information of the Radio Corporation of America, Radio Age: Research, Manufacturing, Communications, Broadcasting (Apr 1953), 12, No. 2, 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Attribute (65)  |  Best (467)  |  Creative (144)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Fear (212)  |  God (776)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Liberty (29)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Noble (93)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Reprisal (2)  |  Right (473)  |  Science And Engineering (16)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Universe (900)

Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion but it would take an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal can blush.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), 310.
Science quotes on:  |  Amount (153)  |  Animal (651)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Monkey (57)  |  Most (1728)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Passion (121)  |  Peculiar (115)

But, indeed, the science of logic and the whole framework of philosophical thought men have kept since the days of Plato and Aristotle, has no more essential permanence as a final expression of the human mind, than the Scottish Longer Catechism.
A Modern Utopia (1904, 2006), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Catechism (2)  |  Essential (210)  |  Final (121)  |  Framework (33)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Permanence (26)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Scottish (4)  |  Thought (995)  |  Whole (756)

Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it seems to me that an exact homology exists between painting and poetry on the one hand and modern chemistry and modern algebra on the other. In poetry and algebra we have the pure idea elaborated and expressed through the vehicle of language, in painting and chemistry the idea enveloped in matter, depending in part on manual processes and the resources of art for its due manifestation.
Attributed.
Science quotes on:  |  Academy (37)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Art (680)  |  Robert Browning (7)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Due (143)  |  Elaborated (7)  |  Elaboration (11)  |  Envelope (6)  |  Exist (458)  |  Express (192)  |  Idea (881)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Influence (231)  |  Language (308)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Manual (7)  |  Master (182)  |  Matter (821)  |  Modern (402)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Painting (46)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Process (439)  |  Pure (299)  |  Quickening (4)  |  Royal (56)  |  Royal Academy (3)  |  Suggestive (4)  |  Lord Alfred Tennyson (26)  |  Through (846)  |  Vehicle (11)  |  Visit (27)

Consciousness… does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.
Source of the expression “stream of consciousness”.
The Principles of Psychology (1890), Vol. 1, 239.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Describe (132)  |  Do (1905)  |  First (1302)  |  Flow (89)  |  Joint (31)  |  Life (1870)  |  Metaphor (37)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Present (630)  |  River (140)  |  Stream (83)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Talking (76)  |  Thought (995)  |  Train (118)  |  Word (650)

Disease is largely a removable evil. It continues to afflict humanity, not only because of incomplete knowledge of its causes and lack of individual and public hygiene, but also because it is extensively fostered by harsh economic and industrial conditions and by wretched housing in congested communities. ... The reduction of the death rate is the principal statistical expression and index of human social progress. It means the saving and lengthening of lives of thousands of citizens, the extension of the vigorous working period well into old age, and the prevention of inefficiency, misery, and suffering. These advances can be made by organized social effort. Public health is purchasable. (1911)
Quoted in Evelynn Maxine Hammonds, Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930(1999), 221.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Affliction (6)  |  Age (509)  |  Cause (561)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Community (111)  |  Condition (362)  |  Congestion (2)  |  Continue (179)  |  Death (406)  |  Disease (340)  |  Economic (84)  |  Economy (59)  |  Effort (243)  |  Evil (122)  |  Extension (60)  |  Foster (12)  |  Health (210)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Hygiene (13)  |  Incomplete (31)  |  Incompleteness (2)  |  Individual (420)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lack (127)  |  Live (650)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Misery (31)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Period (200)  |  Prevention (37)  |  Principal (69)  |  Progress (492)  |  Public Health (12)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Progress (3)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Wretched (8)

Divers of Hermetic Books have such involv’d Obscuritys that they may justly be compar’d to Riddles written in Cyphers. For after a Man has surmounted the difficulty of decyphering the Words & Terms, he finds a new & greater difficulty to discover ye meaning of the seemingly plain Expression.
Fragment In Boyle papers. Cited by Lawrence Principe, 'Boyle's Alchemical Pursuits', In M. Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle Reconsidered (1994), 95
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemy (31)  |  Book (413)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Discover (571)  |  Find (1014)  |  Greater (288)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meaning (244)  |  New (1273)  |  Riddle (28)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Word (650)

During the half-century that has elapsed since the enunciation of the cell-theory by Schleiden and Schwann, in 1838-39, it has became ever more clearly apparent that the key to all ultimate biological problems must, in the last analysis, be sought in the cell. It was the cell-theory that first brought the structure of plants and animals under one point of view by revealing their common plan of organization. It was through the cell-theory that Kolliker and Remak opened the way to an understanding of the nature of embryological development, and the law of genetic continuity lying at the basis of inheritance. It was the cell-­theory again which, in the hands of Virchaw and Max Schultze, inaugurated a new era in the history of physiology and pathology, by showing that all the various functions of the body, in health and in disease, are but the outward expression of cell­-activities. And at a still later day it was through the cell-theory that Hertwig, Fol, Van Beneden, and Strasburger solved the long-standing riddle of the fertilization of the egg, and the mechanism of hereditary transmission. No other biological generalization, save only the theory of organic evolution, has brought so many apparently diverse phenomena under a common point of view or has accomplished more far the unification of knowledge. The cell-theory must therefore be placed beside the evolution-theory as one of the foundation stones of modern biology.
In The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Animal (651)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Basis (180)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Body (557)  |  Cell Theory (4)  |  Century (319)  |  Common (447)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Development (441)  |  Disease (340)  |  Egg (71)  |  Embryo (30)  |  Enunciation (7)  |  Era (51)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fertilization (15)  |  First (1302)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Function (235)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Health (210)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Oskar Hertwig (2)  |  History (716)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Key (56)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Long (778)  |  Lying (55)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pathology (19)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Plan (122)  |  Plant (320)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Problem (731)  |  Robert Remak (2)  |  Riddle (28)  |  Save (126)  |  Theodor Schwann (12)  |  Still (614)  |  Stone (168)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Unification (11)  |  Various (205)  |  View (496)  |  Rudolf Virchow (50)  |  Way (1214)

Each of us has read somewhere that in New Guinea pidgin the word for 'piano' is (I use English spelling) 'this fellow you hit teeth belonging to him he squeal all same pig'. I am inclined to doubt whether this expression is authentic; it looks just like the kind of thing a visitor to the Islands would facetiously invent. But I accept 'cut grass belong head belong me' for 'haircut' as genuine... Such phrases seem very funny to us, and make us feel very superior to the ignorant foreigners who use long winded expressions for simple matters. And then it is our turn to name quite a simple thing, a small uncomplicated molecule consisting of nothing more than a measly 11 carbons, seven hydrogens, one nitrogen and six oxygens. We sharpen our pencils, consult our rule books and at last come up with 3-[(1, 3- dihydro-1, 3-dioxo-2H-isoindol-2-yl) oxy]-3-oxopropanoic acid. A name like that could drive any self-respecting Papuan to piano-playing.
The Chemist's English (1990), 3rd Edition, 57.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acid (83)  |  Authentic (9)  |  Belong (168)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Book (413)  |  Carbon (68)  |  Complication (30)  |  Cut (116)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Feel (371)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Foreigner (3)  |  Funny (11)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Grass (49)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Invention (400)  |  Island (49)  |  Kind (564)  |  Last (425)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Matter (821)  |  Molecule (185)  |  More (2558)  |  Name (359)  |  New (1273)  |  New Guinea (4)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Pencil (20)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Piano (12)  |  Playing (42)  |  Read (308)  |  Rule (307)  |  Self (268)  |  Sharpen (22)  |  Simple (426)  |  Small (489)  |  Spelling (8)  |  Superior (88)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Turn (454)  |  Use (771)  |  Wind (141)  |  Word (650)

Earlier theories … were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the “big bang” expression.]
From microfilmed Speaker's Copy of a radio script held at the BBC Written Archive Centre, for Hoyle's radio talk on the BBC Third Programme (28 Mar 1949). The date and time of the broadcast, 6:30pm, are given in that week’s Radio Times. The quote, with these references given in footnotes, in Simon Mitton, Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science (2011), 127-128 and 332. The text of the talk, the first printed use of the “big bang” expression, in the BBC’s The Listener magazine (7 Apr 1949), Vol.41, 568.
Science quotes on:  |  Bang (29)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Creation (350)  |  Early (196)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Past (355)  |  Remote (86)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)

Economists use the expression “opportunity costs” for losses incurred through certain choices made over others, including ignorance and inaction. For systematics, or more precisely the neglect of systematics and the biological research dependent upon it, the costs are very high.
In 'Edward O. Wilson: The Biological Diversity Crisis: A Challenge to Science', Issues in Science and Technology (Fall 1985), 2, No. 1, 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Certain (557)  |  Choice (114)  |  Cost (94)  |  Economist (20)  |  Funding (20)  |  High (370)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Inaction (4)  |  Incur (4)  |  Loss (117)  |  More (2558)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Other (2233)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Research (753)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Systematics (4)  |  Through (846)  |  Use (771)

Endowed with two qualities, which seemed incompatible with each other, a volcanic imagination and a pertinacity of intellect which the most tedious numerical calculations could not daunt, Kepler conjectured that the movements of the celestial bodies must be connected together by simple laws, or, to use his own expression, by harmonic laws. These laws he undertook to discover. A thousand fruitless attempts, errors of calculation inseparable from a colossal undertaking, did not prevent him a single instant from advancing resolutely toward the goal of which he imagined he had obtained a glimpse. Twenty-two years were employed by him in this investigation, and still he was not weary of it! What, in reality, are twenty-two years of labor to him who is about to become the legislator of worlds; who shall inscribe his name in ineffaceable characters upon the frontispiece of an immortal code; who shall be able to exclaim in dithyrambic language, and without incurring the reproach of anyone, “The die is cast; I have written my book; it will be read either in the present age or by posterity, it matters not which; it may well await a reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an interpreter of his words.”
In 'Eulogy on Laplace', in Smithsonian Report for the year 1874 (1875), 131-132.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Age (509)  |  Anyone (38)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Await (6)  |  Become (821)  |  Body (557)  |  Book (413)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Cast (69)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Character (259)  |  Code (31)  |  Colossal (15)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Connect (126)  |  Die (94)  |  Discover (571)  |  Employ (115)  |  Endow (17)  |  Endowed (52)  |  Error (339)  |  Exclaim (15)  |  Frontispiece (2)  |  Fruitless (9)  |  Glimpse (16)  |  Goal (155)  |  God (776)  |  Harmonic (4)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Incompatible (4)  |  Incur (4)  |  Inscribe (4)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Instant (46)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Interpreter (8)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Johannes Kepler (95)  |  Labor (200)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Legislator (4)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Matter (821)  |  Most (1728)  |  Movement (162)  |  Must (1525)  |  Name (359)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pertinacity (2)  |  Posterity (29)  |  Present (630)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Quality (139)  |  Read (308)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reproach (4)  |  Resolutely (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Single (365)  |  Still (614)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Together (392)  |  Toward (45)  |  Two (936)  |  Undertake (35)  |  Undertaking (17)  |  Use (771)  |  Volcano (46)  |  Wait (66)  |  Weary (11)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)  |  Year (963)

Energy is the measure of that which passes from one atom to another in the course of their transformations. A unifying power, then, but also, because the atom appears to become enriched or exhausted in the course of the exchange, the expression of structure.
In Teilhard de Chardin and Bernard Wall (trans.), The Phenomenon of Man (1959, 2008), 42. Originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955).
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Atom (381)  |  Become (821)  |  Course (413)  |  Energy (373)  |  Enrich (27)  |  Exchange (38)  |  Exhaust (22)  |  Measure (241)  |  Pass (241)  |  Power (771)  |  Structure (365)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Unify (7)

Equations are Expressions of Arithmetical Computation, and properly have no place in Geometry, except as far as Quantities truly Geometrical (that is, Lines, Surfaces, Solids, and Proportions) may be said to be some equal to others. Multiplications, Divisions, and such sort of Computations, are newly received into Geometry, and that unwarily, and contrary to the first Design of this Science. For whosoever considers the Construction of a Problem by a right Line and a Circle, found out by the first Geometricians, will easily perceive that Geometry was invented that we might expeditiously avoid, by drawing Lines, the Tediousness of Computation. Therefore these two Sciences ought not to be confounded. The Ancients did so industriously distinguish them from one another, that they never introduced Arithmetical Terms into Geometry. And the Moderns, by confounding both, have lost the Simplicity in which all the Elegance of Geometry consists. Wherefore that is Arithmetically more simple which is determined by the more simple Equation, but that is Geometrically more simple which is determined by the more simple drawing of Lines; and in Geometry, that ought to be reckoned best which is geometrically most simple.
In 'On the Linear Construction of Equations', Universal Arithmetic (1769), Vol. 2, 470.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Arithmetical (11)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Best (467)  |  Both (496)  |  Circle (117)  |  Computation (28)  |  Confound (21)  |  Confounding (8)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consist (223)  |  Construction (114)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Design (203)  |  Determine (152)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Division (67)  |  Draw (140)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Easily (36)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Equal (88)  |  Equation (138)  |  Far (158)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Geometrician (6)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Industrious (12)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Invent (57)  |  Line (100)  |  Lose (165)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perceive (46)  |  Place (192)  |  Problem (731)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Right (473)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Solid (119)  |  Sort (50)  |  Surface (223)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Truly (118)  |  Two (936)  |  Wherefore (2)  |  Will (2350)

Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expressions for knowledge and ignorance ; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.
In essay, 'Language', collected in Nature: An Essay ; And, Lectures on the Times (1844), 23-24.
Science quotes on:  |  Affection (44)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Behind (139)  |  Correspond (13)  |  Cunning (17)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Describe (132)  |  Distance (171)  |  Express (192)  |  Firm (47)  |  Flower (112)  |  Fox (9)  |  Heat (180)  |  Hope (321)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Image (97)  |  Innocence (13)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lamb (6)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Light (635)  |  Linguistics (39)  |  Lion (23)  |  Love (328)  |  Man (2252)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Picture (148)  |  Respectively (13)  |  Rock (176)  |  Snake (29)  |  Spite (55)  |  State (505)  |  State Of Mind (4)  |  Subtle (37)  |  Torch (13)  |  Visible (87)

Every mathematical book that is worth reading must be read “backwards and forwards”, if I may use the expression. I would modify Lagrange’s advice a little and say, “Go on, but often return to strengthen your faith.” When you come on a hard or dreary passage, pass it over; and come back to it after you have seen its importance or found the need for it further on.
In Algebra, Part 2 (1889), Preface, viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Back (395)  |  Backwards (18)  |  Book (413)  |  Dreary (6)  |  Faith (209)  |  Far (158)  |  Find (1014)  |  Forward (104)  |  Hard (246)  |  Importance (299)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modify (15)  |  Must (1525)  |  Need (320)  |  Often (109)  |  Pass (241)  |  Passage (52)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Return (133)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Strengthen (25)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Use (771)  |  Worth (172)

Every physical fact, every expression of nature, every feature of the earth, the work of any and all of those agents which make the face of the world what it is, and as we see it, is interesting and instructive. Until we get hold of a group of physical facts, we do not know what practical bearings they may have, though right-minded men know that they contain many precious jewels, which science, or the expert hand of philosophy will not fail top bring out, polished, and bright, and beautifully adapted to man's purposes.
In The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), 209-210. Maury was in particular referring to the potential use of deep-sea soundings.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Agent (73)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Bright (81)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Expert (67)  |  Face (214)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fail (191)  |  Feature (49)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Jewel (10)  |  Know (1538)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Polish (17)  |  Practical (225)  |  Precious (43)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Right (473)  |  See (1094)  |  Top (100)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere.
In Jacques Monod and Austryn Wainhouse (trans.), Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (1971), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Biosphere (14)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Direction (185)  |  Entropy (46)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Identical (55)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Irreversibility (4)  |  Irreversible (12)  |  Law (913)  |  Legitimate (26)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Process (439)  |  Say (989)  |  Second Law Of Thermodynamics (14)  |  Thermodynamics (40)  |  Time (1911)  |  View (496)

Experiments may be of two kinds: experiments of simple fact, and experiments of quantity. ...[In the latter] the conditions will ... vary, not in quality, but quantity, and the effect will also vary in quantity, so that the result of quantitative induction is also to arrive at some mathematical expression involving the quantity of each condition, and expressing the quantity of the result. In other words, we wish to know what function the effect is of its conditions. We shall find that it is one thing to obtain the numerical results, and quite another thing to detect the law obeyed by those results, the latter being an operation of an inverse and tentative character.
Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874, 1892), 439.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Character (259)  |  Condition (362)  |  Detect (45)  |  Effect (414)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Find (1014)  |  Function (235)  |  Induction (81)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Obey (46)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Operation (221)  |  Other (2233)  |  Quality (139)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Result (700)  |  Simple (426)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Two (936)  |  Variation (93)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Word (650)

Fifty years ago the successful doctor was said to need three things; a top hat to give him Authority, a paunch to give him Dignity, and piles to give him an Anxious Expression.
Anonymous
Lancet (1951), 1, 169.
Science quotes on:  |  Authority (99)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Physician (284)  |  Piles (7)  |  Successful (134)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Top (100)  |  Year (963)

First, [Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation] is mathematical in its expression…. Second, it is not exact; Einstein had to modify it…. There is always an edge of mystery, always a place where we have some fiddling around to do yet…. But the most impressive fact is that gravity is simple…. It is simple, and therefore it is beautiful…. Finally, comes the universality of the gravitational law and the fact that it extends over such enormous distances…
In The Character of Physical Law (1965, 2001), 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Distance (171)  |  Do (1905)  |  Edge (51)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Enormous (44)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  First (1302)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Gravitation (23)  |  Law Of Universal Gravitation (3)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modify (15)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Simple (426)  |  Universal (198)  |  Universality (22)

For the sake of persons of ... different types, scientific truth should be presented in different forms, and should be regarded as equally scientific, whether it appears in the robust form and the vivid coloring of a physical illustration, or in the tenuity and paleness of a symbolic expression.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Color (155)  |  Different (595)  |  Equally (129)  |  Form (976)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Person (366)  |  Physical (518)  |  Present (630)  |  Regard (312)  |  Robust (7)  |  Sake (61)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Truth (23)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Tenuity (2)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Type (171)  |  Vivid (25)

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions—largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Arrive (40)  |  Being (1276)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Confide (2)  |  Inarticulate (2)  |  Largely (14)  |  Learn (672)  |  Motive (62)  |  Reason (766)  |  Room (42)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Expression (2)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Smoking (27)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  State (505)  |  Thing (1914)  |  View (496)  |  Void (31)  |  Why (491)

Francis Galton, whose mission it seems to be to ride other men's hobbies to death, has invented the felicitous expression 'structureless germs'.
Letter from James Clerk Maxwell to Professor Lewis Campbell, 26th Sep 1874. Quoted in Lewis Campbell and William Garnett (eds.), The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1884), 299.
Science quotes on:  |  Death (406)  |  Sir Francis Galton (18)  |  Germ (54)  |  Mission (23)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ride (23)

Freud becomes one of the dramatis personae, in fact, as discoverer of the great and beautiful modern myth of psychoanalysis. By myth, I mean a poetic, dramatic expression of a hidden truth; and in placing this emphasis, I do not intend to put into question the scientific validity of psychoanalysis.
The White Hotel (1981,1993), vii.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Become (821)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dramatic (19)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Sigmund Freud (70)  |  Great (1610)  |  Mean (810)  |  Modern (402)  |  Myth (58)  |  Psychoanalysis (37)  |  Question (649)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Validity (50)

Gauss was not the son of a mathematician; Handel’s father was a surgeon, of whose musical powers nothing is known; Titian was the son and also the nephew of a lawyer, while he and his brother, Francesco Vecellio, were the first painters in a family which produced a succession of seven other artists with diminishing talents. These facts do not, however, prove that the condition of the nerve-tracts and centres of the brain, which determine the specific talent, appeared for the first time in these men: the appropriate condition surely existed previously in their parents, although it did not achieve expression. They prove, as it seems to me, that a high degree of endowment in a special direction, which we call talent, cannot have arisen from the experience of previous generations, that is, by the exercise of the brain in the same specific direction.
In 'On Heredity', Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems (1889), Vol. 1, 96.
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Appear (122)  |  Appropriate (61)  |  Artist (97)  |  Brain (281)  |  Brother (47)  |  Call (781)  |  Centre (31)  |  Condition (362)  |  Degree (277)  |  Determine (152)  |  Diminish (17)  |  Direction (185)  |  Do (1905)  |  Endowment (16)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Family (101)  |  Father (113)  |  First (1302)  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  Generation (256)  |  High (370)  |  Known (453)  |  Lawyer (27)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Music (133)  |  Nephew (2)  |  Nerve (82)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Painter (30)  |  Parent (80)  |  Power (771)  |  Previous (17)  |  Produced (187)  |  Prove (261)  |  Son (25)  |  Special (188)  |  Specific (98)  |  Succession (80)  |  Surely (101)  |  Surgeon (64)  |  Talent (99)  |  Time (1911)  |  Titian (2)

Genuine science, of course, is neutral. But its practical effects, when harnessed to the appetites of the market, are something less than neutral. Heartbeats are human, but when harnessed to a public-address system, they can be terrifying. Ordinary human appetites for comfort, prestige, or power have in history been troublesome enough, but when they are given exaggerated expression by means of applied science they promise swift destruction.
In The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1967), 93.
Science quotes on:  |  Appetite (20)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Effect (414)  |  Exaggerate (7)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Harness (25)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Market (23)  |  Means (587)  |  Neutral (15)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Power (771)  |  Practical (225)  |  Prestige (16)  |  Promise (72)  |  Swift (16)  |  System (545)  |  Terrify (12)  |  Trouble (117)

Gynaecologists are very smooth indeed. Because they have to listen to woeful and sordid symptoms they develop an expression of refinement and sympathy.
A Sense of Asher (1972), 86.
Science quotes on:  |  Develop (278)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Listen (81)  |  Refinement (19)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Symptom (38)

He should avail himself of their resources in such ways as to advance the expression of the spirit in the life of mankind. He should use them so as to afford to every human being the greatest possible opportunity for developing and expressing his distinctively human capacity as an instrument of the spirit, as a centre of sensitive and intelligent awareness of the objective universe, as a centre of love of all lovely things, and of creative action for the spirit.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Advance (298)  |  Afford (19)  |  Avail (4)  |  Awareness (42)  |  Being (1276)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Centre (31)  |  Creative (144)  |  Develop (278)  |  Distinctively (2)  |  Express (192)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Lovely (12)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Objective (96)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Possible (560)  |  Resource (74)  |  Sensitive (15)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Universe (900)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)

Heredity is the general expression of the periodicity of organic life. All generations belong to a continuous succession of waves, in which every single one resembles its predecessors and its followers.
In 'On the Principles of Animal Morphology', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1888), 15, 295. Original as Letter to Mr John Murray, communicated to the Society by Professor Sir William Turner. Page given as in collected volume published 1889.
Science quotes on:  |  Belong (168)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Follower (11)  |  General (521)  |  Generation (256)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Life (1870)  |  Organic (161)  |  Periodicity (6)  |  Predecessor (29)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Single (365)  |  Succession (80)  |  Wave (112)

History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man’s spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what may be called thought.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 154:24.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Distinct (98)  |  First (1302)  |  History (716)  |  Lie (370)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Product (166)  |  Root (121)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Thought (995)

Hitherto the principle of causality was universally accepted as an indispensable postulate of scientific research, but now we are told by some physicists that it must be thrown overboard. The fact that such an extraordinary opinion should be expressed in responsible scientific quarters is widely taken to be significant of the all-round unreliability of human knowledge. This indeed is a very serious situation.
In Max Planck and James Vincent Murphy (trans.), Where is Science Going?, (1932), 66.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Causality (11)  |  Express (192)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Indispensability (2)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Must (1525)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Overboard (3)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Postulate (42)  |  Principle (530)  |  Research (753)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Serious (98)  |  Seriousness (10)  |  Significance (114)  |  Significant (78)  |  Situation (117)  |  Telling (24)  |  Throw (45)

However far the calculating reason of the mathematician may seem separated from the bold flight of the artist’s phantasy, it must be remembered that these expressions are but momentary images snatched arbitrarily from among the activities of both. In the projection of new theories the mathematician needs as bold and creative a phantasy as the productive artist, and in the execution of the details of a composition the artist too must calculate dispassionately the means which are necessary for the successful consummation of the parts. Common to both is the creation, the generation, of forms out of mind.
From Die Entwickelung der Mathematik im Zusammenhange mit der Ausbreitung der Kultur (1893), 4. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 185. From the original German, “Wie weit auch der rechnende Verstand des Mathematikers von dem kühnen Fluge der Phantasie des Künstlers getrennt zu sein scheint, so bezeichnen diese Ausdrücke doch blosse Augenblicksbilder, die willkürlich aus der Thätigkeit Beider herausgerissen sind. Bei dem Entwurfe neuer Theorieen bedarf der Mathematiker einer ebenso kühnen und schöpferischen Phantasie wie der schaffende Künstler, und bei der Ausführung der Einzelheiten eines Werkes muss auch der Künstler kühl alle Mittel berechnen, welche zum Gelingen der Theile erforderlich sind. Gemeinsam ist Beiden die Hervorbringung, die Erzeugung der Gebilde aus dem Geiste.”
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Artist (97)  |  Bold (22)  |  Both (496)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Common (447)  |  Composition (86)  |  Consummation (7)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creative (144)  |  Detail (150)  |  Dispassionate (9)  |  Execution (25)  |  Fantasy (15)  |  Flight (101)  |  Form (976)  |  Generation (256)  |  Image (97)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Momentary (5)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Productive (37)  |  Projection (5)  |  Reason (766)  |  Remember (189)  |  Separate (151)  |  Snatch (14)  |  Successful (134)  |  Theory (1015)

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term ‘religion’ to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza ... I have not found a better expression than ‘religious’ for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Aversion (9)  |  Better (493)  |  Certain (557)  |  Clearly (45)  |  Describe (132)  |  Emotional (17)  |  Extent (142)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Least (75)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reason (766)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Show (353)  |  Spinoza (11)  |  Term (357)  |  Trust (72)  |  Understand (648)  |  Use (771)

I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. … The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul’s yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced.
In 'Science and God: A Dialogue', Forum and Century (June 1930), 83, 374. Einstein’s dialogue was with James Murphy and J.W.N. Sullivan. Excerpted in David E. Rowe and Robert J. Schulmann, Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb (2007), 230. The book introduces this quote as Einstein’s reply when Murphy asked, in the authors’ words, “how far he thought modern science might be able to go toward establishing practical ideals of life on the ruins of religious ideals.”
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Basis (180)  |  Belief (615)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Do (1905)  |  Ethic (39)  |  Ethics (53)  |  Fail (191)  |  Failure (176)  |  Formula (102)  |  Life (1870)  |  Moral (203)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nobler (3)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Soul (235)  |  Valuation (4)  |  Yearning (13)

I do not claim that intelligence, however defined, has no genetic basis–I regard it as trivially true, uninteresting, and unimportant that it does. The expression of any trait represents a complex interaction of heredity and environment ... a specific claim purporting to demonstrate a mean genetic deficiency in the intelligence of American blacks rests upon no new facts whatever and can cite no valid data in its support. It is just as likely that blacks have a genetic advantage over whites. And, either way, it doesn’t matter a damn. An individual can’t be judged by his group mean.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  American (56)  |  Basis (180)  |  Black (46)  |  Cite (8)  |  Claim (154)  |  Complex (202)  |  Damn (12)  |  Data (162)  |  Deficiency (15)  |  Define (53)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Do (1905)  |  Environment (239)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Group (83)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Individual (420)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Judge (114)  |  Likely (36)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Purport (3)  |  Regard (312)  |  Represent (157)  |  Rest (287)  |  Specific (98)  |  Support (151)  |  Trait (23)  |  True (239)  |  Unimportant (6)  |  Uninteresting (9)  |  Valid (12)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whatever (234)  |  White (132)

I do not intend to go deeply into the question how far mathematical studies, as the representatives of conscious logical reasoning, should take a more important place in school education. But it is, in reality, one of the questions of the day. In proportion as the range of science extends, its system and organization must be improved, and it must inevitably come about that individual students will find themselves compelled to go through a stricter course of training than grammar is in a position to supply. What strikes me in my own experience with students who pass from our classical schools to scientific and medical studies, is first, a certain laxity in the application of strictly universal laws. The grammatical rules, in which they have been exercised, are for the most part followed by long lists of exceptions; accordingly they are not in the habit of relying implicitly on the certainty of a legitimate deduction from a strictly universal law. Secondly, I find them for the most part too much inclined to trust to authority, even in cases where they might form an independent judgment. In fact, in philological studies, inasmuch as it is seldom possible to take in the whole of the premises at a glance, and inasmuch as the decision of disputed questions often depends on an aesthetic feeling for beauty of expression, or for the genius of the language, attainable only by long training, it must often happen that the student is referred to authorities even by the best teachers. Both faults are traceable to certain indolence and vagueness of thought, the sad effects of which are not confined to subsequent scientific studies. But certainly the best remedy for both is to be found in mathematics, where there is absolute certainty in the reasoning, and no authority is recognized but that of one’s own intelligence.
In 'On the Relation of Natural Science to Science in general', Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, translated by E. Atkinson (1900), 25-26.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Accordingly (5)  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Application (257)  |  Attainable (3)  |  Authority (99)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Best (467)  |  Both (496)  |  Case (102)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Classical (49)  |  Compel (31)  |  Confine (26)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Course (413)  |  Decision (98)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Deeply (17)  |  Depend (238)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Do (1905)  |  Education (423)  |  Effect (414)  |  Exception (74)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Experience (494)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Far (158)  |  Fault (58)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Form (976)  |  Genius (301)  |  Glance (36)  |  Grammar (15)  |  Grammatical (2)  |  Habit (174)  |  Happen (282)  |  Important (229)  |  Improve (64)  |  Inasmuch (5)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Independent (74)  |  Individual (420)  |  Indolence (8)  |  Inevitably (6)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Intend (18)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Laxity (2)  |  Legitimate (26)  |  List (10)  |  Logical (57)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Medical (31)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Often (109)  |  Organization (120)  |  Part (235)  |  Pass (241)  |  Philological (3)  |  Place (192)  |  Position (83)  |  Possible (560)  |  Premise (40)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Question (649)  |  Range (104)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Refer (14)  |  Rely (12)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Representative (14)  |  Rule (307)  |  Sadness (36)  |  School (227)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Strict (20)  |  Strictly (13)  |  Strike (72)  |  Student (317)  |  Study (701)  |  Subsequent (34)  |  Supply (100)  |  System (545)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Traceable (5)  |  Training (92)  |  Trust (72)  |  Universal (198)  |  Universal Law (4)  |  Vagueness (15)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

I don’t play accurately—anyone can play accurately—but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for life.
In 'Sebatian Melmoth', The Writings of Oscar Wilde: Epigrams, Phrases and Philosophies For the Use of the Young (1907), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Concern (239)  |  Forte (3)  |  Keep (104)  |  Life (1870)  |  Piano (12)  |  Play (116)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Wonderful (155)

I don’t think it is proper at all to take the position that C. P. Snow has: namely, that the science—the knowledge, the mathematical side of life—runs in an opposite direction to the life of spontaneous humanistic action. They supplement each other. In literature, for instance, writing sonnets: it takes a lot of practice to make that kind of structure become something that just pours out, but when it does pour out, it is possible to say things that cannot be said without the sonnet form. Form and expression are very close together.
In Diane K. Osbon (ed.), A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) (1991, 1995), 261.
Science quotes on:  |  Form (976)  |  Humanism (2)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Literature (116)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Practice (212)  |  Baron C.P. Snow (21)  |  Sonnet (5)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Structure (365)  |  Supplement (7)

I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.
From essay in Thomas Rice Henn, The Apple and the Spectroscope: Being Lectures on Poetry Designed (in the Main) for Science Students (1951), 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Call (781)  |  Cambridge (17)  |  Contact (66)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Discover (571)  |  Education (423)  |  Extent (142)  |  Feel (371)  |  Gift (105)  |  Happening (59)  |  Humanities (21)  |  Importance (299)  |  Include (93)  |  Indeed (323)  |  More (2558)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Side (236)  |  Waste (109)  |  World (1850)

I find in Geology a never failing interest, as [it] has been remarked, it creates the same gran[d] ideas respecting this world, which Astronomy do[es] for the universe.—We have seen much fine scenery that of the Tropics in its glory & luxuriance, exceeds even the language of Humboldt to describe. A Persian writer could alone do justice to it, & if he succeeded he would in England, be called the 'grandfather of all liars'.— But I have seen nothing, which more completely astonished me, than the first sight of a Savage; It was a naked Fuegian his long hair blowing about, his face besmeared with paint. There is in their countenances, an expression, which I believe to those who have not seen it, must be inconceivably wild. Standing on a rock he uttered tones & made gesticulations than which, the cries of domestic animals are far more intelligible.
Letter to Charles Whitley, 23 July 1834. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1821-1836 (1985), Vol. I, 397.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Animal (651)  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Astonish (39)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Blowing (22)  |  Call (781)  |  Completely (137)  |  Countenance (9)  |  Create (245)  |  Describe (132)  |  Do (1905)  |  Domestic (27)  |  Face (214)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Geology (240)  |  Grandfather (14)  |  Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinan von Humboldt (5)  |  Idea (881)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Interest (416)  |  Justice (40)  |  Language (308)  |  Long (778)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Persian (4)  |  Rock (176)  |  Sight (135)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Tone (22)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wild (96)  |  World (1850)  |  Writer (90)

I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.
Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866. In Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter (1887), Vol. 3, 45-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Governing (20)  |  Great (1610)  |  Letter (117)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Objection (34)  |  Reading (136)  |  Say (989)  |  Selection (130)  |  Herbert Spencer (37)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Term (357)  |  Word (650)

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
from Origin of Species (1859, 1888), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Call (781)  |  Equally (129)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Order (638)  |  Power (771)  |  Principle (530)  |  Selection (130)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Term (357)  |  Useful (260)  |  Variation (93)

I have found no better expression than ‘religious’ for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Absent (3)  |  Accessible (27)  |  Better (493)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Degenerate (14)  |  Empiricism (21)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reason (766)  |  Religious (134)  |  Uninspired (2)  |  Whenever (81)

I shall devote only a few lines to the expression of my belief in the importance of science for mankind…. … [I]t is by…daily striving after knowledge that man has raised himself to the unique position he occupies on earth, and that his power and well-being have continually increased.
In opening paragraph of 'Memorandum by Madame Curie, Member of the Committee, on the Question of International Scolarships for the Advancement of the Sciences and the Development of Laboratories' published by the League of Nations, Committee on Intellectual Co-operation, Geneva (16 Jun 1926)
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Continually (17)  |  Daily (91)  |  Devote (45)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Himself (461)  |  Importance (299)  |  Importance Of Science (2)  |  Increase (225)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Line (100)  |  Man (2252)  |  Occupy (27)  |  Position (83)  |  Power (771)  |  Raise (38)  |  Strive (53)  |  Unique (72)  |  Well-Being (5)

I should study Nature’s laws in all their crossings and unions; I should follow magnetic streams to their source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their dealings and communications with other powers and expressions of matter.
John Muir
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aurora (3)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Beginnings (5)  |  Communication (101)  |  Crossing (3)  |  Dealing (11)  |  Follow (389)  |  Law (913)  |  Magnetic (44)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ocean (216)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Ray (115)  |  Shore (25)  |  Source (101)  |  Stream (83)  |  Study (701)  |  Union (52)

I suppose that I tend to be optimistic about the future of physics. And nothing makes me more optimistic than the discovery of broken symmetries. In the seventh book of the Republic, Plato describes prisoners who are chained in a cave and can see only shadows that things outside cast on the cave wall. When released from the cave at first their eyes hurt, and for a while they think that the shadows they saw in the cave are more real than the objects they now see. But eventually their vision clears, and they can understand how beautiful the real world is. We are in such a cave, imprisoned by the limitations on the sorts of experiments we can do. In particular, we can study matter only at relatively low temperatures, where symmetries are likely to be spontaneously broken, so that nature does not appear very simple or unified. We have not been able to get out of this cave, but by looking long and hard at the shadows on the cave wall, we can at least make out the shapes of symmetries, which though broken, are exact principles governing all phenomena, expressions of the beauty of the world outside.
In Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1989), 'Conceptual Foundations of the Unified Theory of Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions.' Nobel Lectures: Physics 1971-1980 (1992), 556.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Book (413)  |  Broken (56)  |  Cast (69)  |  Cave (17)  |  Describe (132)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Do (1905)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Eye (440)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Governing (20)  |  Hard (246)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Long (778)  |  Looking (191)  |  Low (86)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Outside (141)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Plato (80)  |  Principle (530)  |  Prisoner (8)  |  Reality (274)  |  Republic (16)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Shape (77)  |  Simple (426)  |  Study (701)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vision (127)  |  Wall (71)  |  World (1850)

I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2+2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a+b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Character (259)  |  Classification (102)  |  Extension (60)  |  Figure (162)  |  Formula (102)  |  General (521)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Learn (672)  |  Letter (117)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Operative (10)  |  Practical (225)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Say (989)  |  Think (1122)  |  Variation (93)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wisdom (235)

I was suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, and every day during the cold and succeeding hot fits had to lie down for several hours, during which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly interesting me. One day something brought to my recollection Malthus's 'Principles of Population', which I had read about twelve years before. I thought of his clear exposition of 'the positive checks to increase'—disease, accidents, war, and famine—which keep down the population of savage races to so much lower an average than that of more civilized peoples. It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species, since they evidently do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been densely crowded with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain—that is, the fittest would survive.
[The phrase 'survival of the fittest,' suggested by the writings of Thomas Robert Malthus, was expressed in those words by Herbert Spencer in 1865. Wallace saw the term in correspondence from Charles Darwin the following year, 1866. However, Wallace did not publish anything on his use of the expression until very much later, and his recollection is likely flawed.]
My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions (1905), Vol. 1, 361-362, or in reprint (2004), 190.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Attack (86)  |  Average (89)  |  Best (467)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cold (115)  |  Constant (148)  |  Correspondence (24)  |  Cunning (17)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Digestion (29)  |  Disease (340)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Effect (414)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Evidently (26)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Express (192)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Famine (18)  |  Fever (34)  |  Fit (139)  |  Flash (49)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Generation (256)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Hot (63)  |  Hour (192)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Increase (225)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Kill (100)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Thomas Robert Malthus (13)  |  Mankind (356)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Order (638)  |  People (1031)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Population (115)  |  Positive (98)  |  Principle (530)  |  Process (439)  |  Question (649)  |  Race (278)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Read (308)  |  Remain (355)  |  Saw (160)  |  Self (268)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Species (435)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Subject (543)  |  Succeeding (14)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Superior (88)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Survive (87)  |  Term (357)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)  |  War (233)  |  Whole (756)  |  Why (491)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Writing (192)  |  Year (963)

If A denotes one of the two constant traits, for example, the dominating one, a the recessive, and the Aa the hybrid form in which both are united, then the expression:
A + 2Aa + a
gives the series for the progeny of plants hybrid in a pair of differing traits.
'Experiments on Plant Hybrids' (1865). In Curt Stem and Eva R. Sherwood (eds.), The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book (1966), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Constant (148)  |  Dominant (26)  |  Form (976)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Hybrid (14)  |  Plant (320)  |  Progeny (16)  |  Recessive (6)  |  Series (153)  |  Trait (23)  |  Two (936)

If in the description of an experimental arrangement the expression 'position of a particle' can be used, then in the description of the same arrangement the expression 'velocity of a particle' can not be used, and vice versa. Experimental arrangements, one of which can be described with the help of the expression 'position of a particle' and the other with the help of the expression 'velocity' or, more exactly, 'momentum', are called complementary arrangements, and the descriptions are referred to as complementary descriptions.
Modern Science and its Philosophy (1949), 163-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Call (781)  |  Complementary (15)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Momentum (10)  |  More (2558)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particle (200)  |  Physics (564)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Vice (42)

If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Cat (52)  |  Dead (65)  |  Decay (59)  |  Entire (50)  |  Equal (88)  |  Express (192)  |  Function (235)  |  Hour (192)  |  Leave (138)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Meanwhile (2)  |  Mix (24)  |  Pardon (7)  |  Part (235)  |  Say (989)  |  Smear (3)  |  Still (614)  |  System (545)

Wilhelm Röntgen quote: If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen wit
If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow-image of the hand itself… For brevity’s sake I shall use the expression “rays”; and to distinguish them from others of this name I shall call them “X-rays”.
From 'On a New Kind of Rays' (1895). In Herbert S. Klickstein, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen: On a New Kind of Rays, A Bibliographic Study (1966), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Bone (101)  |  Brevity (8)  |  Call (781)  |  Dark (145)  |  Discharge (21)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguishing (14)  |  Hand (149)  |  Image (97)  |  Name (359)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ray (115)  |  Sake (61)  |  Screen (8)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Use (771)  |  X-ray (43)

In order that the relations between science and the age may be what they ought to be, the world at large must be made to feel that science is, in the fullest sense, a ministry of good to all, not the private possession and luxury of a few, that it is the best expression of human intelligence and not the abracadabra of a school, that it is a guiding light and not a dazzling fog.
'Hindrances to Scientific Progress', The Popular Science Monthly (Nov 1890), 38, 121.
Science quotes on:  |  Abracadabra (2)  |  Age (509)  |  Best (467)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Feel (371)  |  Few (15)  |  Fog (10)  |  Good (906)  |  Guide (107)  |  Human (1512)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Large (398)  |  Light (635)  |  Luxury (21)  |  Ministry (2)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Possession (68)  |  Privacy (7)  |  Relation (166)  |  School (227)  |  Sense (785)  |  World (1850)

In order to give my talk some local color, I wanted to imitate Schopenhauer’s style in my very title. His style distinguishes itself especially by the mode of expression associated in the past with fishwives but which today would be called “parliamentary.”
From Lecture (21 Jan 1905) given to Vienna Philosophical Society, 'On a Thesis of Schopenhauer’s', as translated in John Blackmore (ed.), Ludwig Boltzmann: His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900-1906 (1995), 143.
Science quotes on:  |  Arthur Schopenhauer (19)  |  Style (24)

In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.
In How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (2004), 174.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Condition (362)  |  English (35)  |  Express (192)  |  Familiarity (21)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  French (21)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Must (1525)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Order (638)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Peculiarity (26)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Situation (117)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Translate (21)  |  Translation (21)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Word (650)

In science, law is not a rule imposed from without, but an expression of an intrinsic process. The laws of the lawgiver are impotent beside the laws of human nature, as to his disillusion many a lawgiver has discovered.
Attributed. Peter McDonald, In The Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations (2004), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Discover (571)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Intrinsic (18)  |  Law (913)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Process (439)  |  Rule (307)

In scientific study, or, as I prefer to phrase it, in creative scholarship, the truth is the single end sought; all yields to that. The truth is supreme, not only in the vague mystical sense in which that expression has come to be a platitude, but in a special, definite, concrete sense. Facts and the immediate and necessary inductions from facts displace all pre-conceptions, all deductions from general principles, all favourite theories. Previous mental constructions are bowled over as childish play-structures by facts as they come rolling into the mind. The dearest doctrines, the most fascinating hypotheses, the most cherished creations of the reason and of the imagination perish from a mind thoroughly inspired with the scientific spirit in the presence of incompatible facts. Previous intellectual affections are crushed without hesitation and without remorse. Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions.
The Ethical Functions of Scientific Study: An Address Delivered at the Annual Commencement of the University of Michigan, 28 June 1888, 7-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Accept (198)  |  Affection (44)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Better (493)  |  Cherish (25)  |  Childish (20)  |  Conception (160)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Construction (114)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creative (144)  |  Crush (19)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Definite (114)  |  Displace (9)  |  Disposition (44)  |  End (603)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  General (521)  |  Hesitation (19)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Induction (81)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Perish (56)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Presence (63)  |  Principle (530)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Remorse (9)  |  Scholarship (22)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Sense (785)  |  Single (365)  |  Special (188)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Structure (365)  |  Study (701)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vague (50)  |  Yield (86)

In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child’s soul with poetry every day.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 8
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Child (333)  |  Continue (179)  |  German (37)  |  God (776)  |  Greek (109)  |  Hindu (4)  |  Invest (20)  |  Myth (58)  |  Poetic (7)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Search (175)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Expression (2)  |  Shape (77)  |  Soul (235)

In the expressions we adopt to prescribe physical phenomena we necessarily hover between two extremes. We either have to choose a word which implies more than we can prove, or we have to use vague and general terms which hide the essential point, instead of bringing it out. The history of electrical theories furnishes a good example.
Opening Address to the Annual Meeting of the British Association by Prof. Arthur Schuster, in Nature (4 Aug 1892), 46, 325.
Science quotes on:  |  Choice (114)  |  Choose (116)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Essential (210)  |  Example (98)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Furnish (97)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Good (906)  |  Hide (70)  |  Hiding (12)  |  History (716)  |  Hover (8)  |  Implication (25)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physical (518)  |  Point (584)  |  Proof (304)  |  Prove (261)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Vague (50)  |  Vagueness (15)  |  Word (650)

In the fall of 1967, [I was invited] to a conference … on pulsars. … In my talk, I argued that we should consider the possibility that the center of a pulsar is a gravitationally completely collapsed object. I remarked that one couldn't keep saying “gravitationally completely collapsed object” over and over. One needed a shorter descriptive phrase. “How about black hole?” asked someone in the audience. I had been searching for the right term for months, mulling it over in bed, in the bathtub, in my car, whenever I had quiet moments. Suddenly this name seemed exactly right. When I gave a more formal Sigma Xi-Phi Beta Kappa lecture … on December 29, 1967, I used the term, and then included it in the written version of the lecture published in the spring of 1968. (As it turned out, a pulsar is powered by “merely” a neutron star, not a black hole.)
[Although John Wheeler is often identified as coining the term “black hole,” he in fact merely popularized the expression. In his own words, this is his explanation of the true origin: a suggestion from an unidentified person in a conference audience.]
In Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (2000), 296-297.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Audience (28)  |  Black Hole (17)  |  Car (75)  |  Completely (137)  |  Conference (18)  |  Consider (428)  |  Descriptive (18)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fall (243)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Merely (315)  |  Moment (260)  |  Month (91)  |  More (2558)  |  Name (359)  |  Neutron (23)  |  Neutron Star (3)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Object (438)  |  Origin (250)  |  Person (366)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Power (771)  |  Pulsar (3)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Right (473)  |  Small (489)  |  Spring (140)  |  Star (460)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Term (357)  |  Turn (454)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Word (650)

In the summer of 1937, … I told Banach about an expression Johnny [von Neumann] had once used in conversation with me in Princeton before stating some non-Jewish mathematician’s result, “Die Goim haben den folgendenSatzbewiesen” (The goys have proved the following theorem). Banach, who was pure goy, thought it was one of the funniest sayings he had ever heard. He was enchanted by its implication that if the goys could do it, Johnny and I ought to be able to do it better. Johnny did not invent this joke, but he liked it and we started using it.
In Adventures of a Mathematician (1976, 1991), 107. Von Neumann, who was raised in Budapest by a Jewish family, knew the Yiddish word “goy” was equivalent to “gentile” or a non-Jew. Stefan Banach, a Polish mathematician, was raised in a Catholic family, hence “pure goy”. Ulam thus gives us the saying so often elsewhere seen attributed to von Neumann without the context: “The goys have proved the following theorem.” It is seen anecdotally as stated by von Neumann to begin a classroom lecture.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enchanted (2)  |  Funny (11)  |  Implication (25)  |  Invent (57)  |  Jewish (15)  |  Joke (90)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Originate (39)  |  Princeton (4)  |  Prove (261)  |  Pure (299)  |  Result (700)  |  Sayings (2)  |  Start (237)  |  State (505)  |  Summer (56)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Thought (995)  |  John von Neumann (29)

Investigating the conditions under which mutations occur … requires studies of mutation frequency under various methods of handling the organisms. As yet, extremely little has been done along this line. That is because, in the past, a mutation was considered a windfall, and the expression “mutation frequency” would have seemed a contradiction in terms. To attempt to study it would have seemed as absurd as to study the conditions affecting the distribution of dollar bills on the sidewalk. You were simply fortunate if you found one. … Of late, however, we may say that certain very exceptional banking houses have been found, in front of which the dollars fall more frequently—in other words, specially mutable genes have been discovered, that are beginning to yield abundant data at the hands of Nilsson-Ehle, Zeleny, Emerson, Anderson and others.
In 'Variation Due to Change in the Individual Gene', The American Naturalist (Jan-Feb 1922), 56, No. 642, 44.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurd (60)  |  Abundant (23)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Certain (557)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Data (162)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Exceptional (19)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fortunate (31)  |  Frequency (25)  |  Gene (105)  |  House (143)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Late (119)  |  Little (717)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Occur (151)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Past (355)  |  Require (229)  |  Say (989)  |  Sidewalk (2)  |  Study (701)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Various (205)  |  Windfall (2)  |  Word (650)  |  Yield (86)

Is not Cuvier the great poet of our era? Byron has given admirable expression to certain moral conflicts, but our immortal naturalist has reconstructed past worlds from a few bleached bones; has rebuilt cities, like Cadmus, with monsters’ teeth; has animated forests with all the secrets of zoology gleaned from a piece of coal; has discovered a giant population from the footprints of a mammoth.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated by Ellen Marriage in The Wild Ass’s Skin (1906), 21-22.
Science quotes on:  |  Admirable (20)  |  Animated (5)  |  Bleached (4)  |  Bone (101)  |  Lord George Gordon Byron (28)  |  Certain (557)  |  Coal (64)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Baron Georges Cuvier (34)  |  Discover (571)  |  Era (51)  |  Footprint (16)  |  Forest (161)  |  Giant (73)  |  Glean (2)  |  Great (1610)  |  Immortal (35)  |  Mammoth (9)  |  Monster (33)  |  Moral (203)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Past (355)  |  Poet (97)  |  Population (115)  |  Reconstruct (5)  |  Secret (216)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Tooth (32)  |  World (1850)  |  Zoology (38)

It appears, nevertheless, that all such simple solutions of the problem of vertebrate ancestry are without warrant. They arise from a very common tendency of the mind, against which the naturalist has to guard himself,—a tendency which finds expression in the very widespread notion that the existing anthropoid apes, and more especially the gorilla, must be looked upon as the ancestors of mankind, if once the doctrine of the descent of man from ape-like forefathers is admitted. A little reflexion suffices to show that any given living form, such as the gorilla, cannot possibly be the ancestral form from which man was derived, since ex-hypothesi that ancestral form underwent modification and development, and in so doing, ceased to exist.
'Vertebrata', entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition (1899), Vol. 24, 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Ancestry (13)  |  Anthropoid (9)  |  Ape (54)  |  Arise (162)  |  Common (447)  |  Descent (30)  |  Descent Of Man (6)  |  Development (441)  |  Doing (277)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Gorilla (19)  |  Himself (461)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Modification (57)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Notion (120)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Problem (731)  |  Show (353)  |  Simple (426)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Vertebrate (22)  |  Warrant (8)  |  Widespread (23)

It is a good thing for a physician to have prematurely grey hair and itching piles. The first makes him appear to know more than he does, and the second gives him an expression of concern which the patient interprets as being on his behalf.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Behalf (4)  |  Being (1276)  |  Concern (239)  |  First (1302)  |  Give (208)  |  Good (906)  |  Grey (10)  |  Hair (25)  |  Interpret (25)  |  Itch (11)  |  Know (1538)  |  More (2558)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Pile (12)  |  Piles (7)  |  Premature (22)  |  Second (66)  |  Thing (1914)

It is curious to observe how differently these great men [Plato and Bacon] estimated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take Arithmetic for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shop-keepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.
Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge only on account of its uses with reference to that visible and tangible world which Plato so much despised. He speaks with scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later Platonists, and laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters of curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for purposes of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to leave these trifles, and employ themselves in framing convenient expressions which may be of use in physical researches.
In 'Lord Bacon', Edinburgh Review (Jul 1837). Collected in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (1857), Vol. 1, 394.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Advise (7)  |  Apply (170)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Arithmetician (3)  |  Bacon (4)  |  Being (1276)  |  Branch (155)  |  Buy (21)  |  Compute (19)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Convenience (54)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Curious (95)  |  Despise (16)  |  Different (595)  |  Disciple (8)  |  Employ (115)  |  Essence (85)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Estimates of Mathematics (30)  |  Example (98)  |  Exertion (17)  |  Fix (34)  |  Frame (26)  |  Great (1610)  |  Habituate (3)  |  Immutable (26)  |  Important (229)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lament (11)  |  Late (119)  |  Learn (672)  |  Leave (138)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Merchant (7)  |  Mere (86)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Mystical (9)  |  Number (710)  |  Observe (179)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Physical (518)  |  Plato (80)  |  Platonist (2)  |  Power (771)  |  Propensity (9)  |  Property (177)  |  Pure (299)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Raise (38)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Reference (33)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Research (753)  |  Scorn (12)  |  Sell (15)  |  Shifting (5)  |  Solid (119)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Study (701)  |  Tangible (15)  |  Tell (344)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Transaction (13)  |  Travel (125)  |  Travelling (17)  |  Trifle (18)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Visible (87)  |  Whole (756)  |  Withdraw (11)  |  World (1850)

It is most interesting to observe into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION. The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and that is,—DEVELOPMENT. Nor may even these be after all twain, but only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of that unity which man's wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), 360.
Science quotes on:  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Creation (350)  |  Deity (22)  |  Department (93)  |  Development (441)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Field (378)  |  Final (121)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Great (1610)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observe (179)  |  Organic (161)  |  Other (2233)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Rest (287)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Separate (151)  |  Small (489)  |  Still (614)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Ultimately (56)  |  Unity (81)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wit (61)

It is natural for man to relate the units of distance by which he travels to the dimensions of the globe that he inhabits. Thus, in moving about the earth, he may know by the simple denomination of distance its proportion to the whole circuit of the earth. This has the further advantage of making nautical and celestial measurements correspond. The navigator often needs to determine, one from the other, the distance he has traversed from the celestial arc lying between the zeniths at his point of departure and at his destination. It is important, therefore, that one of these magnitudes should be the expression of the other, with no difference except in the units. But to that end, the fundamental linear unit must be an aliquot part of the terrestrial meridian. ... Thus, the choice of the metre was reduced to that of the unity of angles.
Lecture at the École Normale to the Year III (Apr 1795), Oeuvres Completes de Laplace (1878-1912), Vol. 14, 141. In Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1978), Vol. 15, 335.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Angle (25)  |  Arc (14)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Choice (114)  |  Circuit (29)  |  Definition (238)  |  Denomination (6)  |  Destination (16)  |  Determine (152)  |  Difference (355)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Distance (171)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Know (1538)  |  Linear (13)  |  Lying (55)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Making (300)  |  Man (2252)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Meridian (4)  |  Meter (9)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Navigator (8)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Simple (426)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Travel (125)  |  Unit (36)  |  Unity (81)  |  Whole (756)

It is not always the truth that tells us where to look for new knowledge. We don’t search for the penny under the lamp post where the light is. We know we are more likely to find it out there in the darkness. My favorite way of expressing this notion to graduate students who are trying to do very hard experiments is to remind them that “God loves the noise as much as he does the signal.”
In 'Physics and the APS in 1979', Physics Today (Apr 1980), 33, No. 4, 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Darkness (72)  |  Do (1905)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Favorite (37)  |  Find (1014)  |  God (776)  |  Graduate (32)  |  Graduate Student (13)  |  Hard (246)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Light (635)  |  Look (584)  |  Love (328)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Noise (40)  |  Notion (120)  |  Penny (6)  |  Reminder (13)  |  Search (175)  |  Signal (29)  |  Student (317)  |  Tell (344)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Trying (144)  |  Under (7)  |  Way (1214)

It is not I who seek to base Man's dignity upon his great toe, or insinuate that we are lost if an Ape has a hippocampus minor. On the contrary, I have done my best to sweep away this vanity. I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest facuities of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life. At the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes; or is more certain that whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of them.
'On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals' (1863). In Collected Essays (1894), Vol. 7. 152-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Animal (651)  |  Ape (54)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Base (120)  |  Begin (275)  |  Belief (615)  |  Best (467)  |  Brute (30)  |  Certain (557)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Draw (140)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Equally (129)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Form (976)  |  Futile (13)  |  Great (1610)  |  Gulf (18)  |  Hippocampus (2)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Physical (518)  |  Scale (122)  |  Seek (218)  |  Show (353)  |  Structural (29)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vastness (15)  |  World (1850)

It is not only a decided preference for synthesis and a complete denial of general methods which characterizes the ancient mathematics as against our newer Science [modern mathematics]: besides this extemal formal difference there is another real, more deeply seated, contrast, which arises from the different attitudes which the two assumed relative to the use of the concept of variability. For while the ancients, on account of considerations which had been transmitted to them from the Philosophie school of the Eleatics, never employed the concept of motion, the spatial expression for variability, in their rigorous system, and made incidental use of it only in the treatment of phonoromically generated curves, modern geometry dates from the instant that Descartes left the purely algebraic treatment of equations and proceeded to investigate the variations which an algebraic expression undergoes when one of its variables assumes a continuous succession of values.
In 'Untersuchungen über die unendlich oft oszillierenden und unstetigen Functionen', Ostwald’s Klassiker der exacten Wissenschaften (1905), No. 153, 44-45. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 115. From the original German, “Nicht allein entschiedene Vorliebe für die Synthese und gänzliche Verleugnung allgemeiner Methoden charakterisiert die antike Mathematik gegenüber unserer neueren Wissenschaft; es gibt neben diesem mehr äußeren, formalen, noch einen tiefliegenden realen Gegensatz, welcher aus der verschiedenen Stellung entspringt, in welche sich beide zu der wissenschaftlichen Verwendung des Begriffes der Veränderlichkeit gesetzt haben. Denn während die Alten den Begriff der Bewegung, des räumlichen Ausdruckes der Veränderlichkeit, aus Bedenken, die aus der philosophischen Schule der Eleaten auf sie übergegangen waren, in ihrem strengen Systeme niemals und auch in der Behandlung phoronomisch erzeugter Kurven nur vorübergehend verwenden, so datiert die neuere Mathematik von dem Augenblicke, als Descartes von der rein algebraischen Behandlung der Gleichungen dazu fortschritt, die Größenveränderungen zu untersuchen, welche ein algebraischer Ausdruck erleidet, indem eine in ihm allgemein bezeichnete Größe eine stetige Folge von Werten durchläuft.”
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Against (332)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Arise (162)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Complete (209)  |  Concept (242)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Curve (49)  |  Denial (20)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Employ (115)  |  Equation (138)  |  General (521)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Incidental (15)  |  Instant (46)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Method (531)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Never (1089)  |  Preference (28)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Purely (111)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  School (227)  |  Succession (80)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  System (545)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Variable (37)  |  Variation (93)

It is possible that the deepest meaning and aim of Newtonianism, or rather, of the whole scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, of which Newton is the heir and the highest expression, is just to abolish the world of the 'more or less', the world of qualities and sense perception, the world of appreciation of our daily life, and to replace it by the (Archimedean) universe of precision, of exact measures, of strict determination ... This revolution [is] one of the deepest, if not the deepest, mutations and transformations accomplished—or suffered—by the human mind since the invention of the cosmos by the Greeks, two thousand years before.
'The Significance of the Newtonian Synthesis' (1950). In Newtonian Studies (1965), 4-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Appreciation (37)  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Century (319)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Daily (91)  |  Daily Life (18)  |  Determination (80)  |  Greek (109)  |  Heir (12)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Invention (400)  |  Life (1870)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Measure (241)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Perception (97)  |  Possible (560)  |  Precision (72)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Revolution (13)  |  Sense (785)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Two (936)  |  Universe (900)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

It is the constant aim of the mathematician to reduce all his expressions to their lowest terms, to retrench every superfluous word and phrase, and to condense the Maximum of meaning into the Minimum of language.
In Address (22 Feb 1877) for Commemoration Day at Johns Hopkins University. Published as a pamphlet, and reprinted in The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester: (1870-1883) (1909), Vol. 3, 72-73.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Condense (15)  |  Constant (148)  |  Language (308)  |  Lowest (10)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Maximum (16)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Minimum (13)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Retrench (2)  |  Superfluous (21)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Word (650)

It is very desirable to have a word to express the Availability for work of the heat in a given magazine; a term for that possession, the waste of which is called Dissipation. Unfortunately the excellent word Entropy, which Clausius has introduced in this connexion, is applied by him to the negative of the idea we most naturally wish to express. It would only confuse the student if we were to endeavour to invent another term for our purpose. But the necessity for some such term will be obvious from the beautiful examples which follow. And we take the liberty of using the term Entropy in this altered sense ... The entropy of the universe tends continually to zero.
Sketch of Thermodynamics (1868), 100-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Alter (64)  |  Alteration (31)  |  Altered (32)  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Availability (10)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Call (781)  |  Rudolf Clausius (9)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Connection (171)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dissipation (2)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Entropy (46)  |  Example (98)  |  Excellence (40)  |  Express (192)  |  Follow (389)  |  Heat (180)  |  Idea (881)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Invention (400)  |  Liberty (29)  |   Magazine (26)  |  Most (1728)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Negative (66)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Possession (68)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Sense (785)  |  Student (317)  |  Tend (124)  |  Term (357)  |  Unfortunately (40)  |  Universe (900)  |  Waste (109)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  Zero (38)

It was a felicitous expression of Goethe’s to call a noble cathedral “frozen music,” but it might even better be called “petrified mathematics.”
In The Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 44.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Call (781)  |  Cathedral (27)  |  Frozen (2)  |  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (150)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Music (133)  |  Noble (93)  |  Petrified (2)

It was indeed very difficult to explain the concept of a lake as a large body of fresh water which fills a whole district. In Egypt and the Sudan there is no expression for it: birket, fula, tirra etc. refer rather to pond, rain pond, marsh etc.
Their Arabic had no word for lake. In August Petermann, Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilungen (1871), 13. As quoted with implied citation, in Kathrin Fritsch, '"You Have Everything Confused And Mixed Up…!" Georg Schweinfurth, Knowledge And Cartography Of Africa In The 19th Century', History in Africa (2009), 36, 94. Fritsch comments on their misunderstandings caused by “different spatial conceptions [and] language barriers.”
Science quotes on:  |  Concept (242)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Explain (334)  |  Lake (36)  |  Language Barrier (2)  |  Marsh (10)  |  Pond (17)

It will be a general expression of the facts that have been detailed, relating to the changes and transitions by electricity, in common philosophical language, to say, that hydrogen, the alkaline substances, the metals, and certain metallic oxides, are all attracted by negatively electrified metallic surfaces; and contrariwise, that oxygen and acid substances are attracted by positively electrified metallic surfaces and rejected by negatively electrified metallic surfaces; and these attractive and repulsive forces are sufficiently energetic to destroy or suspend the usual operation of elective affinity.
Bakerian Lecture, 'On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1807, 97, 28-29.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Affinity (27)  |  Alkali (6)  |  Attractive (25)  |  Certain (557)  |  Change (639)  |  Charge (63)  |  Common (447)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Detail (150)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Force (497)  |  General (521)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Language (308)  |  Metal (88)  |  Operation (221)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejected (26)  |  Say (989)  |  Substance (253)  |  Surface (223)  |  Transition (28)  |  Will (2350)

Knowledge of the laws of nature offers humankind the only chance of survival in a changing environment. … The search for knowledge gives expression to a basic curiosity which appears to be the salient defining characteristic of human beings.
From opening paragraph of Preface, Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies (1987).
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Being (1276)  |  Chance (244)  |  Changing (7)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Defining (3)  |  Environment (239)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Offer (142)  |  Salient (2)  |  Search (175)  |  Survival (105)

Language is a guide to 'social reality.' Though language is not ordinarily thought of as essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
'The Status of Linguistics as a Science', Language (1929), 5, 207-14. In David Mandelbaum (ed.), Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality (1949), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Alone (324)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Communication (101)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consider (428)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Do (1905)  |  Essential (210)  |  Extent (142)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Guide (107)  |  Habit (174)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Incidental (15)  |  Interest (416)  |  Label (11)  |  Language (308)  |  Large (398)  |  Live (650)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Merely (315)  |  Objective (96)  |  Problem (731)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Society (350)  |  Solution (282)  |  Specific (98)  |  Student (317)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Two (936)  |  Understood (155)  |  Use (771)  |  World (1850)

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Entire (50)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Order (638)  |  Penalty (7)  |  Population (115)  |  Present (630)  |  Secure (23)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Tolerance (11)  |  View (496)

Let us ... consider the ovum [egg] as a physical system. Its potentialities are prodigious and one's first impulse is to expect that such vast potentialities would find expression in complexity of structure. But what do we find? The substance is clouded with particles, but these can be centrifuged away leaving it optically structureless but still capable of development.... On the surface of the egg there is a fine membrane, below it fluid of high viscosity, next fluid of relatively low viscosity, and within this the nucleus, which in the resting stage is simply a bag of fluid enclosed in a delicate membrane.... The egg's simplicity is not that of a machine or a crystal, but that of a nebula. Gathered into it are units relatively simple but capable by their combinations of forming a vast number of dynamical systems...
As guest of honour, closing day address (Jun 1928), Sixth Colloid Symposium, Toronto, Canada, 'Living Matter', printed in Harry Boyer Weiser (ed.), Colloid Symposium Monograph (1928), Vol. 6, 15. Quoted in Joseph Needham, Chemical Embryology (1931), Vol. 1, 612-613.
Science quotes on:  |  Capable (174)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  Egg (71)  |  Expect (203)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Fluid (54)  |  Forming (42)  |  Gather (76)  |  High (370)  |  Impulse (52)  |  Low (86)  |  Machine (271)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Nebula (16)  |  Next (238)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Ovum (4)  |  Particle (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Potential (75)  |  Prodigious (20)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Stage (152)  |  Still (614)  |  Structure (365)  |  Substance (253)  |  Surface (223)  |  System (545)  |  Vast (188)  |  Viscosity (3)

Life itself is but the expression of a sum of phenomena, each of which follows the ordinary physical and chemical laws. (1845)
In Jonathan Miller, Freud: the Man, his World, His Influence (1972), 25
Science quotes on:  |  Chemical (303)  |  Follow (389)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Physical (518)  |  Sum (103)

Man alone amongst the animals speaks and has gestures and expression which we call rational, because he alone has reason in him. And if anyone should say in contradiction that certain birds talk, as seems to be the case with some, especially the magpie and the parrot, and that certain beasts have expression or gestures, as the ape and some others seem to have, I answer that it is not true that they speak, nor that they have gestures, because they have no reason, from which these things need proceed; nor do they purpose to signify anything by them, but they merely reproduce what they see and hear.
In 'The Third Treatise', The Convivio of Dante Alighieri (1903), Chap. 7, 175. This footnoted: Compare De Vulgari Eloquentia, Book 1, Chap 2: 43-65.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ape (54)  |  Beast (58)  |  Bird (163)  |  Call (781)  |  Certain (557)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Do (1905)  |  Hear (144)  |  Man (2252)  |  Merely (315)  |  Other (2233)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reason (766)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Signify (17)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speech (66)  |  Thing (1914)

Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.
In The Ascent of Man (1973), 412.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Equally (129)  |  Man (2252)  |  Marvelous (31)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Plasticity (7)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Unique (72)

Mathematics and music, the most sharply contrasted fields of scientific activity which can be found, and yet related, supporting each other, as if to show forth the secret connection which ties together all the activities of our mind, and which leads us to surmise that the manifestations of the artist’s genius are but the unconscious expressions of a mysteriously acting rationality.
In Vorträge und Reden (1884, 1896), Vol 1, 122. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 191. From the original German, “Mathematik und Musik, der schärfste Gegensatz geistiger Thätigkeit, den man auffinden kann, und doch verbunden, sich unterstützend, als wollten sie die geheime Consequenz nachweisen, die sich durch alle Thätigkeiten unseres Geistes hinzieht, und die auch in den Offenbarungen des künstlerischen Genius uns unbewusste Aeusserungen geheimnissvoll wirkender Vernunftmässigkeit ahnen lässt.”
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Activity (218)  |  Artist (97)  |  Connection (171)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Field (378)  |  Genius (301)  |  Lead (391)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Music (133)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Other (2233)  |  Rationality (25)  |  Relate (26)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sharp (17)  |  Show (353)  |  Support (151)  |  Surmise (7)  |  Tie (42)  |  Together (392)  |  Unconscious (24)

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.
As co-author with Herbert Robbins, in What Is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods (1941, 1996), x.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Aesthetics (12)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Antithesis (7)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Basic (144)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Construction (114)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Desire (212)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Element (322)  |  Emphasis (18)  |  Emphasize (25)  |  Force (497)  |  Generality (45)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Individuality (25)  |  Interplay (9)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Life (1870)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Value (393)  |  Will (2350)

Mathematics is the language of languages, the best school for sharpening thought and expression, is applicable to all processes in nature; and Germany needs mathematical gymnasia. Mathematics is God’s form of speech, and simplifies all things organic and inorganic. As knowledge becomes real, complete and great it approximates mathematical forms. It mediates between the worlds of mind and of matter.
Summarizing the ideas presented by Christian Heinrich Dillmann in Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (1889). From book review, 'Recent Literature on Arithmetic and Arithmetical Teaching', in Granville Stanley Hall (ed.), The Pedagogical Seminary (1892), 2, 168. Dillmann’s book title translates as “Mathematics the Torchbearer of a New Era”. (However, Conant concluded that it was a “loosely-written, vague and incoherent book, which belies every anticipation awakened by its attractive title.”)
Science quotes on:  |  Applicable (31)  |  Approximate (25)  |  Become (821)  |  Best (467)  |  Complete (209)  |  Form (976)  |  Germany (16)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inorganic (14)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mediate (4)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Need (320)  |  Organic (161)  |  Process (439)  |  Real (159)  |  School (227)  |  Sharpen (22)  |  Simplify (14)  |  Speech (66)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  World (1850)

Mathematics, among all school subjects, is especially adapted to further clearness, definite brevity and precision in expression, although it offers no exercise in flights of rhetoric. This is due in the first place to the logical rigour with which it develops thought, avoiding every departure from the shortest, most direct way, never allowing empty phrases to enter. Other subjects excel in the development of expression in other respects: translation from foreign languages into the mother tongue gives exercise in finding the proper word for the given foreign word and gives knowledge of laws of syntax, the study of poetry and prose furnish fit patterns for connected presentation and elegant form of expression, composition is to exercise the pupil in a like presentation of his own or borrowed thoughtsand their development, the natural sciences teach description of natural objects, apparatus and processes, as well as the statement of laws on the grounds of immediate sense-perception. But all these aids for exercise in the use of the mother tongue, each in its way valuable and indispensable, do not guarantee, in the same manner as mathematical training, the exclusion of words whose concepts, if not entirely wanting, are not sufficiently clear. They do not furnish in the same measure that which the mathematician demands particularly as regards precision of expression.
In Anleitung zum mathematischen Unterricht in höheren Schulen (1906), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Aid (101)  |  Allow (51)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Borrow (31)  |  Brevity (8)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Clear (111)  |  Composition (86)  |  Concept (242)  |  Connect (126)  |  Definite (114)  |  Demand (131)  |  Departure (9)  |  Description (89)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Direct (228)  |  Do (1905)  |  Due (143)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Empty (82)  |  Enter (145)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Excel (4)  |  Exclusion (16)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Fit (139)  |  Flight (101)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Form (976)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Give (208)  |  Ground (222)  |  Guarantee (30)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Logical (57)  |  Manner (62)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Measure (241)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mother (116)  |  Mother Tongue (3)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Never (1089)  |  Object (438)  |  Offer (142)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particularly (21)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Perception (97)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Place (192)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Precision (72)  |  Presentation (24)  |  Process (439)  |  Proper (150)  |  Prose (11)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Regard (312)  |  Respect (212)  |  Rhetoric (13)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Same (166)  |  School (227)  |  Sense (785)  |  Short (200)  |  Shortest (16)  |  Statement (148)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Sufficiently (9)  |  Syntax (2)  |  Teach (299)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Training (92)  |  Translation (21)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Want (504)  |  Way (1214)  |  Word (650)

May not subterraneous fire be considered as the great plough (if I may be allowed the expression) which Nature makes use of to turn up the bowels of the earth?
Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and other Volcanoes (1774),161.
Science quotes on:  |  Bowel (17)  |  Consider (428)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fire (203)  |  Great (1610)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Plough (15)  |  Turn (454)  |  Use (771)  |  Volcano (46)

Museums are, in a way, the cathedrals of the modern world, places where sacred issues are expressed and where people come to reflect on them. A museum is also a kind of bridge between the academy and the public.
In The Legacy of the Great War: Ninety Years On (2009), 34.
Science quotes on:  |  Academy (37)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Cathedral (27)  |  Cathedrals Of The Modern World (5)  |  Express (192)  |  Issue (46)  |  Kind (564)  |  Modern (402)  |  Museum (40)  |  People (1031)  |  Public (100)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

Nature vibrates with rhythms, climatic and diastrophic, those finding stratigraphic expression ranging in period from the rapid oscillation of surface waters, recorded in ripple-mark, to those long-deferred stirrings of the deep imprisoned titans which have divided earth history into periods and eras. The flight of time is measured by the weaving of composite rhythms- day and night, calm and storm, summer and winter, birth and death such as these are sensed in the brief life of man. But the career of the earth recedes into a remoteness against which these lesser cycles are as unavailing for the measurement of that abyss of time as would be for human history the beating of an insect's wing. We must seek out, then, the nature of those longer rhythms whose very existence was unknown until man by the light of science sought to understand the earth. The larger of these must be measured in terms of the smaller, and the smaller must be measured in terms of years.
'Rhythm and the Measurement of Geologic Time', Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 1917, 28,746.
Science quotes on:  |  Abyss (30)  |  Against (332)  |  Birth (154)  |  Brief (37)  |  Calm (32)  |  Career (86)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Death (406)  |  Deep (241)  |  Divided (50)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Era (51)  |  Existence (481)  |  Flight (101)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imprison (11)  |  Insect (89)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Oscillation (13)  |  Period (200)  |  Recede (11)  |  Record (161)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Ripple (12)  |  Seek (218)  |  Storm (56)  |  Summer (56)  |  Surface (223)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vibrate (7)  |  Water (503)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Wing (79)  |  Winter (46)  |  Year (963)

No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.
Three Essays on Sexuality: Infantile Sexuality (1905), In James Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953), Vol 7, 182.
Science quotes on:  |  Baby (29)  |  Back (395)  |  Escape (85)  |  Life (1870)  |  Picture (148)  |  Prototype (9)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Sexual (27)  |  Sexuality (11)  |  Smile (34)

On careful examination the physicist finds that in the sense in which he uses language no meaning at all can be attached to a physical concept which cannot ultimately be described in terms of some sort of measurement. A body has position only in so far as its position can be measured; if a position cannot in principle be measured, the concept of position applied to the body is meaningless, or in other words, a position of the body does not exist. Hence if both the position and velocity of electron cannot in principle be measured, the electron cannot have the same position and velocity; position and velocity as expressions of properties which an electron can simultaneously have are meaningless.
Reflections of a Physicist (1950), 90.
Science quotes on:  |  Applied (176)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Concept (242)  |  Electron (96)  |  Examination (102)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Language (308)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Principle (530)  |  Sense (785)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Ultimately (56)  |  Use (771)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Word (650)

Once when lecturing to a class he [Lord Kelvin] used the word “mathematician,” and then interrupting himself asked his class: “Do you know what a mathematician is?” Stepping to the blackboard he wrote upon it:— [an integral expression equal to the square root of pi]
Then putting his finger on what he had written, he turned to his class and said: “A mathematician is one to whom that is as obvious as that twice two makes four is to you. Liouville was a mathematician.”
In Life of Lord Kelvin (1910), 1139.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Blackboard (11)  |  Class (168)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equal (88)  |  Finger (48)  |  Himself (461)  |  Integral (26)  |  Interrupt (6)  |  Baron William Thomson Kelvin (74)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Lord (97)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Pi (14)  |  Root (121)  |  Say (989)  |  Square (73)  |  Square Root (12)  |  Step (234)  |  Turn (454)  |  Twice (20)  |  Two (936)  |  Word (650)  |  Write (250)

One of the principal obstacles to the rapid diffusion of a new idea lies in the difficulty of finding suitable expression to convey its essential point to other minds. Words may have to be strained into a new sense, and scientific controversies constantly resolve themselves into differences about the meaning of words. On the other hand, a happy nomenclature has sometimes been more powerful than rigorous logic in allowing a new train of thought to be quickly and generally accepted.
Opening Address to the Annual Meeting of the British Association by Prof. Arthur Schuster, in Nature (4 Aug 1892), 46, 325.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Convey (17)  |  Difference (355)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Diffusion (13)  |  Essential (210)  |  Finding (34)  |  Happy (108)  |  Idea (881)  |  Lie (370)  |  Logic (311)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Obstacle (42)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Principal (69)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sense (785)  |  Suitability (11)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Train (118)  |  Word (650)

One rarely hears of the mathematical recitation as a preparation for public speaking. Yet mathematics shares with these studies [foreign languages, drawing and natural science] their advantages, and has another in a higher degree than either of them.
Most readers will agree that a prime requisite for healthful experience in public speaking is that the attention of the speaker and hearers alike be drawn wholly away from the speaker and concentrated upon the thought. In perhaps no other classroom is this so easy as in the mathematical, where the close reasoning, the rigorous demonstration, the tracing of necessary conclusions from given hypotheses, commands and secures the entire mental power of the student who is explaining, and of his classmates. In what other circumstances do students feel so instinctively that manner counts for so little and mind for so much? In what other circumstances, therefore, is a simple, unaffected, easy, graceful manner so naturally and so healthfully cultivated? Mannerisms that are mere affectation or the result of bad literary habit recede to the background and finally disappear, while those peculiarities that are the expression of personality and are inseparable from its activity continually develop, where the student frequently presents, to an audience of his intellectual peers, a connected train of reasoning. …
One would almost wish that our institutions of the science and art of public speaking would put over their doors the motto that Plato had over the entrance to his school of philosophy: “Let no one who is unacquainted with geometry enter here.”
In A Scrap-book of Elementary Mathematics: Notes, Recreations, Essays (1908), 210-211.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Alike (60)  |  Art (680)  |  Attention (196)  |  Audience (28)  |  Background (44)  |  Bad (185)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Classroom (11)  |  Command (60)  |  Concentrate (28)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Connect (126)  |  Count (107)  |  Degree (277)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Develop (278)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Do (1905)  |  Door (94)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Easy (213)  |  Enter (145)  |  Entrance (16)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feel (371)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Habit (174)  |  Hear (144)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Institution (73)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Language (308)  |  Listener (7)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Other (2233)  |  Peer (13)  |  Personality (66)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Power (771)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Present (630)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Recede (11)  |  Recitation (2)  |  Result (700)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  School (227)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Share (82)  |  Simple (426)  |  Speaker (6)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Student (317)  |  Thought (995)  |  Train (118)  |  Unaffected (6)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)

Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.
Principles of Mechanics (1899), 7-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Cease (81)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Connection (171)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Number (710)  |  Question (649)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Relation (166)  |  Removal (12)  |  Vex (10)  |  Vexation (2)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)

Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion. Common-sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry.
The Principles or Psychology (1890), Vol. 2, 449-50.
Science quotes on:  |  Affection (44)  |  Bear (162)  |  Best (467)  |  Call (781)  |  Change (639)  |  Cognitive (7)  |  Common (447)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Cry (30)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Exciting (50)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feel Sorry (4)  |  Feeling (259)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Insult (16)  |  Judge (114)  |  Lose (165)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Occur (151)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perception (97)  |  Purely (111)  |  Rational (95)  |  Receive (117)  |  Right (473)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rival (20)  |  Run (158)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sequence (68)  |  Sorry (31)  |  State (505)  |  Statement (148)  |  Strike (72)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Way (1214)

Over the past fifty years or so, scientists have allowed the conventions of expression available to them to become entirely too confining. too confining. The insistence on bland impersonality and the widespread indifference to anything like the display of a unique human author in scientific exposition, have transformed the reading of most scientific papers into an act of tedious drudgery.
In Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age (1990), Preface, xi-xii.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Author (175)  |  Available (80)  |  Become (821)  |  Convention (16)  |  Display (59)  |  Drudgery (6)  |  Exposition (16)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indifference (16)  |  Insistence (12)  |  Most (1728)  |  Paper (192)  |  Past (355)  |  Reading (136)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Transform (74)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Unique (72)  |  Widespread (23)  |  Year (963)

Perhaps today there is a greater kindness of tone, as there is greater ingenuity of expression to make up for the fact that all the real, solid, elemental jests against doctors were uttered some one or two thousand years ago.
In 'The Evil Spoken of Physicians', The Proceedings of the Charaka Club (1902), 1, 80.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Greater (288)  |  Ingenuity (42)  |  Kindness (14)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Solid (119)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Today (321)  |  Tone (22)  |  Two (936)  |  Year (963)

Perhaps we see equations as simple because they are easily expressed in terms of mathematical notation already invented at an earlier stage of development of the science, and thus what appears to us as elegance of description really reflects the interconnectedness of Nature's laws at different levels.
Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1969), in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.),Les Prix Nobel en 1969 (1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Description (89)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Early (196)  |  Ease (40)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Equation (138)  |  Express (192)  |  Invention (400)  |  Law (913)  |  Level (69)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Notation (28)  |  Reflection (93)  |  See (1094)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Stage (152)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)

Religion and science ... constitute deep-rooted and ancient efforts to find richer experience and deeper meaning than are found in the ordinary biological and social satisfactions. As pointed out by Whitehead, religion and science have similar origins and are evolving toward similar goals. Both started from crude observations and fanciful concepts, meaningful only within a narrow range of conditions for the people who formulated them of their limited tribal experience. But progressively, continuously, and almost simultaneously, religious and scientific concepts are ridding themselves of their coarse and local components, reaching higher and higher levels of abstraction and purity. Both the myths of religion and the laws of science, it is now becoming apparent, are not so much descriptions of facts as symbolic expressions of cosmic truths.
'On Being Human,' A God Within, Scribner (1972).
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Biological (137)  |  Both (496)  |  Coarse (4)  |  Component (51)  |  Concept (242)  |  Condition (362)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Continuously (7)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Crude (32)  |  Deep (241)  |  Description (89)  |  Effort (243)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fanciful (6)  |  Find (1014)  |  Formulate (16)  |  Goal (155)  |  High (370)  |  Law (913)  |  Level (69)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Local (25)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Meaningful (19)  |  Myth (58)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Observation (593)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Origin (250)  |  People (1031)  |  Point (584)  |  Progressively (4)  |  Purity (15)  |  Range (104)  |  Reach (286)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Rich (66)  |  Rid (14)  |  Root (121)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Similar (36)  |  Simultaneous (23)  |  Social (261)  |  Start (237)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Toward (45)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Alfred North Whitehead (140)

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.
In 'Religion and Science', The Atlantic (Aug 1925).
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Continual (44)  |  Development (441)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Face (214)  |  Old (499)  |  Power (771)  |  Principle (530)  |  Religion (369)  |  Require (229)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Will (2350)

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
Letter to M. Nadeau (30 Mar 1973).
Science quotes on:  |  Bluff (3)  |  Break (109)  |  Change (639)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Dark (145)  |  Human Society (14)  |  Sailor (21)  |  Weather (49)

Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
Samuel Butler, Henry Festing Jones (ed.), The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1917), 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Burn (99)  |  Daily (91)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Down (455)  |  God (776)  |  Thomas Henry Huxley (132)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  People (1031)  |  Say (989)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Science is not the enemy of humanity but one of the deepest expressions of the human desire to realize that vision of infinite knowledge. Science shows us that the visible world is neither matter nor spirit; the visible world is the invisible organization of energy.
The Cosmic Code (1982), 348.
Science quotes on:  |  Avoid (123)  |  Desire (212)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Energy (373)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Matter (821)  |  Organization (120)  |  Realize (157)  |  Respect (212)  |  Show (353)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Visible (87)  |  Vision (127)  |  World (1850)

Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, “an old and trained engineer,” and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else.
In G.K. Chesterton, 'The Maxims of Maxim', Daily News (25 Feb 1905). Collected in G. K. Chesterton and Dale Ahlquist (ed.), In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton (2011), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (254)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Danger (127)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Else (4)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Everything (489)  |  Example (98)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Full (68)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Hearty (3)  |  Himself (461)  |  Honorable (14)  |  Honour (58)  |  Indemnification (2)  |  Inhuman (4)  |  Little (717)  |  Logic (311)  |  Man (2252)  |  Sir Hiram Maxim (4)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Old (499)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Real (159)  |  Required (108)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Romance (18)  |  Romantic (13)  |  Romanticism (5)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Superhuman (6)  |  Train (118)  |  Training (92)  |  Typical (16)  |  Vague (50)  |  Vagueness (15)

The artist does not illustrate science; … [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations.
'The Arts', in Charles Austin Beard, Whither Mankind: a Panorama of Modern Civilization (1928, 1971), 296.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Artist (97)  |  Conversion (17)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Formula (102)  |  Frequently (21)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Interest (416)  |  Response (56)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Synthesis (58)

The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer, but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.
In The Bird: Its Form and Function (1906), Vol. 1, 18.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Composer (7)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extinction (80)  |  First (1302)  |  Genius (301)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Material (366)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Pass (241)  |  Race (278)  |  Species (435)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Vanishing (11)  |  Work (1402)

The enthusiasm of Sylvester for his own work, which manifests itself here as always, indicates one of his characteristic qualities: a high degree of subjectivity in his productions and publications. Sylvester was so fully possessed by the matter which for the time being engaged his attention, that it appeared to him and was designated by him as the summit of all that is important, remarkable and full of future promise. It would excite his phantasy and power of imagination in even a greater measure than his power of reflection, so much so that he could never marshal the ability to master his subject-matter, much less to present it in an orderly manner.
Considering that he was also somewhat of a poet, it will be easier to overlook the poetic flights which pervade his writing, often bombastic, sometimes furnishing apt illustrations; more damaging is the complete lack of form and orderliness of his publications and their sketchlike character, … which must be accredited at least as much to lack of objectivity as to a superfluity of ideas. Again, the text is permeated with associated emotional expressions, bizarre utterances and paradoxes and is everywhere accompanied by notes, which constitute an essential part of Sylvester’s method of presentation, embodying relations, whether proximate or remote, which momentarily suggested themselves. These notes, full of inspiration and occasional flashes of genius, are the more stimulating owing to their incompleteness. But none of his works manifest a desire to penetrate the subject from all sides and to allow it to mature; each mere surmise, conceptions which arose during publication, immature thoughts and even errors were ushered into publicity at the moment of their inception, with utmost carelessness, and always with complete unfamiliarity of the literature of the subject. Nowhere is there the least trace of self-criticism. No one can be expected to read the treatises entire, for in the form in which they are available they fail to give a clear view of the matter under contemplation.
Sylvester’s was not a harmoniously gifted or well-balanced mind, but rather an instinctively active and creative mind, free from egotism. His reasoning moved in generalizations, was frequently influenced by analysis and at times was guided even by mystical numerical relations. His reasoning consists less frequently of pure intelligible conclusions than of inductions, or rather conjectures incited by individual observations and verifications. In this he was guided by an algebraic sense, developed through long occupation with processes of forms, and this led him luckily to general fundamental truths which in some instances remain veiled. His lack of system is here offset by the advantage of freedom from purely mechanical logical activity.
The exponents of his essential characteristics are an intuitive talent and a faculty of invention to which we owe a series of ideas of lasting value and bearing the germs of fruitful methods. To no one more fittingly than to Sylvester can be applied one of the mottos of the Philosophic Magazine:
“Admiratio generat quaestionem, quaestio investigationem investigatio inventionem.”
In Mathematische Annalen (1898), 50, 155-160. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 176-178.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Applied (176)  |  Attention (196)  |  Available (80)  |  Being (1276)  |  Carelessness (7)  |  Character (259)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Complete (209)  |  Conception (160)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Consist (223)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Creative (144)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Degree (277)  |  Desire (212)  |  Develop (278)  |  Easier (53)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Error (339)  |  Essential (210)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Expect (203)  |  Exponent (6)  |  Fail (191)  |  Flight (101)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Genius (301)  |  Germ (54)  |  Gift (105)  |  Gifted (25)  |  Greater (288)  |  High (370)  |  Idea (881)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inception (3)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Individual (420)  |  Induction (81)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Invention (400)  |  Lack (127)  |  Literature (116)  |  Long (778)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mature (17)  |  Measure (241)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Objectivity (17)  |  Observation (593)  |  Occasional (23)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Orderliness (9)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Owe (71)  |  Owing (39)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Possess (157)  |  Power (771)  |  Present (630)  |  Presentation (24)  |  Production (190)  |  Promise (72)  |  Proximate (4)  |  Publication (102)  |  Pure (299)  |  Purely (111)  |  Read (308)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remote (86)  |  Self (268)  |  Sense (785)  |  Series (153)  |  Side (236)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subject-Matter (8)  |  Summit (27)  |  Surmise (7)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  System (545)  |  Talent (99)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unfamiliarity (5)  |  Utterance (11)  |  Value (393)  |  Veil (27)  |  Verification (32)  |  View (496)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writing (192)

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient
Origin of Species, Ch. 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Equally (129)  |  More (2558)  |  Herbert Spencer (37)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)

The expression Similia similibus is a Latin phrase and means that an imaginary disease can best be cured by an imaginary remedy.
In Elbert Hubbard (ed. and publ.), The Philistine (Mar 1908), 26, No. 4, 105. The reference is to the phrase “similia similibus curantur” (similar things take care of similar things; or, like cures like).
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Cure (124)  |  Disease (340)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Latin (44)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Remedy (63)

The exterior appearance of human life is but the material embodiment, the substantial expression, of thought—the hieroglyphic writing of the soul.
In 'Genius', Wellman’s Miscellany (Dec 1871), 4, No. 6, 201.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Embodiment (9)  |  Exterior (7)  |  Hieroglyphic (6)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Life (1870)  |  Material (366)  |  Soul (235)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Thought (995)  |  Writing (192)

The fascination of any search after truth lies not in the attainment, which at best is found to be very relative, but in the pursuit, where all the powers of the mind and character are brought into play and are absorbed by the task. One feels oneself in contact with something that is infinite and one finds joy that is beyond expression in sounding the abyss of science and the secrets of the infinite mind.
In Isabel Fothergill Smith, The Stone Lady: a Memoir of Florence Bascom (1981). Cited in Earth Sciences History: Journal of the History of the Earth Sciences Society (992), Vols. 11-12, 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorb (54)  |  Absorption (13)  |  Abyss (30)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Best (467)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Character (259)  |  Contact (66)  |  Fascination (35)  |  Feel (371)  |  Find (1014)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Joy (117)  |  Lie (370)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Oneself (33)  |  Power (771)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Search (175)  |  Secret (216)  |  Something (718)  |  Sounding (2)  |  Task (152)  |  Truth (1109)

The function of Latin literature is its expression of Rome. When to England and France your imagination can add Rome in the background, you have laid firm the foundations of culture. The understanding of Rome leads back to the Mediterranean civilisation of which Rome was the last phase, and it automatically exhibits the geography of Europe, and the functions of seas and rivers and mountains and plains. The merit of this study in the education of youth is its concreteness, its inspiration to action, and the uniform greatness of persons, in their characters and their staging. Their aims were great, their virtues were great, and their vices were great. They had the saving merit of sinning with cart ropes.
In 'The Place of Classics in Education', The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 106.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Aim (175)  |  Back (395)  |  Background (44)  |  Character (259)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Concreteness (5)  |  Culture (157)  |  Education (423)  |  England (43)  |  Europe (50)  |  Firm (47)  |  Foundation (177)  |  France (29)  |  Function (235)  |  Geography (39)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Last (425)  |  Latin (44)  |  Lead (391)  |  Literature (116)  |  Mediterranean (9)  |  Merit (51)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Person (366)  |  Phase (37)  |  Plain (34)  |  River (140)  |  Rome (19)  |  Rope (9)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sin (45)  |  Study (701)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Vice (42)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Youth (109)

The great object of human thought is the discovery of truth or, in other words, to arrive at conceptions and expressions of things which shall agree with the nature of things.
Lecture (c. 1840s) on 'Geology and Revelation', in Joseph Henry and Arthur P. Molella et al. (eds.), A Scientist in American Life: Essays and Lectures of Joseph Henry (1980), 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Agree (31)  |  Conception (160)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nature Of Things (30)  |  Object (438)  |  Other (2233)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Word (650)

The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science “more geometrico.”
In Space,Time, Matter, translated by Henry Leopold Brose (1952), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Belief (615)  |  Carry (130)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Church (64)  |  Classical (49)  |  Cling (6)  |  Crumble (5)  |  Despotism (2)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Fixed (17)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Greek (109)  |  Grow (247)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Later (18)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Matter (821)  |  Middle Age (19)  |  Middle Ages (12)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Rock (176)  |  Scepticism (17)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Seem (150)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Skepticism (31)  |  Sovereignty (6)  |  Space (523)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subject-Matter (8)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wave (112)

The history of chemistry is properly divided into the mythologic, the obscure, and the certain. The first period exhibits it from its infancy, deformed by fictions, until the destruction of the library of Alexandria by the Arabs. —The second, though freed in some measure from these absurdities, yet is still clothed in numberless enigmas and allegorical expressions.— The third period commences at the middle of the seventeenth century, with the first establishment of societies and academies of science; of which the wise associates, in many places uniting their efforts, determined to pursue the study of Natural Philosophy by observation and experiments, and candidly to publish their attempts in a general account of their transactions.
In Essays, Physical and Chemical (1791), 4, translated from the original Latin.
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Academy (37)  |  Account (195)  |  Alexandria (2)  |  Allegory (8)  |  Arab (5)  |  Associate (25)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Candid (3)  |  Century (319)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Divided (50)  |  Effort (243)  |  Enigma (16)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fiction (23)  |  First (1302)  |  General (521)  |  History (716)  |  Library (53)  |  Measure (241)  |  Myth (58)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Philosophy (52)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Observation (593)  |  Period (200)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Publication (102)  |  Pursue (63)  |  Society (350)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Transaction (13)  |  Wise (143)

The imaginary expression √(-a) and the negative expression -b, have this resemblance, that either of them occurring as the solution of a problem indicates some inconsistency or absurdity. As far as real meaning is concerned, both are imaginary, since 0 - a is as inconceivable as √(-a).
Science quotes on:  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Both (496)  |  Concern (239)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Negative (66)  |  Problem (731)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Solution (282)

The integrals which we have obtained are not only general expressions which satisfy the differential equation, they represent in the most distinct manner the natural effect which is the object of the phenomenon… when this condition is fulfilled, the integral is, properly speaking, the equation of the phenomenon; it expresses clearly the character and progress of it, in the same manner as the finite equation of a line or curved surface makes known all the properties of those forms.
Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822), Art. 428, trans. Ivor Grattan-Guinness.
Science quotes on:  |  Character (259)  |  Condition (362)  |  Differential Equation (18)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Effect (414)  |  Equation (138)  |  Finite (60)  |  Form (976)  |  General (521)  |  Integral (26)  |  Integration (21)  |  Known (453)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Object (438)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Progress (492)  |  Represent (157)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Surface (223)

The invention of what we may call primary or fundamental notation has been but little indebted to analogy, evidently owing to the small extent of ideas in which comparison can be made useful. But at the same time analogy should be attended to, even if for no other reason than that, by making the invention of notation an art, the exertion of individual caprice ceases to be allowable. Nothing is more easy than the invention of notation, and nothing of worse example and consequence than the confusion of mathematical expressions by unknown symbols. If new notation be advisable, permanently or temporarily, it should carry with it some mark of distinction from that which is already in use, unless it be a demonstrable extension of the latter.
In 'Calculus of Functions', Encyclopaedia of Pure Mathematics (1847), Addition to Article 26, 388.
Science quotes on:  |  Allowable (2)  |  Already (226)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Art (680)  |  Attend (67)  |  Call (781)  |  Caprice (10)  |  Carry (130)  |  Cease (81)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Easy (213)  |  Evidently (26)  |  Example (98)  |  Exertion (17)  |  Extension (60)  |  Extent (142)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Idea (881)  |  Individual (420)  |  Invention (400)  |  Little (717)  |  Making (300)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Language (20)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Notation (28)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Owing (39)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Primary (82)  |  Reason (766)  |  Same (166)  |  Small (489)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Temporary (24)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)  |  Worse (25)

The laws expressing the relations between energy and matter are, however, not solely of importance in pure science. They necessarily come first in order ... in the whole record of human experience, and they control, in the last resort, the rise or fall of political systems, the freedom or bondage of nations, the movements of commerce and industry, the origin of wealth and poverty, and the general physical welfare of the race.
In Matter and Energy (1912), 10-11.
Science quotes on:  |  Bondage (6)  |  Commerce (23)  |  Control (182)  |  Energy (373)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fall (243)  |  First (1302)  |  Freedom (145)  |  General (521)  |  Human (1512)  |  Importance (299)  |  Industry (159)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Matter (821)  |  Movement (162)  |  Nation (208)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Order (638)  |  Origin (250)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Race (278)  |  Record (161)  |  Relation (166)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rise And Fall (2)  |  Solely (9)  |  System (545)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Welfare (30)  |  Whole (756)

The laws of nature, as we understand them, are the foundation of our knowledge in natural things. So much as we know of them has been developed by the successive energies of the highest intellects, exerted through many ages. After a most rigid and scrutinizing examination upon principle and trial, a definite expression has been given to them; they have become, as it were, our belief or trust. From day to day we still examine and test our expressions of them. We have no interest in their retention if erroneous. On the contrary, the greatest discovery a man could make would be to prove that one of these accepted laws was erroneous, and his greatest honour would be the discovery.
Experimental researches in chemistry and physics (1859), 469.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Age (509)  |  Become (821)  |  Belief (615)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Definite (114)  |  Develop (278)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Erroneous (31)  |  Examination (102)  |  Examine (84)  |  Exert (40)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Honour (58)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Interest (416)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Principle (530)  |  Prove (261)  |  Rigid (24)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Still (614)  |  Successive (73)  |  Test (221)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Trial (59)  |  Trust (72)  |  Understand (648)

The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Contain (68)  |  Creation (350)  |  Exist (458)  |  Form (976)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Present (630)  |  Single (365)

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact.
In 'Method of Discovery', On Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature (1863), 56. Also in excerpt collected in in Isabel S. Gordon and Sophie Sorkin (eds.), The Armchair Science Reader (1959), 263.
Science quotes on:  |  Exact (75)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mode (43)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Precise (71)  |  Reason (766)  |  Render (96)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)

The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.
Collected in J. de Finod (ed., trans.) A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1880), 66, printed citation showing “Alfred Bougeart”. Webmaster has not yet found the primary source for this quote, but has found books with the author name printed on the title page as sometimes Bougeart, others as Bougeard, but references therein to "other books by" have some of the same titles in common. If you know the primary source of this quote, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Better (493)  |  Concise (9)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Idea (881)  |  More (2558)  |  Pruning (7)  |  Tree (269)

The most abstract statements or propositions in science are to be regarded as bundles of hypothetical maxims packed into a portable shape and size. Every scientific fact is a short-hand expression for a vast number of practical directions: if you want so-and-so, do so-and-so.
In 'On The Scientific Basis of Morals', Contemporary Review (Sep 1875), collected in Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (eds.), Lectures and Essays: By the Late William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S. (1886), 289.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Bundle (7)  |  Direction (185)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Maxim (19)  |  Most (1728)  |  Number (710)  |  Portable (4)  |  Practical (225)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Regard (312)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Short (200)  |  Statement (148)  |  Vast (188)  |  Want (504)

The new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and quantity and a means of expression, more exact, compact, and ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential facts of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of the great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write.
Mankind in the Making (1903), 204. This is seen in a shorter form, somewhat misquoted in a paraphrase as: “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” However, note that in fact, Wells refers only to “mathematical analysis” such as “averages and maxima and minima” — and did not specify (more complex) “statistics” at all! For citation of the paraphrase, see Samuel Wilks Quotations on this site.
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Average (89)  |  Body (557)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Compact (13)  |  Complete (209)  |  Complex (202)  |  Computation (28)  |  Deal (192)  |  Endless (60)  |  Essential (210)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Form (976)  |  Great (1610)  |  Initiation (8)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Maximum (16)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Minimum (13)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Necessity (197)  |  New (1273)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Problem (731)  |  Quality (139)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Read (308)  |  Remote (86)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Sound (187)  |  State (505)  |  Supplement (7)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinkable (5)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Training (92)  |  Understood (155)  |  Wide (97)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

The occurrence of an internal skeleton, in definite relations to the other organ systems, and the articulation of the body into homologous segments, are points in the general organization of Vertebrates to which especial weight must be given. This metameric structure is more or less definitely expressed in most of the organs, and as it extends to the axial skeleton, the latter also gradually articulates into separate segments, the vertebrae. The latter, however, must be regarded only as the partial expression of a general articulation of the body which is all the more important in consequence of its appearing prior to the articulation of the originally inarticulate axial skeleton. Hence this general articulation may be considered as a primitive vertebral structure, to which the articulation of the axial skeleton is related as a secondary process of the same sort.
As translated and quoted in Ernst Haeckel and E. Ray Lankester (trans.) as epigraph for Chap. 11, The History of Creation (1886), Vol. 1, 328-329.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Consider (428)  |  Definite (114)  |  Express (192)  |  Extend (129)  |  General (521)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Homologous (4)  |  Internal (69)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Process (439)  |  Regard (312)  |  Separate (151)  |  Skeleton (25)  |  Structure (365)  |  System (545)  |  Vertebrate (22)  |  Weight (140)

The prominent reason why a mathematician can be judged by none but mathematicians, is that he uses a peculiar language. The language of mathesis is special and untranslatable. In its simplest forms it can be translated, as, for instance, we say a right angle to mean a square corner. But you go a little higher in the science of mathematics, and it is impossible to dispense with a peculiar language. It would defy all the power of Mercury himself to explain to a person ignorant of the science what is meant by the single phrase “functional exponent.” How much more impossible, if we may say so, would it be to explain a whole treatise like Hamilton’s Quaternions, in such a wise as to make it possible to judge of its value! But to one who has learned this language, it is the most precise and clear of all modes of expression. It discloses the thought exactly as conceived by the writer, with more or less beauty of form, but never with obscurity. It may be prolix, as it often is among French writers; may delight in mere verbal metamorphoses, as in the Cambridge University of England; or adopt the briefest and clearest forms, as under the pens of the geometers of our Cambridge; but it always reveals to us precisely the writer’s thought.
In North American Review (Jul 1857), 85, 224-225.
Science quotes on:  |  Adopt (22)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Brief (37)  |  Cambridge (17)  |  Cambridge University (2)  |  Clear (111)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Corner (59)  |  Defy (11)  |  Delight (111)  |  Disclose (19)  |  Dispense (10)  |  England (43)  |  Exact (75)  |  Explain (334)  |  Exponent (6)  |  Form (976)  |  French (21)  |  Function (235)  |  Geometer (24)  |  Hamilton_William (2)  |  Himself (461)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Judge (114)  |  Language (308)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Language (20)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Metamorphose (2)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Pen (21)  |  Person (366)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Precise (71)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Prolix (2)  |  Prominent (6)  |  Quaternion (9)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Right (473)  |  Right Angle (4)  |  Say (989)  |  Simple (426)  |  Single (365)  |  Special (188)  |  Square (73)  |  Thought (995)  |  Translate (21)  |  Treatise (46)  |  University (130)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Verbal (10)  |  Whole (756)  |  Why (491)  |  Wise (143)  |  Writer (90)

The quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality.
In Max Planck and James Vincent Murphy (trans.), Where is Science Going?, (1932), 143.
Science quotes on:  |  Causality (11)  |  Certain (557)  |  Equation (138)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Exactness (29)  |  Find (1014)  |  Formulation (37)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Law (913)  |  More (2558)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Will (2350)

The rule for life in the sea can be summed up in the well known expression “big fish eat little fish”. … Research shows that great losses occur in the fish cycle because small fish are eaten by larger ones, and in many cases the larger fish are not fit for human consumption.
In 'Man Explores the Sea', Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (Sep 1963), 111, No. 5086, 787-789.
Science quotes on:  |  Big (55)  |  Consumption (16)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Eat (108)  |  Fish (130)  |  Fit (139)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Known (453)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Loss (117)  |  Occur (151)  |  Research (753)  |  Rule (307)  |  Sea (326)  |  Show (353)  |  Small (489)

The self is the class (not the collection) of the experiences (or autopsychological states). The self does not belong to the expression of the basic experience, but is constructed only on a very high level.
The Logical Structure of the World, trans. by Rolf A. George (1967), 299.
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Belong (168)  |  Class (168)  |  Collection (68)  |  Construct (129)  |  Construction (114)  |  Experience (494)  |  High (370)  |  Level (69)  |  Self (268)  |  State (505)

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
In Letter III (1 Apr 1897) from Reading Prison to Robert Ross. Collected in The Works of Oscar Wilde: De Profundis (1905, 1909), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Annoy (5)  |  Machine (271)  |  More (2558)  |  Piano (12)  |  Play (116)  |  Relation (166)  |  Sister (8)

There is a tendency to consider anything in human behavior that is unusual, not well known, or not well understood, as neurotic, psychopathic, immature, perverse, or the expression of some other sort of psychologic disturbance.
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), 195.
Science quotes on:  |  Behavior (95)  |  Consider (428)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Behavior (10)  |  Immature (4)  |  Known (453)  |  Neurotic (6)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perverse (5)  |  Sex (68)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Understood (155)  |  Unusual (37)

There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that… or: There is capitalism in so far as… The use of expressions like “to the extent that” is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.
From 'The Power of Words', collected in Siân Miles (ed.), Simone Weil: An Anthology (2000), 222-223.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Abstract (141)  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Actual (118)  |  Against (332)  |  Age (509)  |  Apply (170)  |  Area (33)  |  Authority (99)  |  Battle (36)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Call (781)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Capitalism (12)  |  Casual (9)  |  Change (639)  |  Communism (11)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Complex (202)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Condition (362)  |  Contain (68)  |  Contingency (11)  |  Cover (40)  |  Degree (277)  |  Democracy (36)  |  Device (71)  |  Element (322)  |  Elementary (98)  |  End (603)  |  Entire (50)  |  Entity (37)  |  Evil (122)  |  Exclusively (10)  |  Extent (142)  |  External (62)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Far (158)  |  Fascism (4)  |  Fight (49)  |  Fill (67)  |  Fix (34)  |  Greek (109)  |  Idea (881)  |  Illustrate (14)  |  Incapable (41)  |  Independent (74)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Interdependence (4)  |  Interrelation (8)  |  Invade (5)  |  Isolate (24)  |  Keep (104)  |  Know (1538)  |  Level (69)  |  Limit (294)  |  Live (650)  |  Lose (165)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Measure (241)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Modify (15)  |  Monster (33)  |  Most (1728)  |  Myth (58)  |  Mythology (19)  |  Nation (208)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Never (1089)  |  Objective (96)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  P (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Play (116)  |  Political (124)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Property (177)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Rational (95)  |  Reality (274)  |  Realm (87)  |  Reference (33)  |  Relate (26)  |  Relation (166)  |  Represent (157)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Revenge (10)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Same (166)  |  Security (51)  |  Seem (150)  |  Simultaneous (23)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Social (261)  |  Solve (145)  |  Specific (98)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Store (49)  |  Strive (53)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subtle (37)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Technician (9)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unaffected (6)  |  Universe (900)  |  Use (771)  |  Vary (27)  |  Vocabulary (10)  |  Whatsoever (41)  |  Windmill (4)  |  Word (650)

There is no art so difficult as the art of observation: it requires a skillful, sober spirit and a well-trained experience, which can only be acquired by practice; for he is not an observer who only sees the thing before him with his eyes, but he who sees of what parts the thing consists, and in what connexion the parts stand to the whole. One person overlooks half from inattention; another relates more than he sees while he confounds it with that which he figures to himself; another sees the parts of the whole, but he throws things together that ought to be separated. ... When the observer has ascertained the foundation of a phenomenon, and he is able to associate its conditions, he then proves while he endeavours to produce the phenomena at his will, the correctness of his observations by experiment. To make a series of experiments is often to decompose an opinion into its individual parts, and to prove it by a sensible phenomenon. The naturalist makes experiments in order to exhibit a phenomenon in all its different parts. When he is able to show of a series of phenomena, that they are all operations of the same cause, he arrives at a simple expression of their significance, which, in this case, is called a Law of Nature. We speak of a simple property as a Law of Nature when it serves for the explanation of one or more natural phenomena.
'The Study of the Natural Sciences: An Introductory Lecture to the Course of Experimental Chemistry in the University of Munich, for the Winter Session of 1852-53,' as translated and republished in The Medical Times and Gazette (22 Jan 1853), N.S. Vol. 6, 82.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Art (680)  |  Ascertain (41)  |  Associate (25)  |  Call (781)  |  Carelessness (7)  |  Cause (561)  |  Component (51)  |  Condition (362)  |  Confound (21)  |  Confuse (22)  |  Consist (223)  |  Correctness (12)  |  Decompose (10)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Different (595)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Eye (440)  |  Figure (162)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Himself (461)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Inattention (5)  |  Individual (420)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observer (48)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Order (638)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Part (235)  |  Person (366)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Practice (212)  |  Produce (117)  |  Proof (304)  |  Property (177)  |  Prove (261)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Report (42)  |  Require (229)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Separate (151)  |  Series (153)  |  Show (353)  |  Significance (114)  |  Simple (426)  |  Skillful (17)  |  Sober (10)  |  Speak (240)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Stand (284)  |  Test (221)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Together (392)  |  Train (118)  |  Training (92)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Validity (50)  |  Verify (24)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

There is no field of biological inquiry in which the influence of the Origin of Species is not traceable; the foremost men of science in every country are either avowed champions of its leading doctrines, or at any rate abstain from opposing them; a host of young and ardent investigators seek for and find inspiration and guidance in Mr. Darwin’s great work; and the general doctrine of Evolution, to one side of which it gives expression, finds in the phenomena of biology a firm base of operations whence it may conduct its conquest of the whole realm of nature.
From Lecture (19 Mar 1880) delivered at the Royal Institute 'The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species', printed in John Michels (ed.), Science (3 Jul 1880), 1, 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstain (7)  |  Ardent (6)  |  Base (120)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Champion (6)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Conquest (31)  |  Country (269)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Field (378)  |  Find (1014)  |  Firm (47)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Guidance (30)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Origin (250)  |  Origin Of Species (42)  |  Realm (87)  |  Seek (218)  |  Side (236)  |  Species (435)  |  Trace (109)  |  Traceable (5)  |  Whole (756)  |  Work (1402)  |  Young (253)

There is nothing which Nature so clearly reveals, and upon which science so strongly insists, as the universal reign of law, absolute, universal, invariable law... Not one jot or tittle of the laws of Nature are unfulfilled. I do not believe it is possible to state this fact too strongly... Everything happens according to law, and, since law is the expression of Divine will, everything happens according to Divine will, i.e. is in some sense ordained, decreed.
Lecture 18, 'Predestination and Free-Will', Religion and Science: A Series of Sunday Lectures (1874), 278.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Accordance (10)  |  According (236)  |  Belief (615)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Decree (9)  |  Divine (112)  |  Do (1905)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fulfillment (20)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happening (59)  |  Insistence (12)  |  Invariability (6)  |  Jot (3)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Ordinance (2)  |  Possible (560)  |  Reign (24)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Sense (785)  |  State (505)  |  Statement (148)  |  Universal (198)  |  Universality (22)  |  Will (2350)

There was once an Editor of the Chemical Society, given to dogmatic expressions of opinion, who once duly said firmly that 'isomer' was wrong usage and 'isomeride' was correct, because the ending 'er' always meant a 'do-er'. 'As in water?' snapped Sidgwick.
Obituary of Nevil Vincent Sidgwick by L. E Sutton, Proceedings of the Chemical Society (1958), 318.
Science quotes on:  |  Chemical (303)  |  Correct (95)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dogmatism (15)  |  Editor (10)  |  Ending (3)  |  Isomer (6)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Society (350)  |  Suffix (2)  |  Usage (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Wrong (246)

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, ... the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its solution must be obtained. By the labours of LaGrange, the motions of a disturbed planet are reduced with all their complication and variety to a purely mathematical question. It then ceases to be a physical problem; the disturbed and disturbing planet are alike vanished: the ideas of time and force are at an end; the very elements of the orbit have disappeared, or only exist as arbitrary characters in a mathematical formula
Address to the Mechanics Institute, 'An Address on the Genius and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton' (1835), excerpted in paper by Luis M. Laita, Luis de Ledesma, Eugenio Roanes-Lozano and Alberto Brunori, 'George Boole, a Forerunner of Symbolic Computation', collected in John A. Campbell and Eugenio Roanes-Lozano (eds.), Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation: International Conference AISC 2000 (2001), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Alike (60)  |  Appropriate (61)  |  Arbitrary (27)  |  Cease (81)  |  Character (259)  |  Complication (30)  |  Condition (362)  |  Disadvantage (10)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Disappearance (28)  |  Disturb (31)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Disturbed (15)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  Dynamics (11)  |  Element (322)  |  End (603)  |  Exist (458)  |  Force (497)  |  Formula (102)  |  General (521)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Labor (200)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Motion (320)  |  Must (1525)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Notation (28)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Physical (518)  |  Planet (402)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Purely (111)  |  Question (649)  |  Solution (282)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vanishing (11)  |  Variety (138)  |  Want (504)  |  Whole (756)

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
[The phrase “survival of the fittest” was not originated by Charles Darwin, though he discussed Spencer's “excellent expression” in a letter to A. R. Wallace (Jul 1866).]
In Principles of Biology (1865, 1872), Vol. 1, 444.
Science quotes on:  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Letter (117)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)

This theme of mutually invisible life at widely differing scales bears an important implication for the ‘culture wars’ that supposedly now envelop our universities and our intellectual discourse in general ... One side of this false dichotomy features the postmodern relativists who argue that all culturally bound modes of perception must be equally valid, and that no factual truth therefore exists. The other side includes the benighted, old-fashioned realists who insist that flies truly have two wings, and that Shakespeare really did mean what he thought he was saying. The principle of scaling provides a resolution for the false parts of this silly dichotomy. Facts are facts and cannot be denied by any rational being. (Often, facts are also not at all easy to determine or specify–but this question raises different issues for another time.) Facts, however, may also be highly scale dependent–and the perceptions of one world may have no validity or expression in the domain of another. The one-page map of Maine cannot recognize the separate boulders of Acadia, but both provide equally valid representations of a factual coastline.
The World as I See It (1999)
Science quotes on:  |  Argue (25)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Benighted (2)  |  Bind (26)  |  Both (496)  |  Boulder (8)  |  Bound (120)  |  Coastline (2)  |  Culturally (2)  |  Culture (157)  |  Deny (71)  |  Dependent (26)  |  Determine (152)  |  Dichotomy (4)  |  Differ (88)  |  Different (595)  |  Discourse (19)  |  Domain (72)  |  Easy (213)  |  Envelop (5)  |  Equally (129)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Factual (8)  |  False (105)  |  Feature (49)  |  Fly (153)  |  General (521)  |  Highly (16)  |  Implication (25)  |  Important (229)  |  Include (93)  |  Insist (22)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Issue (46)  |  Life (1870)  |  Map (50)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mode (43)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mutually (7)  |  Often (109)  |  Old (499)  |  Old-Fashioned (9)  |  Other (2233)  |  Part (235)  |  Perception (97)  |  Principle (530)  |  Provide (79)  |  Question (649)  |  Raise (38)  |  Rational (95)  |  Realist (3)  |  Really (77)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Relativist (2)  |  Representation (55)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Say (989)  |  Scale (122)  |  Separate (151)  |  Shakespeare (6)  |  Side (236)  |  Silly (17)  |  Specify (6)  |  Supposedly (2)  |  Theme (17)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truly (118)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Two (936)  |  University (130)  |  Valid (12)  |  Validity (50)  |  War (233)  |  Widely (9)  |  Wing (79)  |  World (1850)

Those skilled in mathematical analysis know that its object is not simply to calculate numbers, but that it is also employed to find the relations between magnitudes which cannot be expressed in numbers and between functions whose law is not capable of algebraic expression.
In Antoine-Augustin Cournot and Nathaniel T. Bacon (trans.), Mathematical Theory of the Principles of Wealth (1897), Preface, 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebraic (5)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Capable (174)  |  Employ (115)  |  Express (192)  |  Find (1014)  |  Function (235)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Number (710)  |  Object (438)  |  Relation (166)  |  Simply (53)  |  Skill (116)  |  Skilled (6)

Though to the layman, the world revealed by the chemist may seem more commonplace, it is not so to him. Each new insight into how the atoms in their interactions express themselves in structure and transformations, not only of inanimate matter, but particularly also of living matter, provides a thrill.
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (10 Dec 1983) for his Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel: The Nobel Prizes (1984), 43.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Commonplace (24)  |  Express (192)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Insight (107)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Layman (21)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Provide (79)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Structure (365)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Transformation (72)  |  World (1850)

Thought-economy is most highly developed in mathematics, that science which has reached the highest formal development, and on which natural science so frequently calls for assistance. Strange as it may seem, the strength of mathematics lies in the avoidance of all unnecessary thoughts, in the utmost economy of thought-operations. The symbols of order, which we call numbers, form already a system of wonderful simplicity and economy. When in the multiplication of a number with several digits we employ the multiplication table and thus make use of previously accomplished results rather than to repeat them each time, when by the use of tables of logarithms we avoid new numerical calculations by replacing them by others long since performed, when we employ determinants instead of carrying through from the beginning the solution of a system of equations, when we decompose new integral expressions into others that are familiar,—we see in all this but a faint reflection of the intellectual activity of a Lagrange or Cauchy, who with the keen discernment of a military commander marshalls a whole troop of completed operations in the execution of a new one.
In Populär-wissenschafliche Vorlesungen (1903), 224-225.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Activity (218)  |  Already (226)  |  Assistance (23)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Avoidance (11)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Call (781)  |  Carry (130)  |  Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (11)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completed (30)  |  Decompose (10)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Digit (4)  |  Discernment (4)  |  Economy (59)  |  Employ (115)  |  Equation (138)  |  Execution (25)  |  Faint (10)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Form (976)  |  Formal (37)  |  Frequently (21)  |  High (370)  |  Highly (16)  |  Instead (23)  |  Integral (26)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Keen (10)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Lie (370)  |  Logarithm (12)  |  Long (778)  |  Marshal (4)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Military (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Multiplication Table (16)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perform (123)  |  Previously (12)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Replace (32)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Seem (150)  |  Several (33)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Solution (282)  |  Strange (160)  |  Strength (139)  |  Symbol (100)  |  System (545)  |  Table (105)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Troop (4)  |  Unnecessary (23)  |  Use (771)  |  Utmost (12)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wonderful (155)

To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration for the world. It gives a deeper meaning to morality and another dimension to esthetics.
From a letter to his long-time associate, Jerrold Zacharias. Quoted in A tribute to I. I. Rabi, Department of Physics, Columbia University, June 1970. In John S. Rigden, in Rabi, Scientist and Citizen (2000), xxi.
Science quotes on:  |  Admiration (61)  |  Aesthetics (12)  |  Aim (175)  |  Culture (157)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Existence (481)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Culture (10)  |  Human Spirit (12)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Love (328)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Morality (55)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Understanding (527)  |  World (1850)

To sum up all, let it be known that science and religion are two identical words. The learned do not suspect this, no more do the religious. These two words express the two sides of the same fact, which is the infinite. Religion—Science, this is the future of the human mind.
In Victor Hugo and Lorenzo O'Rourke (trans.) Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography: (Postscriptum de ma vie) (1907), 325.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Express (192)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Future (467)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Identical (55)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Known (453)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Side (236)  |  Sum (103)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Two (936)  |  Word (650)

Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being and is subject to the law of the mental unity of crowds.
From Psychologie des Foules (1895), 12. English text in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1897), Book 1, Chap. 1, 1-2. The original French text is, “Dans certaines circonstances données, et seulement dans ces circonstances, une agglomération d’hommes possède des caractères nouveaux fort différents de ceux des individus composant cette agglomération. La personnalité consciente s’évanouit, les sentiments et les idées de toutes les unités sont orientés dans une même direction. Il se forme une âme collective, transitoire sans doute, mais présentant des caractères très nets. La collectivité est alors devenue ce que, faute d’une expression meilleure, j’appellerai une foule organisée, ou, si l’on préfère, une foule psychologique. Elle forme un seul être et se trouve soumise à la loi de l'unité mentale des foules.”
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Call (781)  |  Certain (557)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crowd (25)  |  Different (595)  |  Direction (185)  |  Form (976)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Idea (881)  |  Individual (420)  |  Law (913)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  New (1273)  |  Person (366)  |  Personality (66)  |  Present (630)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Single (365)  |  Subject (543)  |  Term (357)  |  Unity (81)  |  Will (2350)

Very little of Roman literature will find its way into the kingdom of heaven, when the events of this world will have lost their importance. The languages of heaven will be Chinese, Greek, French, German, Italian, and English, and the blessed Saints will dwell with delight on these golden expressions of eternal life. They will be wearied with the moral fervour of Hebrew literature in its battle with a vanished evil, and with Roman authors who have mistaken the Forum for the footstool of the living God.
In 'The Place of Classics in Education', The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 104.
Science quotes on:  |  Author (175)  |  Bless (25)  |  Blessed (20)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Delight (111)  |  Education (423)  |  English (35)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Event (222)  |  Evil (122)  |  Fervor (8)  |  Find (1014)  |  Footstool (2)  |  French (21)  |  German (37)  |  God (776)  |  Golden (47)  |  Greek (109)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Hebrew (10)  |  Importance (299)  |  Italian (13)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Kingdom Of Heaven (3)  |  Language (308)  |  Life (1870)  |  Literature (116)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Moral (203)  |  Roman (39)  |  Saint (17)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

We may now give the following more precise expression to our chief law of biogeny:— The evolution of the foetus (or ontogenesis) is a condensed and abbreviated recapitulation of the evolution of the stem (or phylogenesis); and this recapitulation is the more complete in proportion as the original development (or palingenesis) is preserved by a constant heredity; on the other hand, it becomes less complete in proportion as a varying adaptation to new conditions increases the disturbing factors in the development (or cenogenesis).
The Evolution of Man. Translated from the 5th edition of Anthropogenie by Joseph McCabe (1910), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Become (821)  |  Chief (99)  |  Complete (209)  |  Condition (362)  |  Constant (148)  |  Development (441)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Foetus (5)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Increase (225)  |  Law (913)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phylogeny (10)  |  Precise (71)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Recapitulation (6)  |  Stem (31)

We may see how unexpectedly recondite parts of pure mathematics may bear upon physical science, by calling to mind the circumstance that Fresnel obtained one of the most curious confirmations of the theory (the laws of Circular Polarization by reflection) through an interpretation of an algebraical expression, which, according to the original conventional meaning of the symbols, involved an impossible quantity.
In History of Scientific Ideas, Bk. 2, chap. 14, sect. 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Bear (162)  |  Call (781)  |  Circular (19)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Confirmation (25)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Curious (95)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Involve (93)  |  Involved (90)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Original (61)  |  Part (235)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Polarization (4)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Recondite (8)  |  Reflection (93)  |  See (1094)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Unexpected (55)

We must take the abiding spiritual values which inhere in the deep experiences of religion in all ages and give them new expression in terms of the framework which our new knowledge gives us. Science forces religion to deal with new ideas in the theoretical realm and new forces in the practical realm.
Address to Seventh Annual Midsummer Conferences of Ministers and Other Christian Workers, held by Union Theological Seminary, at Columbia University gymnasium (19 Jul 1927), as quoted in 'Fosdick Sees Bible Outrun by Science', New York Times (20 Jul 1927), 23.
Science quotes on:  |  Abiding (3)  |  Age (509)  |  Deal (192)  |  Deep (241)  |  Experience (494)  |  Force (497)  |  Framework (33)  |  Idea (881)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Practical (225)  |  Realm (87)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theoretical (27)  |  Value (393)

When a thinker improves in expression, it is as if he thought better than before.
From chapter 'Jottings from a Note-book', in Canadian Stories (1918), 172.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Improve (64)  |  Thinker (41)  |  Thought (995)

When Cayley had reached his most advanced generalizations he proceeded to establish them directly by some method or other, though he seldom gave the clue by which they had first been obtained: a proceeding which does not tend to make his papers easy reading. …
His literary style is direct, simple and clear. His legal training had an influence, not merely upon his mode of arrangement but also upon his expression; the result is that his papers are severe and present a curious contrast to the luxuriant enthusiasm which pervades so many of Sylvester’s papers. He used to prepare his work for publication as soon as he carried his investigations in any subject far enough for his immediate purpose. … A paper once written out was promptly sent for publication; this practice he maintained throughout life. … The consequence is that he has left few arrears of unfinished or unpublished papers; his work has been given by himself to the world.
In Proceedings of London Royal Society (1895), 58, 23-24.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Arrears (2)  |  Carry (130)  |  Arthur Cayley (17)  |  Clear (111)  |  Clue (20)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Curious (95)  |  Direct (228)  |  Directly (25)  |  Easy (213)  |  Enough (341)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Establish (63)  |  Far (158)  |  First (1302)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Give (208)  |  Himself (461)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Influence (231)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Leave (138)  |  Legal (9)  |  Life (1870)  |  Literary (15)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  Mode (43)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  Pervade (10)  |  Practice (212)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Present (630)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Prompt (14)  |  Publication (102)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reach (286)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Result (700)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Send (23)  |  Severe (17)  |  Simple (426)  |  Soon (187)  |  Style (24)  |  Subject (543)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Tend (124)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Training (92)  |  Unfinished (4)  |  Unpublished (2)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

When physicists speak of “beauty” in their theories, they really mean that their theory possesses at least two essential features: 1. A unifying symmetry 2. The ability to explain vast amounts of experimental data with the most economical mathematical expressions.
In 'Quantum Heresy', Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension (1995), 127.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Amount (153)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Data (162)  |  Economical (11)  |  Essential (210)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Explain (334)  |  Feature (49)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Most (1728)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Speak (240)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Two (936)  |  Vast (188)

When we reflect that all the aspects of Nature, all the emotions of the soul, and all the events of life, have been the subjects of poetry for hundreds and thousands of years, we can hardly wonder that there should be so many resemblances and coincidences of expression among poets, but rather that they are not more numerous and more striking.
In 'Table-Talk', The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Volume 3 (1883), 1355.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspect (129)  |  Coincidence (20)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Event (222)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Poet (97)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Soul (235)  |  Strike (72)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Year (963)

Who … is not familiar with Maxwell’s memoirs on his dynamical theory of gases? … from one side enter the equations of state; from the other side, the equations of motion in a central field. Ever higher soars the chaos of formulae. Suddenly we hear, as from kettle drums, the four beats “put n=5.” The evil spirit v vanishes; and … that which had seemed insuperable has been overcome as if by a stroke of magic … One result after another follows in quick succession till at last … we arrive at the conditions for thermal equilibrium together with expressions for the transport coefficients.
In Ceremonial Speech (15 Nov 1887) celebrating the 301st anniversary of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Published as Gustav Robert Kirchhoff: Festrede zur Feier des 301. Gründungstages der Karl-Franzens-Universität zu Graz (1888), 29, as translated in Michael Dudley Sturge, Statistical and Thermal Physics (2003), 343. A more complete alternate translation also appears on the Ludwig Boltzmann Quotes page of this website.
Science quotes on:  |  Beat (42)  |  Central (81)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Coefficient (6)  |  Condition (362)  |  Drum (8)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  Enter (145)  |  Equation (138)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Evil (122)  |  Field (378)  |  Follow (389)  |  Formula (102)  |  Hear (144)  |  Kettle (3)  |  Last (425)  |  Magic (92)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  Motion (320)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overcome (40)  |  Result (700)  |  Side (236)  |  Soar (23)  |  Spirit (278)  |  State (505)  |  Stroke (19)  |  Succession (80)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thermal (15)  |  Together (392)  |  Transport (31)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.