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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index O > Category: Objective

Objective Quotes (96 quotes)

… just as the astronomer, the physicist, the geologist, or other student of objective science looks about in the world of sense, so, not metaphorically speaking but literally, the mind of the mathematician goes forth in the universe of logic in quest of the things that are there; exploring the heights and depths for facts—ideas, classes, relationships, implications, and the rest; observing the minute and elusive with the powerful microscope of his Infinitesimal Analysis; observing the elusive and vast with the limitless telescope of his Calculus of the Infinite; making guesses regarding the order and internal harmony of the data observed and collocated; testing the hypotheses, not merely by the complete induction peculiar to mathematics, but, like his colleagues of the outer world, resorting also to experimental tests and incomplete induction; frequently finding it necessary, in view of unforeseen disclosures, to abandon one hopeful hypothesis or to transform it by retrenchment or by enlargement:—thus, in his own domain, matching, point for point, the processes, methods and experience familiar to the devotee of natural science.
In Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art (1908), 26
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Class (168)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Complete (209)  |  Data (162)  |  Depth (97)  |  Devotee (7)  |  Disclosure (7)  |  Domain (72)  |  Elusive (8)  |  Enlargement (8)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Find (1014)  |  Forth (14)  |  Frequently (21)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Guess (67)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Height (33)  |  Hopeful (6)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Implication (25)  |  Incomplete (31)  |  Induction (81)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinitesimal (30)  |  Internal (69)  |  Limitless (14)  |  Literally (30)  |  Located (2)  |  Logic (311)  |  Look (584)  |  Making (300)  |  Match (30)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Merely (315)  |  Metaphor (37)  |  Method (531)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Minute (129)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outer (13)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Point (584)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Process (439)  |  Quest (39)  |  Regard (312)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Resort (8)  |  Rest (287)  |  Sense (785)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Student (317)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Test (221)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Transform (74)  |  Unforeseen (11)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  View (496)  |  World (1850)

[A crowd] thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first … A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed facts. * * * Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. It is only images that terrify or attract them and become motives of action.
From Psychologie des Foules (1895), 29 & 56. English text in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1897), Book 1, Chap 2, 22 & last sentence, 55. Original French text: “[La foule] pense par images, et l’image évoquée en évoque elle-même une série d’autres n’ayant aucun lien logique avec la première. … La foule ne sépare guère le subjectif de l’objectif. Elle admet comme réelles les images évoquées dans son esprit, et qui le plus souvent n’ont qu’une parenté lointaine avec le fait observé. * * * Les foules, ne pouvant penser que par images,ne se laissent impressionner que par des images. Seules les images les terrifient ou les séduisent, et deviennent des mobiles d’action.”
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Action (342)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Call (781)  |  Capable (174)  |  Connection (171)  |  Crowd (25)  |  Distant (33)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  First (1302)  |  Image (97)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Invoke (7)  |  Logical (57)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motive (62)  |  Observed (149)  |  Other (2233)  |  Real (159)  |  Relation (166)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Seduce (4)  |  Series (153)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Terrify (12)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)

A scientific or technical study always consists of the following three steps:
1. One decides the objective.
2. One considers the method.
3. One evaluates the method in relation to the objective.
System of Experimental Design (1987), xxix.
Science quotes on:  |  Consider (428)  |  Consist (223)  |  Design (203)  |  Evaluation (10)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Method (531)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Step (234)  |  Study (701)

A writer must be as objective as a chemist: he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dung-heaps play a very reasonable part in a landscape, and that the evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
Letter to M. V. Kiselev (14 Jan 1887). In L. S. Friedland (ed.), Anton Chekhov: Letters on the Short Story (1967).
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Dung (10)  |  Evil (122)  |  Good (906)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Know (1538)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Life (1870)  |  Must (1525)  |  Passion (121)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Writer (90)

Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence…. The two propositions: “The earth turns round” and “it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round” have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other.
From La Science et l’Hypothèse (1908), 141, as translated by George Bruce Halsted in Science and Hypothesis (1905), 85-86. From the original French, “L’espace absolu, c’est-à-dire le repère auquel il faudrait rapporter la terre pour savoir si réellement elle tourne, n’a aucune existence objective. … Ces deux propositions: ‘la terre tourne’, et: ‘il est plus commode de supposer que la terre tourne’, ont un seul et même sens; il n’y a rien de plus dans l’une que dans l’autre.”
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Convenience (54)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Existence (481)  |  Know (1538)  |  Meaning (244)  |  More (2558)  |  Move (223)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Really (77)  |  Reference Frame (2)  |  Say (989)  |  Space (523)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)

All true science must aim at objective truth, and that means that the human observer must never allow himself to get emotionally mixed up with his subject-matter. His concern is to understand the universe, not to improve it. Detachment is obligatory.
From transcript of BBC radio Reith Lecture (12 Nov 1967), 'A Runaway World', on the bbc.co.uk website.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Concern (239)  |  Detachment (8)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Improve (64)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mix (24)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Obligatory (3)  |  Observer (48)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subject-Matter (8)  |  True (239)  |  True Science (25)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Universe (900)

Among the memoirs of Kirchhoff are some of uncommon beauty. … Can anything be beautiful, where the author has no time for the slightest external embellishment?—But—; it is this very simplicity, the indispensableness of each word, each letter, each little dash, that among all artists raises the mathematician nearest to the World-creator; it establishes a sublimity which is equalled in no other art, something like it exists at most in symphonic music. The Pythagoreans recognized already the similarity between the most subjective and the most objective of the arts.
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), 28-29, as translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 186. From the original German, “Gerade unter den zuletzt erwähnten Abhandlungen Kirchhoff’s sind einige von ungewöhnlicher Schönheit. … kann etwas schön sein, wo dem Autor auch zur kleinsten äusseren Ausschmückung die Zeit fehlt?–Doch–; gerade durch diese Einfachheit, durch diese Unentbehrlichkeit jedes Wortes, jedes Buchstaben, jedes Strichelchens kömmt der Mathematiker unter allen Künstlern dem Weltenschöpfer am nächsten; sie begründet eine Erhabenheit, die in keiner Kunst ein Gleiches,–Aehnliches höchstens in der symphonischen Musik hat. Erkannten doch schon die Pythagoräer die Aehnlichkeit der subjectivsten und der objectivsten der Künste.”
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Author (175)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Creator (97)  |  Dash (3)  |  Equal (88)  |  Establish (63)  |  Exist (458)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (4)  |  Letter (117)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics And Art (8)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Memoir (13)  |  Most (1728)  |  Music (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Raise (38)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Something (718)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Sublimity (6)  |  Symphony (10)  |  Time (1911)  |  Uncommon (14)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

An objective measure of the effects upon blood production was the chief basis of our conclusions that by feeding liver, significant improvement had been obtained.
From Nobel Prize Lecture (12 Dec 1934), collected in Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1922-1941 (1965).
Science quotes on:  |  Basis (180)  |  Blood (144)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Diet (56)  |  Effect (414)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Liver (22)  |  Measure (241)  |  Production (190)  |  Significant (78)

And science, we should insist, better than other discipline, can hold up to its students and followers an ideal of patient devotion to the search to objective truth, with vision unclouded by personal or political motive, not tolerating any lapse from precision or neglect of any anomaly, fearing only prejudice and preconception, accepting nature’s answers humbly and with courage, and giving them to the world with an unflinching fidelity. The world cannot afford to lose such a contribution to the moral framework of its civilisation.
Concluding statements of Pilgrim Trust Lecture (22 Oct 1946) delivered at National Academy of Science Washington, DC. Published in 'The Freedom of Science', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (25 Feb 1947), 91, No. 1, 72.
Science quotes on:  |  Accepting (22)  |  Anomaly (11)  |  Answer (389)  |  Better (493)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Courage (82)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Follower (11)  |  Framework (33)  |  Hold (96)  |  Humbly (8)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Insist (22)  |  Lose (165)  |  Moral (203)  |  Motive (62)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Other (2233)  |  Patient (209)  |  Personal (75)  |  Political (124)  |  Precision (72)  |  Preconception (13)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Search (175)  |  Student (317)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vision (127)  |  World (1850)

As a scientist and geneticist I started to feel that science would probably soon reach the point where its interference into the life processes would be counterproductive if a properly designed governing policy was not implemented. A heavily overcrowded planet, ninety-five percent urbanized with nuclear energy as the main source of energy and with all aspects of life highly computerized, is not too pleasant a place for human life. The life of any individual soon will be predictable from birth to death. Medicine, able to cure almost everything, will make the load of accumulated defects too heavy in the next two or three centuries. The artificial prolongation of life, which looked like a very bright idea when I started research in aging about twenty-five years ago, has now lost its attractiveness for me. This is because I now know that the aging process is so multiform and complex that the real technology and chemistry of its prevention by artificial interference must be too complex and expensive. It would be the privilege of a few, not the method for the majority. I also was deeply concerned about the fact that most research is now either directly or indirectly related to military projects and objectives for power.
Quoted in 'Zhores A(leksandrovich) Medvedev', Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002.
Science quotes on:  |  Aging (9)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Birth (154)  |  Bright (81)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Complex (202)  |  Concern (239)  |  Cure (124)  |  Death (406)  |  Defect (31)  |  Design (203)  |  Energy (373)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feel (371)  |  Future (467)  |  Geneticist (16)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Governing (20)  |  Heavily (14)  |  Human (1512)  |  Idea (881)  |  Implement (13)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interference (22)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Look (584)  |  Majority (68)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Method (531)  |  Military (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Next (238)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Energy (18)  |  Planet (402)  |  Point (584)  |  Power (771)  |  Prevention (37)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Process (439)  |  Project (77)  |  Reach (286)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Soon (187)  |  Start (237)  |  Technology (281)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

But, as we consider the totality of similarly broad and fundamental aspects of life, we cannot defend division by two as a natural principle of objective order. Indeed, the ‘stuff’ of the universe often strikes our senses as complex and shaded continua, admittedly with faster and slower moments, and bigger and smaller steps, along the way. Nature does not dictate dualities, trinities, quarterings, or any ‘objective’ basis for human taxonomies; most of our chosen schemes, and our designated numbers of categories, record human choices from a cornucopia of possibilities offered by natural variation from place to place, and permitted by the flexibility of our mental capacities. How many seasons (if we wish to divide by seasons at all) does a year contain? How many stages shall we recognize in a human life?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Admittedly (2)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Basis (180)  |  Big (55)  |  Broad (28)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Category (19)  |  Choice (114)  |  Choose (116)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Complex (202)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contain (68)  |  Continua (3)  |  Defend (32)  |  Designation (13)  |  Dictate (11)  |  Divide (77)  |  Division (67)  |  Fast (49)  |  Faster (50)  |  Flexibility (6)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mental (179)  |  Moment (260)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Number (710)  |  Offer (142)  |  Often (109)  |  Order (638)  |  Permit (61)  |  Place (192)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Principle (530)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Record (161)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Season (47)  |  Sense (785)  |  Shade (35)  |  Similarly (4)  |  Slow (108)  |  Small (489)  |  Stage (152)  |  Step (234)  |  Strike (72)  |  Stuff (24)  |  Taxonomy (19)  |  Totality (17)  |  Two (936)  |  Universe (900)  |  Variation (93)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wish (216)  |  Year (963)

Does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?
In 'Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?', Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 2004).
Science quotes on:  |  Commensurate (2)  |  Cost (94)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Life (1870)  |  Obsolete (15)  |  Realistic (6)  |  Remotely (2)  |  Simply (53)  |  Space Travel (23)

Essentially only one thing in life interests us: our psychical constitution, the mechanism of which was and is wrapped in darkness. All human resources, art, religion, literature, philosophy and historical sciences, all of them join in bringing lights in this darkness. But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods. This science, as we all know, is making huge progress every day. The facts and considerations which I have placed before you at the end of my lecture are one out of numerous attempts to employ a consistent, purely scientific method of thinking in the study of the mechanism of the highest manifestations of life in the dog, the representative of the animal kingdom that is man's best friend.
'Physiology of Digestion', Nobel Lecture (12 Dec 1904). In Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921 (1967), 134
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Kingdom (21)  |  Art (680)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Best (467)  |  Best Friend (4)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Consistency (31)  |  Consistent (50)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Dog (70)  |  Employ (115)  |  Employment (34)  |  End (603)  |  Essential (210)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Friend (180)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Interest (416)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Literature (116)  |  Making (300)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Method (531)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Progress (492)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Purely (111)  |  Religion (369)  |  Representative (14)  |  Resource (74)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Still (614)  |  Strictness (2)  |  Study (701)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Wrap (7)

Given any domain of thought in which the fundamental objective is a knowledge that transcends mere induction or mere empiricism, it seems quite inevitable that its processes should be made to conform closely to the pattern of a system free of ambiguous terms, symbols, operations, deductions; a system whose implications and assumptions are unique and consistent; a system whose logic confounds not the necessary with the sufficient where these are distinct; a system whose materials are abstract elements interpretable as reality or unreality in any forms whatsoever provided only that these forms mirror a thought that is pure. To such a system is universally given the name MATHEMATICS.
In 'Mathematics', National Mathematics Magazine (Nov 1937), 12, No. 2, 62.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Conform (15)  |  Confound (21)  |  Consistent (50)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Domain (72)  |  Element (322)  |  Empiricism (21)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Implication (25)  |  Induction (81)  |  Inevitable (53)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Logic (311)  |  Material (366)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mirror (43)  |  Name (359)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Process (439)  |  Provide (79)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reality (274)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Symbol (100)  |  System (545)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Thought (995)  |  Transcend (27)  |  Unique (72)  |  Universal (198)  |  Unreality (3)  |  Whatsoever (41)

God plays dice with the universe, but they’re loaded dice. And the main objective of physics now is to find out by what rules were they loaded and how can we use them for our own ends.
Quoted in James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (1987), 314.
Science quotes on:  |  Dice (21)  |  End (603)  |  Find (1014)  |  Find Out (25)  |  God (776)  |  Load (12)  |  Main (29)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Play (116)  |  Rule (307)  |  Universe (900)  |  Use (771)

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)  |  Expression (181)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Himself (461)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Lovely (12)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Possible (560)  |  Resource (74)  |  Sensitive (15)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Universe (900)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)

I am convinced that an important stage of human thought will have been reached when the physiological and the psychological, the objective and the subjective, are actually united, when the tormenting conflicts or contradictions between my consciousness and my body will have been factually resolved or discarded.
Physiology of the Higher Nervous Activity (1932), 93-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Body (557)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Convincing (9)  |  Discard (32)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Human (1512)  |  Importance (299)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Reach (286)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Stage (152)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Thought (995)  |  Torment (18)  |  Unite (43)  |  Will (2350)

I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Calm (32)  |  Contribute (30)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Affairs (6)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Pipe (7)  |  Smoke (32)  |  Smoking (27)

I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman’s irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.
Address at The Physical Society, Berlin (1918) for Max Planck’s 60th birthday, 'Principles of Research', collected in Essays in Science (1934) 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Apparently (22)  |  Art (680)  |  Belief (615)  |  Built (7)  |  Compared (8)  |  Contour (3)  |  Crudity (4)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dreariness (3)  |  Escape (85)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fetter (4)  |  Fetters (7)  |  Finely (3)  |  Freely (13)  |  High (370)  |  Hopeless (17)  |  Hopelessness (6)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Lead (391)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Longing (19)  |  Motive (62)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Noisy (3)  |  Pain (144)  |  Perception (97)  |  Personal (75)  |  Pure (299)  |  Range (104)  |  Restful (2)  |  Schopenhauer (6)  |  Arthur Schopenhauer (19)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Shifting (5)  |  Silence (62)  |  Still (614)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Surrounding (13)  |  Tempered (2)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Trace (109)  |  World (1850)

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves–this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts–possessions, outward success, luxury–have always seemed to me contemptible.
In 'What I Believe,' Forum and Century (1930).
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Basis (180)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Call (781)  |  Cheerfully (2)  |  Contemptible (8)  |  Courage (82)  |  Critical (73)  |  Ease (40)  |  Effort (243)  |  Empty (82)  |  End (603)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Eternally (4)  |  Face (214)  |  Field (378)  |  Give (208)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Kindness (14)  |  Kinship (5)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Look (584)  |  Luxury (21)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Object (438)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Outward (7)  |  Possession (68)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seem (150)  |  Sense (785)  |  Success (327)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trite (5)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unattainable (6)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

If gold medals and prizes were awarded to institutions instead of individuals, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital of 30 years ago would have qualified. The ruling board and administrative structure of that hospital did not falter in their support of the quixotic objective of treating end-stage renal disease despite a long list of tragic failures that resulted from these early efforts.
In Tore Frängsmyr and Jan E. Lindsten (eds.), Nobel Lectures: Physiology Or Medicine: 1981-1990 (1993), 558.
Science quotes on:  |  Administrator (11)  |  Award (13)  |  Board (13)  |  Brigham Hospital (2)  |  Disease (340)  |  Early (196)  |  Effort (243)  |  End (603)  |  Failure (176)  |  Gold (101)  |  Gold Medal (2)  |  Hospital (45)  |  Individual (420)  |  Institution (73)  |  Long (778)  |  Nobel Prize (42)  |  Qualified (12)  |  Qualify (6)  |  Renal (4)  |  Result (700)  |  Stage (152)  |  Structure (365)  |  Support (151)  |  Tragic (19)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Year (963)

If the question were, “What ought to be the next objective in science?” my answer would be the teaching of science to the young, so that when the whole population grew up there would be a far more general background of common sense, based on a knowledge of the real meaning of the scientific method of discovering truth.
Marion Savin Selections from the Scientific Correspondence of Elihu Thomson (1971), v.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Background (44)  |  Base (120)  |  Common (447)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Discovery (837)  |  General (521)  |  Growth (200)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Next (238)  |  Population (115)  |  Question (649)  |  Real (159)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Sense (785)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Whole (756)  |  Young (253)

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.
In 'The Diversity of Cultures', Patterns of Culture (1934, 2005), 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Examination (102)  |  Find (1014)  |  Justify (26)  |  Merit (51)  |  People (1031)  |  Possess (157)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Trait (23)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)

If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.
Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1958), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Alone (324)  |  Language (308)  |  Map (50)  |  Possible (560)  |  Structure (365)  |  Territory (25)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

In an objective system … any mingling of knowledge with values is unlawful, forbidden. But [the] … “first commandment” which ensures the foundation of objective knowledge, is not itself objective. It cannot be objective: it is an ethical guideline, a rule for conduct. True knowledge is ignorant of values, but it cannot be grounded elsewhere than upon a value judgment…
In Chance and Necessity (1970), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Commandment (8)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Elsewhere (10)  |  Ensure (27)  |  Ethical (34)  |  Ethics (53)  |  First (1302)  |  Forbidden (18)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Ground (222)  |  Guideline (4)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mingle (9)  |  Rule (307)  |  System (545)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unlawful (2)  |  Value (393)

In any broad program of research the key word in regard to any one aspect of the program is relevance. … Probably “conducive to progress toward the main object of a program” is as good a definition as any,
From a statement (21 Nov 1963) to the Select Committee on Government Research of the U.S. House of Representatives. Excerpted in 'Vannevar Bush Speaks', Science (27 Dec 1963), New Series, 142, No. 3600, 1623.
Science quotes on:  |  Definition (238)  |  Progress (492)  |  Relevance (18)  |  Research (753)

In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Cause (561)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Forever (111)  |  Hide (70)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lessen (6)  |  Lessening (3)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Pride (84)  |  Primary (82)  |  Prove (261)  |  Reality (274)  |  Relation (166)  |  Result (700)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Will (2350)

In the great debates of early-nineteenth century geology, catastrophists followed the stereotypical method of objective science-empirical literalism. They believed what they saw, interpolated nothing, and read the record of the rocks directly.
'The Stinkstones of Oeningen', In Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983), 105.
Science quotes on:  |  Century (319)  |  Debate (40)  |  Early (196)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Follow (389)  |  Geology (240)  |  Great (1610)  |  Method (531)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Read (308)  |  Record (161)  |  Rock (176)  |  Saw (160)

In the Vienna of the late 1920s and 1930s there throve an internationally famous philosophical bunch called the logical positivists. … They said that a key ingredient of knowledge was “sense data,” and proclaimed emphatically, in the words of … J.S.L. Gilmour, that sense data are “objective and unalterable.” …Good guess, but no cigar!
In 'A Trip Through the Perception Factory', Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), 64.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Data (162)  |  Emphatically (8)  |  Famous (12)  |  Good (906)  |  Guess (67)  |  Ingredient (16)  |  International (40)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Late (119)  |  Logic (311)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Positivist (5)  |  Proclaim (31)  |  Sense (785)  |  Thrive (22)  |  Unalterable (7)  |  Word (650)

It is perfectly possible to be objective about an angry man, but it is inadvisable, for it will only make him angrier.
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 120.
Science quotes on:  |  Anger (21)  |  Man (2252)  |  Possible (560)  |  Will (2350)

Its [the anthropological method] power to make us understand the roots from which our civilization has sprung, that it impresses us with the relative value of all forms of culture, and thus serves as a check to an exaggerated valuation of the standpoint of our own period, which we are only too liable to consider the ultimate goal of human evolution, thus depriving ourselves of the benefits to be gained from the teachings of other cultures and hindering an objective criticism of our own work.
'The History of Anthropology', Science, 1904, 20, 524.
Science quotes on:  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Consider (428)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Culture (157)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Form (976)  |  Gain (146)  |  Goal (155)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Culture (10)  |  Method (531)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Period (200)  |  Power (771)  |  Root (121)  |  Standpoint (28)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Teachings (11)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Understand (648)  |  Value (393)  |  Work (1402)

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)  |  Expression (181)  |  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)  |  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)

Looking back over the last thousand years, one can divide the development of the machine and the machine civilization into three successive but over-lapping and interpenetrating phases: eotechnic, paleotechnic, neotechnic … Speaking in terms of power and characteristic materials, the eotechnic phase is a water-and-wood complex: the paleotechnic phase is a coal-and-wood complex… The dawn-age of our modern technics stretches roughly from the year 1000 to 1750. It did not, of course, come suddenly to an end in the middle of the eighteenth century. A new movement appeared in industrial society which had been gathering headway almost unnoticed from the fifteenth century on: after 1750 industry passed into a new phase, with a different source of power, different materials, different objectives.
Technics and Civilisation (1934), 109.
Science quotes on:  |  18th Century (21)  |  Age (509)  |  Back (395)  |  Century (319)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Civilisation (23)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Coal (64)  |  Complex (202)  |  Course (413)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Divide (77)  |  End (603)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Headway (2)  |  Industry (159)  |  Last (425)  |  Looking (191)  |  Machine (271)  |  Material (366)  |  Modern (402)  |  Movement (162)  |  New (1273)  |  Paleotechnic (2)  |  Pass (241)  |  Phase (37)  |  Power (771)  |  Society (350)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Successive (73)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Technics (2)  |  Technology (281)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Water (503)  |  Wood (97)  |  Year (963)

Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world.
From 'On Practice,' (Jul 1937), in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (2017), 106.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Change (639)  |  Explain (334)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Lie (370)  |  Most (1728)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Problem (731)  |  Understanding (527)  |  World (1850)

Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly–and many clouds upon our vision are of our own making: social and cultural biases, psychological preferences, and mental limitations (in universal modes of thought, not just individualized stupidity).
In Chap. 1, 'Huxley’s Chessboard', Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin (1996, 2011), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Bias (22)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Cultural (26)  |  Darkly (2)  |  Glass (94)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Making (300)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mode (43)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Preference (28)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Social (261)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Universal (198)  |  View (496)  |  Vision (127)

Nature is the objective creditor of every living being.
In On Love & Psychological Exercises: With Some Aphorisms & Other Essays (1998), 57.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Being (3)  |  Nature (2017)

Neither in the subjective nor in the objective world can we find a criterion for the reality of the number concept, because the first contains no such concept, and the second contains nothing that is free from the concept. How then can we arrive at a criterion? Not by evidence, for the dice of evidence are loaded. Not by logic, for logic has no existence independent of mathematics: it is only one phase of this multiplied necessity that we call mathematics.
How then shall mathematical concepts be judged? They shall not be judged. Mathematics is the supreme arbiter. From its decisions there is no appeal. We cannot change the rules of the game, we cannot ascertain whether the game is fair. We can only study the player at his game; not, however, with the detached attitude of a bystander, for we are watching our own minds at play.
In Number: The Language of Science; a Critical Survey Written for the Cultured Non-Mathematician (1937), 244-245.
Science quotes on:  |  Appeal (46)  |  Arbiter (5)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Ascertain (41)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Call (781)  |  Change (639)  |  Concept (242)  |  Contain (68)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Decision (98)  |  Detach (5)  |  Dice (21)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fair (16)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Free (239)  |  Game (104)  |  Independent (74)  |  Judge (114)  |  Loaded (4)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Phase (37)  |  Play (116)  |  Player (9)  |  Reality (274)  |  Rule (307)  |  Study (701)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Watch (118)  |  World (1850)

Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.
The Nature of Physical Theory (1936), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Character (259)  |  Consider (428)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Decision (98)  |  Defy (11)  |  Ethic (39)  |  Ethics (53)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellect (32)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Making (300)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Other (2233)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Problem (731)  |  Prove (261)  |  Question (649)  |  Religion (369)  |  Right (473)  |  Set (400)  |  Single (365)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Turn (454)  |  Will (2350)

Objective conscience is the function of a normal being; the representative of God in the essence. Buried so deeply that it remains relatively indestructible.
In On Love & Psychological Exercises: With Some Aphorisms & Other Essays (1998), 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Bury (19)  |  Conscience (52)  |  Deep (241)  |  Essence (85)  |  Function (235)  |  God (776)  |  Indestructible (12)  |  Normal (29)  |  Relative (42)  |  Remain (355)  |  Representative (14)

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
'The Will to Believe' (1896). In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Certainty (180)  |  Certitude (6)  |  Dream (222)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Planet (402)

Objective Science is that which has as its conscious purpose the investigating of the meaning and aim of existence.
In On Love & Psychological Exercises: With Some Aphorisms & Other Essays (1998), 57.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Existence (481)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Purpose (336)

One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
Albert Einstein and Walter Shropshire (ed.), The Joys of Research (1981), 40.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Crudity (4)  |  Desire (212)  |  Dreariness (3)  |  Escape (85)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Fetters (7)  |  Hopeless (17)  |  Lead (391)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Motive (62)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Pain (144)  |  Perception (97)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Thought (995)  |  World (1850)

One would have to have been brought up in the “spirit of militarism” to understand the difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the one hand, and Auschwitz and Belsen on the other. The usual reasoning is the following: the former case is one of warfare, the latter of cold-blooded slaughter. But the plain truth is that the people involved are in both instances nonparticipants, defenseless old people, women, and children, whose annihilation is supposed to achieve some political or military objective.… I am certain that the human race is doomed, unless its instinctive detestation of atrocities gains the upper hand over the artificially constructed judgment of reason.
Max Born
In The Born-Einstein Letters: Correspondence Between Albert Einstein and Max Born (1971), 205. Born’s commentary (at age 86) added for the book, printed after letter to Albert Einstein, 8 Nov 1953.
Science quotes on:  |  Annihilation (15)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Atrocity (6)  |  Auschwitz (5)  |  Blood (144)  |  Both (496)  |  Certain (557)  |  Children (201)  |  Cold (115)  |  Cold-Blooded (2)  |  Construct (129)  |  Defenseless (3)  |  Difference (355)  |  Doom (34)  |  Former (138)  |  Gain (146)  |  Hiroshima (18)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Involved (90)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Military (45)  |  Nagasaki (3)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Political (124)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Slaughter (8)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Warfare (12)

Our remote ancestors tried to interpret nature in terms of anthropomorphic concepts of their own creation and failed. The efforts of our nearer ancestors to interpret nature on engineering lines proved equally inadequate. Nature refused to accommodate herself to either of these man-made moulds. On the other hand, our efforts to interpret nature in terms of the concepts of pure mathematics have, so far, proved brilliantly successful. It would now seem to be beyond dispute that in some way nature is more closely allied to the concepts of pure mathematics than to those of biology or of engineering, and…the mathematical interpretation…fits objective nature incomparably better than the two previously tried.
In The Mysterious Universe (1930, Rev. Ed. 1942), 158.
Science quotes on:  |  Accommodate (17)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Anthropomorphic (4)  |  Better (493)  |  Biology (232)  |  Concept (242)  |  Creation (350)  |  Effort (243)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fit (139)  |  Inadequate (20)  |  Incomparable (14)  |  Interpret (25)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Man-Made (10)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mold (37)  |  Nature (2017)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Previous (17)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Refuse (45)  |  Successful (134)  |  Try (296)

Our time is distinguished by wonderful achievements in the fields of scientific understanding and the technical application of those insights. Who would not be cheered by this? But let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring constructive mind.
(Sep 1937). In Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman (eds.), Albert Einstein, the Human Side (1979), 70. The editors state that except being unrelated to “a ‘Preaching Mission’, nothing of any consequence is known of the circumstances that prompted its composition.”
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Alone (324)  |  Application (257)  |  Cheer (7)  |  Constructive (15)  |  Dignified (13)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Field (378)  |  Forget (125)  |  Happy (108)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Insight (107)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Let (64)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moral (203)  |  Owe (71)  |  Place (192)  |  Rank (69)  |  Reason (766)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Skill (116)  |  Standard (64)  |  Technical (53)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Value (393)  |  Wonderful (155)

Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
Anonymous
In Wieslaw Krawcewicz, Bindhyachal Rai, Calculus with Maple Labs (2003), 328. In this book, and also in Julian Havil, Nonplussed!: Mathematical Proof of Implausible Ideas? (2007), 68, the quote is attributed to Ian Ellis, but most sources vite it as Anonymous.
Science quotes on:  |  Game (104)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Rule (307)

Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled–while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Arrogant (4)  |  Enough (341)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fool (121)  |  Good (906)  |  Know (1538)  |  Magic (92)  |  Mortal (55)  |  Never (1089)  |  Observe (179)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Particular (80)  |  People (1031)  |  Perfectly (10)  |  Performer (2)  |  Phony (3)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Scrutiny (15)  |  Stage (152)  |  Success (327)  |  Think (1122)  |  Trick (36)  |  Way (1214)

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.
Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics (1938), 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Become (821)  |  Call (781)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Closed (38)  |  Compare (76)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Concept (242)  |  Creation (350)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Enquiry (89)  |  Existence (481)  |  Explain (334)  |  Face (214)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Hear (144)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Impression (118)  |  Increase (225)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Limit (294)  |  Man (2252)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Never (1089)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Physical (518)  |  Picture (148)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Range (104)  |  Reality (274)  |  See (1094)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Trying (144)  |  Understand (648)  |  Watch (118)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Physics does not endeavour to explain nature. In fact, the great success of physics is due to a restriction of its objectives: it only endeavours to explain the regularities in the behavior of objects.
In 'Events, Laws of Nature, and Invariance Principles', Nobel Lecture (12 Dec 1963). in Nobel Lectures: Physics 1963-1970 (1972), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Behavior (95)  |  Due (143)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Great (1610)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Regularity (40)  |  Restriction (14)  |  Success (327)

Positive, objective knowledge is public property. It can be transmitted directly from one person to another, it can be pooled, and it can be passed on from one generation to the next. Consequently, knowledge accumulates through the ages, each generation adding its contribution. Values are quite different. By values, I mean the standards by which we judge the significance of life. The meaning of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, of beauty, justice, success-all these are purely private convictions, and they constitute our store of wisdom. They are peculiar to the individual, and no methods exist by which universal agreement can be obtained. Therefore, wisdom cannot be readily transmitted from person to person, and there is no great accumulation through the ages. Each man starts from scratch and acquires his own wisdom from his own experience. About all that can be done in the way of communication is to expose others to vicarious experience in the hope of a favorable response.
The Nature of Science and Other Lectures (1954), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Age (509)  |  Agreement (55)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Communication (101)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Different (595)  |  Evil (122)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experience (494)  |  Expose (28)  |  Favorable (24)  |  Generation (256)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hope (321)  |  Individual (420)  |  Joy (117)  |  Judge (114)  |  Justice (40)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Method (531)  |  Next (238)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Person (366)  |  Positive (98)  |  Property (177)  |  Purely (111)  |  Response (56)  |  Scratch (14)  |  Significance (114)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Start (237)  |  Store (49)  |  Success (327)  |  Through (846)  |  Universal (198)  |  Value (393)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wisdom (235)

Preferring a search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger. It is an endeavor almost as old as civilization and intertwined with traditional religion, but it follows a very different course—a stoic’s creed, an acquired taste, a guidebook to adventure plotted across rough terrain. It aims to save the spirit, not by surrender but by liberation of the human mind. Its central tenet, as Einstein knew, is the unification of knowledge. When we have unified enough certain knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here. If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
In Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Adventure (69)  |  Aim (175)  |  Central (81)  |  Certain (557)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Course (413)  |  Creed (28)  |  Different (595)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Enough (341)  |  Fail (191)  |  Failure (176)  |  Find (1014)  |  Follow (389)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Liberation (12)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Old (499)  |  Quest (39)  |  Reality (274)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Save (126)  |  Search (175)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Surrender (21)  |  Taste (93)  |  Terrain (6)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unification (11)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

Psychology appeared to be a jungle of confusing, conflicting, and arbitrary concepts. These pre-scientific theories doubtless contained insights which still surpass in refinement those depended upon by psychiatrists or psychologists today. But who knows, among the many brilliant ideas offered, which are the true ones? Some will claim that the statements of one theorist are correct, but others will favour the views of another. Then there is no objective way of sorting out the truth except through scientific research.
From The Scientific Analysis of Personality (1965), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Arbitrary (27)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Claim (154)  |  Concept (242)  |  Conflicting (13)  |  Confusing (2)  |  Correct (95)  |  Depend (238)  |  Idea (881)  |  Insight (107)  |  Jungle (24)  |  Know (1538)  |  Offer (142)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pre-Scientific (5)  |  Psychiatrist (16)  |  Psychologist (26)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Refinement (19)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Statement (148)  |  Still (614)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Today (321)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics. It is granted that the behavior of animals can be investigated without appeal to consciousness. Heretofore the viewpoint has been that such data have value only in so far as they can be interpreted by analogy in terms of consciousness. The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane.
In Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (1913), 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogy (76)  |  Animal (651)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Branch (155)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Data (162)  |  Do (1905)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Grant (76)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Introspection (6)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Need (320)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Plane (22)  |  Position (83)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Purely (111)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Value (393)  |  View (496)  |  Viewpoint (13)

Pursuit of the objective of maximum species diversity or even maximum species richness could lead to serious negative consequences if taken literally.
In The Fragmented Forest: Island Biogeography Theory and the Preservation of Biotic Diversity (1984), 106.
Science quotes on:  |  Consequence (220)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Lead (391)  |  Literal (12)  |  Literally (30)  |  Maximum (16)  |  Negative (66)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Richness (15)  |  Serious (98)  |  Species (435)

Reality is a fabrication slapped together by an often bumbling inner team. ...The proclamation that "there can be no such thing as an objective fact" has a great deal of validity.
In 'A Trip Through the Perception Factory', Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000),70.
Science quotes on:  |  Deal (192)  |  Fabrication (2)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inner (72)  |  Proclamation (3)  |  Reality (274)  |  Slap (3)  |  Team (17)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Together (392)  |  Validity (50)

Realizing how often ingenious speculation in the complex biological world has led nowhere and how often the real advances in biology as well as in chemistry, physics and astronomy have kept within the bounds of mechanistic interpretation, we geneticists should rejoice, even with our noses on the grindstone (which means both eyes on the objectives), that we have at command an additional means of testing whatever original ideas pop into our heads.
'The Rise of Genetics', Science (1932), 1969, 264.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Both (496)  |  Bound (120)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Command (60)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Eye (440)  |  Geneticist (16)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Ingenuity (42)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Rejoice (11)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Test (221)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)

Science can be the basis of an objective criticism of political power because it claims no power itself. Politics can afford the independence of science because science does not attempt to dictate its purposes.
In The Scientific Estate (1965), 191.
Science quotes on:  |  Afford (19)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Basis (180)  |  Claim (154)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Dictate (11)  |  Independence (37)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Power (771)  |  Purpose (336)

Science is concerned with what is possible while engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways, one that meets a number of often poorly stated economic and practical objectives.
From Turing Award lecture (1968), 'One Man's View of Computer Science', collected in ACM Turing Award Lectures: The First Twenty Years, 1966 to 1985 (1987), 209. ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery. Also in Journal of the ACM (Jan 1969), 16, No. 1, 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Choice (114)  |  Concern (239)  |  Economic (84)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Number (710)  |  Poor (139)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Practical (225)  |  Practicality (7)  |  Science And Engineering (16)  |  State (505)  |  Way (1214)

Science is knowledge certain and evident in itself, or by the principles from which it is deducted, or with which it is certainly connected. It is subjective, as existing in the mind; objective, as embodied in truths; speculative, as leading to do something, as in practical science.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Connect (126)  |  Do (1905)  |  Embody (18)  |  Evident (92)  |  Exist (458)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Practical (225)  |  Principle (530)  |  Something (718)  |  Speculative (12)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Truth (1109)

Science is often regarded as the most objective and truth-directed of human enterprises, and since direct observation is supposed to be the favored route to factuality, many people equate respectable science with visual scrutiny–just the facts ma’am, and palpably before my eyes. But science is a battery of observational and inferential methods, all directed to the testing of propositions that can, in principle, be definitely proven false ... At all scales, from smallest to largest, quickest to slowest, many well-documented conclusions of science lie beyond the strictly limited domain of direct observation. No one has ever seen an electron or a black hole, the events of a picosecond or a geological eon.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Battery (12)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Black Hole (17)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Definitely (5)  |  Direct (228)  |  Domain (72)  |  Electron (96)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Eon (12)  |  Equate (3)  |  Event (222)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Factuality (2)  |  False (105)  |  Favor (69)  |  Favored (5)  |  Geological (11)  |  Human (1512)  |  Inferential (2)  |  Large (398)  |  Largest (39)  |  Lie (370)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observational (15)  |  Often (109)  |  Palpably (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Prove (261)  |  Quick (13)  |  Regard (312)  |  Respectable (8)  |  Route (16)  |  Scale (122)  |  Scrutiny (15)  |  See (1094)  |  Slow (108)  |  Small (489)  |  Strictly (13)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Test (221)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Visual (16)

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
In Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956, 2006), 277.
Science quotes on:  |  Anti-Intellectual (2)  |  Bottom (36)  |  Demand (131)  |  Distrust (11)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Production (190)  |  Pure (299)  |  Really (77)  |  Reason (766)

Scientists alone can establish the objectives of their research, but society, in extending support to science, must take account of its own needs. As a layman, I can suggest only with diffidence what some of the major tasks might be on your scientific agenda, but … First, I would suggest the question of the conservation and development of our natural resources. In a recent speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, I proposed a world-wide program to protect land and water, forests and wildlife, to combat exhaustion and erosion, to stop the contamination of water and air by industrial as well as nuclear pollution, and to provide for the steady renewal and expansion of the natural bases of life.
From Address to the Centennial Convocation of the National Academy of Sciences (22 Oct 1963), 'A Century of Scientific Conquest'. Online at The American Presidency Project.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Agenda (4)  |  Air (366)  |  Alone (324)  |  Assembly (13)  |  Base (120)  |  Combat (16)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Contamination (4)  |  Development (441)  |  Diffidence (2)  |  Erosion (20)  |  Establish (63)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Expansion (43)  |  First (1302)  |  Forest (161)  |  General (521)  |  Industrial (15)  |  Land (131)  |  Layman (21)  |  Life (1870)  |  Major (88)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Resource (23)  |  Need (320)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Program (57)  |  Propose (24)  |  Protect (65)  |  Question (649)  |  Recent (78)  |  Renewal (4)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Society (350)  |  Speech (66)  |  Steady (45)  |  Stop (89)  |  Suggest (38)  |  Support (151)  |  Task (152)  |  United Nations (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Wide (97)  |  Wildlife (16)  |  World (1850)  |  Worldwide (19)

Scientists are not robotic inducing machines that infer structures of explanation only from regularities observed in natural phenomena (assuming, as I doubt, that such a style of reasoning could ever achieve success in principle). Scientists are human beings, immersed in culture, and struggling with all the curious tools of inference that mind permits ... Culture can potentiate as well as constrain–as Darwin’s translation of Adam Smith’s laissez-faire economic models into biology as the theory of natural selection. In any case, objective minds do not exist outside culture, so we must make the best of our ineluctable embedding.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Assume (43)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Biology (232)  |  Case (102)  |  Constrain (11)  |  Culture (157)  |  Curious (95)  |  Darwins (5)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Economic (84)  |  Embed (7)  |  Exist (458)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Immerse (6)  |  Induce (24)  |  Infer (12)  |  Inference (45)  |  Machine (271)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Model (106)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Observe (179)  |  Observed (149)  |  Outside (141)  |  Permit (61)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Potentiate (2)  |  Principle (530)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Regularity (40)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Selection (130)  |  Structure (365)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Style (24)  |  Success (327)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Tool (129)  |  Translation (21)

Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked “What more do you want?” We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.
Quoted by Dennis Meredith, in 'Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection and Extraterrestrial Life-Wish', Science Digest (Jun 1979), 85, 38 & 89. Reproduced in Carl Sagan and Tom Head, Conversations With Sagan (2006), 55-56.
Science quotes on:  |  Apollo Program (2)  |  Ask (420)  |  Back (395)  |  Bay Of Pigs (2)  |  Billion (104)  |  Decade (66)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dollar (22)  |  End (603)  |  Fiasco (2)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flight (101)  |  Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (13)  |  Idea (881)  |  John F. Kennedy (53)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moon (252)  |  More (2558)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Orbital (4)  |  Origin (250)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  President (36)  |  Reason (766)  |  Response (56)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spending (24)  |  Spent (85)  |  Successful (134)  |  Want (504)

So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn’t that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist’s eye? Far from that, without this language most of the intimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.
From La valeur de la science. In Anton Bovier, Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems (2006), 3, giving translation "approximately" in the footnote of the opening epigraph in the original French: “L’analyse mathématique, n’est elle donc qu’un vain jeu d’esprit? Elle ne peut pas donner au physicien qu’un langage commode; n’est-ce pa là un médiocre service, dont on aurait pu se passer à la rigueur; et même n’est il pas à craindre que ce langage artificiel ne soit pas un voile interposé entre la réalité at l’oeil du physicien? Loin de là, sans ce langage, la pluspart des anaologies intimes des choses nous seraient demeurées à jamais inconnues; et nous aurions toujours ignoré l’harmonie interne du monde, qui est, nous le verrons, la seule véritable réalité objective.” Another translation, with a longer quote, beginning “Without this language…”, is on the Henri Poincaré Quotes" page of this website.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fear (212)  |  Forever (111)  |  Game (104)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Internal (69)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Language (20)  |  Mediocre (14)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Reality (274)  |  Remain (355)  |  See (1094)  |  Service (110)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vain (86)  |  Veil (27)  |  World (1850)

The conception of objective reality … has thus evaporated … into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
In 'The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics', Daedalus (1958), 87, 95-108. As cited in Karl Popper, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (1992), 85.
Science quotes on:  |  Behavior (95)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Conception (160)  |  Evaporation (7)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Particle (200)  |  Reality (274)  |  Represent (157)  |  Representation (55)  |  Transparency (7)  |  Transparent (16)

The empirical basis of objective science has nothing “absolute” about it. Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or “given” base; and when we cease our attempts to drive our piles into a deeper layer, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that they are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery: Logik Der Forschung (1959, 2002), 94.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Base (120)  |  Basis (180)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bold (22)  |  Building (158)  |  Carry (130)  |  Cease (81)  |  Down (455)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Enough (341)  |  Firm (47)  |  Ground (222)  |  Layer (41)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Piles (7)  |  Reach (286)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rise (169)  |  Solid (119)  |  Structure (365)  |  Swamp (9)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)

The empirical domain of objective contemplation, and the delineation of our planet in its present condition, do not include a consideration of the mysterious and insoluble problems of origin and existence.
In lecture, 'Organic Life', collected in Cosmos, the Elements of the Physical World (1849), 348, as translated by E.C. Otté. Also seen translated as “The mysterious and unsolved problem of how things came to be does not enter the empirical province of objective research, which is confined to a description of things as they are.”
Science quotes on:  |  Condition (362)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Description (89)  |  Do (1905)  |  Domain (72)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Existence (481)  |  Include (93)  |  Insoluble (15)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Origin (250)  |  Planet (402)  |  Present (630)  |  Problem (731)  |  Research (753)

The essential characteristic of science is the simple idea of attempting “to ascertain objective truth without regard to personal desires.”
The Nature of Science and Other Lectures (1954), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Ascertain (41)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Desire (212)  |  Essential (210)  |  Idea (881)  |  Personal (75)  |  Regardless (8)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Simple (426)  |  Truth (1109)

The hope that new experiments will lead us back to objective events in time and space is about as well founded as the hope of discovering the end of the world in the unexplored regions of the Antarctic.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Antarctic (7)  |  Back (395)  |  Discover (571)  |  End (603)  |  End Of The World (6)  |  Event (222)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Founded (22)  |  Hope (321)  |  Lead (391)  |  New (1273)  |  Region (40)  |  Space (523)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Unexplored (15)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

The importance of C.F. Gauss for the development of modern physical theory and especially for the mathematical fundament of the theory of relativity is overwhelming indeed; also his achievement of the system of absolute measurement in the field of electromagnetism. In my opinion it is impossible to achieve a coherent objective picture of the world on the basis of concepts which are taken more or less from inner psychological experience.
Quoted in G. Waldo Dunnington, Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004), 350.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Basis (180)  |  Concept (242)  |  Development (441)  |  Electromagnetism (19)  |  Experience (494)  |  Field (378)  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  Importance (299)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Inner (72)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Overwhelming (30)  |  Physical (518)  |  Picture (148)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Relativity (91)  |  System (545)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  World (1850)

The institutional goal of science is the extension of certified knowledge. The technical methods employed toward this end provide the relevant definition of knowledge: empirically confirmed and logically consistent predictions. The institutional imperatives (mores) derive from the goal and the methods. The entire structure of technical and moral norms implements the final objective. The technical norm of empirical evidence, adequate, valid and reliable, is a prerequisite for sustained true prediction; the technical norm of logical consistency, a prerequisite for systematic and valid prediction. The mores of science possess a methodologic rationale but they are binding, not only because they are procedurally efficient, but because they are believed right and good. They are moral as well as technical prescriptions. Four sets of institutional imperatives–universalism, communism, disinterestedness, organized scepticism–comprise the ethos of modern science.
Social Theory and Social Structure (1957), 552-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequate (50)  |  Belief (615)  |  Binding (9)  |  Certification (2)  |  Communism (11)  |  Comprise (2)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Consistency (31)  |  Consistent (50)  |  Definition (238)  |  Derive (70)  |  Disinterest (8)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Empiricism (21)  |  Employ (115)  |  End (603)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Extension (60)  |  Final (121)  |  Goal (155)  |  Good (906)  |  Imperative (16)  |  Implement (13)  |  Institution (73)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Method (531)  |  Methodology (14)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern Science (55)  |  Moral (203)  |  More (2558)  |  Organisation (7)  |  Possess (157)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Prerequisite (9)  |  Prescription (18)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Rationale (8)  |  Relevance (18)  |  Reliability (18)  |  Right (473)  |  Scepticism (17)  |  Set (400)  |  Skepticism (31)  |  Structure (365)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Technical (53)  |  Validity (50)

The only level of the hierarchy [of biological communities] that is both necessary and sufficient to meet all objectives is the ecosystem or some higher-level approach. The strategy selected should not only ensure the conservation of spotted owls, but all the intricate linkages that are associated with natural populations of spotted owls in naturally functioning ecosystems. Many of these are as yet unknown.
In The Fragmented Forest: Island Biogeography Theory and the Preservation of Biotic Diversity (1984), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Associate (25)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Both (496)  |  Community (111)  |  Conservation (187)  |  Ecosystem (33)  |  Ensure (27)  |  Functioning (4)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Linkage (5)  |  Natural (810)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Owl (3)  |  Population (115)  |  Select (45)  |  Strategy (13)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Unknown (195)

The products of the senses, especially those of sight, hearing, and touch, form the basis of all the higher thought processes. Hence the importance of developing accurate sense concepts. … The purpose of objective thinking is to enable the mind to think without the help of objects.
As quoted in William W. Speer, Primary Arithmetic (1896), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Basis (180)  |  Concept (242)  |  Develop (278)  |  Education (423)  |  Enable (122)  |  Form (976)  |  Hear (144)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Help (116)  |  Importance (299)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Object (438)  |  Process (439)  |  Product (166)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sight (135)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Touch (146)

The result is that a generation of physicists is growing up who have never exercised any particular degree of individual initiative, who have had no opportunity to experience its satisfactions or its possibilities, and who regard cooperative work in large teams as the normal thing. It is a natural corollary for them to feel that the objectives of these large teams must be something of large social significance.
In 'Science and Freedom: Reflections of a Physicist', Isis, 1947, 37, 130.
Science quotes on:  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Degree (277)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feel (371)  |  Generation (256)  |  Growing (99)  |  Individual (420)  |  Initiative (17)  |  Large (398)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Never (1089)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Regard (312)  |  Result (700)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Significance (114)  |  Social (261)  |  Something (718)  |  Team (17)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Work (1402)

The scientific method … is nothing but the exclusion of subjective opinions as far as possible, by the devising of experiments where observation can give objective answers, yes or no, to questions whether events are causally connected.
In Science and the Humanities: The Rickman Godlee Lecture Delivered At University College London 25 October 1956 (1956), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Cause (561)  |  Connect (126)  |  Connected (8)  |  Devising (7)  |  Event (222)  |  Exclusion (16)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Method (531)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Observation (593)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Possible (560)  |  Question (649)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Subjective (20)

The scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capable…. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One, can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.
From an Address (19 May 1939) at Princeton Theological Seminary, 'Science and Religion', collected in Ideas And Opinions (1954, 2010), 41.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Condition (362)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Goal (155)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Relate (26)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Teach (299)

The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves.
In Tarner Lecture, at Trinity College, Cambridge (Oct 1956), 'Science and Religion', printed in Mind and Matter (1958), 90. Also collected in What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (1992, 2012), 154.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Color (155)  |  Light (635)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Picture (148)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Wave (112)

Theories rarely arise as patient inferences forced by accumulated facts. Theories are mental constructs potentiated by complex external prods (including, in idealized cases, a commanding push from empirical reality) . But the prods often in clude dreams, quirks, and errors–just as we may obtain crucial bursts of energy from foodstuffs or pharmaceuticals of no objective or enduring value. Great truth can emerge from small error. Evolution is thrilling, liberating, and correct. And Macrauchenia is a litoptern.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulate (30)  |  Arise (162)  |  Burst (41)  |  Case (102)  |  Command (60)  |  Complex (202)  |  Construct (129)  |  Correct (95)  |  Crucial (10)  |  Dream (222)  |  Emerge (24)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Endure (21)  |  Energy (373)  |  Error (339)  |  Evolution (635)  |  External (62)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Force (497)  |  Great (1610)  |  Include (93)  |  Inference (45)  |  Liberate (10)  |  Mental (179)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Often (109)  |  Patient (209)  |  Pharmaceutical (4)  |  Potentiate (2)  |  Push (66)  |  Quirk (2)  |  Rarely (21)  |  Reality (274)  |  Small (489)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Value (393)

There are no better terms available to describe the difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former ‘objective’ and the latter ‘subjective.’ ... While for the natural scientist the contrast between objective facts and subjective opinions is a simple one, the distinction cannot as readily be applied to the object of the social sciences. The reason for this is that the object, the ‘facts’ of the social sciences are also opinions—not opinions of the student of the social phenomena, of course, but opinions of those whose actions produce the object of the social scientist.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Applied (176)  |  Apply (170)  |  Approach (112)  |  Available (80)  |  Better (493)  |  Call (781)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Course (413)  |  Describe (132)  |  Difference (355)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Former (138)  |  Latter (21)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Scientist (6)  |  Object (438)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Produce (117)  |  Readily (10)  |  Reason (766)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Simple (426)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Social Scientist (5)  |  Student (317)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)

There have, however, always been men of high and disciplined spirituality who have insisted on their direct experience of something greater than themselves. Their conviction of the reality of a spiritual life apart from and transcending the life of the body may not lend itself to scientific proof or disproof; nevertheless the remarkable transformation in personality seen in those who rightfully lay claim to such experience is as objective as tomorrow's sunrise. Millions of lesser men draw strength from the contacts they can make through prayer and meditation with this aspect of the inner life.
at a convention of scientists in 1967 at the University of Notre Dame
Science quotes on:  |  Aspect (129)  |  Body (557)  |  Claim (154)  |  Contact (66)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Direct (228)  |  Draw (140)  |  Experience (494)  |  Greater (288)  |  High (370)  |  Inner (72)  |  Life (1870)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Personality (66)  |  Prayer (30)  |  Proof (304)  |  Reality (274)  |  Religion (369)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Something (718)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Strength (139)  |  Sunrise (14)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Through (846)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  Transformation (72)

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)  |  Expression (181)  |  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)  |  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 was positive, clear-cut, unquestioned direction of the project at all levels. Authority was invariably delegated with responsibility, and this delegation was absolute and without reservation. Only in this way could the many apparently autonomous organizations working on the many apparently independent tasks be pulled together to achieve our final objective.
In And Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project (1962), 415.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Authority (99)  |  Autonomy (6)  |  Clear-Cut (10)  |  Cut (116)  |  Direction (185)  |  Final (121)  |  Independent (74)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Level (69)  |  Manhattan Project (15)  |  Organization (120)  |  Positive (98)  |  Project (77)  |  Pull (43)  |  Reservation (7)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Task (152)  |  Together (392)  |  Unify (7)  |  Unquestioned (7)  |  Way (1214)  |  Working (23)

Though much new light is shed by ... studies in radioactivity, the nucleus of the atom, with its hoard of energy, thus continues to present us with a fascinating mystery. ... Our assault on atoms has broken down the outer fortifications. We feel that we know the fundamental rules according to which the outer part of the atom is built. The appearance and properties of the electron atmosphere are rather familiar. Yet that inner citadel, the atomic nucleus, remains unconquered, and we have reason to believe that within this citadel is secreted a great treasure. Its capture may form the main objective of the physicists’ next great drive.
'Assault on Atoms' (Read 23 Apr 1931 at Symposium—The Changing World) Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1931), 70, No. 3, 229.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Assault (12)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Atom (381)  |  Belief (615)  |  Broken (56)  |  Broken Down (2)  |  Built (7)  |  Capture (11)  |  Citadel (4)  |  Continue (179)  |  Down (455)  |  Drive (61)  |  Electron (96)  |  Energy (373)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Feel (371)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortification (6)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hoard (2)  |  Inner (72)  |  Know (1538)  |  Light (635)  |  Main (29)  |  Mystery (188)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Outer (13)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Radioactivity (33)  |  Reason (766)  |  Remain (355)  |  Rule (307)  |  Secret (216)  |  Study (701)  |  Treasure (59)

Thus science strips off, one after the other, the more or less gross materialisations by which we endeavour to form an objective image of the soul, till men of science, speculating, in their non-scientific intervals, like other men on what science may possibly lead to, have prophesied that we shall soon have to confess that the soul is nothing else than a function of certain complex material systems.
Review of B. Stewart and P. G. Tait's book on Paradoxical Philosophy, in Nature, 19, 1878. In W. D. Niven (ed.), The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1890), Vol. 2, 760.
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Complex (202)  |  Confess (42)  |  Confession (9)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Form (976)  |  Function (235)  |  Gross (7)  |  Image (97)  |  Lead (391)  |  Material (366)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Non-Scientific (7)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Prophesy (11)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Soon (187)  |  Soul (235)  |  Speculation (137)  |  System (545)

Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.
Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (1975, 1993), 31-32.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Church (64)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Humanitarian (5)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Method (531)  |  Modern (402)  |  Myth (58)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Outlook (32)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Unanimity (4)  |  Variety (138)  |  Victim (37)  |  Weak (73)  |  Willing (44)

Until recently even the most generous assessment places the subject [of the origin of the universe] at the edges of objective inquiry if not entirely outside the scientific method.
As quoted in John Noble Wilford, 'Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest', New York Times (12 Mar 1991), C10.
Science quotes on:  |  Assessment (3)  |  Edge (51)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Generous (17)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Origin (250)  |  Origin Of The Universe (20)  |  Outside (141)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Subject (543)  |  Universe (900)

We are Marxists, and Marxism teaches that in our approach to a problem we should start from objective facts, not from abstract definitions, and that we should derive our guiding principles, policies, and measures from an analysis of these facts.
As quoted in William Theodore De Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition (1960), 929.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Approach (112)  |  Definition (238)  |  Derive (70)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Measure (241)  |  Policy (27)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Start (237)

We had a clear, unmistakable, specific objective. Although at first there was considerable doubt whether we could attain this objective, there was never any doubt about what it was. Consequently the people in responsible positions were able to tailor their every action to its accomplishment.
In And Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project (1962), 414.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Action (342)  |  Attain (126)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Clear (111)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Doubt (314)  |  First (1302)  |  Manhattan Project (15)  |  Never (1089)  |  People (1031)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Specific (98)  |  Tailor (3)  |  Unmistakable (6)

We have corrupted the term research to mean study and experiment and development toward selected objectives, and we have even espoused secret and classified projects. This was not the old meaning of university research. We need a new term, or the revival of a still older one, to refer to the dedicated activities of the scholar, the intensive study of special aspects of a subject for its own sake, motivated by the love of knowledge and truth.
In 'Technology and National Research Policy', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Oct 1953), 292.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Corrupt (4)  |  Dedicated (19)  |  Development (441)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Intensive (9)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Love (328)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Motivated (14)  |  Motivation (28)  |  Need (320)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Project (77)  |  Research (753)  |  Revival (2)  |  Sake (61)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Secret (216)  |  Select (45)  |  Special (188)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Term (357)  |  Truth (1109)  |  University (130)

We only have to look around us to see how complexity ... and psychic “temperature” are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a directionally controlled transformation of the Noosphere “as a whole.”
In Teilhard de Chardin and René Hague (trans.), The Heart of Matter (1950, 1978), 38. His term Noosphere refers to the collective sphere of human consciousness.
Science quotes on:  |  Complexity (121)  |  Controlled (3)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Indication (33)  |  Individual (420)  |  Look (584)  |  Planet (402)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Reality (274)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Rising (44)  |  Scale (122)  |  See (1094)  |  Still (614)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Whole (756)

We shall therefore say that a program has common sense if it automatically deduces for itself a sufficient wide class of immediate consequences of anything it is told and what it already knows. ... Our ultimate objective is to make programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do.
'Programs with Common Sense', (probably the first paper on AI), delivered to the Teddington Conference on the Mechanization of Thought Processes (Dec 1958). Printed in National Physical Laboratory, Mechanisation of Thought Processes: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the National Physical Laboratory on 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th November 1958 (1959), 78. Also Summary in John McCarthy and Vladimir Lifschitz (ed.), Formalizing Common Sense: Papers by John McCarthy (1990), 9-10.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Artificial Intelligence (12)  |  Automatic (16)  |  Class (168)  |  Common (447)  |  Common Sense (136)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Definition (238)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effective (68)  |  Experience (494)  |  Human (1512)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Make (25)  |  Say (989)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Wide (97)

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself.
In 'Orientation to Life,' The Conduct of Life (1951).
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Color (155)  |  Culture (157)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Personality (66)  |  Read (308)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  System (545)  |  Type (171)  |  World (1850)

When someone says his conclusions are objective, he means that they are based on prejudices which many other people share.
In The Decline and Fall of Science (1976), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Base (120)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Say (989)  |  Share (82)

Without this language [mathematics] most of the intimate analogies of things would have remained forever unknown to us; and we should forever have been ignorant of the internal harmony of the world, which is the only true objective reality. …
This harmony … is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.
From La Valeur de la Science, as translated by George Bruce Halsted, in 'The Value of Science', Popular Science Monthly (Sep 1906), 69 195-196.
Science quotes on:  |  Analogy (76)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attain (126)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Better (493)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Enable (122)  |  Forever (111)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Internal (69)  |  Intimate (21)  |  Know (1538)  |  Language (308)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics As A Language (20)  |  Most (1728)  |  Price (57)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reality (274)  |  Remain (355)  |  Slow (108)  |  Sole (50)  |  Source (101)  |  Thing (1914)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understood (155)  |  Universal (198)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world that objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. … Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one.
Letter to Max Born (7 Sep 1944). In Born-Einstein Letters, 146. Einstein Archives 8-207. In Albert Einstein, Alice Calaprice, Freeman Dyson, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2011), 393-394. Often seen paraphrased as “I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos.” Also see a related quote about God playing dice on the Stephen W. Hawking Quotes page of this website.
Science quotes on:  |  Attitude (84)  |  Belief (615)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completion (23)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Dice (21)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Game (104)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Law (913)  |  Order (638)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  See (1094)  |  Senility (2)  |  Success (327)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Trying (144)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Younger (21)


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.