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: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index O > Category: Occult

Occult Quotes (9 quotes)

Occult sciences. Those imaginary sciences of the middle ages which related to the influence of supernatural powers, such as alchemy, magic, necromancy, and astrology.
In Noah Webster, Noah Porter (supervising ed.) and Dorsey Gardner (ed.), Webster's Condensed Dictionary: A Condensed Dictionary of the English Language (1884, 1887), 385.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Alchemy (31)  |  Astrology (46)  |  Imaginary (16)  |  Influence (231)  |  Magic (92)  |  Middle Age (19)  |  Middle Ages (12)  |  Necromancy (3)  |  Power (771)  |  Supernatural (26)

But shall gravity be therefore called an occult cause, and thrown out of philosophy, because the cause of gravity is occult and not yet discovered? Those who affirm this, should be careful not to fall into an absurdity that may overturn the foundations of all philosophy. For causes usually proceed in a continued chain from those that are more compounded to those that are more simple; when we are arrived at the most simple cause we can go no farther ... These most simple causes will you then call occult and reject them? Then you must reject those that immediately depend on them.
Mathematical Principles (1729), 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Call (781)  |  Cause (561)  |  Compound (117)  |  Depend (238)  |  Discover (571)  |  Fall (243)  |  Farther (51)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Immediately (115)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Reject (67)  |  Simple (426)  |  Usually (176)  |  Will (2350)

GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary,  119-120.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Author (175)  |  Bird (163)  |  Call (781)  |  Character (259)  |  Considerable (75)  |  Degree (277)  |  Difference (355)  |  Discover (571)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Goose (13)  |  Great (1610)  |  Humour (116)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Insignificant (33)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Method (531)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Paper (192)  |  Person (366)  |  Power (771)  |  Process (439)  |  Result (700)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Various (205)  |  Writing (192)

I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
Principia. In Isaac Newton, Andrew Motte and N. W. Chittenden, Newton’s Principia (1847), 506-507.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Cause (561)  |  Discover (571)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Metaphysical (38)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Whatever (234)

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.
The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Science of Complexity (1988). In Adam Frank, The Constant Fire (2009), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Browse (2)  |  Commitment (28)  |  Other (2233)  |  Reason (766)  |  Refresh (5)

It seems to me farther, that these Particles have not only a Vis inertiae, accompanied with such passive Laws of Motion as naturally result from that Force, but also that they are moved by certain active Principles, such as that of Gravity, and that which causes Fermentation, and the Cohesion of Bodies. These Principles I consider, not as occult Qualities, supposed to result from the specifick Forms of Things, but as general Laws of Nature, by which the Things themselves are form'd; their Truth appearing to us by Phaenomena, though their Causes be not yet discover'd. For these are manifest Qualities, and their Causes only are occult.
From Opticks, (1704, 2nd ed. 1718), Book 3, Query 31, 376-377.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certain (557)  |  Cohesion (7)  |  Consider (428)  |  Discover (571)  |  Farther (51)  |  Fermentation (15)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  General (521)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Motion (14)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Laws Of Motion (10)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Particle (200)  |  Principle (530)  |  Result (700)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
In Nature: An Essay, to Which is Added, Orations, Lectures, and Addresses (1845), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Better (493)  |  Bough (10)  |  Deem (7)  |  Delight (111)  |  Effect (414)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Field (378)  |  Great (1610)  |  High (370)  |  Justly (7)  |  Minister (10)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Relation (166)  |  Right (473)  |  Storm (56)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Surprise (91)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unacknowledged (2)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Wave (112)  |  Wood (97)

To complete a PhD[,] I took courses in the history of philosophy. … As a result of my studies, I concluded that the traditional philosophy of science had little if anything to do with biology. … I had no use for a philosophy based on such an occult force as the vis vitalis. … But I was equally disappointed by the traditional philosophy of science, which was all based on logic, mathematics, and the physical sciences, and had adopted Descartes’ conclusion that an organism was nothing but a machine. This Cartesianism left me completely dissatisfied.
In 'Introduction', What Makes Biology Unique?: Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (2007), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Biology (232)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completely (137)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Course (413)  |  Disappoint (14)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equally (129)  |  Force (497)  |  History (716)  |  Little (717)  |  Logic (311)  |  Machine (271)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Organism (231)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Result (700)  |  Use (771)

To complete a PhD[,] I took courses in the history of philosophy. … As a result of my studies, I concluded that the traditional philosophy of science had little if anything to do with biology. … I had no use for a philosophy based on such an occult force as the vis vitalis. … But I was equally disappointed by the traditional philosophy of science, which was all based on logic, mathematics, and the physical sciences, and had adopted Descartes’ conclusion that an organism was nothing but a machine. This Cartesianism left me completely dissatisfied.
In 'Introduction', What Makes Biology Unique?: Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (2007), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Biology (232)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completely (137)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Course (413)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Disappoint (14)  |  Disappointed (6)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equally (129)  |  Force (497)  |  History (716)  |  Little (717)  |  Logic (311)  |  Machine (271)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Organism (231)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Result (700)  |  Study (701)  |  Traditional (16)  |  Use (771)


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.