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

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

Remote Quotes (86 quotes)

...neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.
Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (Ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon (1852), Vol. 1, 173.
Science quotes on:  |  Ascend (30)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  More (2558)  |  Possible (560)  |  Progress (492)  |  Stand (284)

“Science studies everything,” say the scientists. But, really, everything is too much. Everything is an infinite quantity of objects; it is impossible at one and the same time to study all. As a lantern cannot light up everything, but only lights up the place on which it is turned or the direction in which the man carrying it is walking, so also science cannot study everything, but inevitably only studies that to which its attention is directed. And as a lantern lights up most strongly the place nearest to it, and less and less strongly objects that are more and more remote from it, and does not at all light up those things its light does not reach, so also human science, of whatever kind, has always studied and still studies most carefully what seems most important to the investigators, less carefully what seems to them less important, and quite neglects the whole remaining infinite quantity of objects. ... But men of science to-day ... have formed for themselves a theory of “science for science's sake,” according to which science is to study not what mankind needs, but everything.
In 'Modern Science', Essays and Letters (1903), 223.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Attention (196)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Direct (228)  |  Direction (185)  |  Everything (489)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Form (976)  |  Human (1512)  |  Importance (299)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lantern (8)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Need (320)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Object (438)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reach (286)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Sake (61)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Turn (454)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Whole (756)

[At my secondary school] if you were very bright, you did classics; if you were pretty thick, you did woodwork; and if you were neither of those poles, you did science. The number of kids in my school who did science because they were excited by the notion of science was pretty small. You were allocated to those things, you weren’t asked. This was in the late 1930s/early 1940s … Science was seen as something more remote and less to do with everyday life.
From interview with Brian Cox and Robert Ince, in 'A Life Measured in Heartbeats', New Statesman (21 Dec 2012), 141, No. 5138, 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Allocated (2)  |  Ask (420)  |  Bright (81)  |  Do (1905)  |  Early (196)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Excited (8)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Late (119)  |  Life (1870)  |  More (2558)  |  Notion (120)  |  Number (710)  |  Pole (49)  |  School (227)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Student (317)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Woodwork (2)

Newsreader: A huge asteroid could destroy Earth! And by coincidence, that's the subject of tonight's miniseries.
Dogbert: In science, researchers proved that this simple device can keep idiots off your television screen. [TV remote control] Click.
Dilbert cartoon strip (30 Apr 1993).
Science quotes on:  |  Asteroid (19)  |  Click (4)  |  Coincidence (20)  |  Control (182)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Device (71)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Idiot (22)  |  News (36)  |  Proof (304)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Screen (8)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Subject (543)  |  Television (33)  |  Tonight (9)

1. Universal CHEMISTRY is the Art of resolving mixt, compound, or aggregate Bodies into their Principles; and of composing such Bodies from those Principles. 2. It has for its Subject all the mix’d, compound, and aggregate Bodies that are and resolvable and combinable and Resolution and Combination, or Destruction and Generation, for its Object. 3. Its Means in general, are either remote or immediate; that is, either Instruments or the Operations themselves. 4. Its End is either philosophical and theoretical; or medicinal, mechanical, œconomical, and practical. 5. Its efficient Cause is the Chemist.
In Philosophical Principles of Universal Chemistry: Or, The Foundation of a Scientifical Manner of Inquiring Into and Preparing the Natural and Artificial Bodies for the Uses of Life: Both in the Smaller Way of Experiment, and the Larger Way of Business (1730), 1. Footnote to (1.): “The justness of this Definition will appear from the scope and tenour of the Work; though it is rather adapted to the perfect, than the present imperfect state of Chemistry….” Footnote to (4): “Hence universal Chemistry is commodiously resolved into several Parts or Branches, under which it must be distinctly treated to give a just notion of its due extent and usefulness. For tho’ in common acceptation of the word, Chemistry is supposed to relate chiefly to the Art of Medicine, as it supplies that Art with Remedies, this in reality is but a very small part of its use, compared with the rest; numerous other Arts, Trades, and mechanical Employments, Merchandize itself, and all natural Philosophy, being as much, and some of them more, concern’d therewith….”
Science quotes on:  |  Aggregate (24)  |  Art (680)  |  Body (557)  |  Cause (561)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Combination (150)  |  Compose (20)  |  Compound (117)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Economical (11)  |  Efficient (34)  |  End (603)  |  General (521)  |  Generation (256)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Medicinal (3)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Object (438)  |  Operation (221)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Practical (225)  |  Principle (530)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Subject (543)  |  Theoretical (27)  |  Universal (198)

A poet is, after all, a sort of scientist, but engaged in a qualitative science in which nothing is measurable. He lives with data that cannot be numbered, and his experiments can be done only once. The information in a poem is, by definition, not reproducible. ... He becomes an equivalent of scientist, in the act of examining and sorting the things popping in [to his head], finding the marks of remote similarity, points of distant relationship, tiny irregularities that indicate that this one is really the same as that one over there only more important. Gauging the fit, he can meticulously place pieces of the universe together, in geometric configurations that are as beautiful and balanced as crystals.
In The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974, 1995), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Balance (82)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Become (821)  |  Configuration (8)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Data (162)  |  Definition (238)  |  Distance (171)  |  Engagement (9)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Examination (102)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fit (139)  |  Gauge (2)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Indication (33)  |  Information (173)  |  Irregularity (12)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Mark (47)  |  Measurement (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Number (710)  |  Once (4)  |  Piece (39)  |  Poem (104)  |  Poet (97)  |  Point (584)  |  Qualitative (15)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Reproducibility (2)  |  Reproducible (9)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Sort (50)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Together (392)  |  Universe (900)

All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one’s ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account.
'Address on University Education' (12 Sep 1876) delivered at the formal opening of the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore. Collected in Science and Education: Essays (1897), 248.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Good (906)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Insignificance (12)  |  Insignificant (33)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Say (989)  |  Turn (454)

All palaetiological sciences, all speculations which attempt to ascend from the present to the remote past, by the chain of causation, do also, by an inevitable consequence, urge us to look for the beginning of the state of things which we thus contemplate; but in none of these cases have men been able, by the aid of science, to arrive at a beginning which is homogeneous with the known course of events. The first origin of language, of civilization, of law and government, cannot be clearly made out by reasoning and research; and just as little, we may expect, will a knowledge of the origin of the existing and extinct species of plants and animals, be the result of physiological and geological investigation.
In History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), Vol. 3, 581.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Animal (651)  |  Ascend (30)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Causation (14)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Course (413)  |  Do (1905)  |  Event (222)  |  Expect (203)  |  Extinct (25)  |  First (1302)  |  Geology (240)  |  Government (116)  |  Homogeneous (17)  |  Inevitable (53)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Origin (250)  |  Palaetiology (2)  |  Past (355)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Plant (320)  |  Present (630)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Species (435)  |  Speculation (137)  |  State (505)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Will (2350)

Ampère was a mathematician of various resources & I think might rather be called excentric [sic] than original. He was as it were always mounted upon a hobby horse of a monstrous character pushing the most remote & distant analogies. This hobby horse was sometimes like that of a child ['s] made of heavy wood, at other times it resembled those [?] shapes [?] used in the theatre [?] & at other times it was like a hypogrif in a pantomime de imagie. He had a sort of faith in animal magnetism & has published some refined & ingenious memoirs to prove the identity of electricity & magnetism but even in these views he is rather as I said before excentric than original. He has always appeared to me to possess a very discursive imagination & but little accuracy of observation or acuteness of research.
'Davy’s Sketches of his Contemporaries', Chymia, 1967, 12, 135-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  André-Marie Ampère (11)  |  Animal (651)  |  Call (781)  |  Character (259)  |  Child (333)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Faith (209)  |  Horse (78)  |  Identity (19)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Little (717)  |  Magnetism (43)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mount (43)  |  Observation (593)  |  Other (2233)  |  Personality (66)  |  Possess (157)  |  Prove (261)  |  Research (753)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Various (205)  |  View (496)  |  Wood (97)

Astronomy is, not without reason, regarded, by mankind, as the sublimest of the natural sciences. Its objects so frequently visible, and therefore familiar, being always remote and inaccessible, do not lose their dignity.
In Elements of Chemistry: In the Order of the Lectures Given in Yale College (1830), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Being (1276)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Do (1905)  |  Familiarity (21)  |  Frequently (21)  |  Inaccessible (18)  |  Lose (165)  |  Loss (117)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Object (438)  |  Reason (766)  |  Regard (312)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Visible (87)

Büchsel in his reminiscences from the life of a country parson relates that he sought his recreation in Lacroix’s Differential Calculus and thus found intellectual refreshment for his calling. Instances like this make manifest the great advantage which occupation with mathematics affords to one who lives remote from the city and is compelled to forego the pleasures of art. The entrancing charm of mathematics, which captivates every one who devotes himself to it, and which is comparable to the fine frenzy under whose ban the poet completes his work, has ever been incomprehensible to the spectator and has often caused the enthusiastic mathematician to be held in derision. A classic illustration is the example of Archimedes….
From Die Entwickelung der Mathematik im Zusammenhange mit der Ausbreitung der Kultur (1893), 22. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 186. From the original German, “Wenn Büchsel in seinen Erinnerungen aus dem Leben eines Landgeistlichen erzählt, dass er in der Differentialrechnung von Lacroix Erholung gesucht und geistige Erfrischung ftir seinen Beruf gefunden habe, so erkennen wir darin den grossen Vorzug, den die Beschaftigung mit der Mathematik für jemanden hat, der fern von einer Stadt lebt und auf ihre Kunstgenüsse verzichten muss. Der berückende Zauber der Mathematik, dem jeder unterliegt, der sich ihr ergiebt, und der dem holden Wahnsinn vergleichbar ist, unter dessen Bann der Dichter sein Work vollendet, ist dem betrachtenden Mitmenschen immer unbegreiflich gewesen und hat den begeisterten Mathematiker oft zum Gespött werden lassen. Als klassisches Beispiel wird jedem Schüler Archimedes…”
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Art (680)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Captivate (5)  |  Cause (561)  |  Charm (54)  |  City (87)  |  Classic (13)  |  Compel (31)  |  Complete (209)  |  Country (269)  |  Derision (8)  |  Devote (45)  |  Differential Calculus (11)  |  Enthusiastic (7)  |  Entrance (16)  |  Example (98)  |  Forego (4)  |  Frenzy (6)  |  Great (1610)  |  Himself (461)  |  Hold (96)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Incomprehensible (31)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Parson (3)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Poet (97)  |  Recreation (23)  |  Refreshment (3)  |  Reminiscence (4)  |  Spectator (11)  |  Work (1402)

By research in pure science I mean research made without any idea of application to industrial matters but solely with the view of extending our knowledge of the Laws of Nature. I will give just one example of the ‘utility’ of this kind of research, one that has been brought into great prominence by the War—I mean the use of X-rays in surgery. Now, not to speak of what is beyond money value, the saving of pain, or, it may be, the life of the wounded, and of bitter grief to those who loved them, the benefit which the state has derived from the restoration of so many to life and limb, able to render services which would otherwise have been lost, is almost incalculable. Now, how was this method discovered? It was not the result of a research in applied science starting to find an improved method of locating bullet wounds. This might have led to improved probes, but we cannot imagine it leading to the discovery of X-rays. No, this method is due to an investigation in pure science, made with the object of discovering what is the nature of Electricity. The experiments which led to this discovery seemed to be as remote from ‘humanistic interest’ —to use a much misappropriated word—as anything that could well be imagined. The apparatus consisted of glass vessels from which the last drops of air had been sucked, and which emitted a weird greenish light when stimulated by formidable looking instruments called induction coils. Near by, perhaps, were great coils of wire and iron built up into electro-magnets. I know well the impression it made on the average spectator, for I have been occupied in experiments of this kind nearly all my life, notwithstanding the advice, given in perfect good faith, by non-scientific visitors to the laboratory, to put that aside and spend my time on something useful.
In Speech made on behalf of a delegation from the Conjoint Board of Scientific Studies in 1916 to Lord Crewe, then Lord President of the Council. In George Paget Thomson, J. J. Thomson and the Cavendish Laboratory in His Day (1965), 167-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Air (366)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Application (257)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Average (89)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bitter (30)  |  Call (781)  |  Consist (223)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Drop (77)  |  Due (143)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Faith (209)  |  Find (1014)  |  Glass (94)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grief (20)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Impression (118)  |  Induction (81)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Interest (416)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Iron (99)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Looking (191)  |  Magnet (22)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Method (531)  |  Money (178)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Non-Scientific (7)  |  Object (438)  |  Occupied (45)  |  Pain (144)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Probe (12)  |  Prominence (5)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Ray (115)  |  Render (96)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Service (110)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Spend (97)  |  State (505)  |  Suck (8)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)  |  Utility (52)  |  Value (393)  |  Vessel (63)  |  View (496)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wire (36)  |  Word (650)  |  Wound (26)  |  X-ray (43)

Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:– so various yet so uniform–so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.
The Silurian System (1839), 574.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Back (395)  |  Become (821)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Connect (126)  |  Connection (171)  |  Continent (79)  |  Deposit (12)  |  Do (1905)  |  Formation (100)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Impression (118)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Present (630)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Range (104)  |  Recent (78)  |  Respect (212)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Singleness (2)  |  Striking (48)  |  Succession (80)  |  Survey (36)  |  System (545)  |  Trace (109)  |  Uniformity (38)  |  Variety (138)  |  Various (205)  |  Vast (188)  |  Whole (756)

Consider the eighth category, which deals with stones. Wilkins divides them into the following classifications: ordinary (flint, gravel, slate); intermediate (marble, amber, coral); precious (pearl, opal); transparent (amethyst, sapphire); and insoluble (coal, clay, and arsenic). The ninth category is almost as alarming as the eighth. It reveals that metals can be imperfect (vermilion, quicksilver); artificial (bronze, brass); recremental (filings, rust); and natural (gold, tin, copper). The whale appears in the sixteenth category: it is a viviparous, oblong fish. These ambiguities, redundances, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
Other Inquisitions 1937-1952 (1964), trans. Ruth L. C. Simms, 103.
Science quotes on:  |  Alarming (4)  |  Animal (651)  |  Arsenic (10)  |  Belong (168)  |  Benevolent (9)  |  Broken (56)  |  Bronze (5)  |  Category (19)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chinese (22)  |  Classification (102)  |  Coal (64)  |  Consider (428)  |  Copper (25)  |  Deal (192)  |  Distance (171)  |  Divide (77)  |  Divided (50)  |  Dog (70)  |  Encyclopedia (7)  |  Fish (130)  |  Flower (112)  |  Gold (101)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mad (54)  |  Marble (21)  |  Mercury (54)  |  Mermaid (5)  |  Metal (88)  |  Natural (810)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Other (2233)  |  Precious (43)  |  Quicksilver (8)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Rust (9)  |  Sapphire (4)  |  Slate (6)  |  Stone (168)  |  Tin (18)  |  Train (118)  |  Transparent (16)  |  Whale (45)

During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima.
Max Born
My Life & My Views (1968), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Age (509)  |  Application (257)  |  Art (680)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Become (821)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Concern (239)  |  Decision (98)  |  Determine (152)  |  Development (441)  |  Economic (84)  |  Fate (76)  |  Function (235)  |  Hiroshima (18)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Impact (45)  |  Integral (26)  |  Life (1870)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obsolete (15)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Race (278)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Social (261)  |  Standpoint (28)  |  Work (1402)  |  Youth (109)

Earlier theories … were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the “big bang” expression.]
From microfilmed Speaker's Copy of a radio script held at the BBC Written Archive Centre, for Hoyle's radio talk on the BBC Third Programme (28 Mar 1949). The date and time of the broadcast, 6:30pm, are given in that week’s Radio Times. The quote, with these references given in footnotes, in Simon Mitton, Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science (2011), 127-128 and 332. The text of the talk, the first printed use of the “big bang” expression, in the BBC’s The Listener magazine (7 Apr 1949), Vol.41, 568.
Science quotes on:  |  Bang (29)  |  Big Bang (45)  |  Creation (350)  |  Early (196)  |  Expression (181)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Past (355)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)

Early in my school days a boy had a copy of the “Wonders of the World,” which I often read, and disputed with other boys about the veracity of some of the statements; and I believe that this book first gave me a wish to travel in remote countries, which was ultimately fulfilled by the voyage of the Beagle.
In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), 'Autobiography', The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887, 1896), Vol. 1, 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Beagle (14)  |  Belief (615)  |  Book (413)  |  Boy (100)  |  Copy (34)  |  Country (269)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Early (196)  |  First (1302)  |  Other (2233)  |  Read (308)  |  School (227)  |  Statement (148)  |  Travel (125)  |  Ultimately (56)  |  Veracity (2)  |  Voyage (13)  |  Wish (216)  |  Wonder (251)  |  World (1850)

For the saving the long progression of the thoughts to remote and first principles in every case, the mind should provide itself several stages; that is to say, intermediate principles, which it might have recourse to in the examining those positions that come in its way. These, though they are not self-evident principles, yet, if they have been made out from them by a wary and unquestionable deduction, may be depended on as certain and infallible truths, and serve as unquestionable truths to prove other points depending upon them, by a nearer and shorter view than remote and general maxims. … And thus mathematicians do, who do not in every new problem run it back to the first axioms through all the whole train of intermediate propositions. Certain theorems that they have settled to themselves upon sure demonstration, serve to resolve to them multitudes of propositions which depend on them, and are as firmly made out from thence as if the mind went afresh over every link of the whole chain that tie them to first self-evident principles.
In The Conduct of the Understanding, Sect. 21.
Science quotes on:  |  Afresh (4)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Back (395)  |  Case (102)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chain (51)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Depend (238)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evident (92)  |  Examine (84)  |  Firmly (6)  |  First (1302)  |  General (521)  |  Infallible (18)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Link (48)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Maxim (19)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Multitude (50)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Nearer (45)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Progression (23)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Prove (261)  |  Provide (79)  |  Recourse (12)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Run (158)  |  Save (126)  |  Say (989)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Evident (22)  |  Serve (64)  |  Settle (23)  |  Settled (34)  |  Several (33)  |  Short (200)  |  Stage (152)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Tie (42)  |  Train (118)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unquestionable (10)  |  View (496)  |  Wary (3)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)

Four college students taking a class together, had done so well through the semester, and each had an “A”. They were so confident, the weekend before finals, they went out partying with friends. Consequently, on Monday, they overslept and missed the final. They explained to the professor that they had gone to a remote mountain cabin for the weekend to study, but, unfortunately, they had a flat tire on the way back, didn’t have a spare, and couldn’t get help for a long time. As a result, they missed the final. The professor kindly agreed they could make up the final the following day. When they arrived the next morning, he placed them each in separate rooms, handed each one a test booklet, and told them to begin. The the first problem was simple, worth 5 points. Turning the page they found the next question, written: “(For 95 points): Which tire?”
Anonymous
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Begin (275)  |  Class (168)  |  College (71)  |  Confident (25)  |  Education (423)  |  Exam (5)  |  Excuse (27)  |  Explain (334)  |  Final (121)  |  First (1302)  |  Flat (34)  |  Friend (180)  |  Joke (90)  |  Long (778)  |  Miss (51)  |  Morning (98)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Next (238)  |  Point (584)  |  Problem (731)  |  Professor (133)  |  Question (649)  |  Result (700)  |  Separate (151)  |  Simple (426)  |  Student (317)  |  Study (701)  |  Test (221)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tire (7)  |  Together (392)  |  Unfortunately (40)  |  Way (1214)  |  Worth (172)

I believed that, instead of the multiplicity of rules that comprise logic, I would have enough in the following four, as long as I made a firm and steadfast resolution never to fail to observe them.
The first was never to accept anything as true if I did not know clearly that it was so; that is, carefully to avoid prejudice and jumping to conclusions, and to include nothing in my judgments apart from whatever appeared so clearly and distinctly to my mind that I had no opportunity to cast doubt upon it.
The second was to subdivide each on the problems I was about to examine: into as many parts as would be possible and necessary to resolve them better.
The third was to guide my thoughts in an orderly way by beginning, as if by steps, to knowledge of the most complex, and even by assuming an order of the most complex, and even by assuming an order among objects in! cases where there is no natural order among them.
And the final rule was: in all cases, to make such comprehensive enumerations and such general review that I was certain not to omit anything.
The long chains of inferences, all of them simple and easy, that geometers normally use to construct their most difficult demonstrations had given me an opportunity to think that all the things that can fall within the scope of human knowledge follow from each other in a similar way, and as long as one avoids accepting something as true which is not so, and as long as one always observes the order required to deduce them from each other, there cannot be anything so remote that it cannot be reached nor anything so hidden that it cannot be uncovered.
Discourse on Method in Discourse on Method and Related Writings (1637), trans. Desmond M. Clarke, Penguin edition (1999), Part 2, 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accepting (22)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Better (493)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Cast (69)  |  Certain (557)  |  Complex (202)  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Construct (129)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Easy (213)  |  Enough (341)  |  Examine (84)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fall (243)  |  Final (121)  |  Firm (47)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  General (521)  |  Guide (107)  |  Human (1512)  |  Include (93)  |  Inference (45)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Logic (311)  |  Long (778)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Natural (810)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Observe (179)  |  Omit (12)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Order (638)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Problem (731)  |  Reach (286)  |  Required (108)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Review (27)  |  Rule (307)  |  Scope (44)  |  Simple (426)  |  Something (718)  |  Step (234)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whatever (234)

I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population. You see it overrunning everywhere. Places that were very remote when I went there 50 years ago are now overrun.
From interview with Michael Bond, 'It’s a Wonderful Life', New Scientist (14 Dec 2002), 176, No. 2373, 48.
Science quotes on:  |  Doubt (314)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Face (214)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Human (1512)  |  Increase (225)  |  Overpopulation (6)  |  Planet (402)  |  Population (115)  |  Problem (731)  |  See (1094)  |  Year (963)

If a teacher is full of his subject, and can induce enthusiasm in his pupils; if his facts are concrete and naturally connected, the amount of material that an average child can assimilate without injury is as astonishing as is the little that will fag him if it is a trifle above or below or remote from him, or taught dully or incoherently.
In The North American Review (Mar 1883), No. 316, 289.
Science quotes on:  |  Above (7)  |  Amount (153)  |  Assimilate (9)  |  Astonishing (29)  |  Average (89)  |  Below (26)  |  Child (333)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Connect (126)  |  Dull (58)  |  Education (423)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Incoherent (7)  |  Induce (24)  |  Injury (36)  |  Little (717)  |  Material (366)  |  Naturally (11)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Tire (7)  |  Trifle (18)  |  Will (2350)

If I were working in astrophysics I would find it quite hard to explain to people what I was doing. Natural history is a pretty easy thing to explain. It does have its complexities, but nowhere do you speak about things that are outside people’s experience. You might speak about a species that is outside their experience, but nothing as remote as astrophysics.
From interview with Michael Bond, 'It’s a Wonderful Life', New Scientist (14 Dec 2002), 176, No. 2373, 48.
Science quotes on:  |  Astrophysics (15)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Easy (213)  |  Experience (494)  |  Explain (334)  |  Find (1014)  |  Hard (246)  |  History (716)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Outside (141)  |  People (1031)  |  Speak (240)  |  Species (435)  |  Thing (1914)

If the Humours of the Eye by old Age decay, so as by shrinking to make the Cornea and Coat of the Crystalline Humour grow flatter than before, the Light will not be refracted enough, and for want of a sufficient Refraction will not converge to the bottom of the Eye but to some place beyond it, and by consequence paint in the bottom of the Eye a confused Picture, and according to the Indistinctuess of this Picture the Object will appear confused. This is the reason of the decay of sight in old Men, and shews why their Sight is mended by Spectacles. For those Convex glasses supply the defect of plumpness in the Eye, and by increasing the Refraction make the rays converge sooner, so as to convene distinctly at the bottom of the Eye if the Glass have a due degree of convexity. And the contrary happens in short-sighted Men whose Eyes are too plump. For the Refraction being now too great, the Rays converge and convene in the Eyes before they come at the bottom; and therefore the Picture made in the bottom and the Vision caused thereby will not be distinct, unless the Object be brought so near the Eye as that the place where the converging Rays convene may be removed to the bottom, or that the plumpness of the Eye be taken off and the Refractions diminished by a Concave-glass of a due degree of Concavity, or lastly that by Age the Eye grow flatter till it come to a due Figure: For short-sighted Men see remote Objects best in Old Age, and therefore they are accounted to have the most lasting Eyes.
Opticks (1704), Book 1, Part 1, Axiom VII, 10-11.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Account (195)  |  Age (509)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Concave (6)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Converge (10)  |  Convergence (4)  |  Convex (6)  |  Decay (59)  |  Defect (31)  |  Degree (277)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Due (143)  |  Enough (341)  |  Eye (440)  |  Figure (162)  |  Glass (94)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Happen (282)  |  Humour (116)  |  Lens (15)  |  Light (635)  |  Most (1728)  |  Object (438)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Picture (148)  |  Ray (115)  |  Reason (766)  |  Refraction (13)  |  See (1094)  |  Short (200)  |  Short-Sighted (5)  |  Sight (135)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Spectacles (10)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Supply (100)  |  Vision (127)  |  Want (504)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die. ... There have been eternities when [human intellect] did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Breath (61)  |  Clever (41)  |  Cold (115)  |  Corner (59)  |  Die (94)  |  Draw (140)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Exist (458)  |  Glitter (10)  |  Grow (247)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Haughty (3)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellect (32)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Invent (57)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mendacious (2)  |  Minute (129)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Pour (9)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Solar Systems (5)  |  Star (460)  |  System (545)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

In the present state of our knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to speculate on the remote cause of the electrical energy, or the reason why different bodies, after being brought into contact, should be found differently electrified; its relation to chemical affinity is, however, sufficiently evident. May it not be identical with it, and an essential property of matter?
Bakerian Lecture, 'On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1807, 97, 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Affinity (27)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Being (1276)  |  Cause (561)  |  Charge (63)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Contact (66)  |  Different (595)  |  Electrical (57)  |  Energy (373)  |  Essential (210)  |  Evident (92)  |  Identical (55)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Matter (821)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Reason (766)  |  State (505)  |  Why (491)

Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.
[Contact Webmaster if you can supply a primary print source.]
Science quotes on:  |  Intelligence (218)  |  More (2558)  |  Stuck (5)  |  Wheel (51)

It is an open secret to the few who know it, but a mystery and stumbling block to the many, that Science and Poetry are own sisters; insomuch that in those branches of scientific inquiry which are most abstract, most formal, and most remote from the grasp of the ordinary sensible imagination, a higher power of imagination akin to the creative insight of the poet is most needed and most fruitful of lasting work.
From Introduction written for William Kingdon Clifford, Clifford’s Lectures and Essays (1879), Vol. 1, 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Branch (155)  |  Creative (144)  |  Formal (37)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Insight (107)  |  Know (1538)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Need (320)  |  Open (277)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Poet (97)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Power (771)  |  Science And Poetry (17)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Sister (8)  |  Stumbling Block (6)  |  Work (1402)

It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference—inference either intuitive or deliberate.
From Gifford Lecture, Edinburgh, (1927), 'Reality', collected in The Nature of the Physical World (1928), 281.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Character (259)  |  Deliberate (19)  |  Deny (71)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Direct (228)  |  Everything (489)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  First (1302)  |  Inference (45)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Thing (1914)  |  View (496)

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations - past and present - are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hunger, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia. Thus, we are up against the paradox that the individual who is more complex, unpredictable, and mysterious than any communal entity is the one nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feeling of kinshiIf in some manner the voice of an individual reaches us from the remotest distance of time, it is a timeless voice speaking about ourselves.
In Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Communal (7)  |  Complex (202)  |  Culture (157)  |  Distance (171)  |  Dream (222)  |  Entity (37)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Incomprehensible (31)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interval (14)  |  Manner (62)  |  Millennia (4)  |  More (2558)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Often (109)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Outsider (7)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Past (355)  |  Preoccupation (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Reach (286)  |  Remain (355)  |  Society (350)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Timeless (8)  |  Unchanged (4)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Unpredictable (18)  |  Voice (54)  |  Weaken (5)

It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Age (509)  |  Alone (324)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Celestial Mechanics (4)  |  Century (319)  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Church (64)  |  Completely (137)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Countless (39)  |  Deep (241)  |  Derive (70)  |  Develop (278)  |  Devote (45)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Devotee (7)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Disentangle (4)  |  Easily (36)  |  Easy (213)  |  Effort (243)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Enable (122)  |  End (603)  |  Failure (176)  |  False (105)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fight (49)  |  Give (208)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Immense (89)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Issue (46)  |  Kepler (4)  |  Kindred (12)  |  Labor (200)  |  Life (1870)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Man (2252)  |  Materialistic (2)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Mentality (5)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motive (62)  |  Must (1525)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Nobl (4)  |  Notion (120)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ours (4)  |  People (1031)  |  Persecute (6)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Practical (225)  |  Principle (530)  |  Profoundly (13)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Rationality (25)  |  Reality (274)  |  Realization (44)  |  Realize (157)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Religious (134)  |  Remain (355)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Say (989)  |  Scatter (7)  |  Scientific (955)  |  See (1094)  |  Serious (98)  |  Show (353)  |  Similar (36)  |  Skeptical (21)  |  Solitary (16)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Spite (55)  |  Strength (139)  |  Strong (182)  |  Strongest (38)  |  Surround (33)  |  Theoretical Science (4)  |  Through (846)  |  True (239)  |  Understand (648)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unjustly (2)  |  Vivid (25)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Wide (97)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worker (34)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)  |  Yearn (13)  |  Yearning (13)

It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it so true as of Egypt.
Opening remark in Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers (1891), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Approach (112)  |  Augment (12)  |  Book (413)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Destined (42)  |  Diminish (17)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Everlasting (11)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Forever (111)  |  Land (131)  |  Learn (672)  |  More (2558)  |  Nearer (45)  |  New (1273)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Old (499)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Place (192)  |  Predict (86)  |  Seem (150)  |  Study (701)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

It seems to me that the view toward which we are tending is that the specificity in gene action is always a chemical specificity, probably the production of enzymes which guide metabolic processes along particular channels. A given array of genes thus determines the production of a particular kind of protoplasm with particular properties—such, for example, as that of responding to surface forces by the formation of a special sort of semipermeable membrane, and that of responding to trivial asymmetries in the play of external stimuli by polarization, with consequent orderly quantitative gradients in all physiologic processes. Different genes may now be called into play at different points in this simple pattern, either through the local formation of their specific substrates for action, or by activation of a mutational nature. In either case the pattern becomes more complex and qualitatively differentiated. Successive interactions of differentiated regions and the calling into play of additional genes may lead to any degree of complexity of pattern in the organism as a largely self-contained system. The array of genes, assembled in the course of evolution, must of course be one which determines a highly self­regulatory system of reactions. On this view the genes are highly specific chemically, and thus called into play only under very specific conditions; but their morphological effects, if any, rest on quantitative influences of immediate or remote products on growth gradients, which are resultants of all that has gone on before in the organism.
In 'Genetics of Abnormal Growth in the Guinea Pig', Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology (1934), 2, 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Activation (6)  |  Asymmetry (6)  |  Become (821)  |  Call (781)  |  Channel (23)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Course (413)  |  Degree (277)  |  Determine (152)  |  Different (595)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enzyme (19)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Force (497)  |  Formation (100)  |  Gene (105)  |  Gradient (2)  |  Growth (200)  |  Guide (107)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Influence (231)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lead (391)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Metabolism (15)  |  More (2558)  |  Morphological (3)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Organism (231)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Point (584)  |  Polarization (4)  |  Product (166)  |  Production (190)  |  Protoplasm (13)  |  Qualitative (15)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Rest (287)  |  Self (268)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Special (188)  |  Specific (98)  |  Stimulus (30)  |  Successive (73)  |  Surface (223)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Trivial (59)  |  View (496)

It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge.
Writing upon the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, New York.
'The Bridge as a Monument', Harper's Weekly (26 May 1883), 27, 326. In David P. Billington, The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering (1983), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Bare (33)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Bridge Engineering (8)  |  Brooklyn Bridge (2)  |  Durable (7)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Fortress (4)  |  Happen (282)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Monument (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  New (1273)  |  Palace (8)  |  Posterity (29)  |  Shrine (8)  |  Utility (52)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writing (192)

It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained. … I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject.
In Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A., (1890), Nature, 42, 466.
Science quotes on:  |  Access (21)  |  Accessibility (3)  |  Acquaint (11)  |  Additional (6)  |  Area (33)  |  Arise (162)  |  Arising (22)  |  Attain (126)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Belief (615)  |  Both (496)  |  Branch (155)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Bring (95)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Communication (101)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Counteract (5)  |  Course (413)  |  Daily (91)  |  Danger (127)  |  Decipher (7)  |  Devise (16)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Discover (571)  |  Display (59)  |  Ease (40)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Exaggeration (16)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Express (192)  |  Extent (142)  |  Facility (14)  |  Faith (209)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  First Sight (6)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  Genius (301)  |  Grapple (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Himself (461)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Increase (225)  |  Invent (57)  |  Keep (104)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Language (308)  |  Less (105)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mere (86)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Notation (28)  |  Number (710)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Predict (86)  |  Previously (12)  |  Principle (530)  |  Progress (492)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Region (40)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Safe (61)  |  Satisfactory (19)  |  Say (989)  |  Seem (150)  |  Sight (135)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Simplify (14)  |  Source (101)  |  Specialized (9)  |  Study (701)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Subject (543)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  Tend (124)  |  Territory (25)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Way (1214)  |  Well-Chosen (2)  |  Widen (10)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worker (34)

Let him look at that dazzling light hung aloft as an eternal lamp to lighten the universe; let him behold the earth, a mere dot compared with the vast circuit which that orb describes, and stand amazed to find that the vast circuit itself is but a very fine point compared with the orbit traced by the stars as they roll their course on high. But if our vision halts there, let imagination pass beyond; it will fail to form a conception long before Nature fails to supply material. The whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of Nature. No notion comes near it. Though we may extend our thought beyond imaginable space, yet compared with reality we bring to birth mere atoms. Nature is an infinite sphere whereof the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short, imagination is brought to silence at the thought, and that is the most perceptible sign of the all-power of God.
Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?
Pensées (1670), Section 1, aphorism 43. In H. F. Stewart (ed.), Pascal’s Pensées (1950), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Aloft (5)  |  Amazement (19)  |  Ample (4)  |  Atom (381)  |  Behold (19)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Birth (154)  |  Bosom (14)  |  Cell (146)  |  Centre (31)  |  Circuit (29)  |  Circumference (23)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Conception (160)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Corner (59)  |  Course (413)  |  Dazzling (13)  |  Describe (132)  |  Dot (18)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Extend (129)  |  Face (214)  |  Fail (191)  |  Failure (176)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  God (776)  |  Halt (10)  |  High (370)  |  Himself (461)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imperceptibility (2)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Light (635)  |  Lodge (3)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Lost (34)  |  Man (2252)  |  Material (366)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Notion (120)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Orb (20)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Pass (241)  |  Perception (97)  |  Point (584)  |  Power (771)  |  Reality (274)  |  Regard (312)  |  Roll (41)  |  Short (200)  |  Sign (63)  |  Silence (62)  |  Space (523)  |  Speck (25)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Supply (100)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Town (30)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Visibility (6)  |  Visible (87)  |  Vision (127)  |  Weigh (51)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wit (61)  |  World (1850)  |  Worth (172)

Let us now declare the means whereby our understanding can rise to knowledge without fear of error. There are two such means: intuition and deduction. By intuition I mean not the varying testimony of the senses, nor the deductive judgment of imagination naturally extravagant, but the conception of an attentive mind so distinct and so clear that no doubt remains to it with regard to that which it comprehends; or, what amounts to the same thing, the self-evidencing conception of a sound and attentive mind, a conception which springs from the light of reason alone, and is more certain, because more simple, than deduction itself. …
It may perhaps be asked why to intuition we add this other mode of knowing, by deduction, that is to say, the process which, from something of which we have certain knowledge, draws consequences which necessarily follow therefrom. But we are obliged to admit this second step; for there are a great many things which, without being evident of themselves, nevertheless bear the marks of certainty if only they are deduced from true and incontestable principles by a continuous and uninterrupted movement of thought, with distinct intuition of each thing; just as we know that the last link of a long chain holds to the first, although we can not take in with one glance of the eye the intermediate links, provided that, after having run over them in succession, we can recall them all, each as being joined to its fellows, from the first up to the last. Thus we distinguish intuition from deduction, inasmuch as in the latter case there is conceived a certain progress or succession, while it is not so in the former; … whence it follows that primary propositions, derived immediately from principles, may be said to be known, according to the way we view them, now by intuition, now by deduction; although the principles themselves can be known only by intuition, the remote consequences only by deduction.
In Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Philosophy of Descartes. [Torrey] (1892), 64-65.
Science quotes on:  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Add (42)  |  Admit (49)  |  Alone (324)  |  Amount (153)  |  Ask (420)  |  Attentive (15)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Case (102)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Chain (51)  |  Clear (111)  |  Comprehend (44)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Conception (160)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Declare (48)  |  Deduce (27)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Deductive (13)  |  Derive (70)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Draw (140)  |  Error (339)  |  Evident (92)  |  Extravagant (10)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fear (212)  |  Fellow (88)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Former (138)  |  Glance (36)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hold (96)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Inasmuch (5)  |  Incontestable (3)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Join (32)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Last (425)  |  Latter (21)  |  Let (64)  |  Light (635)  |  Link (48)  |  Long (778)  |  Mark (47)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mode (43)  |  More (2558)  |  Movement (162)  |  Naturally (11)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Obliged (6)  |  Other (2233)  |  Primary (82)  |  Principle (530)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Provide (79)  |  Reason (766)  |  Recall (11)  |  Regard (312)  |  Remain (355)  |  Rise (169)  |  Run (158)  |  Same (166)  |  Say (989)  |  Second (66)  |  Self (268)  |  Sense (785)  |  Simple (426)  |  Something (718)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spring (140)  |  Step (234)  |  Succession (80)  |  Testimony (21)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Therefrom (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  True (239)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Uninterrupted (7)  |  Vary (27)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whereby (2)  |  Why (491)

Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference.
Swarthmore Lecture (1929) at Friends’ House, London, printed in Science and the Unseen World (1929), 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Direct (228)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Inference (45)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Thing (1914)

Naturally, some intriguing thoughts arise from the discovery that the three chief particles making up matter—the proton, the neutron, and the electron—all have antiparticles. Were particles and antiparticles created in equal numbers at the beginning of the universe? If so, does the universe contain worlds, remote from ours, which are made up of antiparticles?
In The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences (1960, 1968), 222. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 138.
Science quotes on:  |  Antiparticle (4)  |  Arise (162)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Chief (99)  |  Create (245)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Electron (96)  |  Equal (88)  |  Making (300)  |  Matter (821)  |  Neutron (23)  |  Number (710)  |  Particle (200)  |  Proton (23)  |  Thought (995)  |  Universe (900)  |  World (1850)

Not a single visible phenomenon of cell-division gives even a remote suggestion of qualitative division. All the facts, on the contrary, indicate that the division of the chromatin is carried out with the most exact equality.
In The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896), 306.
Science quotes on:  |  Cell Division (6)  |  Chromatin (4)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Division (67)  |  Equality (34)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Most (1728)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Qualitative (15)  |  Single (365)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Visible (87)

Nowadays the field naturalist—who is usually at all points superior to the mere closet naturalist—follows a profession as full of hazard and interest as that of the explorer or of the big-game hunter in the remote wilderness.
African Game Trails (1910), 414-415.
Science quotes on:  |  Explorer (30)  |  Field (378)  |  Field Naturalist (3)  |  Follow (389)  |  Game (104)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Hunter (28)  |  Interest (416)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Point (584)  |  Profession (108)  |  Superior (88)  |  Usually (176)  |  Wilderness (57)

One cause of the error may be for want of a proper knowledge of the remote past. Here, as elsewhere, ’tis distance lends enchantment to the view. We fail to make due allowance for the refractive nature of the medium through which we are compelled to view the past. We naturally magnify the greatness of that which is remote. By this the imagination is addressed rather than the understanding. The dim and shadowing figures of the past are clothed in glorious light, and pigmies appear as giants.
From speech (20 Nov 1883) delivered to the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, Washington D.C.,'It Moves, or Philosophy of Reform' , collected in The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches (2016), 288.
Science quotes on:  |  Enchantment (9)  |  Error (339)  |  Giant (73)  |  Greatness (55)  |  History (716)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Past (355)  |  Pigmy (4)  |  Refraction (13)  |  Understanding (527)

One of the grandest generalizations formulated by modern biological science is that of the continuity of life; the protoplasmic activity within each living body now on earth has continued without cessation from the remote beginnings of life on our planet, and from that period until the present no single organism has ever arisen save in the form of a bit of living protoplasm detached from a pre-existing portion; the eternal flame of life once kindled upon this earth has passed from organism to organism, and is still, going on existing and propagating, incarnated within the myriad animal and plant forms of everyday life.
In History of the Human Body (1919), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Animal (651)  |  Arise (162)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Body (557)  |  Cessation (13)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Detach (5)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Everyday (32)  |  Everyday Life (15)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Existence (481)  |  Flame (44)  |  Form (976)  |  Formulation (37)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Grandest (10)  |  Incarnation (3)  |  Kindled (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Body (3)  |  Modern (402)  |  Myriad (32)  |  Organism (231)  |  Pass (241)  |  Period (200)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plant (320)  |  Portion (86)  |  Present (630)  |  Propagation (15)  |  Protoplasm (13)  |  Save (126)  |  Single (365)  |  Still (614)

One reason which has led the organic chemist to avert his mind from the problems of Biochemistry is the obsession that the really significant happenings in the animal body are concerned in the main with substances of such high molecular weight and consequent vagueness of molecular structure as to make their reactions impossible of study by his available and accurate methods. There remains, I find, pretty widely spread, the feeling—due to earlier biological teaching—that, apart from substances which are obviously excreta, all the simpler products which can be found in cells or tissues are as a class mere objects, already too remote from the fundamental biochemical events to have much significance. So far from this being the case, recent progress points in the clearest way to the fact that the molecules with which a most important and significant part of the chemical dynamics of living tissues is concerned are of a comparatively simple character.
In 'The Dynamic Side of Biochemistry', Address (11 Sep 1913) in Report on the 83rd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1914), 657-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Already (226)  |  Animal (651)  |  Available (80)  |  Being (1276)  |  Biochemistry (50)  |  Biological (137)  |  Body (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Class (168)  |  Concern (239)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Due (143)  |  Event (222)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Happening (59)  |  High (370)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Living (492)  |  Metabolism (15)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Molecular Structure (9)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Most (1728)  |  Object (438)  |  Obsession (13)  |  Organic (161)  |  Point (584)  |  Problem (731)  |  Product (166)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Reason (766)  |  Recent (78)  |  Remain (355)  |  Significance (114)  |  Significant (78)  |  Simple (426)  |  Spread (86)  |  Structure (365)  |  Study (701)  |  Substance (253)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Vagueness (15)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weight (140)

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.
In The Sense of Wonder (1956), as condensed in Reader’s Digest (1986), 129, 174.
Science quotes on:  |  Across (32)  |  Alone (324)  |  Bay (6)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Blaze (14)  |  Bright (81)  |  Burn (99)  |  Century (319)  |  Clear (111)  |  Companion (22)  |  Constellation (18)  |  Cottage (4)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Distant (33)  |  Edge (51)  |  Far (158)  |  Flat (34)  |  Flow (89)  |  Give (208)  |  Headland (2)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Life (32)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Low (86)  |  Milky Way (29)  |  Millions (17)  |  Misty (6)  |  Never (1089)  |  Night (133)  |  Occur (151)  |  Otherwise (26)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Planet (402)  |  Probably (50)  |  Reminder (13)  |  Rim (5)  |  River (140)  |  Score (8)  |  See (1094)  |  Shore (25)  |  Sight (135)  |  Sky (174)  |  Space (523)  |  Spectator (11)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Summer (56)  |  Surround (33)  |  Thought (995)  |  Throng (3)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

Perhaps a thousand other worlds that lie
Remote from us, and latent in the sky,
Are lightened by his beams, and kindly nurs’d.
From 'Eleanora' (1692). Collected in Samuel Johnson (ed.), The Works of th Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1800), Vol. 3, 130.
Science quotes on:  |  Beam (26)  |  Latent (13)  |  Lie (370)  |  Light (635)  |  Other (2233)  |  Sky (174)  |  Thousand (340)  |  World (1850)

Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos [mathematics], where pure thought can dwell in its natural home...
'The Study of Mathematics', Philosophical Essays (1910), 73-74. In J. E. Creighton (Ed.), Evander Bradley McGilvary, 'Reviews of Books', The Philosophical Review (1911), Vol 20, 422.
Science quotes on:  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Generation (256)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Home (184)  |  Human (1512)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Order (638)  |  Passion (121)  |  Pitiful (5)  |  Pure (299)  |  Thought (995)

Since as the Creation is, so is the Creator also magnified, we may conclude in consequence of an infinity, and an infinite all-active power, that as the visible creation is supposed to be full of siderial systems and planetary worlds, so on, in like similar manner, the endless Immensity is an unlimited plenum of creations not unlike the known Universe.… That this in all probability may be the real case, is in some degree made evident by the many cloudy spots, just perceivable by us, as far without our starry Regions, in which tho’ visibly luminous spaces, no one Star or particular constituent body can possibly be distinguished; those in all likelyhood may be external creation, bordering upon the known one, too remote for even our Telescopes to reach.
In The Universe and the Stars: Being an Original Theory on the Visible Creation, Founded on the Laws of Nature (1750, 1837), 143-144.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Body (557)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creator (97)  |  Degree (277)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Endless (60)  |  Evident (92)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Known (453)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Planet (402)  |  Planetary (29)  |  Plenum (2)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Power (771)  |  Probability (135)  |  Reach (286)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  System (545)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Universe (900)  |  Unlimited (24)  |  Visible (87)  |  World (1850)

Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Car (75)  |  Drive (61)  |  Hour (192)  |  Space (523)  |  Straight (75)  |  Upward (44)  |  Upwards (6)

Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You’re, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It’s an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Academic (20)  |  Big (55)  |  Book (413)  |  Boon (7)  |  C (2)  |  Call (781)  |  Card (5)  |  Catalog (5)  |  Ceiling (5)  |  Computer (131)  |  Deep (241)  |  Dinner (15)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Face (214)  |  Find (1014)  |  Five (16)  |  Floor (21)  |  Foot (65)  |  Get Up (5)  |  High (370)  |  Home (184)  |  Incomparable (14)  |  Initial (17)  |  Know (1538)  |  Large (398)  |  Late (119)  |  Lead (391)  |  Leave (138)  |  Library (53)  |  Load (12)  |  Look (584)  |  Miner (9)  |  Nick (2)  |  Online (4)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Piece (39)  |  Pile (12)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Point (584)  |  Public (100)  |  Pull (43)  |  Reason (766)  |  Research (753)  |  Say (989)  |  Shelve (2)  |  Sit (51)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Small (489)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Try (296)  |  Trying (144)  |  Walk (138)  |  Why (491)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Such is the character of mathematics in its profounder depths and in its higher and remoter zones that it is well nigh impossible to convey to one who has not devoted years to its exploration a just impression of the scope and magnitude of the existing body of the science. An imagination formed by other disciplines and accustomed to the interests of another field may scarcely receive suddenly an apocalyptic vision of that infinite interior world. But how amazing and how edifying were such a revelation, if it only could be made.
In Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art (1908), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Amazing (35)  |  Apocalyptic (2)  |  Body (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Convey (17)  |  Depth (97)  |  Devote (45)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Exist (458)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Field (378)  |  Form (976)  |  High (370)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Impression (118)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interior (35)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  Other (2233)  |  Profound (105)  |  Receive (117)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Scope (44)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Vision (127)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)  |  Zone (5)

Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
In 'Removal' (Jul 1938), collected in One Man's Meat (1942), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Elsewhere (10)  |  Enlarge (37)  |  Enormous (44)  |  Eye (440)  |  Favor (69)  |  Forget (125)  |  Insist (22)  |   Magazine (26)  |  Movie (21)  |  Primary (82)  |  Radio (60)  |  Range (104)  |  Secondary (15)  |  Tabloid (2)  |  Television (33)  |  Together (392)  |  Will (2350)

The ancestors of the higher animals must be regarded as one-celled beings, similar to the Amœbæ which at the present day occur in our rivers, pools, and lakes. The incontrovertible fact that each human individual develops from an egg, which, in common with those of all animals, is a simple cell, most clearly proves that the most remote ancestors of man were primordial animals of this sort, of a form equivalent to a simple cell. When, therefore, the theory of the animal descent of man is condemned as a “horrible, shocking, and immoral” doctrine, tho unalterable fact, which can be proved at any moment under the microscope, that the human egg is a simple cell, which is in no way different to those of other mammals, must equally be pronounced “horrible, shocking, and immoral.”
Translated from his Ueber die Entstehung und den Stammbaum des Menschengeschlechts, (1873), Vol. 2, as an epigraph to Chap. 6, The Evolution of Man, (1879), Vol 1, 120-121.
Science quotes on:  |  Amoeba (21)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Animal (651)  |  Being (1276)  |  Cell (146)  |  Common (447)  |  Condemn (44)  |  Descent (30)  |  Descent Of Man (6)  |  Develop (278)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Egg (71)  |  Equally (129)  |  Equivalent (46)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Form (976)  |  Higher (37)  |  Horrible (10)  |  Human (1512)  |  Immoral (5)  |  Incontrovertible (8)  |  Individual (420)  |  Lake (36)  |  Mammal (41)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Moment (260)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Occur (151)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pool (16)  |  Present (630)  |  Primordial (14)  |  Pronounce (11)  |  Proof (304)  |  Prove (261)  |  Regard (312)  |  River (140)  |  Shocking (3)  |  Simple (426)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Unalterable (7)  |  Way (1214)

The enthusiasm of Sylvester for his own work, which manifests itself here as always, indicates one of his characteristic qualities: a high degree of subjectivity in his productions and publications. Sylvester was so fully possessed by the matter which for the time being engaged his attention, that it appeared to him and was designated by him as the summit of all that is important, remarkable and full of future promise. It would excite his phantasy and power of imagination in even a greater measure than his power of reflection, so much so that he could never marshal the ability to master his subject-matter, much less to present it in an orderly manner.
Considering that he was also somewhat of a poet, it will be easier to overlook the poetic flights which pervade his writing, often bombastic, sometimes furnishing apt illustrations; more damaging is the complete lack of form and orderliness of his publications and their sketchlike character, … which must be accredited at least as much to lack of objectivity as to a superfluity of ideas. Again, the text is permeated with associated emotional expressions, bizarre utterances and paradoxes and is everywhere accompanied by notes, which constitute an essential part of Sylvester’s method of presentation, embodying relations, whether proximate or remote, which momentarily suggested themselves. These notes, full of inspiration and occasional flashes of genius, are the more stimulating owing to their incompleteness. But none of his works manifest a desire to penetrate the subject from all sides and to allow it to mature; each mere surmise, conceptions which arose during publication, immature thoughts and even errors were ushered into publicity at the moment of their inception, with utmost carelessness, and always with complete unfamiliarity of the literature of the subject. Nowhere is there the least trace of self-criticism. No one can be expected to read the treatises entire, for in the form in which they are available they fail to give a clear view of the matter under contemplation.
Sylvester’s was not a harmoniously gifted or well-balanced mind, but rather an instinctively active and creative mind, free from egotism. His reasoning moved in generalizations, was frequently influenced by analysis and at times was guided even by mystical numerical relations. His reasoning consists less frequently of pure intelligible conclusions than of inductions, or rather conjectures incited by individual observations and verifications. In this he was guided by an algebraic sense, developed through long occupation with processes of forms, and this led him luckily to general fundamental truths which in some instances remain veiled. His lack of system is here offset by the advantage of freedom from purely mechanical logical activity.
The exponents of his essential characteristics are an intuitive talent and a faculty of invention to which we owe a series of ideas of lasting value and bearing the germs of fruitful methods. To no one more fittingly than to Sylvester can be applied one of the mottos of the Philosophic Magazine:
“Admiratio generat quaestionem, quaestio investigationem investigatio inventionem.”
In Mathematische Annalen (1898), 50, 155-160. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 176-178.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Applied (176)  |  Attention (196)  |  Available (80)  |  Being (1276)  |  Carelessness (7)  |  Character (259)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Complete (209)  |  Conception (160)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Consist (223)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Creative (144)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Degree (277)  |  Desire (212)  |  Develop (278)  |  Easier (53)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Error (339)  |  Essential (210)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Expect (203)  |  Exponent (6)  |  Expression (181)  |  Fail (191)  |  Flight (101)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Genius (301)  |  Germ (54)  |  Gift (105)  |  Gifted (25)  |  Greater (288)  |  High (370)  |  Idea (881)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inception (3)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Individual (420)  |  Induction (81)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Invention (400)  |  Lack (127)  |  Literature (116)  |  Long (778)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mature (17)  |  Measure (241)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Objectivity (17)  |  Observation (593)  |  Occasional (23)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Orderliness (9)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Owe (71)  |  Owing (39)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  Possess (157)  |  Power (771)  |  Present (630)  |  Presentation (24)  |  Production (190)  |  Promise (72)  |  Proximate (4)  |  Publication (102)  |  Pure (299)  |  Purely (111)  |  Read (308)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Remain (355)  |  Self (268)  |  Sense (785)  |  Series (153)  |  Side (236)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subject-Matter (8)  |  Summit (27)  |  Surmise (7)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  System (545)  |  Talent (99)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unfamiliarity (5)  |  Utterance (11)  |  Value (393)  |  Veil (27)  |  Verification (32)  |  View (496)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writing (192)

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.
In Light Waves and Their Uses (1903), 23-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Established (7)  |  Exceedingly (28)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Important (229)  |  Law (913)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Supplant (4)

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions. As instances of such discoveries, which are in most cases due to the increasing order of accuracy made possible by improvements in measuring instruments, may be mentioned: first, the departure of actual gases from the simple laws of the so-called perfect gas, one of the practical results being the liquefaction of air and all known gases; second, the discovery of the velocity of light by astronomical means, depending on the accuracy of telescopes and of astronomical clocks; third, the determination of distances of stars and the orbits of double stars, which depend on measurements of the order of accuracy of one-tenth of a second-an angle which may be represented as that which a pin's head subtends at a distance of a mile. But perhaps the most striking of such instances are the discovery of a new planet or observations of the small irregularities noticed by Leverrier in the motions of the planet Uranus, and the more recent brilliant discovery by Lord Rayleigh of a new element in the atmosphere through the minute but unexplained anomalies found in weighing a given volume of nitrogen. Many other instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that “our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”
In Light Waves and Their Uses (1903), 23-4. Michelson had some years earlier referenced “an eminent physicist” that he did not name who had “remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals,” near the end of his Convocation Address at the Dedication of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, 'Some of the Objects and Methods of Physical Science' (4 Jul 1894), published in University of Chicago Quarterly Calendar (Aug 1894), 3, No.2, 15. Also
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Action (342)  |  Actual (118)  |  Air (366)  |  Angle (25)  |  Anomaly (11)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Being (1276)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Call (781)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Clock (51)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Decimal (21)  |  Depend (238)  |  Determination (80)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distance (171)  |  Due (143)  |  Element (322)  |  Examination (102)  |  Exceedingly (28)  |  Exception (74)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  First (1302)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Future (467)  |  Gas (89)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Irregularity (12)  |  Known (453)  |  Law (913)  |  Lead (391)  |  LeVerrier_Urbain (3)  |  Light (635)  |  Limit (294)  |  Liquefaction (2)  |  Look (584)  |  Lord (97)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mention (84)  |  Minute (129)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  New (1273)  |  Nitrogen (32)  |  Observation (593)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overthrow (5)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Pin (20)  |  Planet (402)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Practical (225)  |  Push (66)  |  Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh (9)  |  Recent (78)  |  Represent (157)  |  Result (700)  |  Simple (426)  |  Small (489)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Speed Of Light (18)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Statement (148)  |  Striking (48)  |  Surely (101)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Through (846)  |  Unexplained (8)  |  Uranus (6)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier (4)  |  Volume (25)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Will (2350)

The new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and quantity and a means of expression, more exact, compact, and ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential facts of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of the great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write.
Mankind in the Making (1903), 204. This is seen in a shorter form, somewhat misquoted in a paraphrase as: “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” However, note that in fact, Wells refers only to “mathematical analysis” such as “averages and maxima and minima” — and did not specify (more complex) “statistics” at all! For citation of the paraphrase, see Samuel Wilks Quotations on this site.
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Average (89)  |  Body (557)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Compact (13)  |  Complete (209)  |  Complex (202)  |  Computation (28)  |  Deal (192)  |  Endless (60)  |  Essential (210)  |  Expression (181)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Form (976)  |  Great (1610)  |  Initiation (8)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Maximum (16)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Minimum (13)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Necessity (197)  |  New (1273)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Problem (731)  |  Quality (139)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Read (308)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Sound (187)  |  State (505)  |  Supplement (7)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinkable (5)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Training (92)  |  Understood (155)  |  Wide (97)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

The night spread out of the east in a great flood, quenching the red sunlight in a single minute. We wriggled by breathless degrees deep into our sleeping bags. Our sole thought was of comfort; we were not alive to the beauty or the grandeur of our position; we did not reflect on the splendor of our elevation. A regret I shall always have is that I did not muster up the energy to spend a minute or two stargazing. One peep I did make between the tent flaps into the night, and I remember dimly an appalling wealth of stars, not pale and remote as they appear when viewed through the moisture-laden air of lower levels, but brilliant points of electric blue fire standing out almost stereoscopically. It was a sight an astronomer would have given much to see, and here were we lying dully in our sleeping bags concerned only with the importance of keeping warm and comfortable.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Alive (97)  |  Appalling (10)  |  Appear (122)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Bag (4)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Blue (63)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Comfort (64)  |  Comfortable (13)  |  Concern (239)  |  Deep (241)  |  Degree (277)  |  Dimly (6)  |  East (18)  |  Electric (76)  |  Elevation (13)  |  Energy (373)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flap (2)  |  Flood (52)  |  Give (208)  |  Grandeur (35)  |  Great (1610)  |  Importance (299)  |  Keep (104)  |  Level (69)  |  Lie (370)  |  Low (86)  |  Lying (55)  |  Minute (129)  |  Moisture (21)  |  Muster (2)  |  Night (133)  |  Pale (9)  |  Peep (4)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Red (38)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Regret (31)  |  Remember (189)  |  See (1094)  |  Sight (135)  |  Single (365)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Sole (50)  |  Spend (97)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Spread (86)  |  Stand (284)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Sunlight (29)  |  Tent (13)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Warm (74)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Wriggle (3)

The outlook seems grim. Natural selection under civilized conditions may lead mankind to evolve towards a state of genetic overspecialization for living in gadget-ridden environments. It is certainly up to man to decide whether this direction of his evolution is or is not desirable. If it is not, man has, or soon will have, the knowledge requisite to redirect the evolution of his species pretty much as he sees fit. Perhaps we should not be too dogmatic about this choice of direction. We may be awfully soft compared to paleolithic men when it comes to struggling, unaided by gadgets, with climatic difficulties and wild beasts. Most of us feel most of the time that this is not a very great loss. If our remote descendants grow to be even more effete than we are, they may conceivably be compensated by acquiring genotypes conducive to kindlier dispositions and greater intellectual capacities than those prevalent in mankind today.
[Co-author with American statistician Gordon Allen.]
Theodosius Dobzhansky and Gordon Allen, 'Does Natural Selection Continue to Operate in Modern Mankind?', American Anthropologist, 1956, 58 599.
Science quotes on:  |  Author (175)  |  Beast (58)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Choice (114)  |  Condition (362)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Direction (185)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Environment (239)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Feel (371)  |  Fit (139)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Genotype (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Grow (247)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lead (391)  |  Living (492)  |  Loss (117)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Outlook (32)  |  Paleolithic (2)  |  See (1094)  |  Selection (130)  |  Soft (30)  |  Soon (187)  |  Species (435)  |  State (505)  |  Statistician (27)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Wild (96)  |  Will (2350)

The present knowledge of the biochemical constitution of the cell was achieved largely by the use of destructive methods. Trained in the tradition of the theory of solutions, many a biochemist tends, even today, to regard the cell as a “bag of enzymes”. However, everyone realizes now that the biochemical processes studied in vitro may have only a remote resemblance to the events actually occurring in the living cell.
Nucleo-cytoplasmic Relations in Micro-Organisms: Their Bearing on Cell Heredity and Differentiation (1953), 108.
Science quotes on:  |  Biochemist (9)  |  Cell (146)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Enzyme (19)  |  Event (222)  |  In Vitro (3)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Living (492)  |  Method (531)  |  Present (630)  |  Realize (157)  |  Regard (312)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Tend (124)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Today (321)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Train (118)  |  Use (771)

The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter at a remote period, Man, the wonder and the glory of the universe, proceeded.
In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), 213.
Science quotes on:  |  Branch (155)  |  Glory (66)  |  Great (1610)  |  Man (2252)  |  Monkey (57)  |  New (1273)  |  New World (6)  |  Old (499)  |  Old World (9)  |  Period (200)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Stem (31)  |  Two (936)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wonder (251)  |  World (1850)

The traditional psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead.
'On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology', Mind (1884), 9, 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Consist (223)  |  Continue (179)  |  Definite (114)  |  Echo (12)  |  Flow (89)  |  Form (976)  |  Free (239)  |  Image (97)  |  Lead (391)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Other (2233)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Psychology (166)  |  River (140)  |  Say (989)  |  Sense (785)  |  Still (614)  |  Stream (83)  |  Water (503)  |  Whither (11)

The understanding must not however be allowed to jump and fly from particulars to axioms remote and of almost the highest generality (such as the first principles, as they are called, of arts and things), and taking stand upon them as truths that cannot be shaken, proceed to prove and frame the middle axioms by reference to them; which has been the practice hitherto, the understanding being not only carried that way by a natural impulse, but also by the use of syllogistic demonstration trained and inured to it. But then, and then only, may we hope well of the sciences when in a just scale of ascent, and by successive steps not interrupted or broken, we rise from particulars to lesser axioms; and then to middle axioms, one above the other; and last of all to the most general. For the lowest axioms differ but slightly from bare experience, while the highest and most general (which we now have) are notional and abstract and without solidity. But the middle are the true and solid and living axioms, on which depend the affairs and fortunes of men; and above them again, last of all, those which are indeed the most general; such, I mean, as are not abstract, but of which those intermediate axioms are really limitations.
The understanding must not therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights, to keep it from leaping and flying. Now this has never yet been done; when it is done, we may entertain better hopes of science.
From Novum Organum (1620), Book 1, Aphorism 104. Translated as The New Organon: Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man), collected in James Spedding, Robert Ellis and Douglas Heath (eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon (1857), Vol. 4, 97.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Art (680)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Bare (33)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Broken (56)  |  Call (781)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Depend (238)  |  Differ (88)  |  Entertain (27)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Fly (153)  |  Flying (74)  |  Fortune (50)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Hope (321)  |  Impulse (52)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Jump (31)  |  Last (425)  |  Limitation (52)  |  Living (492)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mean (810)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Natural (810)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Practice (212)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Prove (261)  |  Rise (169)  |  Scale (122)  |  Solid (119)  |  Stand (284)  |  Step (234)  |  Successive (73)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Train (118)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weight (140)  |  Wing (79)

The world probably being of much greater antiquity than physical science has thought to be possible, it is interesting and harmless to speculate whether man has shared with the world its more remote history. … Some of the beliefs and legends which have come down to us from antiquity are so universal and deep-rooted that we have are accustomed to consider them almost as old as the race itself. One is tempted to inquire how far the unsuspected aptness of some of these beliefs and sayings to the point of view so recently disclosed is the result of mere chance or coincidence, and how far it may be evidence of a wholly unknown and unsuspected ancient civilization of which all other relic has disappeared.
In 'The Elixir of Life', The Interpretation of Radium: Being the Substance of Six Free Popular Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow (1909, 1912), 248-250. The original lectures of early 1908, were greatly edited, rearranged and supplemented by the author for the book form.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Chance (244)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Coincidence (20)  |  Consider (428)  |  Deep (241)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Down (455)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Greater (288)  |  Harmless (9)  |  History (716)  |  Inquire (26)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Legend (18)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Possible (560)  |  Race (278)  |  Relic (8)  |  Result (700)  |  Root (121)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Thought (995)  |  Universal (198)  |  Unknown (195)  |  View (496)  |  Wholly (88)  |  World (1850)

These two orders of mountains [Secondary and Tertiary] offer the most ancient chronicle of our globe, least liable to falsifications and at the same time more legible than the writing of the primitive ranges. They are Nature's archives, prior to even the most remote records and traditions that have been preserved for our observant century to investigate, comment on and bring to the light of day, and which will not be exhausted for several centuries after our own.
Observations sur la Formation des Montagnes', Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae (1777) [1778], 46. Trans. Albert Carozzi.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Archive (5)  |  Century (319)  |  Chronicle (6)  |  Comment (12)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Falsification (11)  |  Globe (51)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Least (75)  |  Legibility (2)  |  Liability (7)  |  Light (635)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Offer (142)  |  Order (638)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Range (104)  |  Record (161)  |  Secondary (15)  |  Tertiary (4)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Writing (192)

This science, Geometry, is one of indispensable use and constant reference, for every student of the laws of nature; for the relations of space and number are the alphabet in which those laws are written. But besides the interest and importance of this kind which geometry possesses, it has a great and peculiar value for all who wish to understand the foundations of human knowledge, and the methods by which it is acquired. For the student of geometry acquires, with a degree of insight and clearness which the unmathematical reader can but feebly imagine, a conviction that there are necessary truths, many of them of a very complex and striking character; and that a few of the most simple and self-evident truths which it is possible for the mind of man to apprehend, may, by systematic deduction, lead to the most remote and unexpected results.
In The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Part 1, Bk. 2, chap. 4, sect. 8 (1868).
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Acquired (77)  |  Alphabet (14)  |  Apprehend (5)  |  Character (259)  |  Clearness (11)  |  Complex (202)  |  Constant (148)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Degree (277)  |  Evident (92)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Insight (107)  |  Interest (416)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Lead (391)  |  Man (2252)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mind Of Man (7)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Number (710)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Possess (157)  |  Possible (560)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reference (33)  |  Relation (166)  |  Result (700)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Evident (22)  |  Simple (426)  |  Space (523)  |  Strike (72)  |  Striking (48)  |  Student (317)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Use (771)  |  Value (393)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Wish (216)  |  Write (250)

To most ... of us, Russia was as mysterious and remote as the other side of the moon and not much more productive when it came to really new ideas or inventions. A common joke of the time [mid 1940s] said that the Russians could not surreptitiously introduce nuclear bombs in suitcases into the United States because they had not yet been able to perfect a suitcase.
In Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), 760.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Common (447)  |  Idea (881)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Introduction (37)  |  Invention (400)  |  Joke (90)  |  Moon (252)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Mystery (188)  |  New (1273)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Bomb (6)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Production (190)  |  Productive (37)  |  Really (77)  |  Russia (14)  |  Side (236)  |  State (505)  |  Suitcase (3)  |  Surreptitious (2)  |  Time (1911)  |  United States (31)

Truth and falsity, indeed understanding, is not necessarily something purely intellectual, remote from feelings and attitudes. ... It is in the total conduct of men rather than in their statements that truth or falsehood lives, more in what a man does, in his real reaction to other men and to things, in his will to do them justice, to live at one with them. Here lies the inner connection between truth and justice. In the realm of behavior and action, the problem recurs as to the difference between piece and part.
From 'On Truth', collected in Mary Henle (ed.), Documents of Gestalt Psychology (1961), 28.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Connection (171)  |  Difference (355)  |  Do (1905)  |  Falsehood (30)  |  Falsity (16)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Inner (72)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Justice (40)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Other (2233)  |  Part (235)  |  Piece (39)  |  Problem (731)  |  Purely (111)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Real (159)  |  Realm (87)  |  Recur (4)  |  Something (718)  |  Statement (148)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Total (95)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Will (2350)

Unconscious, perhaps, of the remote tendency of his own labours, he [Joseph Black] undermined that doctrine of material heat, which he seemed to support. For, by his advocacy of latent heat, he taught that its movements constantly battle, not only some of our senses, but all of them; and that, while our feelings make us believe that heat is lost, our intellect makes us believe that it is not lost. Here, we have apparent destructability, and real indestructibility. To assert that a body received heat without its temperature rising, was to make the understanding correct the touch, and defy its dictates. It was a bold and beautiful paradox, which required courage as well as insight to broach, and the reception of which marks an epoch in the human mind, because it was an immense step towards idealizing matter into force.
History of Civilization in England (1861), Vol. 2, 494.
Science quotes on:  |  Apparent (85)  |  Assert (69)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Joseph Black (14)  |  Body (557)  |  Bold (22)  |  Courage (82)  |  Defy (11)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Feelings (52)  |  Force (497)  |  Heat (180)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Immense (89)  |  Insight (107)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Labor (200)  |  Latent Heat (7)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Movement (162)  |  Paradox (54)  |  Reception (16)  |  Required (108)  |  Rising (44)  |  Sense (785)  |  Step (234)  |  Support (151)  |  Temperature (82)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Touch (146)  |  Understanding (527)

Under the... new hypothesis [of Continental Drift] certain geological concepts come to acquire a new significance amounting in a few cases to a complete inversion of principles, and the inquirer will find it necessary to re-orient his ideas. For the first time he will get glimpses... of a pulsating restless earth, all parts of which are in greater or less degree of movement in respect to the axis of rotation, having been so, moreover, throughout geological time. He will have to leave behind him—perhaps reluctantly—the dumbfounding spectacle of the present continental masses, firmly anchored to a plastic foundation yet remaining fixed in space; set thousands of kilometres apart, it may be, yet behaving in almost identical fashion from epoch to epoch and stage to stage like soldiers, at drill; widely stretched in some quarters at various times and astoundingly compressed in others, yet retaining their general shapes, positions and orientations; remote from one another through history, yet showing in their fossil remains common or allied forms of terrestrial life; possessed during certain epochs of climates that may have ranged from glacial to torrid or pluvial to arid, though contrary to meteorological principles when their existing geographical positions are considered -to mention but a few such paradoxes!
Our Wandering Continents: An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting (1937), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Arid (6)  |  Behind (139)  |  Certain (557)  |  Climate (102)  |  Common (447)  |  Complete (209)  |  Concept (242)  |  Consider (428)  |  Continental Drift (15)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Degree (277)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Foundation (177)  |  General (521)  |  Greater (288)  |  History (716)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Idea (881)  |  Identical (55)  |  Inquirer (9)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mention (84)  |  Movement (162)  |  Necessary (370)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plastic (30)  |  Possess (157)  |  Present (630)  |  Principle (530)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Respect (212)  |  Rotation (13)  |  Set (400)  |  Significance (114)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Space (523)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Stage (152)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Various (205)  |  Will (2350)

Vagueness is very much more important in the theory of knowledge than you would judge it to be from the writings of most people. Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise, and everything precise is so remote from everything that we normally think, that you cannot for a moment suppose that is what we really mean when we say what we think.
In The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918, 1919), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Degree (277)  |  Do (1905)  |  Everything (489)  |  Important (229)  |  Judge (114)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mean (810)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Normal (29)  |  People (1031)  |  Precise (71)  |  Realize (157)  |  Say (989)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Think (1122)  |  Vague (50)  |  Vagueness (15)  |  Writing (192)

We are as remote from adequate explanation of the nature and causes of mechanical evolution of the hard parts of animals as we were when Aristotle first speculated on this subject … I think it is possible that we may never fathom all the causes of mechanical evolution or of the origin of new mechanical characters, but shall have to remain content with observing the modes of mechanical evolution, just as embryologists and geneticists are observing the modes of development, from the fertilized ovum to the mature individual, without in the least understanding either the cause or the nature of the process of development which goes on under their eyes every day
From 'Orthogenesis as observed from paleontological evidence beginning in the year 1889', American Naturalist (1922) 56, 141-142. As quoted and cited in 'G.G. Simpson, Paleontology, and the Modern Synthesis', collected in Ernst Mayr, William B. Provine (eds.), The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology (1998), 171.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequate (50)  |  Animal (651)  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Cause (561)  |  Character (259)  |  Development (441)  |  Embryologist (3)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fathom (15)  |  Fertilization (15)  |  First (1302)  |  Geneticist (16)  |  Hard (246)  |  Individual (420)  |  Mature (17)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Mode (43)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Observation (593)  |  Origin (250)  |  Ovum (4)  |  Possible (560)  |  Process (439)  |  Remain (355)  |  Subject (543)  |  Think (1122)  |  Understanding (527)

We are like the inhabitants of an isolated valley in New Guinea who communicate with societies in neighboring valleys (quite different societies, I might add) by runner and by drum. When asked how a very advanced society will communicate, they might guess by an extremely rapid runner or by an improbably large drum. They might not guess a technology beyond their ken. And yet, all the while, a vast international cable and radio traffic passes over them, around them, and through them... We will listen for the interstellar drums, but we will miss the interstellar cables. We are likely to receive our first messages from the drummers of the neighboring galactic valleys - from civilizations only somewhat in our future. The civilizations vastly more advanced than we, will be, for a long time, remote both in distance and in accessibility. At a future time of vigorous interstellar radio traffic, the very advanced civilizations may be, for us, still insubstantial legends.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accessibility (3)  |  Add (42)  |  Advance (298)  |  Ask (420)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Both (496)  |  Cable (11)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Different (595)  |  Distance (171)  |  Drum (8)  |  Drummer (3)  |  Extremely (17)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Galactic (6)  |  Guess (67)  |  Improbable (15)  |  Inhabitant (50)  |  International (40)  |  Interstellar (8)  |  Isolate (24)  |  Ken (2)  |  Large (398)  |  Legend (18)  |  Likely (36)  |  Listen (81)  |  Long (778)  |  Message (53)  |  Miss (51)  |  More (2558)  |  Neighboring (5)  |  New (1273)  |  New Guinea (4)  |  Pass (241)  |  Radio (60)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Receive (117)  |  Runner (2)  |  Society (350)  |  Still (614)  |  Technology (281)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Traffic (10)  |  Valley (37)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vastly (8)  |  Vigorous (21)  |  Will (2350)

We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalised one than viviculture, which I once ventured to use.
First use of the term Eugenics.
Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883), 25, footnote.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Blood (144)  |  Brief (37)  |  Chance (244)  |  Degree (277)  |  Eugenics (6)  |  Express (192)  |  First (1302)  |  Idea (881)  |  Influence (231)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  More (2558)  |  Nomenclature (159)  |  Question (649)  |  Race (278)  |  Tend (124)  |  Term (357)  |  Use (771)  |  Want (504)  |  Word (650)

We have here spoken of the prediction of facts of the same kind as those from which our rule was collected. But the evidence in favour of our induction is of a much higher and more forcible character when it enables us to explain and determine cases of a kind different from those which were contemplated in the formation of our hypothesis. The instances in which this has occurred, indeed, impress us with a conviction that the truth of our hypothesis is certain. No accident could give rise to such an extraordinary coincidence. No false supposition could, after being adjusted to one class of phenomena, so exactly represent a different class, when the agreement was unforeseen and contemplated. That rules springing from remote and unconnected quarters should thus leap to the same point, can only arise from that being where truth resides.
In The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), Vol. 2, 230.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Agreement (55)  |  Arise (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Certain (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Class (168)  |  Coincidence (20)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Determine (152)  |  Different (595)  |  Enable (122)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Explain (334)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Formation (100)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Impress (66)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Induction (81)  |  Kind (564)  |  Leap (57)  |  More (2558)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Point (584)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Represent (157)  |  Reside (25)  |  Rise (169)  |  Rule (307)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unconnected (10)  |  Unforeseen (11)

We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous.
In 'Introduction', Nature: Addresses, and Lectures (1849), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Creation (350)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Esteem (18)  |  Frivolous (8)  |  Function (235)  |  Hate (68)  |  Idea (881)  |  Race (278)  |  Religious (134)  |  Speculative (12)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unsound (5)

We intend to say something about the structure of the atom but lack a language in which we can make ourselves understood. We are in much the same position as a sailor, marooned on a remote island where conditions differ radically from anything he has ever known and where, to make things worse, the natives speak a completely alien tongue.
In conversation during first meeting with Werner Heisenberg (summer 1920), as quoted in William H. Cropper, Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking (2001), 249-250.
Science quotes on:  |  Alien (35)  |  Atom (381)  |  Completely (137)  |  Condition (362)  |  Differ (88)  |  Difference (355)  |  Island (49)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Lack (127)  |  Language (308)  |  Native (41)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Radically (5)  |  Sailor (21)  |  Say (989)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Structure (365)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Understood (155)

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
The Outermost House (1928), 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Attain (126)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Complete (209)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Concept (242)  |  Creature (242)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extension (60)  |  Fate (76)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Finish (62)  |  Form (976)  |  Gift (105)  |  Gifted (25)  |  Glass (94)  |  Hear (144)  |  Image (97)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Move (223)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Observation (593)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Splendour (8)  |  Survey (36)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tragic (19)  |  Universal (198)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

We now live in an age in which science is a court from which there is no appeal. And this issue this time around, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is not the evolution of the species, which can seem a remote business, but the nature of our own precious inner selves.
Tom Wolfe
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Appeal (46)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Business (156)  |  Century (319)  |  Court (35)  |  Evolution (635)  |  First (1302)  |  Inner (72)  |  Issue (46)  |  Live (650)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Precious (43)  |  Seem (150)  |  Self (268)  |  Species (435)  |  Time (1911)  |  Twenty-First (2)

We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own—to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
In Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen (1856), 411-412
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Admiration (61)  |  Carry (130)  |  Cast (69)  |  Chill (10)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Fine (37)  |  Glory (66)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ice (58)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intensity (34)  |  Labor (200)  |  Most (1728)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Peak (20)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Region (40)  |  Think (1122)  |  Triumph (76)

We thus begin to see that the institutionalized practice of citations and references in the sphere of learning is not a trivial matter. While many a general reader–that is, the lay reader located outside the domain of science and scholarship–may regard the lowly footnote or the remote endnote or the bibliographic parenthesis as a dispensable nuisance, it can be argued that these are in truth central to the incentive system and an underlying sense of distributive justice that do much to energize the advancement of knowledge.
In ''he Matthew Effect in Science, II: Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property', Isis (1988), 79, 621.
Science quotes on:  |  Advancement (63)  |  Argument (145)  |  Begin (275)  |  Bibliography (3)  |  Central (81)  |  Citation (4)  |  Dispense (10)  |  Distributive (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Domain (72)  |  Energize (2)  |  Footnote (5)  |  General (521)  |  Incentive (10)  |  Institution (73)  |  Justice (40)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learning (291)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nuisance (10)  |  Outside (141)  |  Parenthesis (2)  |  Practice (212)  |  Reader (42)  |  Reference (33)  |  Regard (312)  |  Scholarship (22)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sphere (118)  |  System (545)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Underlying (33)

Well beyond the tropostrata
There is a region stark and stellar
Where, on a streak of anti-matter
Lived Dr. Edward anti-Teller.

Remote from Fusion’s origin,

He lived unguessed and unawares
With all his antikith and kin,
And kept macassars on his chairs.

One morning, idling by the sea,
He spied a tin of monstrous girth
That bore three letters: A. E. C.
Out stepped a visitor from Earth.

Then, shouting gladly o’er the sands,
Met two who in their alien ways
Were like as lentils. Their right hands
Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.
In 'Perils of Modern Living', The New Yorker (10 Nov 1956), 56. Reprinted in Edward Teller with Judith Schoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics (2002), 428. Webmaster supposes the initials 'A.E.C.' might be for the Atomic Energy Commission.
Science quotes on:  |  Alien (35)  |  Anti-Matter (4)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Chair (25)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fusion (16)  |  Gamma Ray (3)  |  Kin (10)  |  Letter (117)  |  Matter (821)  |  Morning (98)  |  Origin (250)  |  Ray (115)  |  Rest (287)  |  Right (473)  |  Sand (63)  |  Sea (326)  |  Edward Teller (43)  |  Tin (18)  |  Two (936)  |  Way (1214)

When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most austere and the most remote, and a mathematician should be of all men the one who can most easily take refuge where, as Bertrand Russell says, “one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.”
In A Mathematician's Apology (1940, 2012), 43.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Art (680)  |  Austere (7)  |  Best (467)  |  Dreary (6)  |  Ease (40)  |  Escape (85)  |  Exile (6)  |  Find (1014)  |  Impulse (52)  |  Incomparable (14)  |  Least (75)  |  Mad (54)  |  Madness (33)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nobler (3)  |  Refuge (15)  |  Bertrand Russell (198)  |  Say (989)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  World (1850)

Where we reach the sphere of mathematics we are among processes which seem to some the most inhuman of all human activities and the most remote from poetry. Yet it is just here that the artist has the fullest scope for his imagination. … We are in the imaginative sphere of art, and the mathematician is engaged in a work of creation which resembles music in its orderliness, … It is not surprising that the greatest mathematicians have again and again appealed to the arts in order to find some analogy to their own work. They have indeed found it in the most varied arts, in poetry, in painting, and in sculpture, although it would certainly seem that it is in music, the most abstract of all the arts, the art of number and time, that we find the closest analogy.
In The Dance of Life (1923), 138-139.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Activity (218)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Appeal (46)  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Creation (350)  |  Engage (41)  |  Find (1014)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Inhuman (4)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Most (1728)  |  Music (133)  |  Number (710)  |  Order (638)  |  Orderliness (9)  |  Painting (46)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Process (439)  |  Reach (286)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Scope (44)  |  Sculpture (12)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Time (1911)  |  Various (205)  |  Work (1402)

Why, then, are we surprised that comets, such a rare spectacle in the universe, are not known, when their return is at vast intervals?. … The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject … And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them …. Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate … Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all. Someday there will be a man who will show in what regions comets have their orbit, why they travel so remote from other celestial bodies, how large they are and what sort they are.
Natural Questions, Book 7. As translated by Thomas H. Corcoran in Seneca in Ten Volumes: Naturales Quaestiones II (1972), 279 and 293.
Science quotes on:  |  Affair (29)  |  Age (509)  |  Amaze (5)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Comet (65)  |  Descendant (18)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Diligent (19)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Efface (6)  |  Enough (341)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Hidden (43)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Large (398)  |  Lie (370)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Memory (144)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Orbit (85)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Plain (34)  |  Rare (94)  |  Research (753)  |  Reserve (26)  |  Return (133)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Show (353)  |  Single (365)  |  Sky (174)  |  Someday (15)  |  Something (718)  |  Sorry (31)  |  Spectacle (35)  |  Still (614)  |  Subject (543)  |  Successive (73)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Travel (125)  |  Unfold (15)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

You can hardly imagine how I am struggling to exert my poetical ideas just now for the discovery of analogies & remote figures respecting the earth, Sun & all sorts of things—for I think it is the true way (corrected by judgement) to work out a discovery.
Letter to C. Schrenbein, 13th Nov, 1845. In Frank A. J. L. James (ed.), The Correspondence of Michael Faraday (1996), Vol. 3, 428.
Science quotes on:  |  Discovery (837)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Exert (40)  |  Figure (162)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Poet (97)  |  Sun (407)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)


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.