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: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index S > Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville Quotes

Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville
(1780 - 1872)

British mathematician.

Science Quotes by Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville (5 quotes)

Astronomy affords the most extensive example of the connection of physical sciences. In it are combined the sciences of number and quantity, or rest and motion. In it we perceive the operation of a force which is mixed up with everything that exists in the heavens or on earth; which pervades every atom, rules the motion of animate and inanimate beings, and is a sensible in the descent of the rain-drop as in the falls of Niagara; in the weight of the air, as in the periods of the moon.
— Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville
On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1858), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Animate (8)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Atom (381)  |  Being (1276)  |  Combination (150)  |  Connection (171)  |  Descent (30)  |  Drop (77)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Everything (489)  |  Example (98)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Extensive (34)  |  Fall (243)  |  Force (497)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Mix (24)  |  Moon (252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Niagara (8)  |  Number (710)  |  Operation (221)  |  Perception (97)  |  Period (200)  |  Pervade (10)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Rain (70)  |  Raindrop (4)  |  Rest (287)  |  Rule (307)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Weight (140)

Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by slow degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the Differential Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity.
— Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville
Martha Somerville (ed.) Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville (1874), 140-141.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Conception (160)  |  Convince (43)  |  Degree (277)  |  Deity (22)  |  Differential Calculus (11)  |  Eternity (64)  |  Exist (458)  |  Grant (76)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Omniscient (6)  |  Proof (304)  |  Purely (111)  |  Slow (108)  |  Still (614)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Supersede (8)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unity (81)  |  Vouchsafe (3)

Science, regarded as the pursuit of truth, which can only be attained by patient and unprejudiced investigation, wherein nothing is to be attempted, nothing so minute as to be justly disregarded, must ever afford occupation of consummate interest, and subject of elevated meditation.
— Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville
On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1858), 2-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Attain (126)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Consummate (5)  |  Disregard (12)  |  Elevated (3)  |  Interest (416)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Mediation (4)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Minute (129)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Patience (58)  |  Patient (209)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Regard (312)  |  Subject (543)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unprejudiced (3)

So numerous are the objects which meet our view in the heavens, that we cannot imagine a point of space where some light would not strike the eye;—innumerable stars, thousands of double and multiple systems, clusters in one blaze with their tens of thousands of stars, and the nebulae amazing us by the strangeness of their forms and the incomprehensibility of their nature, till at last, from the limit of our senses, even these thin and airy phantoms vanish in the distance.
— Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville
On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1858), 420.
Science quotes on:  |  Airy (2)  |  Amazement (19)  |  Amazing (35)  |  Blaze (14)  |  Cluster (16)  |  Distance (171)  |  Eye (440)  |  Form (976)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Incomprehensibility (2)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Last (425)  |  Light (635)  |  Limit (294)  |  Multiple (19)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nebula (16)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Object (438)  |  Phantom (9)  |  Point (584)  |  Sense (785)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Strangeness (10)  |  Strike (72)  |  System (545)  |  Thin (18)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Vanish (19)  |  View (496)

Who shall declare the time allotted to the human race, when the generations of the most insignificant insect also existed for unnumbered ages? Yet man is also to vanish in the ever-changing course of events. The earth is to be burnt up, and the elements are to melt with fervent heat—to be again reduced to chaos—possibly to be renovated and adorned for other races of beings. These stupendous changes may be but cycles in those great laws of the universe, where all is variable but the laws themselves and He who has ordained them.
— Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville
Physical Geography (1848), Vol. 1, 2-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Adornment (4)  |  Age (509)  |  Being (1276)  |  Burnt (2)  |  Change (639)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Course (413)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Declaration (10)  |  Declare (48)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Element (322)  |  Event (222)  |  Ever-Changing (2)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fervent (6)  |  Generation (256)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heat (180)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Insect (89)  |  Insignificant (33)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Melt (16)  |  Most (1728)  |  Ordained (2)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Race (278)  |  Reduced (3)  |  Renovation (2)  |  Stupendous (13)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vanish (19)  |  Variability (5)  |  Variable (37)


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.