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Who said: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index W > Max Weber Quotes

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Max Weber
(21 Apr 1864 - 14 Jun 1920)

German sociologist who espoused a liberal imperialism. He did not accept Marx's economic determinism but instead studied the religious roots of capitalism.

Science Quotes by Max Weber (6 quotes)

[In] the realm of science, … what we have achieved will be obsolete in ten, twenty or fifty years. That is the fate, indeed, that is the very meaning of scientific work. … Every scientific “fulfillment” raises new “questions” and cries out to be surpassed and rendered obsolete. Everyone who wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this.
— Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As translated by Rodney Livingstone in David Owen (ed.), The Vocation Lectures: Science as a Vocation: Politics as a Vocation (2004), 11. A different translation of a longer excerpt for this quote, beginning “In science, each of us knows …”, is also on the Max Weber Quotes web page on this site.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Fate (76)  |  Fulfillment (20)  |  Himself (461)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Meaning (244)  |  New (1273)  |  Obsolete (15)  |  Question (649)  |  Raise (38)  |  Realm (87)  |  Render (96)  |  Resign (4)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Serve (64)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

In science, each of us knows that what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years. That is the fate to which science is subjected; it is the very meaning of scientific work, to which it is devoted in a quite specific sense, as compared with other spheres of culture for which in general the same holds. Every scientific “fulfilment” raises new “questions”; it asks to be “surpassed” and outdated. Whoever wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this fact. Scientific works certainly can last as “gratifications” because of their artistic quality, or they may remain important as a means of training. Yet they will be surpassed scientifically—let that be repeated—for it is our common fate and, more our common goal. We cannot work without hoping that others will advance further than we have. In principle, this progress goes on ad infinitum.
— Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As given in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (translators and eds.), 'Science as a Vocation', Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), 138. A different translation of a shorter excerpt from this quote, beginning “[In] the realm of science, …” is also on the Max Weber Quotes web page on this site.
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Inspiration in the field of science by no means plays any greater role, as academic conceit fancies, than it does in the field of mastering problems of practical life by a modern entrepreneur. On the other hand, and this also is often misconstrued, inspiration plays no less a role in science than it does in the realm of art.
— Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As given in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (translators and eds.), 'Science as a Vocation', Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), 136.
Science quotes on:  |  Academic (20)  |  Art (680)  |  Conceit (15)  |  Entrepreneur (5)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Field (378)  |  Greater (288)  |  Hand (149)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Less (105)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mastering (11)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Modern (402)  |  Often (109)  |  Other (2233)  |  Play (116)  |  Practical (225)  |  Problem (731)  |  Realm (87)  |  Role (86)

Inspiration plays no less a role in science than it does in the realm of art. It is a childish notion to think that a mathematician attains any scientifically valuable results by sitting at his desk with a ruler, calculating machines or other mechanical means. The mathematical imagination of a Weierstrass is naturally quite differently oriented in meaning and result than is the imagination of an artist, and differs basically in quality. But the psychological processes do not differ. Both are frenzy (in the sense of Plato’s “mania”) and “inspiration.”
— Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As given in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (translators and eds.), 'Science as a Vocation', Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), 136.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Attain (126)  |  Basic (144)  |  Both (496)  |  Calculating Machine (3)  |  Childish (20)  |  Desk (13)  |  Differ (88)  |  Differently (4)  |  Do (1905)  |  Frenzy (6)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Inspiration (80)  |  Machine (271)  |  Mania (3)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Naturally (11)  |  Notion (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plato (80)  |  Process (439)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Quality (139)  |  Realm (87)  |  Result (700)  |  Role (86)  |  Ruler (21)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Think (1122)  |  Value (393)  |   Karl Weierstrass, (10)

Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized accomplishment.
— Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As given in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (translators and eds.), 'Science as a Vocation', Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), 135.
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Who—aside from certain big children who are indeed found in the natural sciences—still believes that the findings of astronomy, biology, physics, or chemistry could teach us anything about the meaning of the world?
— Max Weber
From a Speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524-525. As given in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright-Mills (translators and eds.), 'Science as a Vocation', Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Belief (615)  |  Biology (232)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Find (1014)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Still (614)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching (190)  |  World (1850)


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)
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- 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


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