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: “The Columbia is lost; there are no survivors.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index W > John Wilkins Quotes

Thumbnail of John Wilkins (source)
John Wilkins
(1614 - 19 Nov 1672)

English churchman, scholar and scientist who was one of the founders and the first secretary of the Royal Society, London. He wrote for the common reader the Discovery (1638) and the Discourse (1640) which showed how reason and experience supported Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo rather than Aristotlian or literal biblical doctrines.


Science Quotes by John Wilkins (3 quotes)

'Tis certain that our senses are extremely disproportioned for comprehending the whole compass and latitude of things.
— John Wilkins
In Mathematical Magic; or the Wonders That May Be Performed by Mechanical Geometry (1680), 116
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Compass (37)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Extremely (17)  |  Latitude (6)  |  Nature Of Things (30)  |  Sense (785)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Whole (756)

As soon as the art of Flying is Found out, some of their Nation will make one of the first Colonies, that shall Transplant into that other World.
— John Wilkins
In A Discovery of a New World, Or, a Discourse: Tending to Prove, that 'tis Probable There May Be Another Habitable World in the Moon (1638, 1684), 159.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Colony (8)  |  First (1302)  |  Flying (74)  |  Moon (252)  |  Nation (208)  |  Other (2233)  |  Soon (187)  |  Space Travel (23)  |  Transplant (12)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Whatever is Natural doth by that appear, adorned with all imaginable Elegance and Beauty. There are such inimitable gildings and embroideries in the smallest seeds of Plants, but especially in the parts of Animals, in the head or eye of a small Fly: such accurate order and symmetry in the frame of the most minute creatures, a Lowse or a Mite, as no man were able to conceive without seeing of them. Whereas the most curious works of Art, the sharpest finest Needle, doth appear as a blunt rough bar of iron, coming from the furnace or the forge. The most accurate engravings or embossments, seem such rude bungling deformed works, as if they had been done with a Mattock or a Trowel.
— John Wilkins
In Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (1675, 1699), 80.
Science quotes on:  |  Accurate (88)  |  Adornment (4)  |  Animal (651)  |  Art (680)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Coming (114)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Creature (242)  |  Curious (95)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Embroidery (2)  |  Engraving (4)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fly (153)  |  Forge (10)  |  Inimitable (6)  |  Iron (99)  |  Louse (6)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mattock (2)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Minute (129)  |  Mite (5)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Order (638)  |  Plant (320)  |  Seed (97)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Small (489)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Work (1402)



Quotes by others about John Wilkins (1)

There is scarce any one invention, which this nation has produced in our age, but it has some way or other been set forward by his assistance. ... He is indeed a man born for the good of mankind, and for the honour of his country. ... So I may thank God, that Dr. Wilkins was an Englishman, for wherever he had lived, there had been the chief seat of generous knowledge and true philosophy.
In Micrographia, Preface. Cited in Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1976), Vol. 14, 369-370.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Assistance (23)  |  Born (37)  |  Chief (99)  |  Country (269)  |  Englishman (5)  |  Forward (104)  |  Generous (17)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Honour (58)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Invention (400)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Nation (208)  |  Other (2233)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Scarce (11)  |  Seat (7)  |  Set (400)  |  Thank (48)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wherever (51)


See also:
  • 19 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Wilkins's death.

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.