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Aristophanes
(448 B.C. - )
Greek philosopher and playwright.
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Science Quotes by Aristophanes (5 quotes)
First listen my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.
— Aristophanes
…...
Meton: With the straight ruler I set to work
To make the circle four-cornered.
To make the circle four-cornered.
— Aristophanes
First(?) allusion to the problem of squaring the circle. As quoted in B. L. Van Der Waerden, Science Awakening (1954, 2012), Vol. 1, 130, Aristophanes writes this as a joke in his The Birds, which implies the scholarly problem of the quadrature of the circle was known to his audience in ancient Athens.
Old age is but a second childhood.
— Aristophanes
In Aristophanes and Thomas Mitchell (trans.), 'The Clouds', The Comedies of Aristophanes (1822), 148.
Strepsiades: But why do they look so fixedly on the ground?
Disciple of Socrates: They are seeking for what is below the ground. …
Strepsiades: And what is their rump looking at in the heavens?
Disciple: It is studying astronomy on its own account.
Disciple of Socrates: They are seeking for what is below the ground. …
Strepsiades: And what is their rump looking at in the heavens?
Disciple: It is studying astronomy on its own account.
— Aristophanes
In The Clouds, Aristophanes Five Comedies (2003), 129.
The Moon by us to you her greeting sends,
But bids us say that she’s an ill-used moon,
And takes it much amiss that you should still
Shuffle her days, and turn them topsy-turvy;
And that the gods (who know their feast-days well),
By your false count are sent home supperless,
And scold and storm at her for your neglect.
But bids us say that she’s an ill-used moon,
And takes it much amiss that you should still
Shuffle her days, and turn them topsy-turvy;
And that the gods (who know their feast-days well),
By your false count are sent home supperless,
And scold and storm at her for your neglect.
— Aristophanes
From poem, 'The Clouds', quoted in William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), 126. Concerning the imperfect calendar used in ancient Greece in which multiples of the lunar cycles did not exactly correspond to the solar year.
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) -- 
