(source)
|
Nathaniel Bowditch
(26 Mar 1773 - 16 Mar 1838)
American mathematician and astronomer.
|
Science Quotes by Nathaniel Bowditch (2 quotes)
I never come across one of Laplace’s “Thus it plainly appears” without feeling sure that I have hours of hard work before me to fill up the chasm and find out and show how it plainly appears.
— Nathaniel Bowditch
In Florian Cajori, Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1896), 104.
Whenever I meet in Laplace with the words “Thus it plainly appears”, I am sure that hours and perhaps days, of hard study will alone enable me to discover how it plainly appears.
— Nathaniel Bowditch
Mécanique céleste (1829-39), Celestial mechanics (1966).
Quotes by others about Nathaniel Bowditch (1)
The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive “condensation” of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words “it is evident,” he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him.
In The Principles of Psychology (1918), Vol. 2, 369-370.
See also:
- 26 Mar - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Bowditch's birth.
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) -- 
