(source)
|
Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
(19 Jun 1897 - 9 Oct 1967)
English physical chemist.
|
Science Quotes by Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (6 quotes)
A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.
— Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
Quoted in E. J. Bowen's obituary of Hinshelwood, Chemistry in Britain (1967), Vol. 3, 536.
Chemistry: that most excellent child of intellect and art.
— Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
From presidential address to 1953 conference of Science Masters Association, Oxford, part of the Centenary Celbrations of the Chemical Society of London. As quoted in Charles Alfred Coulson, Science and Christian Belief (1956), 51.
Nobody, I suppose, could devote many years to the study of chemical kinetics without being deeply conscious of the fascination of time and change: this is something that goes outside science into poetry; but science, subject to the rigid necessity of always seeking closer approximations to the truth, itself contains many poetical elements.
— Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
From Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1956), collected in Nobel Lectures in Chemistry (1999), 474.
The natural sciences are sometimes said to have no concern with values, nor to seek morality and goodness, and therefore belong to an inferior order of things. Counter-claims are made that they are the only living and dynamic studies... Both contentions are wrong. Language, Literature and Philosophy express, reflect and contemplate the world. But it is a world in which men will never be content to stay at rest, and so these disciplines cannot be cut off from the great searching into the nature of things without being deprived of life-blood.
— Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
Presidential Address to Classical Association, 1959. In E. J. Bowen's obituary of Hinshelwood, Chemistry in Britain (1967), Vol. 3, 536.
The technology [semiconductors] which has transformed practical existence is largely an application of what was discovered by these allegedly irresponsible [natural] philosophers.
— Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
Address on the Tercentenary of the Royal Society (1960). In Michael Dudley Sturge, Statistical and Thermal Physics (2003), 251.
To some men knowledge of the universe has been an end possessing in itself a value that is absolute: to others it has seemed a means of useful applications.
— Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
In The Structure of Physical Chemistry (1951, 2005), 2.
See also:
- 19 Jun - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Hinshelwood'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) -- 
