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: “Dangerous... to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index O > Sir William Osler Quotes > Experiment

Thumbnail of Sir William Osler (source)
Sir William Osler
(12 Jul 1849 - 29 Dec 1919)

Canadian physician, medical educator and author whose clinical teaching, research and personality strongly influenced medical practice, including encouraging a warmer bedside manner between doctors and their patients. He wrote Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892), one of the most successful textbooks in medical history.


Sir William Osler Quotes on Experiment (4 quotes)

>> Click for 47 Science Quotes by Sir William Osler

>> Click for Sir William Osler Quotes on | Medicine | Nature |

Seeing and thinking have done much for human progress; in the sphere of mind and morals everything, and could the world have been saved by armchair philosophy, the Greeks would have done it; but only a novum organon could do this, the powerful possibilities of which were only revealed when man began to search our the secrets of nature by way of experiment, to use the words of Harvey.
— Sir William Osler
Address at the opening of the new Pathological Institute of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow (4 Oct 1911). Printed in 'The Pathological Institute of a General Hospital', Glasgow Medical Journal (1911), 76, 326.
Science quotes on:  |  Armchair (7)  |  Do (1905)  |  Everything (489)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Greek (109)  |  William Harvey (30)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Progress (18)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moral (203)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Organon (2)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Progress (492)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Search (175)  |  Secret (216)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution. Of the two methods by which he can do this, the mathematical and the experimental, both have been equally fruitful—by the one he has gauged the starry heights and harnessed the cosmic forces to his will; by the other he has solved many of the problems of life and lightened many of the burdens of humanity.
— Sir William Osler
In 'The Evolution of the Idea of Experiment in Medicine', in C.G. Roland, Sir William Osler, 1849-1919: A Selection for Medical Students (1982), 103. As cited in William Osler and Mark E. Silverman (ed.), The Quotable Osler (2002), 249
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Burden (30)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Do (1905)  |  Equally (129)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Force (497)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Harness (25)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Interrogation (5)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Method (531)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)

The ancients thought as clearly as we do, had greater skills in the arts and in architecture, but they had never learned the use of the great instrument which has given man control over nature—experiment.
— Sir William Osler
Address at the opening of the new Pathological Institute of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow (4 Oct 1911). Printed in 'The Pathological Institute of a General Hospital', Glasgow Medical Journal (1911), 76, 327.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Architecture (50)  |  Art (680)  |  Control (182)  |  Do (1905)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Skill (116)  |  Thought (995)  |  Use (771)

To each of us life is an experiment in Nature’s laboratory, and she tests and tries us in a thousand ways, using us and improving us if we serve her turn, ruthlessly dispensing with us if we do not.
— Sir William Osler
In 'The Evolution of the Idea of Experiment in Medicine', Transactions of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons. Seventh Triennial Session (1907), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Dispense (10)  |  Do (1905)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ruthless (12)  |  Test (221)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Turn (454)  |  Way (1214)


See also:
  • 12 Jul - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Osler's birth.
  • Sir William Osler - Excerpt from 'Books And Men' address (12 Jan 1901)
  • William Osler - context of quote “Two sorts of doctors” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
  • William Osler - context of quote “Two sorts of doctors” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
  • William Osler: A Life in Medicine, by Michael Bliss. - book suggestion.

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.