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 > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index 1 > Category: 18th Century

18th Century Quotes (21 quotes)
Eighteenth Century Quotes

[In 18th-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay.
In Science in History (1969), Vol. 2, 591.
Science quotes on:  |  Ambition (46)  |  Britain (26)  |  Century (319)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Illiterate (6)  |  Henry Maudslay (5)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Most (1728)  |  Thomas Newcomen (2)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Taught (6)  |  Simple (426)  |  Skillful (17)  |  Smith (3)  |  George Stephenson (10)  |  Usual (6)  |  Usually (176)  |  Workman (13)

At the beginning of its existence as a science, biology was forced to take cognizance of the seemingly boundless variety of living things, for no exact study of life phenomena was possible until the apparent chaos of the distinct kinds of organisms had been reduced to a rational system. Systematics and morphology, two predominantly descriptive and observational disciplines, took precedence among biological sciences during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. More recently physiology has come to the foreground, accompanied by the introduction of quantitative methods and by a shift from the observationalism of the past to a predominance of experimentation.
In Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937, 1982), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  Apparent (85)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Boundless (28)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Description (89)  |  Descriptive (18)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Existence (481)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Foreground (3)  |  Introduction (37)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Morphology (22)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observational (15)  |  Organism (231)  |  Past (355)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Possible (560)  |  Precedence (4)  |  Predominance (3)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Rational (95)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Shift (45)  |  Study (701)  |  System (545)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Systematics (4)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Two (936)  |  Variety (138)

By the 18th century science had been so successful in laying bare the laws of nature that many thought there was nothing left to discover. Immutable laws prescribed the motion of every particle in the universe, exactly and forever: the task of the scientist was to elucidate the implications of those laws for any particular phenomenon of interest. Chaos gave way to a clockwork world. But the world moved on ...Today even our clocks are not made of clockwork. ... With the advent of quantum mechanics, the clockwork world has become a lottery. Fundamental events, such as the decay of a radioactive atom, are held to be determined by chance, not law.
Does God Play Dice?: The New Mathematics of Chaos (2002). xi.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Bare (33)  |  Become (821)  |  Century (319)  |  Chance (244)  |  Chaos (99)  |  Clock (51)  |  Decay (59)  |  Discover (571)  |  Event (222)  |  Forever (111)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Immutable (26)  |  Interest (416)  |  Law (913)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Particle (200)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Predictability (7)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Mechanics (47)  |  Radioactive (24)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Successful (134)  |  Task (152)  |  Thought (995)  |  Today (321)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

Half a century ago Oswald (1910) distinguished classicists and romanticists among the scientific investigators: the former being inclined to design schemes and to use consistently the deductions from working hypotheses; the latter being more fit for intuitive discoveries of functional relations between phenomena and therefore more able to open up new fields of study. Examples of both character types are Werner and Hutton. Werner was a real classicist. At the end of the eighteenth century he postulated the theory of “neptunism,” according to which all rocks including granites, were deposited in primeval seas. It was an artificial scheme, but, as a classification system, it worked quite satisfactorily at the time. Hutton, his contemporary and opponent, was more a romanticist. His concept of “plutonism” supposed continually recurrent circuits of matter, which like gigantic paddle wheels raise material from various depths of the earth and carry it off again. This is a very flexible system which opens the mind to accept the possible occurrence in the course of time of a great variety of interrelated plutonic and tectonic processes.
In 'The Scientific Character of Geology', The Journal of Geology (Jul 1961), 69, No. 4, 456-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  According (236)  |  Artificial (38)  |  Being (1276)  |  Both (496)  |  Carry (130)  |  Century (319)  |  Character (259)  |  Circuit (29)  |  Classicist (2)  |  Classification (102)  |  Concept (242)  |  Consistently (8)  |  Contemporary (33)  |  Course (413)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Deposit (12)  |  Depth (97)  |  Design (203)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Earth (1076)  |  End (603)  |  Field (378)  |  Fit (139)  |  Flexible (7)  |  Former (138)  |  Functional (10)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Granite (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  James Hutton (22)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Open (277)  |  Opponent (23)  |  Wilhelm Ostwald (5)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Possible (560)  |  Primeval (15)  |  Process (439)  |  Raise (38)  |  Recurrent (2)  |  Relation (166)  |  Rock (176)  |  Romanticist (2)  |  Satisfactory (19)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sea (326)  |  Study (701)  |  Suppose (158)  |  System (545)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Type (171)  |  Use (771)  |  Variety (138)  |  Various (205)  |  Abraham Werner (5)  |  Wheel (51)  |  Work (1402)  |  Working (23)

He [Winston Churchill] is rather like a layer cake. One layer was certainly seventeenth century. The eighteenth century in him is obvious. There was the nineteenth century, and a large slice, of course, of the twentieth century; and another, curious, layer which may possibly have been the twenty-first.
As quoted in Peter Stansky, Churchill: A Profile (1973), 197.
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  19th Century (41)  |  20th Century (40)  |  21st Century (11)  |  Cake (6)  |  Century (319)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Winston Churchill (48)  |  Course (413)  |  Curious (95)  |  First (1302)  |  Large (398)  |  Layer (41)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Possibly (111)

It is interesting to note how many fundamental terms which the social sciences are trying to adopt from physics have as a matter of historical fact originated in the social field. Take, for instance, the notion of cause. The Greek aitia or the Latin causa was originally a purely legal term. It was taken over into physics, developed there, and in the 18th century brought back as a foreign-born kind for the adoration of the social sciences. The same is true of the concept of law of nature. Originally a strict anthropomorphic conception, it was gradually depersonalized or dehumanized in the natural sciences and then taken over by the social sciences in an effort to eliminate final causes or purposes from the study of human affairs. It is therefore not anomalous to find similar transformations in the history of such fundamental concepts of statistics as average and probability. The concept of average was developed in the Rhodian laws as to the distribution of losses in maritime risks. After astronomers began to use it in correcting their observations, it spread to other physical sciences; and the prestige which it thus acquired has given it vogue in the social field. The term probability, as its etymology indicates, originates in practical and legal considerations of probing and proving.
The Statistical View of Nature (1936), 327-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Adoration (4)  |  Astronomer (97)  |  Average (89)  |  Back (395)  |  Cause (561)  |  Century (319)  |  Concept (242)  |  Conception (160)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Develop (278)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Effort (243)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Field (378)  |  Final (121)  |  Find (1014)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Greek (109)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Kind (564)  |  Latin (44)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Matter (821)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Notion (120)  |  Observation (593)  |  Originate (39)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Physics (564)  |  Practical (225)  |  Prestige (16)  |  Probability (135)  |  Purely (111)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Risk (68)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Spread (86)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Study (701)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Trying (144)  |  Use (771)

It is not, indeed, strange that the Greeks and Romans should not have carried ... any ... experimental science, so far as it has been carried in our time; for the experimental sciences are generally in a state of progression. They were better understood in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. But this constant improvement, this natural growth of knowledge, will not altogether account for the immense superiority of the modern writers. The difference is a difference not in degree, but of kind. It is not merely that new principles have been discovered, but that new faculties seem to be exerted. It is not that at one time the human intellect should have made but small progress, and at another time have advanced far; but that at one time it should have been stationary, and at another time constantly proceeding. In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. They reasoned as justly as ourselves on subjects which required pure demonstration.
History (May 1828). In Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (1880), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  16th Century (3)  |  17th Century (20)  |  Account (195)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Art (680)  |  Better (493)  |  Century (319)  |  Constant (148)  |  Degree (277)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Difference (355)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Exert (40)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Grace (31)  |  Greek (109)  |  Growth (200)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellect (32)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Immense (89)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Magnificence (14)  |  Merely (315)  |  Modern (402)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Persuasion (9)  |  Principle (530)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Progress (492)  |  Progression (23)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reason (766)  |  Required (108)  |  Roman (39)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Small (489)  |  State (505)  |  Stationary (11)  |  Strange (160)  |  Subject (543)  |  Superiority (19)  |  Taste (93)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understood (155)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writer (90)

It may be said of many palaeontologists, as Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper said recently of 18th century historians: “Their most serious error was to measure the past by the present”.
In The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (1973), 26.
Science quotes on:  |  Century (319)  |  Error (339)  |  Historian (59)  |  Measure (241)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Most (1728)  |  Paleontologist (19)  |  Past (355)  |  Present (630)  |  Professor (133)  |  Serious (98)

Looking back over the last thousand years, one can divide the development of the machine and the machine civilization into three successive but over-lapping and interpenetrating phases: eotechnic, paleotechnic, neotechnic … Speaking in terms of power and characteristic materials, the eotechnic phase is a water-and-wood complex: the paleotechnic phase is a coal-and-wood complex… The dawn-age of our modern technics stretches roughly from the year 1000 to 1750. It did not, of course, come suddenly to an end in the middle of the eighteenth century. A new movement appeared in industrial society which had been gathering headway almost unnoticed from the fifteenth century on: after 1750 industry passed into a new phase, with a different source of power, different materials, different objectives.
Technics and Civilisation (1934), 109.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Back (395)  |  Century (319)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Civilisation (23)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Coal (64)  |  Complex (202)  |  Course (413)  |  Dawn (31)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Divide (77)  |  End (603)  |  Gathering (23)  |  Headway (2)  |  Industry (159)  |  Last (425)  |  Looking (191)  |  Machine (271)  |  Material (366)  |  Modern (402)  |  Movement (162)  |  New (1273)  |  Objective (96)  |  Paleotechnic (2)  |  Pass (241)  |  Phase (37)  |  Power (771)  |  Society (350)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Successive (73)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Technics (2)  |  Technology (281)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Water (503)  |  Wood (97)  |  Year (963)

Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.
The Great Chain of Being (1936), 184.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Bless (25)  |  Blessed (20)  |  Century (319)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Great (1610)  |  Great Chain Of Being (2)  |  Late (119)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Next (238)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Playing (42)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Word (650)

Our ultimate task is to find interpretative procedures that will uncover each bias and discredit its claims to universality. When this is done the eighteenth century can be formally closed and a new era that has been here a long time can be officially recognised. The individual human being, stripped of his humanity, is of no use as a conceptual base from which to make a picture of human society. No human exists except steeped in the culture of his time and place. The falsely abstracted individual has been sadly misleading to Western political thought. But now we can start again at a point where major streams of thought converge, at the other end, at the making of culture. Cultural analysis sees the whole tapestry as a whole, the picture and the weaving process, before attending to the individual threads.
As co-author with Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (1979, 2002), 41-42.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Base (120)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bias (22)  |  Century (319)  |  Claim (154)  |  Closed (38)  |  Conceptual (11)  |  Converge (10)  |  Culture (157)  |  Discredit (8)  |  End (603)  |  Era (51)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Human Society (14)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Long (778)  |  Major (88)  |  Making (300)  |  Misleading (21)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Picture (148)  |  Point (584)  |  Political (124)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Process (439)  |  Recognise (14)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  Start (237)  |  Stream (83)  |  Strip (7)  |  Tapestry (5)  |  Task (152)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thread (36)  |  Time (1911)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Universality (22)  |  Use (771)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Western (45)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this country, especially in its more exact departments. ... Mathematics were at the last gasp, and Astronomy nearly so—I mean in those members of its frame which depend upon precise measurement and systematic calculation. The chilling torpor of routine had begun to spread itself over all those branches of Science which wanted the excitement of experimental research.
Quoted in Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, Memoir of Augustus De Morgan (1882), 41
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  Amount (153)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Century (319)  |  Chill (10)  |  Country (269)  |  Department (93)  |  Depend (238)  |  End (603)  |  Exact (75)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Gasp (6)  |  Last (425)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Measurement (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Movement (162)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Precise (71)  |  Precision (72)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Research (753)  |  Routine (26)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Small (489)  |  Spread (86)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Want (504)

The extraordinary development of mathematics in the last century is quite unparalleled in the long history of this most ancient of sciences. Not only have those branches of mathematics which were taken over from the eighteenth century steadily grown, but entirely new ones have sprung up in almost bewildering profusion, and many of them have promptly assumed proportions of vast extent.
In The History of Mathematics in the Nineteenth Century', Congress of Arts and Sciences (1905), Vol. 1, 474. As cited and wuoted in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Bewildering (5)  |  Branch (155)  |  Century (319)  |  Development (441)  |  Extent (142)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  History (716)  |  Last (425)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  Most (1728)  |  New (1273)  |  Profusion (3)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Spring (140)  |  Vast (188)

The most consequential change in man's view of the world, of living nature and of himself came with the introduction, over a period of some 100 years beginning only in the 18th century, of the idea of change itself, of change over periods of time: in a word, of evolution.
'Evolution', Scientific American (Jul 1978), 239:1, 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Beginning (312)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Himself (461)  |  Idea (881)  |  Introduction (37)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Period (200)  |  Time (1911)  |  View (496)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

The private motives of scientists are not the trend of science. The trend of science is made by the needs of society: navigation before the eighteenth century, manufacture thereafter; and in our age I believe the liberation of personality. Whatever the part which scientists like to act, or for that matter which painters like to dress, science shares the aims of our society just as art does.
From The Common Sense of Science (1951), 145.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  20th Century (40)  |  Act (278)  |  Age (509)  |  Aim (175)  |  Art (680)  |  Century (319)  |  Liberation (12)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Matter (821)  |  Motive (62)  |  Navigation (26)  |  Need (320)  |  Painter (30)  |  Personality (66)  |  Private (29)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Share (82)  |  Society (350)  |  Trend (23)  |  Whatever (234)

The teacher manages to get along still with the cumbersome algebraic analysis, in spite of its difficulties and imperfections, and avoids the smooth infinitesimal calculus, although the eighteenth century shyness toward it had long lost all point.
Elementary Mathematics From an Advanced Standpoint (1908). 3rd edition (1924), trans. E. R. Hedrick and C. A. Noble (1932), Vol. 1, 155.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Calculus (65)  |  Century (319)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Infinitesimal (30)  |  Long (778)  |  Manage (26)  |  Point (584)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Spite (55)  |  Still (614)  |  Teacher (154)

There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.
A God Within (1972), 216.
Science quotes on:  |  Century (319)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Demon (8)  |  Humane (19)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Will (2350)

There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result … in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things.
Paul Klee
Quoted in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Feb 1959), 59, citing Bauhaus-Zeitschrijt (1928).
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Century (319)  |  Clue (20)  |  Discipline (85)  |  End (603)  |  Exact (75)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Final (121)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Function (235)  |  Gate (33)  |  Learn (672)  |  Look (584)  |  Looking (191)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Music (133)  |  Observed (149)  |  Open (277)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Result (700)  |  Root (121)  |  Rule (307)  |  Salutary (5)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Strictly (13)  |  Surface (223)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)

Through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century, many philosophers, most men of science, and, indeed, most educated men, were to accept without question—the conception of the universe as a Great Chain of Being, composed of an immense, or—by the strict but seldom rigorously applied logic of the principle of continuity—of an infinite number of links ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents, which barely escape non-existence, through 'every possible' grade up to the ens perfectissimum—or, in a somewhat more orthodox version, to the highest possible kind of creature, between which and the Absolute Being the disparity was assumed to be infinite—every one of them differing from that immediately above and that immediately below it by the 'least possible' degree of difference.
The Great Chain of Being (1936), 59.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Accept (198)  |  Age (509)  |  Applied (176)  |  Being (1276)  |  Century (319)  |  Conception (160)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Creature (242)  |  Degree (277)  |  Difference (355)  |  Down (455)  |  Escape (85)  |  Existence (481)  |  Great (1610)  |  Great Chain Of Being (2)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Immense (89)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Kind (564)  |  Late (119)  |  Logic (311)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Middle Age (19)  |  Middle Ages (12)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Number (710)  |  Order (638)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Possible (560)  |  Principle (530)  |  Question (649)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Through (846)  |  Universe (900)

To find fault with our ancestors for not having annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and vote by ballot, would be like quarrelling with the Greeks and Romans for not using steam navigation, when we know it is so safe and expeditious; which would be, in short, simply finding fault with the third century before Christ for not being the eighteenth century after. It was necessary that many other things should be thought and done, before, according to the laws of human affairs, it was possible that steam navigation should be thought of. Human nature must proceed step by step, in politics as well as in physics.
The Spirit of the Age (1831). Ed. Frederick A. von Hayek (1942), 48.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Being (1276)  |  Century (319)  |  Christ (17)  |  Fault (58)  |  Find (1014)  |  Greek (109)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Know (1538)  |  Law (913)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Navigation (26)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parliament (8)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Politics (122)  |  Possible (560)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Quarrel (10)  |  Roman (39)  |  Safe (61)  |  Safety (58)  |  Short (200)  |  Steam (81)  |  Step (234)  |  Step By Step (11)  |  Suffrage (4)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Universal (198)  |  Vote (16)

We praise the eighteenth century for concerning itself chiefly with analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew.
In The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe (1906), 198.
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  Analyse (4)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Anew (19)  |  Century (319)  |  Chiefly (47)  |  Concern (239)  |  Content (75)  |  Discover (571)  |  False (105)  |  Praise (28)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Task (152)


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.