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 A > Category: Article

Article Quotes (22 quotes)

‘I was reading an article about “Mathematics”. Perfectly pure mathematics. My own knowledge of mathematics stops at “twelve times twelve,” but I enjoyed that article immensely. I didn’t understand a word of it; but facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful. That mathematical fellow believed in his facts. So do I. Get your facts first, and’—the voice dies away to an almost inaudible drone—’then you can distort ‘em as much as you please.’
In 'An Interview with Mark Twain', in Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea (1899), Vol. 2, 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Delight (111)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Distort (22)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drone (4)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fellow (88)  |  First (1302)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Please (68)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Mathematics (72)  |  Reading (136)  |  Stop (89)  |  Time (1911)  |  Twelve (4)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Word (650)

Dogbert (advice to Boss): Every credible scientist on earth says your products harm the environment. I recommend paying weasels to write articles casting doubt on the data. Then eat the wrong kind of foods and hope you die before the earth does.
Dilbert cartoon strip (30 Oct 2007).
Science quotes on:  |  Advice (57)  |  Casting (10)  |  Consulting (13)  |  Credibility (4)  |  Data (162)  |  Death (406)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eat (108)  |  Environment (239)  |  Food (213)  |  Harm (43)  |  Hope (321)  |  Kind (564)  |  Product (166)  |  Recommend (27)  |  Recommendation (12)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)  |  Wrong (246)

At the present time all property is personal; the man owns his own ponies and other belongings he has personally acquired; the woman owns her horses, dogs, and all the lodge equipments; children own their own articles; and parents do not control the possessions of their children. There is no family property as we use the term. A wife is as independent as the most independent man in our midst. If she chooses to give away or sell all of her property, there is no one to gainsay her.
Speech on 'The Legal Conditions of Indian Women', delivered to Evening Session (Thur 29 Mar 1888), collected in Report of the International Council of Women: Assembled by the National Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, D.C., U.S. of America, March 25 to April 1, 1888 (1888), Vol. 1, 239-240.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Choose (116)  |  Control (182)  |  Dispute (36)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Family (101)  |  Give (208)  |  Horse (78)  |  Independent (74)  |  Lodge (3)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Personal (75)  |  Pony (2)  |  Possession (68)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Sell (15)  |  Term (357)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Wife (41)  |  Woman (160)

Generality of points of view and of methods, precision and elegance in presentation, have become, since Lagrange, the common property of all who would lay claim to the rank of scientific mathematicians. And, even if this generality leads at times to abstruseness at the expense of intuition and applicability, so that general theorems are formulated which fail to apply to a single special case, if furthermore precision at times degenerates into a studied brevity which makes it more difficult to read an article than it was to write it; if, finally, elegance of form has well-nigh become in our day the criterion of the worth or worthlessness of a proposition,—yet are these conditions of the highest importance to a wholesome development, in that they keep the scientific material within the limits which are necessary both intrinsically and extrinsically if mathematics is not to spend itself in trivialities or smother in profusion.
In Die Entwickdung der Mathematik in den letzten Jahrhunderten (1884), 14-15.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstruse (12)  |  Applicable (31)  |  Apply (170)  |  Become (821)  |  Both (496)  |  Brevity (8)  |  Claim (154)  |  Common (447)  |  Condition (362)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Degenerate (14)  |  Development (441)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Expense (21)  |  Fail (191)  |  Form (976)  |  Formulate (16)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Importance (299)  |  Intrinsic (18)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Lead (391)  |  Limit (294)  |  Material (366)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Method (531)  |  Modern Mathematics (50)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Precision (72)  |  Presentation (24)  |  Profusion (3)  |  Property (177)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Rank (69)  |  Read (308)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Single (365)  |  Smother (3)  |  Special (188)  |  Special Case (9)  |  Spend (97)  |  Study (701)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Time (1911)  |  Triviality (3)  |  View (496)  |  Wholesome (12)  |  Worth (172)  |  Worthless (22)  |  Write (250)

I can see him [Sylvester] now, with his white beard and few locks of gray hair, his forehead wrinkled o’er with thoughts, writing rapidly his figures and formulae on the board, sometimes explaining as he wrote, while we, his listeners, caught the reflected sounds from the board. But stop, something is not right, he pauses, his hand goes to his forehead to help his thought, he goes over the work again, emphasizes the leading points, and finally discovers his difficulty. Perhaps it is some error in his figures, perhaps an oversight in the reasoning. Sometimes, however, the difficulty is not elucidated, and then there is not much to the rest of the lecture. But at the next lecture we would hear of some new discovery that was the outcome of that difficulty, and of some article for the Journal, which he had begun. If a text-book had been taken up at the beginning, with the intention of following it, that text-book was most likely doomed to oblivion for the rest of the term, or until the class had been made listeners to every new thought and principle that had sprung from the laboratory of his mind, in consequence of that first difficulty. Other difficulties would soon appear, so that no text-book could last more than half of the term. In this way his class listened to almost all of the work that subsequently appeared in the Journal. It seemed to be the quality of his mind that he must adhere to one subject. He would think about it, talk about it to his class, and finally write about it for the Journal. The merest accident might start him, but once started, every moment, every thought was given to it, and, as much as possible, he read what others had done in the same direction; but this last seemed to be his real point; he could not read without finding difficulties in the way of understanding the author. Thus, often his own work reproduced what had been done by others, and he did not find it out until too late.
A notable example of this is in his theory of cyclotomic functions, which he had reproduced in several foreign journals, only to find that he had been greatly anticipated by foreign authors. It was manifest, one of the critics said, that the learned professor had not read Rummer’s elementary results in the theory of ideal primes. Yet Professor Smith’s report on the theory of numbers, which contained a full synopsis of Kummer’s theory, was Professor Sylvester’s constant companion.
This weakness of Professor Sylvester, in not being able to read what others had done, is perhaps a concomitant of his peculiar genius. Other minds could pass over little difficulties and not be troubled by them, and so go on to a final understanding of the results of the author. But not so with him. A difficulty, however small, worried him, and he was sure to have difficulties until the subject had been worked over in his own way, to correspond with his own mode of thought. To read the work of others, meant therefore to him an almost independent development of it. Like the man whose pleasure in life is to pioneer the way for society into the forests, his rugged mind could derive satisfaction only in hewing out its own paths; and only when his efforts brought him into the uncleared fields of mathematics did he find his place in the Universe.
In Florian Cajori, Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890), 266-267.
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Adhere (3)  |  Anticipate (20)  |  Appear (122)  |  Author (175)  |  Beard (8)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Board (13)  |  Book (413)  |  Bring (95)  |  Class (168)  |  Companion (22)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Constant (148)  |  Contain (68)  |  Correspond (13)  |  Critic (21)  |  Derive (70)  |  Development (441)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Direction (185)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Doom (34)  |  Effort (243)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Elucidate (4)  |  Emphasize (25)  |  Error (339)  |  Example (98)  |  Explain (334)  |  Field (378)  |  Figure (162)  |  Final (121)  |  Finally (26)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forehead (3)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Forest (161)  |  Formula (102)  |  Full (68)  |  Function (235)  |  Genius (301)  |  Give (208)  |  Greatly (12)  |  Hair (25)  |  Half (63)  |  Hand (149)  |  Hear (144)  |  Help (116)  |  Hew (3)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Independent (74)  |  Intention (46)  |  Journal (31)  |  Ernst Eduard Kummer (3)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Last (425)  |  Late (119)  |  Lead (391)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Life (1870)  |  Likely (36)  |  Listen (81)  |  Listener (7)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manifest (21)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Mere (86)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Mode (43)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Notable (6)  |  Number (710)  |  Oblivion (10)  |  Often (109)  |  Other (2233)  |  Outcome (15)  |  Oversight (4)  |  Pass (241)  |  Path (159)  |  Pause (6)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Place (192)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Point (584)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prime (11)  |  Principle (530)  |  Professor (133)  |  Quality (139)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Read (308)  |  Real (159)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Report (42)  |  Reproduce (12)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Right (473)  |  Rugged (7)  |  Rum (3)  |  Same (166)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Seem (150)  |  Several (33)  |  Small (489)  |  Smith (3)  |  Society (350)  |  Something (718)  |  Soon (187)  |  Sound (187)  |  Spring (140)  |  Start (237)  |  Stop (89)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subsequently (2)  |  James Joseph Sylvester (58)  |  Synopsis (2)  |  Talk (108)  |  Term (357)  |  Textbook (39)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Numbers (7)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weakness (50)  |  White (132)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worry (34)  |  Wrinkle (4)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)

I have always felt that astronomical hypotheses should not be regarded as articles of faith, but should only serve as a framework for astronomical calculations, so that it does not matter whether they were right or wrong, as long as the phenomena can be characterized precisely. For who could possibly be certain as to whether the uneven movement of the sun, if we follow the hypotheses of Ptolemy, can be explained by assuming an epicycle or eccentricity. Both assumptions are plausible. That’s why I would consider it quite desirable for you to tell something about that in the preface. In this way you would appease the Aristotelians and the theologians, whose opposition you dread.
From surviving fragment of a Letter (20 Apr 1541) answering a query from Copernicus as to whether he should publish his book (De Revolutionibus). From the German in Leopold Friedrich Prowe, Nicolaus Coppernicus (1883), Vol. 1, Part 2, 521-522. Translated from Prowe by Webmaster using web resources. Original German: “Hypothesen nicht als Glaubens-Artikel zu betrachten seien, sondern nur als Grundlage für die astronomischen Rechnungen zu dienen hätten, so dass es nicht darauf ankomme, ob sie richtig oder falsch seien, wofern sich nur die Erscheinungen dadurch genau bestimmen liessen. »Denn wer dürfte uns wohl darüber sichere Auskunft geben, ob die ungleiche Bewegung der Sonne, wenn wir den Hypothesen des Ptolemaeus folgen, durch Annahme eines Epicykels oder der Ekcentricität zu erklären sei. Beide Annahmen sind gestattet. Daher würde ich—so schliesst Osiander—es für recht wünschenswerth erachten, wenn Du hierüber in der Vorrede etwas beibrächtest. Auf diese Weise würdest Du die Aristoteliker und die Theologen milder stimmen, von denen Du befürchtest, dass sie heftigen Widerspruch kundthun werden.«” Compare Latin text, from Johannes Kepler, 'Apologia Tychonia', Astronomi Opera Omnia (1858), Vol. 1, 246: “De hypothesibus ego sic sensi semper, non esse articulos fidei, sed fundamenta calculi ita ut, etiamsi falsae sint, modo motuum φαινομενα exacte exhibeant, nihil referat; quis enim nos certiores reddet, an Solis inaequalis motus nomine epicycli an nomine eccentricitatis contingat, si Ptolemaei hypotheses sequamur, cum id possit utrumque. Quare plausibile fore videretur, si hac de re in praefatione nonnihil attingeres. Sic enim placidiores redderes peripatheticos et theologos, quos contradicturos metuis.”
Science quotes on:  |  Allowable (2)  |  Appease (6)  |  Aristotelian (2)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Both (496)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Certain (557)  |  Characterize (22)  |  Consider (428)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Eccentricity (3)  |  Epicycle (4)  |  Explain (334)  |  Faith (209)  |  Fear (212)  |  Follow (389)  |  Framework (33)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Long (778)  |  Matter (821)  |  Movement (162)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Plausible (24)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Preface (9)  |  Ptolemy (19)  |  Regard (312)  |  Right (473)  |  Something (718)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tell (344)  |  Theologian (23)  |  Vehement (2)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Wrong (246)

I have read various articles on the fourth dimension, the relativity theory of Einstein, and other psychological speculation on the constitution of the universe; and after reading them I feel as Senator Brandegee felt after a celebrated dinner in Washington. “I feel,” he said, “as if I had been wandering with Alice in Wonderland and had tea with the Mad Hatter.”
Quoted in Michio Kaku, Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time (2005), 118-119. [Note:Brandegee's original remark was in the context of politics after a White House conference with President Wilson (Feb 1917), and unrelated to Einstein's theory.]
Science quotes on:  |  Alice In Wonderland (8)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fourth Dimension (3)  |  Mad (54)  |  Other (2233)  |  Psychological (42)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Tea (13)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Universe (900)  |  Various (205)  |  Wander (44)

I have recently read an article on handwriting and forgeries in which it is stated that ink eradicators do not remove ink: but merely bleach it, and that ink so bleached can be easily brought out by a process of fuming: known to all handwriting experts. Can you give me a description of this process, what chemicals are used: and how it is performed?
Showing his early interest in science, at age 16, while a student at Tulsa Central High School. From the first time Gardner’s writing appeared in print: a query printed in a magazine in Hugo Gernsback (ed.), 'Now It Is Now It Isn’t', Science and Invention (Apr 1930), 1119. As quoted and cited in Dana Richards, 'Martin Gardner: A “Documentary”', collected in Elwyn R. Berlekamp and Tom Rodgers (ed.) The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler: A Collection in Tribute to Martin Gardner (1999), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Bleach (3)  |  Bring Out (4)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Description (89)  |  Do (1905)  |  Expert (67)  |  Forgery (3)  |  Fume (7)  |  Handwriting (2)  |  Ink (11)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Merely (315)  |  Perform (123)  |  Process (439)  |  Read (308)  |  Remove (50)

I suppose that the first chemists seemed to be very hard-hearted and unpoetical persons when they scouted the glorious dream of the alchemists that there must be some process for turning base metals into gold. I suppose that the men who first said, in plain, cold assertion, there is no fountain of eternal youth, seemed to be the most cruel and cold-hearted adversaries of human happiness. I know that the economists who say that if we could transmute lead into gold, it would certainly do us no good and might do great harm, are still regarded as unworthy of belief. Do not the money articles of the newspapers yet ring with the doctrine that we are getting rich when we give cotton and wheat for gold rather than when we give cotton and wheat for iron?
'The Forgotten Man' (1883). In The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (1918), 468.
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemist (23)  |  Assertion (35)  |  Base (120)  |  Base Metal (3)  |  Belief (615)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Cold (115)  |  Cotton (8)  |  Cruel (25)  |  Cruelty (24)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Dream (222)  |  Economist (20)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Eternity (64)  |  First (1302)  |  Fountain (18)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Glory (66)  |  Gold (101)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Hard (246)  |  Harm (43)  |  Heart (243)  |  Human (1512)  |  Iron (99)  |  Know (1538)  |  Lead (391)  |  Metal (88)  |  Money (178)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Person (366)  |  Process (439)  |  Regard (312)  |  Richness (15)  |  Ring (18)  |  Say (989)  |  Scout (3)  |  Still (614)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Unworthy (18)  |  Wheat (10)  |  Youth (109)

I was reading in an article on Bizet not long ago that music has ceased to be an art and has become a science—in which event it must have a mathematical future!
In letter to H.E. Krehbiel (1887), collected in Elizabeth Bisland The Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (1922), Vol. 14, 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Event (222)  |  Future (467)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Music (133)  |  Must (1525)  |  Reading (136)  |  Science And Art (195)

I’ve been very involved in science literacy because it’s critically important in our world today. … As a public, we’re asked to vote on issues, we’re asked to accept explanations, we’re asked to figure out what to do with our own health care, and you can’t do that unless you have some level of science literacy. Science literacy isn’t about figuring out how to solve equations like E=MC². Rather, it’s about being able to read an article in the newspaper about the environment, about health care and figuring out how to vote on it. It’s about being able to prepare nutritious meals. It’s about being able to think your way through the day.
As quoted in 'Then & Now: Dr. Mae Jemison' (19 Jun 2005) on CNN web site.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Ask (420)  |  Being (1276)  |  Care (203)  |  Citizenship (9)  |  Do (1905)  |  Environment (239)  |  Equation (138)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Figure (162)  |  Health (210)  |  Health Care (10)  |  Involved (90)  |  Literacy (10)  |  Meal (19)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Nutrition (25)  |  Read (308)  |  Science Literacy (6)  |  Solve (145)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Through (846)  |  Today (321)  |  Vote (16)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

If the world goes crazy for a lovely fossil, that's fine with me. But if that fossil releases some kind of mysterious brain ray that makes people say crazy things and write lazy articles, a serious swarm of flies ends up in my ointment.
Criticism of excessive media hype about a fossil discovery, from blog 'The Loom' (19 May 2009) on Discover magazine website.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Crazy (27)  |  End (603)  |  Fly (153)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lazy (10)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Mystery (188)  |  People (1031)  |  Ray (115)  |  Release (31)  |  Say (989)  |  Serious (98)  |  Swarm (15)  |  Thing (1914)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

In 1892 one of us was able within the compass of a short article in a medical journal to give a résumé of our knowledge of the Trypanosomes. To-day it requires a whole volume to relate all that is known about these hæmatozoa and the diseases to which they give rise.
Opening lines from Introduction to Alphonse Laveran and Felix Etienne Pierre Mesnil Trypanosomes and Trypanosomiasis (1904), v. English edition translated and much enlarged by David Nabarro, (1907), xv. The article was footnoted as A. Laveran, Arch. Méd. Expérim. (1 Mar 1892).
Science quotes on:  |  Compass (37)  |  Disease (340)  |  Journal (31)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Medical (31)  |  Require (229)  |  Resume (4)  |  Rise (169)  |  Short (200)  |  Volume (25)  |  Whole (756)

It [buckyballs, C60 by Richard Smalley] was an absolutely electrifying discovery. Within a year or two, you couldn’t pick up a chemistry journal without one-third of the articles being about fullerenes.
As quoted in Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle (28 Oct 2005).
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Buckyball (5)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Fullerene (4)  |  Journal (31)  |  Richard E. Smalley (19)  |  Two (936)  |  Year (963)

My interest in science was excited at age nine by an article on astronomy in National Geographic; the author was Donald Menzel of the Harvard Observatory. For the next few years, I regularly made star maps and snuck out at night to make observations from a locust tree in our back yard.
In Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1986 (1987).
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Author (175)  |  Back (395)  |  Backyard (4)  |  Child (333)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Geographic (10)  |  Harvard (7)  |  Interest (416)  |  Locust (2)  |  Map (50)  |  National Geographic (2)  |  Next (238)  |  Night (133)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observatory (18)  |  Sneak (3)  |  Star (460)  |  Star Map (2)  |  Tree (269)  |  Year (963)

Philosophers no longer write for the intelligent, only for their fellow professionals. The few thousand academic philosophers in the world do not stint themselves: they maintain more than seventy learned journals. But in the handful that cover more than one subdivision of philosophy, any given philosopher can hardly follow more than one or two articles in each issue. This hermetic condition is attributed to “technical problems” in the subject. Since William James, Russell, and Whitehead, philosophy, like history, has been confiscated by scholarship and locked away from the contamination of general use.
In The Culture We Deserve (1989), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Academic (20)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Condition (362)  |  Contamination (4)  |  Cover (40)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Follow (389)  |  General (521)  |  Give (208)  |  Handful (14)  |  Hardly (19)  |  Hermetic (2)  |  History (716)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Issue (46)  |  William James (50)  |  Journal (31)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Lock (14)  |  Long (778)  |  Maintain (105)  |  More (2558)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Problem (731)  |  Professional (77)  |  Scholarship (22)  |  Seventy (2)  |  Subdivision (2)  |  Subject (543)  |  Technical (53)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Alfred North Whitehead (140)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

Something to remember. If you have remembered every word in this article, your memory will have recorded about 150 000 bits of information. Thus, the order in your brain will have increased by about 150 000 units. However, while you have been reading the article, you will have converted about 300 000 joules of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat which you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the Universe by about 3 x 1024 units, about 20 million million million times the increase in order because you remember my article.
An afterword to his three-page article discussing thermodynamics and entropy, in 'The Direction of Time', New Scientist (9 Jul 1987), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Bit (21)  |  Brain (281)  |  Convection (3)  |  Convert (22)  |  Disorder (45)  |  Energy (373)  |  Food (213)  |  Form (976)  |  Heat (180)  |  Increase (225)  |  Information (173)  |  Joule (3)  |  Lose (165)  |  Memory (144)  |  Million (124)  |  Order (638)  |  Reading (136)  |  Record (161)  |  Remember (189)  |  Something (718)  |  Sweat (17)  |  Time (1911)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)

The Builder of this Universe was wise,
He plann’d all souls, all systems, planets, particles:
The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and Æons by,
Was—Heavens!—was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles!
In 'Practical-Devotional', Past and Present, Book 2, Chap 15, collected in On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840), 101. Note: “Nine-and-thirty Articles” of the Church of England.
Science quotes on:  |  Builder (16)  |  Eon (12)  |  Formation (100)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Particle (200)  |  Plan (122)  |  Planet (402)  |  Poem (104)  |  Small (489)  |  Soul (235)  |  System (545)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wisdom (235)  |  Wise (143)  |  World (1850)

There came in February the issue of Life saying on the cover “Dr. Teller Refutes 9000 Scientists”… I wrote to Life and said first that Teller hadn’t refuted 9000 scientists and second I felt that they should publish the article that I had written… They sent the article back and said that they didn’t want it and then I offered it to Look. The editor of Look called me and said they couldn’t get into a controversy with Life. Then I offered it to the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal and Readers Digest and none of them were interested in it. And then I thought, “What shall I do? I’ll have to write a book and see if I can’t get it published.”’
As quoted in Ted Goertzel, et al., Linus Pauling: A Life in Science and Politics (1965, 1995), 46.
Science quotes on:  |  Back (395)  |  Book (413)  |  Call (781)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Do (1905)  |  Editor (10)  |  First (1302)  |  Home (184)  |  Interest (416)  |  Journal (31)  |  Life (1870)  |  Look (584)  |  Offer (142)  |  Publish (42)  |  Refute (6)  |  Return (133)  |  Saturday (11)  |  Scientist (881)  |  See (1094)  |  Edward Teller (43)  |  Thought (995)  |  Want (504)  |  Write (250)

To the east was our giant neighbor Makalu, unexplored and unclimbed, and even on top of Everest the mountaineering instinct was sufficient strong to cause me to spend some moments conjecturing as to whether a route up that mountain might not exist. Far away across the clouds the great bulk of Kangchenjunga loomed on the horizon. To the west, Cho Oyu, our old adversary from 1952, dominated the scene and we could see the great unexplored ranges of Nepal stretching off into the distance. The most important photograph, I felt, was a shot down the north ridge, showing the North Col and the old route that had been made famous by the struggles of those great climbers of the 1920s and 1930s. I had little hope of the results being particularly successful, as I had a lot of difficulty in holding the camera steady in my clumsy gloves, but I felt that they would at least serve as a record. After some ten minutes of this, I realized that I was becoming rather clumsy-fingered and slow-moving, so I quickly replaced my oxygen set and experience once more the stimulating effect of even a few liters of oxygen. Meanwhile, Tenzing had made a little hole in the snow and in it he placed small articles of food – a bar of chocolate, a packet of biscuits and a handful of lollies. Small offerings, indeed, but at least a token gifts to the gods that all devoted Buddhists believe have their home on this lofty summit. While we were together on the South Col two days before, Hunt had given me a small crucifix that he had asked me to take to the top. I, too, made a hole in the snow and placed the crucifix beside Tenzing’s gifts.
As quoted in Whit Burnett, The Spirit of Adventure: The Challenge (1955), 349.
Science quotes on:  |  Across (32)  |  Adversary (7)  |  Ask (420)  |  Bar (9)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belief (615)  |  Buddhist (5)  |  Bulk (24)  |  Camera (7)  |  Cause (561)  |  Chocolate (5)  |  Climb (39)  |  Climber (7)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Clumsy (7)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Devote (45)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Distance (171)  |  Dominate (20)  |  Down (455)  |  East (18)  |  Effect (414)  |  Everest (10)  |  Exist (458)  |  Experience (494)  |  Famous (12)  |  Far (158)  |  Feel (371)  |  Food (213)  |  Giant (73)  |  Gift (105)  |  Give (208)  |  Glove (4)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Handful (14)  |  Hold (96)  |  Hole (17)  |  Home (184)  |  Hope (321)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Important (229)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Least (75)  |  Little (717)  |  Lofty (16)  |  Loom (20)  |  Lot (151)  |  Meanwhile (2)  |  Minute (129)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Mountaineering (5)  |  Neighbor (14)  |  Nepal (2)  |  North (12)  |  Offering (2)  |  Old (499)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Packet (3)  |  Particularly (21)  |  Photograph (23)  |  Place (192)  |  Quickly (21)  |  Range (104)  |  Realize (157)  |  Record (161)  |  Replace (32)  |  Result (700)  |  Ridge (9)  |  Route (16)  |  Scene (36)  |  See (1094)  |  Serve (64)  |  Set (400)  |  Shoot (21)  |  Show (353)  |  Slow (108)  |  Small (489)  |  Snow (39)  |  South (39)  |  Spend (97)  |  Steady (45)  |  Stimulate (21)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Strong (182)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Summit (27)  |  Together (392)  |  Token (10)  |  Top (100)  |  Two (936)  |  Unexplored (15)  |  West (21)

We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek … for steersman. In choosing this term, we wish to recognize that the first significant paper on feedback mechanisms is an article on governors, which was published by Clerk Maxwell in 1868, and that governor is derived from a Latin corruption … We also wish to refer to the fact that the steering engines of a ship are indeed one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms.
In Cybernetics (1948), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Best (467)  |  Call (781)  |  Clerk (13)  |  Communication (101)  |  Control (182)  |  Corruption (17)  |  Cybernetic (5)  |  Cybernetics (5)  |  Decision (98)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Engine (99)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feedback (10)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Governor (13)  |  Greek (109)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Latin (44)  |  Machine (271)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Name (359)  |  Paper (192)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Ship (69)  |  Significant (78)  |  Term (357)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Wish (216)

Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of its husk, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Declare (48)  |  Declared (24)  |  Down (455)  |  Ground (222)  |  Help (116)  |  Husk (4)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Labor (200)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Package (6)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Pulpit (2)  |  Ready (43)  |  Seek (218)  |  Sell (15)  |  Set (400)  |  Set Down (2)  |  Stern (6)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Use (771)  |  Wise (143)


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.