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: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Coalescence

Coalescence Quotes (2 quotes)

In early times, when the knowledge of nature was small, little attempt was made to divide science into parts, and men of science did not specialize. Aristotle was a master of all science known in his day, and wrote indifferently treatises on physics or animals. As increasing knowledge made it impossible for any one man to grasp all scientific subjects, lines of division were drawn for convenience of study and of teaching. Besides the broad distinction into physical and biological science, minute subdivisions arose, and, at a certain stage of development, much attention was, given to methods of classification, and much emphasis laid on the results, which were thought to have a significance beyond that of the mere convenience of mankind.
But we have reached the stage when the different streams of knowledge, followed by the different sciences, are coalescing, and the artificial barriers raised by calling those sciences by different names are breaking down. Geology uses the methods and data of physics, chemistry and biology; no one can say whether the science of radioactivity is to be classed as chemistry or physics, or whether sociology is properly grouped with biology or economics. Indeed, it is often just where this coalescence of two subjects occurs, when some connecting channel between them is opened suddenly, that the most striking advances in knowledge take place. The accumulated experience of one department of science, and the special methods which have been developed to deal with its problems, become suddenly available in the domain of another department, and many questions insoluble before may find answers in the new light cast upon them. Such considerations show us that science is in reality one, though we may agree to look on it now from one side and now from another as we approach it from the standpoint of physics, physiology or psychology.
In article 'Science', Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), 402.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulated (2)  |  Advance (298)  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Approach (112)  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Attention (196)  |  Available (80)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Become (821)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Cast (69)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Coalesce (5)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Convenience (54)  |  Data (162)  |  Deal (192)  |  Department (93)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Divide (77)  |  Division (67)  |  Domain (72)  |  Down (455)  |  Early (196)  |  Economic (84)  |  Economics (44)  |  Experience (494)  |  Find (1014)  |  Follow (389)  |  Geology (240)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Indifferent (17)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Light (635)  |  Little (717)  |  Look (584)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Master (182)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Method (531)  |  Minute (129)  |  Most (1728)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Occur (151)  |  Open (277)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physics (564)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Problem (731)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Question (649)  |  Radioactivity (33)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reality (274)  |  Result (700)  |  Say (989)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Show (353)  |  Side (236)  |  Significance (114)  |  Small (489)  |  Sociology (46)  |  Special (188)  |  Specialize (4)  |  Stage (152)  |  Standpoint (28)  |  Stream (83)  |  Striking (48)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)

Nature has but one plan of operation, invariably the same in the smallest things as well as in the largest, and so often do we see the smallest masses selected for use in Nature, that even enormous ones are built up solely by fitting these together. Indeed, all Nature’s efforts are devoted to uniting the smallest parts of our bodies in such a way that all things whatsoever, however diverse they may be, which coalesce in the structure of living things construct the parts by means of a sort of compendium.
'On the Developmental Process', in H. B. Adelmann (ed.), Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (1966), Vol. 2, 843.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Building (158)  |  Coalesce (5)  |  Compendium (5)  |  Construct (129)  |  Construction (114)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Devotion (37)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effort (243)  |  Enormous (44)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Invariability (6)  |  Invariably (35)  |  Large (398)  |  Largest (39)  |  Living (492)  |  Living Thing (4)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Operation (221)  |  Part (235)  |  Plan (122)  |  Sameness (3)  |  See (1094)  |  Select (45)  |  Selection (130)  |  Small (489)  |  Structure (365)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Together (392)  |  Uniting (4)  |  Use (771)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whatsoever (41)


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.