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: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Constraint

Constraint Quotes (13 quotes)

Scio: tu coactus tua voluntate es.
I know it; you are constrained by your inclination.
Terence
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 383.
Science quotes on:  |  Inclination (36)  |  Know (1538)

A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between ‘external’ forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and ‘internal’ forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development–what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called ‘laws of form.’
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Balance (82)  |  Biologist (70)  |  Call (781)  |  Complete (209)  |  Darwinian (10)  |  Development (441)  |  Downgrade (2)  |  Emphasis (18)  |  Environment (239)  |  Equally (129)  |  Err (5)  |  Evolution (635)  |  External (62)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Ignoring (11)  |  Impose (22)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Internal (69)  |  Law (913)  |  Limit (294)  |  Local (25)  |  Must (1525)  |  Old (499)  |  Place (192)  |  Power (771)  |  Practically (10)  |  Represent (157)  |  Selection (130)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Western (45)

A free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly; for while bodily labors performed under constraint do not harm the body, nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.
Plato
From The Republic 7 536e, as translated by Paul Shorey (1930).
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Do (1905)  |  Education (423)  |  Free (239)  |  Harm (43)  |  Labor (200)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Perform (123)  |  Pursue (63)  |  Slave (40)  |  Soul (235)  |  Stay (26)  |  Study (701)

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.
The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), 8th edition, trans. Sarah A. Solovay and John M. Mueller, ed. George E. G. Catlin (1938, 1964 edition), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Capable (174)  |  Fact (1257)  |  General (521)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Individual (420)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Right (473)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)

Historically, science has pursued a premise that Nature can be understood fully, its future predicted precisely, and its behavior controlled at will. However, emerging knowledge indicates that the nature of Earth and biological systems transcends the limits of science, questioning the premise of knowing, prediction, and control. This knowledge has led to the recognition that, for civilized human survival, technological society has to adapt to the constraints of these systems.
As quoted in Chris Maser, Decision-Making for a Sustainable Environment: A Systemic Approach (2012), 4, citing N. Narasimhan, 'Limitations of Science and Adapting to Nature', Environmental Research Letters (Jul-Sep 2007), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Behavior (95)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Control (182)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Future (467)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Limit (294)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Premise (40)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Society (350)  |  Survival (105)  |  System (545)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Transcend (27)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Understood (155)  |  Will (2350)

Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted–for the constraint of a definite ‘thing’ cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw ‘evolution’ or ‘social organization,’ not to mention the more mundane ‘digestion’ or ‘self-interest,’ without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar’s mind.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Camera (7)  |  Candid (3)  |  Concept (242)  |  Definite (114)  |  Depict (3)  |  Digestion (29)  |  Directly (25)  |  Draw (140)  |  Evolution (635)  |  History (716)  |  Idea (881)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Interest (416)  |  Mental (179)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Mundane (2)  |  Must (1525)  |  Object (438)  |  Organization (120)  |  Physical (518)  |  Portray (6)  |  Process (439)  |  Reality (274)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Interest (3)  |  Social (261)  |  Structure (365)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Trace (109)  |  Train (118)  |  Wish (216)

It is tautological to say that an organism is adapted to its environment. It is even tautological to say that an organism is physiologically adapted to its environment. However, just as in the case of many morphological characters, it is unwarranted to conclude that all aspects of the physiology of an organism have evolved in reference to a specific milieu. It is equally gratuitous to assume that an organism will inevitably show physiological specializations in its adaptation to a particular set of conditions. All that can be concluded is that the functional capacities of an organism are sufficient to have allowed persistence within its environment. On one hand, the history of an evolutionary line may place serious constraints upon the types of further physiological changes that are readily feasible. Some changes might require excessive restructuring of the genome or might involve maladaptive changes in related functions. On the other hand, a taxon which is successful in occupying a variety of environments may be less impressive in individual physiological capacities than one with a far more limited distribution.
In W.R. Dawson, G.A. Bartholomew, and A.F. Bennett, 'A Reappraisal of the Aquatic Specializations of the Galapagos Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus)', Evolution (1977), 31, 891.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Allow (51)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Assume (43)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Case (102)  |  Change (639)  |  Character (259)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Condition (362)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Environment (239)  |  Equally (129)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Excessive (24)  |  Far (158)  |  Feasible (3)  |  Function (235)  |  Functional (10)  |  Genome (15)  |  Gratuitous (2)  |  Hand (149)  |  History (716)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Individual (420)  |  Inevitably (6)  |  Involve (93)  |  Less (105)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Line (100)  |  Milieu (5)  |  More (2558)  |  Morphological (3)  |  Occupy (27)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particular (80)  |  Persistence (25)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Place (192)  |  Readily (10)  |  Reference (33)  |  Relate (26)  |  Require (229)  |  Restructuring (2)  |  Say (989)  |  Serious (98)  |  Set (400)  |  Show (353)  |  Specialization (24)  |  Specific (98)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sufficient (133)  |  Tautological (2)  |  Type (171)  |  Unwarranted (2)  |  Variety (138)  |  Will (2350)

It is we, we alone, who have dreamed up the causes, the one-thing-after-another, the one-thing-reciprocating-another, the relativity, the constraint, the numbers, the laws, the freedom, the ‘reason why,’ the purpose. ... We are creating myths.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Cause (561)  |  Create (245)  |  Dream (222)  |  Dreamed Up (2)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Law (913)  |  Myth (58)  |  Number (710)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reason (766)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Why (491)

Life is inseparable from water. For all terrestrial animals, including birds, the inescapable need for maintaining an adequate state of hydration in a hostile, desiccating environment is a central persistent constraint which exerts a sustained selective pressure on every aspect of the life cycle. It has been said, with some justification, that the struggle for existence is a struggle for free energy for doing physiological work. It can be said with equal justification for terrestrial organisms that the struggle for existence is a struggle to maintain an aqueous internal environment in which energy transformations for doing work can take place.
In 'The water economy of seed-eating birds that survive without drinking', Proceedings of the International Ornithological Congress (1972), 15, 237-238.
Science quotes on:  |  Adequate (50)  |  Animal (651)  |  Aqueous (8)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Bird (163)  |  Central (81)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Doing (277)  |  Energy (373)  |  Environment (239)  |  Equal (88)  |  Exert (40)  |  Existence (481)  |  Free (239)  |  Hostile (8)  |  Include (93)  |  Inescapable (7)  |  Inseparable (18)  |  Internal (69)  |  Justification (52)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life Cycle (5)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Need (320)  |  Organism (231)  |  Persistent (18)  |  Physiological (64)  |  Place (192)  |  Pressure (69)  |  Say (989)  |  Selective (21)  |  State (505)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Terrestrial (62)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Water (503)  |  Work (1402)

Scientists who dislike constraints on research like to remark that a truly great research worker needs only three pieces of equipment: a pencil, a piece of paper and a brain. But they quote this maxim more often at academic banquets than at budget hearings.
In Dr. N Sreedharan, Quotations of Wit and Wisdom (2007), 68.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Dislike (16)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Genius (301)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Money (178)  |  More (2558)  |  Paper (192)  |  Pencil (20)  |  Quote (46)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Truly (118)

We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility. Organisms inherit a body form and a style of embryonic development; these impose constraint s upon future change and adaptation. In many cases, evolutionary pathways reflect inherited patterns more than current environmental demands. These inheritances constrain, but they also provide opportunity. A potentially minor genetic change ... entails a host of complex, nonadaptive consequences ... What ‘play’ would evolution have if each structure were built for a restricted purpose and could be used for nothing else? How could humans learn to write if our brain had not evolved for hunting, social cohesion, or whatever, and could not transcend the adaptive boundaries of its original purpose?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Adaptive (3)  |  Body (557)  |  Boundary (55)  |  Brain (281)  |  Build (211)  |  Case (102)  |  Change (639)  |  Cohesion (7)  |  Complex (202)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Constrain (11)  |  Current (122)  |  Demand (131)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Embryonic (6)  |  Entail (4)  |  Environment (239)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Host (16)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hunt (32)  |  Hunting (23)  |  Impose (22)  |  Inhabit (18)  |  Inherit (35)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Inherited (21)  |  Learn (672)  |  Minor (12)  |  Mold (37)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Optimal (4)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organism (231)  |  Original (61)  |  Pathway (15)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Play (116)  |  Provide (79)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Restrict (13)  |  Scrutinize (7)  |  Selection (130)  |  Social (261)  |  Structure (365)  |  Style (24)  |  Transcend (27)  |  Utility (52)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)  |  Write (250)

When Bonner writes that ‘natural selection for optimal feeding is then presumed to be the cause of non-motility in all forms,’ I can’t help suspecting that some plants might do even better if they could walk from shade to sun–but the inherited constraints of design never permitted a trial of this intriguing option.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Cause (561)  |  Design (203)  |  Do (1905)  |  Feed (31)  |  Form (976)  |  Help (116)  |  Inherit (35)  |  Inherited (21)  |  Intriguing (4)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Never (1089)  |  Optimal (4)  |  Option (10)  |  Permit (61)  |  Plant (320)  |  Presume (9)  |  Selection (130)  |  Shade (35)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suspect (18)  |  Trial (59)  |  Walk (138)  |  Write (250)

Why do the laws that govern [the universe] seem constant in time? One can imagine a Universe in which laws are not truly law-full. Talk of miracle does just this, invoking God to make things work. Physics aims to find the laws instead, and hopes that they will be uniquely constrained, as when Einstein wondered whether God had any choice when He made the Universe.
Gregory Benford, in John Brockman, What We Believe But Cannot Prove. In Clifford A. Pickover, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them (2008), 182-183.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Choice (114)  |  Constant (148)  |  Do (1905)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Find (1014)  |  God (776)  |  Govern (66)  |  Hope (321)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Invoke (7)  |  Law (913)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truly (118)  |  Unique (72)  |  Universe (900)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Work (1402)


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.