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: “I was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index D > Category: Diffuse

Diffuse Quotes (5 quotes)

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Atmosphere (117)  |  Body (557)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Compare (76)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Illuminate (26)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Light (635)  |  Luminous (19)  |  Object (438)  |  Overshadow (2)  |  Relief (30)  |  See (1094)  |  Side (236)  |  Single (365)  |  Strong (182)  |  Stronger (36)  |  Sun (407)

One thought I cannot forbear suggesting: we have long known that “one star differeth from another star in glory;" we have now the strongest evidence that they also differ in constituent materials,—some of them perhaps having no elements to be found in some other. What then becomes of that homogeneity of original diffuse matter which is almost a logical necessity of the nebular hypothesis?
L.M. Rutherfurd, 'Astronomical Observations with the Spectroscope' (4 Dec 1862), American Journal of Science and Arts (May 1863), 2nd Series, 35, No. 103, 77. His obituarist, Johns K. Rees, wrote (1892) “This paper was the first published work on star spectra.”
Science quotes on:  |  Constituent (47)  |  Difference (355)  |  Element (322)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Glory (66)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Logic (311)  |  Matter (821)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Original (61)  |  Star (460)  |  Strong (182)  |  Suggestion (49)

Standing now in diffused light, with the wind at my back, I experience suddenly a feeling of completeness–not a feeling of having achieved something or of being stronger than everyone who was ever here before, not a feeling of having arrived at the ultimate point, not a feeling of supremacy. Just a breath of happiness deep inside my mind and my breast. The summit seemed suddenly to me to be a refuge, and I had not expected to find any refuge up here. Looking at the steep, sharp ridges below us, I have the impression that to have come later would have been too late. Everything we now say to one another, we only say out of embarrassment. I don’t think anymore. As I pull the tape recorder, trancelike, from my rucksack, and switch it on wanting to record a few appropriate phrases, tears again well into my eyes. “Now we are on the summit of Everest,” I begin, “it is so cold that we cannot take photographs…” I cannot go on, I am immediately shaken with sobs. I can neither talk nor think, feeling only how this momentous experience changes everything. To reach only a few meters below the summit would have required the same amount of effort, the same anxiety and burden of sorrow, but a feeling like this, an eruption of feeling, is only possible on the summit itself.
In Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (1979), 180.
Science quotes on:  |  Achieve (75)  |  Amount (153)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Anymore (5)  |  Appropriate (61)  |  Arrive (40)  |  Back (395)  |  Begin (275)  |  Being (1276)  |  Below (26)  |  Breast (9)  |  Breath (61)  |  Burden (30)  |  Change (639)  |  Cold (115)  |  Completeness (19)  |  Deep (241)  |  Effort (243)  |  Embarrassment (5)  |  Eruption (10)  |  Everest (10)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Everything (489)  |  Expect (203)  |  Experience (494)  |  Eye (440)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Find (1014)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Impression (118)  |  Inside (30)  |  Late (119)  |  Light (635)  |  Looking (191)  |  Meter (9)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Momentous (7)  |  Photograph (23)  |  Phrase (61)  |  Point (584)  |  Possible (560)  |  Pull (43)  |  Reach (286)  |  Record (161)  |  Recorder (5)  |  Refuge (15)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Ridge (9)  |  Rucksack (3)  |  Same (166)  |  Say (989)  |  Seem (150)  |  Shake (43)  |  Sharp (17)  |  Something (718)  |  Sorrow (21)  |  Stand (284)  |  Steep (7)  |  Strong (182)  |  Stronger (36)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Summit (27)  |  Supremacy (4)  |  Switch (10)  |  Talk (108)  |  Tape (5)  |  Tear (48)  |  Think (1122)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Want (504)  |  Wind (141)

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.
In The Descent of Man (1874), Part 1, Chap 5, 136.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Acquired (77)  |  Aid (101)  |  Check (26)  |  Deterioration (10)  |  Feel (371)  |  Give (208)  |  Hard (246)  |  Helpless (14)  |  Impel (5)  |  Incidental (15)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Mainly (10)  |  Manner (62)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Noble (93)  |  Originally (7)  |  Part (235)  |  Previously (12)  |  Reason (766)  |  Render (96)  |  Result (700)  |  Social (261)  |  Subsequently (2)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Tender (6)  |  Urge (17)  |  Widely (9)

There are, as we have seen, a number of different modes of technological innovation. Before the seventeenth century inventions (empirical or scientific) were diffused by imitation and adaption while improvement was established by the survival of the fittest. Now, technology has become a complex but consciously directed group of social activities involving a wide range of skills, exemplified by scientific research, managerial expertise, and practical and inventive abilities. The powers of technology appear to be unlimited. If some of the dangers may be great, the potential rewards are greater still. This is not simply a matter of material benefits for, as we have seen, major changes in thought have, in the past, occurred as consequences of technological advances.
Concluding paragraph of "Technology," in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (1973), Vol. 4, 364.
Science quotes on:  |  17th Century (20)  |  Ability (162)  |  Activity (218)  |  Advance (298)  |  Appear (122)  |  Become (821)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Century (319)  |  Change (639)  |  Complex (202)  |  Consciously (6)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Danger (127)  |  Different (595)  |  Direct (228)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Establish (63)  |  Exemplify (5)  |  Expertise (8)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Group (83)  |  Imitation (24)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Invention (400)  |  Inventive (10)  |  Involve (93)  |  Major (88)  |  Material (366)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mode (43)  |  Number (710)  |  Occur (151)  |  Past (355)  |  Potential (75)  |  Power (771)  |  Practical (225)  |  Range (104)  |  Research (753)  |  Reward (72)  |  Scientific (955)  |  See (1094)  |  Simply (53)  |  Skill (116)  |  Social (261)  |  Still (614)  |  Survival (105)  |  Survival Of The Fittest (43)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unlimited (24)  |  Wide (97)


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.