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: “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Influx

Influx Quotes (2 quotes)

It is said that the composing of the Lilavati was occasioned by the following circumstance. Lilavati was the name of the author’s daughter, concerning whom it appeared, from the qualities of the ascendant at her birth, that she was destined to pass her life unmarried, and to remain without children. The father ascertained a lucky hour for contracting her in marriage, that she might be firmly connected and have children. It is said that when that hour approached, he brought his daughter and his intended son near him. He left the hour cup on the vessel of water and kept in attendance a time-knowing astrologer, in order that when the cup should subside in the water, those two precious jewels should be united. But, as the intended arrangement was not according to destiny, it happened that the girl, from a curiosity natural to children, looked into the cup, to observe the water coming in at the hole, when by chance a pearl separated from her bridal dress, fell into the cup, and, rolling down to the hole, stopped the influx of water. So the astrologer waited in expectation of the promised hour. When the operation of the cup had thus been delayed beyond all moderate time, the father was in consternation, and examining, he found that a small pearl had stopped the course of the water, and that the long-expected hour was passed. In short, the father, thus disappointed, said to his unfortunate daughter, I will write a book of your name, which shall remain to the latest times—for a good name is a second life, and the ground-work of eternal existence.
In Preface to the Persian translation of the Lilavati by Faizi (1587), itself translated into English by Strachey and quoted in John Taylor (trans.) Lilawati, or, A Treatise on Arithmetic and Geometry by Bhascara Acharya (1816), Introduction, 3. [The Lilavati is the 12th century treatise on mathematics by Indian mathematician, Bhaskara Acharya, born 1114.]
Science quotes on:  |  12th Century (3)  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Appear (122)  |  Approach (112)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Ascendant (2)  |  Ascertain (41)  |  Astrologer (10)  |  Attendance (2)  |  Author (175)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Birth (154)  |  Book (413)  |  Bring (95)  |  Chance (244)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Coming (114)  |  Compose (20)  |  Concern (239)  |  Connect (126)  |  Contract (11)  |  Course (413)  |  Cup (7)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Daughter (30)  |  Delay (21)  |  Destined (42)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Disappoint (14)  |  Disappointed (6)  |  Down (455)  |  Dress (10)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Examine (84)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Fall (243)  |  Father (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  Firmly (6)  |  Follow (389)  |  Girl (38)  |  Good (906)  |  Ground (222)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Hole (17)  |  Hour (192)  |  Indian (32)  |  Intend (18)  |  Jewel (10)  |  Keep (104)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Late (119)  |  Leave (138)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Look (584)  |  Lucky (13)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Moderate (6)  |  Name (359)  |  Natural (810)  |  Observe (179)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Operation (221)  |  Order (638)  |  Pass (241)  |  Pearl (8)  |  Precious (43)  |  Promise (72)  |  Quality (139)  |  Remain (355)  |  Roll (41)  |  Say (989)  |  Second (66)  |  Separate (151)  |  Short (200)  |  Small (489)  |  Son (25)  |  Stop (89)  |  Subside (5)  |  Time (1911)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Two (936)  |  Unfortunate (19)  |  United (15)  |  Unmarried (3)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Wait (66)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Write (250)

Now, it may be stretching an analogy to compare epidemics of cholera—caused by a known agent—with that epidemic of violent crime which is destroying our cities. It is unlikely that our social problems can be traced to a single, clearly defined cause in the sense that a bacterial disease is ‘caused’ by a microbe. But, I daresay, social science is about as advanced in the late twentieth century as bacteriological science was in the mid nineteenth century. Our forerunners knew something about cholera; they sensed that its spread was associated with misdirected sewage, filth, and the influx of alien poor into crowded, urban tenements. And we know something about street crime; nowhere has it been reported that a member of the New York Stock Exchange has robbed ... at the point of a gun. Indeed, I am naively confident that an enlightened social scientist of the next century will be able to point out that we had available to us at least some of the clues to the cause of urban crime.
'Cholera at the Harvey,' Woods Hole Cantata: Essays on Science and Society (1985).
Science quotes on:  |  19th Century (41)  |  20th Century (40)  |  Advance (298)  |  Agent (73)  |  Alien (35)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Associate (25)  |  Available (80)  |  Bacteria (50)  |  Cause (561)  |  Century (319)  |  Cholera (7)  |  City (87)  |  Clearly (45)  |  Clue (20)  |  Compare (76)  |  Confident (25)  |  Crime (39)  |  Crowd (25)  |  Define (53)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Disease (340)  |  Enlighten (32)  |  Enlightened (25)  |  Epidemic (8)  |  Exchange (38)  |  Filth (5)  |  Forerunner (4)  |  Gun (10)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Know (1538)  |  Known (453)  |  Late (119)  |  Member (42)  |  Microbe (30)  |  Misdirect (2)  |  New (1273)  |  New York (17)  |  Next (238)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Out (9)  |  Poor (139)  |  Problem (731)  |  Report (42)  |  Rob (6)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sewage (9)  |  Single (365)  |  Social (261)  |  Social Science (37)  |  Social Scientist (5)  |  Something (718)  |  Spread (86)  |  Stock Exchange (2)  |  Street (25)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Teenager (6)  |  Trace (109)  |  Unlikely (15)  |  Urban (12)  |  Violent (17)  |  Will (2350)


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.