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 I > Category: Irreducible

Irreducible Quotes (7 quotes)

Dass die bis jetzt unzerlegten chemischen Elemente absolut unzerlegbare Stoffe seien, ist gegenwärtig mindestens sehr unwahrscheinlich. Vielmehr scheint es, dass die Atome der Elemente nicht die letzten, sondern nur die näheren Bestandtheile der Molekeln sowohl der Elemente wie der Verbindungen bilden, die Molekeln oder Molecule als Massentheile erster, die Atome als solche zweiter Ordnung anzusehen sind, die ihrerseits wiederum aus Massentheilchen einer dritten höheren Ordnung bestehen werden.
That the as yet undivided chemical elements are absolutely irreducible substances, is currently at least very unlikely. Rather it seems, that the atoms of elements are not the final, but only the immediate constituents of the molecules of both the elements and the compounds—the Molekeln or molecule as foremost division of matter, the atoms being considered as second order, in turn consisting of matter particles of a third higher order.
[Speculating in 1870, on the existence of subatomic particles, in opening remark of the paper by which he became established as co-discoverer of the Periodic Law.]
'Die Natur der chemischen Elemente als Function ihrer Atomgewichte' ('The Nature of the Chemical Elements as a Function of their Atomic Weight'), Annalen der Chemie (1870), supp. b, 354. Original German paper reprinted in Lothar Meyer and Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev, Das natürliche System der chemischen Elemente: Abhandlungen (1895), 9. Translation by Webmaster, with punctuation faithful to the original, except a comma was changed to a dash to improve readability.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Atom (381)  |  Being (1276)  |  Both (496)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Compound (117)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consisting (5)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  Division (67)  |  Element (322)  |  Existence (481)  |  Final (121)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Law (913)  |  Matter (821)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Order (638)  |  Paper (192)  |  Particle (200)  |  Periodic Law (6)  |  Subatomic (10)  |  Substance (253)  |  Turn (454)  |  Undivided (3)  |  Unlikely (15)

Although species may be discrete, they have no immutable essence. Variation is the raw material of evolutionary change. It represents the fundamental reality of nature, not an accident about a created norm. Variation is primary; essences are illusory. Species must be defined as ranges of irreducible variation.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Change (639)  |  Create (245)  |  Define (53)  |  Discrete (11)  |  Essence (85)  |  Evolutionary (23)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Illusory (2)  |  Immutable (26)  |  Material (366)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Norm (5)  |  Primary (82)  |  Range (104)  |  Raw (28)  |  Reality (274)  |  Represent (157)  |  Species (435)  |  Variation (93)

Evolution is a theory of organic change, but it does not imply, as many people assume, that ceaseless flux is the irreducible state of nature and that structure is but a temporary incarnation of the moment. Change is more often a rapid transition between stable states than a continuous transformation at slow and steady rates. We live in a world of structure and legitimate distinction. Species are the units of nature’s morphology.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Assume (43)  |  Ceaseless (6)  |  Change (639)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Flux (21)  |  Imply (20)  |  Incarnation (3)  |  Legitimate (26)  |  Live (650)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Morphology (22)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Often (109)  |  Organic (161)  |  People (1031)  |  Rapid (37)  |  Rate (31)  |  Slow (108)  |  Species (435)  |  Stable (32)  |  State (505)  |  Steady (45)  |  Structure (365)  |  Temporary (24)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Transition (28)  |  Unit (36)  |  World (1850)

I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.
Letter to his brother Henry James, while William was writing his Principles of Psychology. As quoted in 'The Origins of Modern Science', Science and the Modern World (1926, 2011), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Forge (10)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Stubborn (14)  |  Teeth (43)  |  Write (250)

It needs scarcely be pointed out that in placing Mathematics at the head of Positive Philosophy, we are only extending the application of the principle which has governed our whole Classification. We are simply carrying back our principle to its first manifestation. Geometrical and Mechanical phenomena are the most general, the most simple, the most abstract of all,— the most irreducible to others, the most independent of them; serving, in fact, as a basis to all others. It follows that the study of them is an indispensable preliminary to that of all others. Therefore must Mathematics hold the first place in the hierarchy of the sciences, and be the point of departure of all Education whether general or special.
In Auguste Comte and Harriet Martineau (trans.), The Positive Philosophy (1858), Introduction, Chap. 2, 50.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Application (257)  |  Back (395)  |  Basis (180)  |  Carry (130)  |  Classification (102)  |  Departure (9)  |  Education (423)  |  Estimates of Mathematics (30)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  General (521)  |  Geometrical (11)  |  Govern (66)  |  Head (87)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Hold (96)  |  Independent (74)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Manifestation (61)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Need (320)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Place (192)  |  Point (584)  |  Positive (98)  |  Preliminary (6)  |  Principle (530)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Serve (64)  |  Serving (15)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simply (53)  |  Special (188)  |  Study (701)  |  Whole (756)

Kepler’s principal goal was to explain the relationship between the existence of five planets (and their motions) and the five regular solids. It is customary to sneer at Kepler for this. … It is instructive to compare this with the current attempts to “explain” the zoology of elementary particles in terms of irreducible representations of Lie groups.
In Celestial Mechanics (1969), Vol. 1, 95.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Compare (76)  |  Current (122)  |  Customary (18)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Existence (481)  |  Explain (334)  |  Goal (155)  |  Johannes Kepler (95)  |  Lie (370)  |  Lie Group (2)  |  Motion (320)  |  Particle (200)  |  Planet (402)  |  Principal (69)  |  Regular (48)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Representation (55)  |  Sneer (9)  |  Solid (119)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Zoology (38)

The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Adequate (50)  |  Basic (144)  |  Data (162)  |  Datum (3)  |  Element (322)  |  Experience (494)  |  Goal (155)  |  Possible (560)  |  Representation (55)  |  Simple (426)  |  Single (365)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Surrender (21)  |  Theory (1015)


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.