Jaw Quotes (4 quotes)
[Concerning the Piltdown hoax,] that jaw has been literally a bone of contention for a long time.
In 'Quotation Marks', New York Times (29 Nov 1953), SM71.
The crocodile cannot turn its head. Like science, it must always go forward with all-devouring jaws.
As quoted in Robert S. De Ropp, The New Prometheans: Creative and Destructive Forces in Modern Science (1972), 20, which adds that: “On the building that had been constructed in Cambridge specially to house his researches had been chiseled a crocodile by the sculptor Eric Gill. Esoterically speaking, this referred to Kapitza’s special name for Rutherford, but, for public consumption, he offered a different explanation: ‘Mine is the crocodile of science.’” Kapitza, regarded Rutherford, “The Prof”, as always moving forward, never back.
The language of the street is always strong. What can describe the folly and emptiness of scolding like the word jawing?
When I undertake the dissection of a human cadaver I pass a stout rope tied like a noose beneath the lower jaw and through the two zygomas up to the top of the head, either more toward the forehead or more toward the occiput according as I want the cadaver to hang with its head up or down. The longer end of the noose I run through a pulley fixed to a beam in the room so that I may raise or lower the cadaver as it hangs there or may turn it round in any direction to suit my purpose; and should I so wish I can allow it to recline at an angle upon a table, since a table can easily be placed underneath the pulley. This is how the cadaver was suspended for drawing all the muscle tables... though while that one was being drawn the rope was passed around the occiput so as to show the muscles in the neck. If the lower jaw has been removed in the course of dissection, or the zygomas have been broken, the hollows for the temporal muscles will nonetheless hold the noose sufficiently firmly. You must take care not to put the noose around the neck, unless some of the muscles connected to the occipital bone have already been cut away. It is best to suspend the cadaver like this because a human body lying on a table is very difficult to turn over on to its chest or its back.
From De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (1543), Book II, 268, as translated by William Frank Richardson and John Burd Carman, in 'How the Cadaver Can Be Held Erect While These Muscles are Dissected', On The Fabric of the Human Body: Book II: The Ligaments and Muscles (1998), 234.
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) -- 
