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 M > Category: Morally

Morally Quotes (2 quotes)

Few will deny that even in the first scientific instruction in mathematics the most rigorous method is to be given preference over all others. Especially will every teacher prefer a consistent proof to one which is based on fallacies or proceeds in a vicious circle, indeed it will be morally impossible for the teacher to present a proof of the latter kind consciously and thus in a sense deceive his pupils. Notwithstanding these objectionable so-called proofs, so far as the foundation and the development of the system is concerned, predominate in our textbooks to the present time. Perhaps it will be answered, that rigorous proof is found too difficult for the pupil’s power of comprehension. Should this be anywhere the case,—which would only indicate some defect in the plan or treatment of the whole,—the only remedy would be to merely state the theorem in a historic way, and forego a proof with the frank confession that no proof has been found which could be comprehended by the pupil; a remedy which is ever doubtful and should only be applied in the case of extreme necessity. But this remedy is to be preferred to a proof which is no proof, and is therefore either wholly unintelligible to the pupil, or deceives him with an appearance of knowledge which opens the door to all superficiality and lack of scientific method.
In 'Stücke aus dem Lehrbuche der Arithmetik', Werke, Bd. 2 (1904), 296.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Anywhere (16)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Applied (176)  |  Apply (170)  |  Base (120)  |  Call (781)  |  Case (102)  |  Circle (117)  |  Comprehend (44)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Concern (239)  |  Confession (9)  |  Consciously (6)  |  Consistent (50)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Defect (31)  |  Deny (71)  |  Development (441)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Door (94)  |  Doubtful (30)  |  Especially (31)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Fallacy (31)  |  Far (158)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Forego (4)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Frank (4)  |  Give (208)  |  Historic (7)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Indicate (62)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lack (127)  |  Latter (21)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Merely (315)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Plan (122)  |  Power (771)  |  Predominate (7)  |  Prefer (27)  |  Preference (28)  |  Present (630)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Proof (304)  |  Pupil (62)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Sense (785)  |  So-Called (71)  |  State (505)  |  Superficiality (4)  |  System (545)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Textbook (39)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Time (1911)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Unintelligible (17)  |  Vicious Circle (4)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Will (2350)

I do not think that, practically or morally, we can defend a policy of saving every distinctive local population of organisms. I can cite a good rationale for the preservation of species, for each species is a unique and separate natural object that, once lost, can never be reconstituted. But subspecies are distinctive local populations of species with broader geographic range. Subspecies are dynamic, interbreedable, and constantly changing: what then are we saving by declaring them all inviolate?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Broad (28)  |  Change (639)  |  Cite (8)  |  Constantly (27)  |  Declare (48)  |  Defend (32)  |  Distinctive (25)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Geographic (10)  |  Good (906)  |  Local (25)  |  Lose (165)  |  Natural (810)  |  Never (1089)  |  Object (438)  |  Organism (231)  |  Policy (27)  |  Population (115)  |  Practically (10)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Range (104)  |  Rationale (8)  |  Reconstitute (2)  |  Save (126)  |  Separate (151)  |  Species (435)  |  Subspecies (2)  |  Think (1122)  |  Unique (72)


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.