Optic Quotes (2 quotes)
I… formerly had two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in travelling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regard the prospects. Finding this change troublesome, and not always sufficiently ready, I had the glasses cut, and half of each kind associated in the same circle. … By this means, as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready.
Letter (23 May 1785) to George Wheatley). Collected in William Temple Franklin (ed.), The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin (1809), Vol. 6, 168.
Pictures, propagated by motion along the fibers of the optic nerves in the brain, are the cause of vision.
In Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light (3rd ed., corrected, 1721), 12.
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) -- 
