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: “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it... That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That�s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Pierce

Pierce Quotes (4 quotes)

Anybody who looks at living organisms knows perfectly well that they can produce other organisms like themselves. This is their normal function, they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t do this, and it’s not plausible that this is the reason why they abound in the world. In other words, living organisms are very complicated aggregations of elementary parts, and by any reasonable theory of probability or thermodynamics highly improbable. That they should occur in the world at all is a miracle of the first magnitude; the only thing which removes, or mitigates, this miracle is that they reproduce themselves. Therefore, if by any peculiar accident there should ever be one of them, from there on the rules of probability do not apply, and there will be many of them, at least if the milieu is reasonable. But a reasonable milieu is already a thermodynamically much less improbable thing. So, the operations of probability somehow leave a loophole at this point, and it is by the process of self-reproduction that they are pierced.
From lecture series on self-replicating machines at the University of Illinois, Lecture 5 (Dec 1949), 'Re-evaluation of the Problems of Complicated Automata—Problems of Hierarchy and Evolution', Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (1966).
Science quotes on:  |  Abound (17)  |  Accident (92)  |  Aggregation (6)  |  Already (226)  |  Anybody (42)  |  Apply (170)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Do (1905)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Exist (458)  |  First (1302)  |  Function (235)  |  Improbable (15)  |  In Other Words (9)  |  Know (1538)  |  Living (492)  |  Look (584)  |  Loophole (2)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Milieu (5)  |  Miracle (85)  |  Mitigate (5)  |  Normal (29)  |  Occur (151)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Plausible (24)  |  Point (584)  |  Probability (135)  |  Process (439)  |  Reason (766)  |  Remove (50)  |  Reproduce (12)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Rule (307)  |  Self (268)  |  Somehow (48)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thermodynamics (40)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

Neutrinos, they are very small
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed—you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
In poem 'Cosmic Gall', The New Yorker (17 Dec 1960). Collected in Telephone Poles and Other Poems (1964), 5. Note: In fact, about 1014 neutrinos from the Sun and 103 neutrinos in cosmic rays pass through our bodies each second. Neutrinos are now known to have a very small amount of mass, and they do interact (through the weak force).
Science quotes on:  |  Ball (64)  |  Barrier (34)  |  Bed (25)  |  Brass (5)  |  Call (781)  |  Charge (63)  |  Class (168)  |  Cold (115)  |  Do (1905)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Enter (145)  |  Exquisite (27)  |  Fall (243)  |  Gas (89)  |  Glass (94)  |  Grass (49)  |  Guillotine (5)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Insult (16)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Lover (11)  |  Mass (160)  |  Most (1728)  |  Neutrino (11)  |  Pass (241)  |  Photon (11)  |  Shoulder (33)  |  Silly (17)  |  Small (489)  |  Stall (3)  |  Steel (23)  |  Substantial (24)  |  Through (846)  |  Wall (71)  |  Wonderful (155)

Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
Starving backstage, morning-stars are jaded
The moonshine murmur still shivers alone
Curved slice of sliver, shear breath shadows stone
Suspending twilight shiny and shaded
Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
Carving solace into silver in June
On horizons’ glow from forgotten gold
The moonshine’s’ shilling delivers alone
Gleaming duels of knights, pierce deathly silence
Steel tines of starlight, clashing swords they hold
Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
Dimples aware, sparkle sand on the dune
Winking at comets, after tails are told
The moon-sand whispers, sift rivers alone
Sharpness they hone, filing skills onto stone
Starlight dazzles, its own space created
Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
From owls’ talon, moonlight shimmers alone
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Aware (36)  |  Breath (61)  |  Carve (5)  |  Clash (10)  |  Comet (65)  |  Create (245)  |  Curve (49)  |  Dazzle (4)  |  Deliver (30)  |  Desert (59)  |  Duel (4)  |  Dune (4)  |  File (6)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Gleam (13)  |  Glow (15)  |  Gold (101)  |  Hold (96)  |  Hone (3)  |  Horizon (47)  |  June (2)  |  Knight (6)  |  Moon (252)  |  Moonlight (5)  |  Moonshine (5)  |  Morning (98)  |  Murmur (4)  |  Owl (3)  |  Painting (46)  |  River (140)  |  Sand (63)  |  Setting (44)  |  Shade (35)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Sharpness (9)  |  Shear (2)  |  Shilling (5)  |  Shiny (3)  |  Shiver (2)  |  Sift (3)  |  Silence (62)  |  Silver (49)  |  Skill (116)  |  Slice (3)  |  Sliver (2)  |  Solace (7)  |  Space (523)  |  Sparkle (8)  |  Star (460)  |  Starlight (5)  |  Stars (304)  |  Starvation (13)  |  Steel (23)  |  Still (614)  |  Stone (168)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suspend (11)  |  Sword (16)  |  Tail (21)  |  Talon (2)  |  Tell (344)  |  Tone (22)  |  Twilight (6)  |  Whisper (11)  |  Wink (3)

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
In Brave New World (1932, 1950), 58.
Science quotes on:  |  Properly (21)  |  Read (308)  |  Use (771)  |  Word (650)  |  X-ray (43)


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.