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: “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Residual

Residual Quotes (5 quotes)

Almost all the greatest discoveries in astronomy have resulted from what we have elsewhere termed Residual Phenomena, of a qualitative or numerical kind, of such portions of the numerical or quantitative results of observation as remain outstanding and unaccounted for, after subducting and allowing for all that would result from the strict application of known principles.
Outlines of Astronomy (1876), 626.
Science quotes on:  |  Allowing (2)  |  Application (257)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Kind (564)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Observation (593)  |  Outstanding (16)  |  Phenomena (8)  |  Portion (86)  |  Principle (530)  |  Qualitative (15)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Remain (355)  |  Result (700)  |  Term (357)  |  Unaccounted (2)

And even your atom, my dear mechanists and physicists—how much error, how much rudimentary psychology is still residual in your atom!
From 'The Four Great Errors', The Twilight of the Idols (1888), collected in Thomas Common (trans.), The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1896), Vol. 11, 139.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Error (339)  |  Mechanist (3)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Rudimentary (4)  |  Still (614)

Our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea. Whatever else be certain, this at least is certain—that the world of our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no positive idea.
In Address to Harvard Young Men’s Christian Association, 'Is Life Worth Living?', collected in The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, (1897, 2006), 54. Published earlier in International Journal of Ethics (Oct 1895).
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Drop (77)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Larger (14)  |  Natural (810)  |  Positive (98)  |  Present (630)  |  Property (177)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sort (50)  |  Whatever (234)  |  World (1850)

The generalized theory of relativity has furnished still more remarkable results. This considers not only uniform but also accelerated motion. In particular, it is based on the impossibility of distinguishing an acceleration from the gravitation or other force which produces it. Three consequences of the theory may be mentioned of which two have been confirmed while the third is still on trial: (1) It gives a correct explanation of the residual motion of forty-three seconds of arc per century of the perihelion of Mercury. (2) It predicts the deviation which a ray of light from a star should experience on passing near a large gravitating body, the sun, namely, 1".7. On Newton's corpuscular theory this should be only half as great. As a result of the measurements of the photographs of the eclipse of 1921 the number found was much nearer to the prediction of Einstein, and was inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the sun, in further confirmation of the theory. (3) The theory predicts a displacement of the solar spectral lines, and it seems that this prediction is also verified.
Studies in Optics (1927), 160-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Acceleration (12)  |  Arc (14)  |  Body (557)  |  Century (319)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Confirmation (25)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Consider (428)  |  Corpuscle (14)  |  Deviation (21)  |  Displacement (9)  |  Distance (171)  |  Eclipse (25)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Experience (494)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Force (497)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Great (1610)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Inversely Proportional (7)  |  Large (398)  |  Light (635)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mercury (54)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nearer (45)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Passing (76)  |  Photograph (23)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Ray (115)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Result (700)  |  Spectral Line (5)  |  Star (460)  |  Still (614)  |  Sun (407)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Trial (59)  |  Two (936)

When, in an experiment, all known causes being allowed for, there remain certain unexplained effects (excessively slight it may be), these must be carefully investigated, and every conceivable variation of arrangement of apparatus, etc., tried ; until, if possible, we manage so to exaggerate the residual phenomenon as to be able to detect its cause. It is here, perhaps, that in the present state of science we may most reasonably look for extensions of our knowledge
In William Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait, Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), Vol. 1, 306.
Science quotes on:  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Being (1276)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certain (557)  |  Conceivable (28)  |  Detect (45)  |  Effect (414)  |  Exaggerate (7)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Extension (60)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Look (584)  |  Manage (26)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Possible (560)  |  Present (630)  |  Remain (355)  |  Slight (32)  |  State (505)  |  Unexplained (8)  |  Variation (93)


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.