Rift Quotes (4 quotes)
…continental blocks can join and rift at random.… The fact that two provinces of the Canadian Shield have been together during post-Cambrian time does not necessarily mean that they were formed close together or that the sediments lying in one province were derived from the province now beside it.
In 'The Effect of New Orogenetic Theories Upon Ideas of the Tectonics of the Canadian Shield', collected in Royal Society of Canada, Special Publication No. 4, The Tectonics of the Canadian Shield (1962), 135-138. As quoted and cited in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (Nov 1995), 41, 544. This quote’s relevance is to show that after some years of reluctance, Wilson did eventually accept the idea of continental drift.
Relativity was a highly technical new theory that gave new meanings to familiar concepts and even to the nature of the theory itself. The general public looked upon relativity as indicative of the seemingly incomprehensible modern era, educated scientists despaired of ever understanding what Einstein had done, and political ideologues used the new theory to exploit public fears and anxieties—all of which opened a rift between science and the broader culture that continues to expand today.
'The Cultural Legacy of Relativity Theory' in Albert Einstein, Robert W. Lawson, Robert Geroch, Roger Penrose and David C. Cassidy, Relativity (2005), 226.
Since the seventeenth century, physical intuition has served as a vital source for mathematical porblems and methods. Recent trends and fashions have, however, weakened the connection between mathematics and physics; mathematicians, turning away from their roots of mathematics in intuition, have concentrated on refinement and emphasized the postulated side of mathematics, and at other times have overlooked the unity of their science with physics and other fields. In many cases, physicists have ceased to appreciate the attitudes of mathematicians. This rift is unquestionably a serious threat to science as a whole; the broad stream of scientific development may split into smaller and smaller rivulets and dry out. It seems therefore important to direct our efforts towards reuniting divergent trends by classifying the common features and interconnections of many distinct and diverse scientific facts.
As co-author with David Hilbert, in Methods of Mathematical Physics (1937, 1989), Preface, v.
The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things.
In 'Where I Lived and What I Lived For', in Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (1854, 1899), 112.
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) -- 
