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: “I was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Simplicity

Simplicity Quotes (175 quotes)

…the simplicity, the indispensableness of each word, each letter, each little dash, that among all artists raises the mathematician nearest to the World-creator; it establishes a sublimity which is equalled in no other art,—Something like it exists at most in symphonic music.
As quoted in Robert E. Moritz, 'Meaning, Methods and Mission of Modern Mathematics', The Scientific Monthly (May 1928), 26, No. 5, 424.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Creator (97)  |  Dash (3)  |  Equal (88)  |  Establish (63)  |  Exist (458)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Letter (117)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Most (1728)  |  Music (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Raise (38)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Something (718)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

[An outsider views a scientist] as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as a realist, insofar as he seeks to describe the world independent of the act of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from that which is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sense experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research.
In 'Reply to Critcisms', Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (1949, 1959), Vol. 2, 684.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Appear (122)  |  Concept (242)  |  Consider (428)  |  Describe (132)  |  Effective (68)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Experience (494)  |  Extent (142)  |  Free (239)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Spirit (12)  |  Idealist (5)  |  Independent (74)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Invention (400)  |  Justify (26)  |  Logical (57)  |  Look (584)  |  Opportunist (3)  |  Outsider (7)  |  Perception (97)  |  Platonist (2)  |  Positivist (5)  |  Realist (3)  |  Relation (166)  |  Representation (55)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Seek (218)  |  Sense (785)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Tool (129)  |  Type (171)  |  Unscrupulous (2)  |  View (496)  |  Viewpoint (13)  |  World (1850)

[Decimal currency is desirable because] by that means all calculations of interest, exchange, insurance, and the like are rendered much more simple and accurate, and, of course, more within the power of the great mass of people. Whenever such things require much labor, time, and reflection, the greater number who do not know, are made the dupes of the lesser number who do.
Letter to Congress (15 Jan 1782). 'Coinage Scheme Proposed by Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance', from MS. letters and reports of the Superintendent of Finance, No, 137, Vol. 1, 289-300. Reprinted as Appendix, in Executive Documents, Senate of the U.S., Third Session of the Forty-Fifth Congress, 1878-79 (1879), 430.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Accurate (88)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Course (413)  |  Currency (3)  |  Decimal (21)  |  Desirable (33)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dupe (5)  |  Exchange (38)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greater (288)  |  Insurance (12)  |  Interest (416)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labor (200)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  More (2558)  |  Number (710)  |  People (1031)  |  Power (771)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Render (96)  |  Require (229)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Simple (426)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Whenever (81)

[It] may be laid down as a general rule that, if the result of a long series of precise observations approximates a simple relation so closely that the remaining difference is undetectable by observation and may be attributed to the errors to which they are liable, then this relation is probably that of nature.
'Mémoire sur les Inégalites Séculaires des Planètes et des Satellites' (I 785, published 1787). In Oeuvres completes de Laplace, 14 Vols. (1843-1912), Vol. 11, 57, trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 130.
Science quotes on:  |  Approximate (25)  |  Approximation (32)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Difference (355)  |  Down (455)  |  Error (339)  |  General (521)  |  Long (778)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Precise (71)  |  Precision (72)  |  Relation (166)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Result (700)  |  Rule (307)  |  Series (153)  |  Simple (426)  |  Undetectable (3)

[Science moves] with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.
In The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968, 2001), Preface, xi.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Arrogance (22)  |  Belief (615)  |  Both (496)  |  Characterization (8)  |  Move (223)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Simple (426)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Youth (109)

[The steamboat] will answer for sea voyages as well as for inland navigation, in particular for packets, where there may be a great number of passengers. He is also of opinion, that fuel for a short voyage would not exceed the weight of water for a long one, and it would produce a constant supply of fresh water. ... [T]he boat would make head against the most violent tempests, and thereby escape the danger of a lee shore; and that the same force may be applied to a pump to free a leaky ship of her water. ... [T]he good effects of the machine, is the almost omnipotent force by which it is actuated, and the very simple, easy, and natural way by which the screws or paddles are turned to answer the purpose of oars.
[This letter was written in 1785, before the first steamboat carried a man (Fitch) on 27 Aug 1787.]
Letter to Benjamin Franklin (12 Oct 1785), in The Works of Benjamin Franklin (1882), Vol. 10, 232.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Applied (176)  |  Constant (148)  |  Danger (127)  |  Ease (40)  |  Easy (213)  |  Effect (414)  |  Escape (85)  |  First (1302)  |  Force (497)  |  Free (239)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inland (3)  |  Leak (4)  |  Letter (117)  |  Long (778)  |  Machine (271)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Navigation (26)  |  Number (710)  |  Oar (2)  |  Omnipotent (13)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Packet (3)  |  Paddle (3)  |  Passenger (10)  |  Pump (9)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Screw (17)  |  Sea (326)  |  Ship (69)  |  Short (200)  |  Simple (426)  |  Steamboat (7)  |  Supply (100)  |  Tempest (7)  |  Turn (454)  |  Violent (17)  |  Voyage (13)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weight (140)  |  Will (2350)

[The] structural theory is of extreme simplicity. It assumes that the molecule is held together by links between one atom and the next: that every kind of atom can form a definite small number of such links: that these can be single, double or triple: that the groups may take up any position possible by rotation round the line of a single but not round that of a double link: finally that with all the elements of the first short period [of the periodic table], and with many others as well, the angles between the valencies are approximately those formed by joining the centre of a regular tetrahedron to its angular points. No assumption whatever is made as to the mechanism of the linkage. Through the whole development of organic chemistry this theory has always proved capable of providing a different structure for every different compound that can be isolated. Among the hundreds of thousands of known substances, there are never more isomeric forms than the theory permits.
Presidential Address to the Chemical Society (16 Apr 1936), Journal of the Chemical Society (1936), 533.
Science quotes on:  |  Angle (25)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Atom (381)  |  Capability (44)  |  Capable (174)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Compound (117)  |  Definite (114)  |  Development (441)  |  Different (595)  |  Double (18)  |  Element (322)  |  Extreme (78)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Isolated (15)  |  Isomer (6)  |  Joining (11)  |  Kind (564)  |  Known (453)  |  Link (48)  |  Linkage (5)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Molecule (185)  |  More (2558)  |  Never (1089)  |  Next (238)  |  Number (710)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organic Chemistry (41)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Periodic Table (19)  |  Permit (61)  |  Point (584)  |  Possible (560)  |  Regular (48)  |  Rotation (13)  |  Short (200)  |  Single (365)  |  Small (489)  |  Structural (29)  |  Structure (365)  |  Substance (253)  |  Table (105)  |  Tetrahedron (4)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Valency (4)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Whole (756)

[Two college boys on the Flambeau River in a canoe]…their first…taste of freedom … The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave them their first taste of those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts which every woodsman faces daily, but against which civilization has built a thousand buffers. These boys were “on their own” in this particular sense. Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.
In 'Wisconsin: Flambeau', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 112-113.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Boy (100)  |  Buffer (2)  |  Canoe (6)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Foolish (41)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Learn (672)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Need (320)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Occasional (23)  |  Particular (80)  |  Penalty (7)  |  Reward (72)  |  River (140)  |  Sense (785)  |  Thrill (26)  |  Travel (125)  |  Trip (11)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Wise (143)  |  Woodsman (2)  |  Youth (109)

[When nature appears complicated:] The moment we contemplate it as it is, and attain a position from which we can take a commanding view, though but of a small part of its plan, we never fail to recognize that sublime simplicity on which the mind rests satisfied that it has attained the truth.
Concluding remark in Dionysius Lardner (ed.), Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Vol 1, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), 361.
Science quotes on:  |  Attain (126)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Fail (191)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moment (260)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Plan (122)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Rest (287)  |  Small (489)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Truth (1109)  |  View (496)

An diesen Apparate ist nichts neu als seine Einfachkeit und die vollkommene zu Verlaessigkeit, welche er gewaehst.
In this apparatus is nothing new but its simplicity and thorough trustworthiness.
On his revolutionary method of organic analysis.
Poggendorf's Annalen, (1831), 21, 4. Trans. W. H. Brock.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Method (531)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organic Chemistry (41)  |  Reliability (18)  |  Revolutionary (31)  |  Thorough (40)

Dilbert: Maybe I’m unlucky in love because I’m so knowledgeable about science that I intimidate people. Their intimidation becomes low self-esteem, then they reject me to protect their egos.
Dogbert: Occam’s Razor.
Dilbert: What is “Occam's Razor”?
Dogbert: A guy named Occam had a rule about the world. Basically he said that when there are multiple explanations for something the simplest explanation is usually correct. The simplest explanation for your poor love life is that you’re immensely unattractive.
Dilbert: Maybe Occam had another rule that specifically exempted this situation, but his house burned down with all his notes. Then he forgot.
Dogbert: Occam’s Razor.
Dilbert: I’m an idiot.
Dogbert: I don’t think we can rule it out at this point.
Dilbert comic strip (11 Jul 1993).
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Burn (99)  |  Correct (95)  |  Down (455)  |  Ego (17)  |  Exemption (3)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Forgetfulness (8)  |  House (143)  |  Idiot (22)  |  Intimidation (3)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Low (86)  |  Luck (44)  |  Multiple (19)  |  Note (39)  |  Occam�s Razor (3)  |  People (1031)  |  Point (584)  |  Poor (139)  |  Protect (65)  |  Protection (41)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Rule (307)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Esteem (7)  |  Situation (117)  |  Something (718)  |  Think (1122)  |  Unattractive (3)  |  Usually (176)  |  World (1850)

If the Indians hadn’t spent the $24. In 1626 Peter Minuit, first governor of New Netherland, purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for about $24. … Assume for simplicity a uniform rate of 7% from 1626 to the present, and suppose that the Indians had put their $24 at [compound] interest at that rate …. What would be the amount now, after 280 years? 24 x (1.07)280 = more than 4,042,000,000.
The latest tax assessment available at the time of writing gives the realty for the borough of Manhattan as $3,820,754,181. This is estimated to be 78% of the actual value, making the actual value a little more than $4,898,400,000.
The amount of the Indians’ money would therefore be more than the present assessed valuation but less than the actual valuation.
In A Scrap-book of Elementary Mathematics: Notes, Recreations, Essays (1908), 47-48.
Science quotes on:  |  Actual (118)  |  Amount (153)  |  Assessment (3)  |  Available (80)  |  Compound (117)  |  First (1302)  |  Governor (13)  |  Indian (32)  |  Interest (416)  |  Invest (20)  |  Island (49)  |  Little (717)  |  Making (300)  |  Manhattan (3)  |  Money (178)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Present (630)  |  Purchase (8)  |  Spent (85)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Tax (27)  |  Time (1911)  |  Valuation (4)  |  Value (393)  |  Writing (192)  |  Year (963)

In primis, hominis est propria VERI inquisitio atque investigato. Itaque cum sumus negotiis necessariis, curisque vacui, tum avemus aliquid videre, audire, ac dicere, cognitionemque rerum, aut occultarum aut admirabilium, ad benè beatéque vivendum necessariam ducimus; —ex quo intelligitur, quod VERUM, simplex, sincerumque sit, id esse naturæ hominis aptissimum. Huic veri videndi cupiditati adjuncta est appetitio quædam principatûs, ut nemini parere animus benè a naturâ informatus velit, nisi præcipienti, aut docenti, aut utilitatis causâ justè et legitimè imperanti: ex quo animi magnitudo existit, et humanarum rerum contemtio.
Before all other things, man is distinguished by his pursuit and investigation of TRUTH. And hence, when free from needful business and cares, we delight to see, to hear, and to communicate, and consider a knowledge of many admirable and abstruse things necessary to the good conduct and happiness of our lives: whence it is clear that whatsoever is TRUE, simple, and direct, the same is most congenial to our nature as men. Closely allied with this earnest longing to see and know the truth, is a kind of dignified and princely sentiment which forbids a mind, naturally well constituted, to submit its faculties to any but those who announce it in precept or in doctrine, or to yield obedience to any orders but such as are at once just, lawful, and founded on utility. From this source spring greatness of mind and contempt of worldly advantages and troubles.
In De Officiis, Book 1. Sect. 13. As given in epigraph to John Frederick William Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830), viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstruse (12)  |  Advantage (144)  |  Announce (13)  |  Business (156)  |  Care (203)  |  Communicate (39)  |  Communication (101)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Congenial (3)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contempt (20)  |  Delight (111)  |  Dignified (13)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Direct (228)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Forbid (14)  |  Free (239)  |  Good (906)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Hear (144)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Kind (564)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lawful (7)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Longing (19)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Obedience (20)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Precept (10)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  See (1094)  |  Simple (426)  |  Spring (140)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Utility (52)  |  Whatsoever (41)  |  Yield (86)

L’analyse mathématique … dans l’étude de tous les phénomènes; elle les interprète par le même langage, comme pour attester l’unité et la simplicité du plan de l’univers, et rendre encore plus manifeste cet ordre immuable qui préside à toutes les causes naturelles.
Mathematical analysis … in the study of all phenomena, interprets them by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes.
From Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822), xv, translated by Alexander Freeman in The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), 8.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Attest (4)  |  Cause (561)  |  Evident (92)  |  Interpret (25)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  More (2558)  |  Natural (810)  |  Order (638)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Plan (122)  |  Plus (43)  |  Preside (3)  |  Same (166)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Unchangeable (11)  |  Unity (81)  |  Universe (900)

Le premier regard de l’homme jeté sur l’univers n’y découvre que variété, diversité, multiplicité des phénomènes. Que ce regard soit illuminé par la science,—par la science qui rapproche l’homme de Dieu,—et la simplicité et l’unité brillent de toutes parts.
Man’s first glance at the universe discovers only variety, diversity, multiplicity of phenomena. Let that glance be illuminated by science—by the science which brings man closer to God,—and simplicity and unity shine on all sides.
Original French quoted in René Vallery-Radot, La Vie de Pasteur (1901), 209. Translation by Google translate, tweaked by Webmaster. The English version of the book, omits this passage, except for “Science, which brings man nearer to God.” In The Life of Pasteur (1902), Vol. 1, 194.
Science quotes on:  |  Closer (43)  |  Discover (571)  |  Diversity (75)  |  First (1302)  |  Glance (36)  |  God (776)  |  Illuminate (26)  |  Man (2252)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Regard (312)  |  Shine (49)  |  Side (236)  |  Unity (81)  |  Universe (900)  |  Variety (138)

Newsreader: A huge asteroid could destroy Earth! And by coincidence, that's the subject of tonight's miniseries.
Dogbert: In science, researchers proved that this simple device can keep idiots off your television screen. [TV remote control] Click.
Dilbert cartoon strip (30 Apr 1993).
Science quotes on:  |  Asteroid (19)  |  Click (4)  |  Coincidence (20)  |  Control (182)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Device (71)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Idiot (22)  |  News (36)  |  Proof (304)  |  Remote (86)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Screen (8)  |  Simple (426)  |  Subject (543)  |  Television (33)  |  Tonight (9)

Simplex non sigillum veri.
Simplicity is no sign of truth.
Eijkman’s motto, and the title of a lecture he gave late in his career. As stated in Alfred Jay Bollet, in Plagues & Poxes: The Rise and Fall of Epidemic Disease (1987), 77. This contrasts with the much-quoted motto of Herman Boerhaave, “simplex sigillum veri” (simplicity is the sign of truth).
Science quotes on:  |  Sign (63)  |  Truth (1109)

Simplex sigillum veri.
Simplicity is the sign of truth.
Favorite motto. Inscription on a monument to Boerhaave at the church of St. Peter, Leyden, Holland. In 'Memoirs of Boerhaave', The Literary Magazine, and American Register (1 Sep 1807), 8, 67.
Science quotes on:  |  Sign (63)  |  Truth (1109)

A black hole has no hair.
[Summarizing the simplicity of a black hole, which shows only three characteristics to the outside world (mass, charge, spin) and comparing the situation to a room full of bald-pated people who had one characteristic in common, but no differences in hair length, style or color for individual variations.]
In Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (2000), 297. Quote introduced previously as the No-Hair Theorem in Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John Wheeler, Gravitation (1973).
Science quotes on:  |  Black Hole (17)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Charge (63)  |  Color (155)  |  Common (447)  |  Difference (355)  |  Identification (20)  |  Individual (420)  |  Mass (160)  |  Outside (141)  |  People (1031)  |  Show (353)  |  Situation (117)  |  Small (489)  |  Spin (26)  |  Variation (93)  |  World (1850)

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty until found effective.
Edward Teller, Wendy Teller, Wilson Talley, Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991, 2002), Footnote, 69.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Effective (68)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Guilt (13)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Innocence (13)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Novel (35)  |  Simple (426)  |  Statement (148)  |  Suggestion (49)  |  Want (504)

A great part of its [higher arithmetic] theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.
Quoted in H. Eves, Mathematical Circles (1977) .
Science quotes on:  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Character (259)  |  Charm (54)  |  Concealed (25)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Derive (70)  |  Discover (571)  |  Do (1905)  |  Find (1014)  |  Great (1610)  |  Impress (66)  |  Induction (81)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Method (531)  |  Peculiarity (26)  |  Process (439)  |  Profound (105)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Remain (355)  |  Simple (426)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Success (327)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Vain (86)

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.
Autobiographical Notes (1946), 33. Quoted in Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana, Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (1997), 227.
Science quotes on:  |  Applicability (7)  |  Area (33)  |  Basic (144)  |  Classical (49)  |  Concept (242)  |  Concern (239)  |  Content (75)  |  Convincing (9)  |  Deep (241)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Extend (129)  |  Extension (60)  |  Framework (33)  |  Greater (288)  |  Impression (118)  |  Impressive (27)  |  Impressiveness (2)  |  Kind (564)  |  More (2558)  |  Never (1089)  |  Overthrown (8)  |  Physical (518)  |  Premise (40)  |  Relation (166)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thermodynamics (40)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Universal (198)  |  Will (2350)

All of today’s DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.
In The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974, 1979), 27.
Science quotes on:  |  Cell (146)  |  DNA (81)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Elaboration (11)  |  Extension (60)  |  First (1302)  |  Molecule (185)  |  String (22)  |  Through (846)  |  Today (321)

Among the memoirs of Kirchhoff are some of uncommon beauty. … Can anything be beautiful, where the author has no time for the slightest external embellishment?—But—; it is this very simplicity, the indispensableness of each word, each letter, each little dash, that among all artists raises the mathematician nearest to the World-creator; it establishes a sublimity which is equalled in no other art, something like it exists at most in symphonic music. The Pythagoreans recognized already the similarity between the most subjective and the most objective of the arts.
In Ceremonial Speech (15 Nov 1887) celebrating the 301st anniversary of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Published as Gustav Robert Kirchhoff: Festrede zur Feier des 301. Gründungstages der Karl-Franzens-Universität zu Graz (1888), 28-29, as translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 186. From the original German, “Gerade unter den zuletzt erwähnten Abhandlungen Kirchhoff’s sind einige von ungewöhnlicher Schönheit. … kann etwas schön sein, wo dem Autor auch zur kleinsten äusseren Ausschmückung die Zeit fehlt?–Doch–; gerade durch diese Einfachheit, durch diese Unentbehrlichkeit jedes Wortes, jedes Buchstaben, jedes Strichelchens kömmt der Mathematiker unter allen Künstlern dem Weltenschöpfer am nächsten; sie begründet eine Erhabenheit, die in keiner Kunst ein Gleiches,–Aehnliches höchstens in der symphonischen Musik hat. Erkannten doch schon die Pythagoräer die Aehnlichkeit der subjectivsten und der objectivsten der Künste.”
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Art (680)  |  Artist (97)  |  Author (175)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Creator (97)  |  Dash (3)  |  Equal (88)  |  Establish (63)  |  Exist (458)  |  Indispensable (31)  |  Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (4)  |  Letter (117)  |  Little (717)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics And Art (8)  |  Mathematics As A Fine Art (23)  |  Memoir (13)  |  Most (1728)  |  Music (133)  |  Objective (96)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Raise (38)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Similarity (32)  |  Something (718)  |  Subjective (20)  |  Sublimity (6)  |  Symphony (10)  |  Time (1911)  |  Uncommon (14)  |  Word (650)  |  World (1850)

Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
From La Science et l’Hypothèse (1902), 176, as translated in A.D. Ritchie, Scientific Method: An Inquiry into the Character and Validity of Natural Law (1923), 201. From the original French, “Il faut bien s’arrêter quelque part, et pour que la science soit possible, il faut s’arrêter quand on a trouvé la simplicité.” A more literal translation of that sentence would be (per Google Translate): “You have to stop somewhere, and for science to be possible, you have to stop when you have found simplicity.”
Science quotes on:  |  Data (162)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Possible (560)

As an Art, Mathematics has its own standard of beauty and elegance which can vie with the more decorative arts. In this it is diametrically opposed to a Baroque art which relies on a wealth of ornamental additions. Bereft of superfluous addenda, Mathematics may appear, on first acquaintance, austere and severe. But longer contemplation reveals the classic attributes of simplicity relative to its significance and depth of meaning.
In The Skeleton Key of Mathematics (1949), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Addition (70)  |  Appear (122)  |  Art (680)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Austere (7)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Bereft (2)  |  Classic (13)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Depth (97)  |  Diametrical (2)  |  Diametrically (6)  |  Elegance (40)  |  First (1302)  |  Longer (10)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Meaning (244)  |  More (2558)  |  Opposed (3)  |  Ornament (20)  |  Relative (42)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Severe (17)  |  Significance (114)  |  Standard (64)  |  Superfluous (21)  |  Wealth (100)

Ask a scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will be silent. Ask a religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied.
Quotations: Superultramodern Science and Philosophy (2005).
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Frenzy (6)  |  Person (366)  |  Profound (105)  |  Question (649)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Silence (62)  |  Simple (426)  |  Will (2350)

Astronomy is older than physics. In fact, it got physics started by showing the beautiful simplicity of the motion of the stars and planets, the understanding of which was the beginning of physics. But the most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth.
In 'Astronomy', The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961), Vol. 1, 3-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Atom (381)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Kind (564)  |  Made (14)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Older (7)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Planet (402)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Same (166)  |  Showing (6)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Start (237)  |  Understanding (527)

At the outset do not be worried about this big question—Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the thirst—a thirst that from the soul must arise!—the fervent longing, are the be-all and the end-all.
'The Student Life' (1905). In G. L. Keynes (ed.), Selected Writings of Sir William Osler (1951), 172.
Science quotes on:  |  Arise (162)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Contentment (11)  |  Desire (212)  |  Do (1905)  |  End (603)  |  Fervent (6)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Fruition (2)  |  Glimpse (16)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Know (1538)  |  Longing (19)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Outset (7)  |  Possible (560)  |  Quest (39)  |  Question (649)  |  Simple (426)  |  Soul (235)  |  Start (237)  |  Thirst (11)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Whole (756)

Avoid complexities. Make everything as simple as possible.
As quoted in Joseph Wickham Roe, English and American Tool Builders (1916), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Avoid (123)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Everything (489)  |  Making (300)  |  Possible (560)  |  Simple (426)

Beneath all the wealth of detail in a geological map lies an elegant, orderly simplicity.
As quoted in G.D. Garland, 'John Tuzo Wilson', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (Nov 1995), 552.
Science quotes on:  |  Beneath (68)  |  Detail (150)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Geology (240)  |  Lie (370)  |  Map (50)  |  Order (638)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Wealth (100)

Berzelius' symbols are horrifying. A young student in chemistry might as soon learn Hebrew as make himself acquainted with them... They appear to me equally to perplex the adepts in science, to discourage the learner, as well as to cloud the beauty and simplicity of the atomic theory.
Quoted in H. E. Roscoe, 'Presidential Address', Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 57th report, 1887, 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Theory (16)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Discourage (14)  |  Equally (129)  |  Hebrew (10)  |  Himself (461)  |  Learn (672)  |  Soon (187)  |  Student (317)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Young (253)

Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is at the same time the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find out simpler methods of proof.
'Mathematical Problems', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Jul 1902), 8, 441.
Science quotes on:  |  Confirm (58)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Effort (243)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Error (339)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Proof (304)  |  Rigor (29)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Time (1911)

But it is just this characteristic of simplicity in the laws of nature hitherto discovered which it would be fallacious to generalize, for it is obvious that simplicity has been a part cause of their discovery, and can, therefore, give no ground for the supposition that other undiscovered laws are equally simple.
From Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford (1914) 'On Scientific Method in Philosophy', collected in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1919), 102.
Science quotes on:  |  Cause (561)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Equally (129)  |  Fallacious (13)  |  Generalize (19)  |  Ground (222)  |  Law (913)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Other (2233)  |  Simple (426)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Undiscovered (15)

Chaos is the beginning, simplicity is the end.
Letter (1950) to Ocy Tjeng Sit, as quoted in Maurits Cornelis Escher and ‎J.W. Vermeulen (ed.), Escher on Escher: Exploring the Infinite (1989), which is requoted in Michele Emmer and ‎Doris Schattschneider, M.C. Escher’s Legacy: A Centennial Celebration (2007), 71.
Science quotes on:  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Chaos (99)  |  End (603)

Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:– so various yet so uniform–so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.
The Silurian System (1839), 574.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Back (395)  |  Become (821)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Connect (126)  |  Connection (171)  |  Continent (79)  |  Deposit (12)  |  Do (1905)  |  Formation (100)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Impression (118)  |  Inferior (37)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Nature (80)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Period (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Present (630)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Range (104)  |  Recent (78)  |  Remote (86)  |  Respect (212)  |  Singleness (2)  |  Striking (48)  |  Succession (80)  |  Survey (36)  |  System (545)  |  Trace (109)  |  Uniformity (38)  |  Variety (138)  |  Various (205)  |  Vast (188)  |  Whole (756)

Complexity is the prodigy of the world. Simplicity is the sensation of the universe. Behind complexity, there is always simplicity to be revealed. Inside simplicity, there is always complexity to be discovered
Gang Yu
In course Syllabus for 'Algorithm Design and Implementations' (2004) on mccombs.utexas.edu web site.
Science quotes on:  |  Behind (139)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Prodigy (5)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Universe (900)  |  World (1850)

Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. … All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It’s an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no “why” in those examples. We don’t understand why electricity travels. We don’t know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.
In God's Debris: A Thought Experiment (2004), 22.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Computer (131)  |  Constant (148)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Example (98)  |  Forever (111)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happening (59)  |  Invention (400)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Light (635)  |  Machine (271)  |  Need (320)  |  Observation (593)  |  Observe (179)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Record (161)  |  Result (700)  |  Rocket (52)  |  Ship (69)  |  Simple (426)  |  Speed (66)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Travel (125)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Why (491)

Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage—good teaching—than a bill forcing our honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?.
In 'The Verdict on Creationism' The Sketical Inquirer (Winter 1987/88), 12, 186.
Science quotes on:  |  Basic (144)  |  Bill (14)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Commodity (5)  |  Creation (350)  |  Creation Science (2)  |  Creationism (8)  |  Curriculum (11)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Enter (145)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Equal (88)  |  False (105)  |  Forcing (2)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgetting (13)  |  Fragile (26)  |  General (521)  |  Good (906)  |  Heritage (22)  |  Honor (57)  |  Honorable (14)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Known (453)  |  Mention (84)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Precious (43)  |  Reason (766)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Simple (426)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Trust (72)  |  Undermining (2)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Why (491)

Difficulties [in defining mathematics with full generality, yet simplicity] are but consequences of our refusal to see that mathematics cannot be defined without acknowledging its most obvious feature: namely, that it is interesting. Nowhere is intellectual beauty so deeply felt and fastidiously appreciated.
In Personal Knowledge (1958, 2012), 200,
Science quotes on:  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Define (53)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Fastidious (2)  |  Feature (49)  |  Generality (45)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Refusal (23)  |  See (1094)

Discoveries are not generally made in the order of their scientific arrangement: their connexions and relations are made out gradually; and it is only when the fermentation of invention has subsided that the whole clears into simplicity and order.
In 'The Equilibrium of Forces on a Point', Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1819), Vol. 1, Preface, iii.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Clear (111)  |  Connection (171)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Fermentation (15)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Invention (400)  |  Order (638)  |  Relation (166)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Subside (5)  |  Whole (756)

During the time that [Karl] Landsteiner gave me an education in the field of imununology, I discovered that he and I were thinking about the serologic problem in very different ways. He would ask, What do these experiments force us to believe about the nature of the world? I would ask, What is the most. simple and general picture of the world that we can formulate that is not ruled by these experiments? I realized that medical and biological investigators were not attacking their problems the same way that theoretical physicists do, the way I had been in the habit of doing.
‘Molecular Disease’, Pfizer Spectrum (1958), 6:9, 234.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Belief (615)  |  Biological (137)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doing (277)  |  Education (423)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Field (378)  |  Force (497)  |  Formulation (37)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Habit (174)  |  Immunology (14)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Karl Landsteiner (8)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Picture (148)  |  Problem (731)  |  Realization (44)  |  Research (753)  |  Rule (307)  |  Simple (426)  |  Theoretical Physicist (21)  |  Theoretical Physics (26)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Time (1911)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

Engineering is the science and art of efficient dealing with materials and forces … it involves the most economic design and execution … assuring, when properly performed, the most advantageous combination of accuracy, safety, durability, speed, simplicity, efficiency, and economy possible for the conditions of design and service.
As coauthor with Frank W. Skinner, and Harold E. Wessman, Vocational Guidance in Engineering Lines (1933), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Advantageous (10)  |  Art (680)  |  Assure (16)  |  Coauthor (2)  |  Combination (150)  |  Condition (362)  |  Deal (192)  |  Design (203)  |  Durability (2)  |  Economic (84)  |  Economy (59)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  Efficient (34)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Execution (25)  |  Force (497)  |  Frank (4)  |  Involve (93)  |  Material (366)  |  Most (1728)  |  Perform (123)  |  Possible (560)  |  Properly (21)  |  Safety (58)  |  Science And Art (195)  |  Service (110)  |  Speed (66)

Equations are Expressions of Arithmetical Computation, and properly have no place in Geometry, except as far as Quantities truly Geometrical (that is, Lines, Surfaces, Solids, and Proportions) may be said to be some equal to others. Multiplications, Divisions, and such sort of Computations, are newly received into Geometry, and that unwarily, and contrary to the first Design of this Science. For whosoever considers the Construction of a Problem by a right Line and a Circle, found out by the first Geometricians, will easily perceive that Geometry was invented that we might expeditiously avoid, by drawing Lines, the Tediousness of Computation. Therefore these two Sciences ought not to be confounded. The Ancients did so industriously distinguish them from one another, that they never introduced Arithmetical Terms into Geometry. And the Moderns, by confounding both, have lost the Simplicity in which all the Elegance of Geometry consists. Wherefore that is Arithmetically more simple which is determined by the more simple Equation, but that is Geometrically more simple which is determined by the more simple drawing of Lines; and in Geometry, that ought to be reckoned best which is geometrically most simple.
In 'On the Linear Construction of Equations', Universal Arithmetic (1769), Vol. 2, 470.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Arithmetical (11)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Best (467)  |  Both (496)  |  Circle (117)  |  Computation (28)  |  Confound (21)  |  Confounding (8)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consist (223)  |  Construction (114)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Design (203)  |  Determine (152)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Division (67)  |  Draw (140)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Easily (36)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Equal (88)  |  Equation (138)  |  Expression (181)  |  Far (158)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Geometrician (6)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Industrious (12)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Invent (57)  |  Line (100)  |  Lose (165)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Never (1089)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perceive (46)  |  Place (192)  |  Problem (731)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Right (473)  |  Simple (426)  |  Solid (119)  |  Sort (50)  |  Surface (223)  |  Teaching of Mathematics (39)  |  Tedious (15)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Truly (118)  |  Two (936)  |  Wherefore (2)  |  Will (2350)

For every complex question there is a simple answer–and it's wrong.
Anonymous
Although often seen attributed to H.L. Mencken, webmaster has not found found a primary source, and no authoritative quote collection containing it. If you have a primary source, please contact webmaster, who meanwhile lists this quote as only being author unknown.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Complex (202)  |  Question (649)  |  Simple (426)  |  Wrong (246)

For if as scientists we seek simplicity, then obviously we try the simplest surviving theory first, and retreat from it only when it proves false. Not this course, but any other, requires explanation. If you want to go somewhere quickly, and several alternate routes are equally likely to be open, no one asks why you take the shortest. The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is the most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.
Problems and Projects (1972), 352.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Ask (420)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Course (413)  |  Equally (129)  |  Explanation (246)  |  First (1302)  |  Hope (321)  |  Most (1728)  |  Open (277)  |  Other (2233)  |  Prove (261)  |  Require (229)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Seek (218)  |  Shortest (16)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Try (296)  |  Want (504)  |  Why (491)

Gases are distinguished from other forms of matter, not only by their power of indefinite expansion so as to fill any vessel, however large, and by the great effect heat has in dilating them, but by the uniformity and simplicity of the laws which regulate these changes.
Theory of Heat (1904), 31.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Effect (414)  |  Expansion (43)  |  Form (976)  |  Gas (89)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heat (180)  |  Indefinite (21)  |  Large (398)  |  Law (913)  |  Matter (821)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Uniformity (38)  |  Vessel (63)

Guard against both doing experiments simply because they are likely to yield easy or easily manipulated results or because they are what a lively laboratory imagination is able to invent.
From archive recording (3 Jun 1959) with to John C. Kenna, giving his recollection of his farewell speech to Cambridge Psychological Society (4 Mar 1952), in which he gave a summary of points he considered to be basic requirements for a good experimental psychologist. Part of point 4 of 7, from transcription of recording held at British Psychological Society History of Psychology Centre, London, as abridged on thepsychologist.bps.org.uk website.
Science quotes on:  |  Experiment (736)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Manipulate (11)  |  Result (700)

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.
In The Queen of the Sciences (1938), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Creative (144)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fitness (9)  |  Generality (45)  |  Guide (107)  |  Indefinable (5)  |  Inspire (58)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Past (355)  |  Prospect (31)  |  Sense (785)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Usefulness (92)

How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity–in short: what mathematicians call ‘elegance’–are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Convince (43)  |  Crucial (10)  |  Decide (50)  |  Dispense (10)  |  Do (1905)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Failure (176)  |  Luxury (21)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Matter (821)  |  People (1031)  |  Program (57)  |  Short (200)  |  Success (327)

How to start on my adventure—how to become a forester—was not so simple. There were no schools of Forestry in America. … Whoever turned his mind toward Forestry in those days thought little about the forest itself and more about its influences, and about its influence on rainfall first of all. So I took a course in meteorology, which has to do with weather and climate. and another in botany, which has to do with the vegetable kingdom—trees are unquestionably vegetable. And another in geology, for forests grow out of the earth. Also I took a course in astronomy, for it is the sun which makes trees grow. All of which is as it should be, because science underlies the forester’s knowledge of the woods. So far I was headed right. But as for Forestry itself, there wasn’t even a suspicion of it at Yale. The time for teaching Forestry as a profession was years away.
In Breaking New Ground (1947, 1998), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  America (143)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Become (821)  |  Biography (254)  |  Botany (63)  |  Climate (102)  |  Course (413)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  First (1302)  |  Forest (161)  |  Forester (4)  |  Forestry (17)  |  Geology (240)  |  Grow (247)  |  Growth (200)  |  Influence (231)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Little (717)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Profession (108)  |  Right (473)  |  School (227)  |  Simple (426)  |  Start (237)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tree (269)  |  Turn (454)  |  Underlie (19)  |  Vegetable (49)  |  Weather (49)  |  Whoever (42)  |  Wood (97)  |  Year (963)

I am a great believer in the simplicity of things and as you probably know I am inclined to hang on to broad & simple ideas like grim death until evidence is too strong for my tenacity.
Letter to Irving Langmuir (10 Jun 1919). Quoted in Nathan Reingold and Ida H. Reingold, Science in America: A Documentary History 1900-1939 (1981), 354.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Believer (26)  |  Broad (28)  |  Death (406)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grim (6)  |  Hang (46)  |  Idea (881)  |  Inclination (36)  |  Inclined (41)  |  Know (1538)  |  Simple (426)  |  Strong (182)  |  Tenacity (10)  |  Thing (1914)

I could clearly see that the blood is divided and flows through tortuous vessels and that it is not poured out into spaces, but is always driven through tubules and distributed by the manifold bendings of the vessels... [F]rom the simplicity Nature employs in all her works, we may conclude... that the network I once believed to be nervous [that is, sinewy] is really a vessel intermingled with the vesicles and sinuses and carrying the mass of blood to them or away from them... though these elude even the keenest sight because of their small size... From these considerations it is highly probable that the question about the mutual union and anastomosis of the vessels can be solved; for if Nature once circulates the blood within vessels and combines their ends in a network, it is probable that they are joined by anastomosis at other times too.
'The Return to Bologna 1659-1662', in H. B. Adelmann (ed.), Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (1966), Vol. 1, 194-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Blood (144)  |  Capillary (4)  |  Circulation (27)  |  Combine (58)  |  Conclude (66)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Divided (50)  |  Elude (11)  |  Employ (115)  |  End (603)  |  Flow (89)  |  Manifold (23)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Network (21)  |  Other (2233)  |  Question (649)  |  See (1094)  |  Sight (135)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Union (52)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Work (1402)

I had a Meccano set with which I “played” endlessly. Meccano which was invented by Frank Hornby around 1900, is called Erector Set in the US. New toys (mainly Lego) have led to the extinction of Meccano and this has been a major disaster as far as the education of our young engineers and scientists is concerned. Lego is a technically trivial plaything and kids love it partly because it is so simple and partly because it is seductively coloured. However it is only a toy, whereas Meccano is a real engineering kit and it teaches one skill which I consider to be the most important that anyone can acquire: This is the sensitive touch needed to thread a nut on a bolt and tighten them with a screwdriver and spanner just enough that they stay locked, but not so tightly that the thread is stripped or they cannot be unscrewed. On those occasions (usually during a party at your house) when the handbasin tap is closed so tightly that you cannot turn it back on, you know the last person to use the washroom never had a Meccano set.
Nobel laureate autobiography in Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures 1996 (1997), 189.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Back (395)  |  Bolt (11)  |  Call (781)  |  Closed (38)  |  Color (155)  |  Concern (239)  |  Consider (428)  |  Disaster (58)  |  Education (423)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Enough (341)  |  Extinction (80)  |  House (143)  |  Important (229)  |  Invention (400)  |  Kid (18)  |  Kit (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Last (425)  |  Lock (14)  |  Love (328)  |  Major (88)  |  Meccano (5)  |  Most (1728)  |  Need (320)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Nut (7)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Party (19)  |  Person (366)  |  Play (116)  |  Plaything (3)  |  Real (159)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Screwdriver (2)  |  Seduction (3)  |  Sensitive (15)  |  Set (400)  |  Simple (426)  |  Skill (116)  |  Spanner (2)  |  Strip (7)  |  Tap (10)  |  Teach (299)  |  Technical (53)  |  Thread (36)  |  Tight (4)  |  Touch (146)  |  Toy (22)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Turn (454)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)  |  Young (253)

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.
As quoted, without citation, in Mack R. Douglas, Making a Habit of Success: How to Make a Habit of Succeeding, How to Win With High Self-Esteem (1966, 1994), 38. Note: Webmaster is dubious of a quote which seems to appear in only one source, without a citation, decades after Bell’s death. If you know a primary source, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Astound (9)  |  Available (80)  |  Become (821)  |  Construction (114)  |  Definite (114)  |  Determined (9)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Failure (176)  |  Find (1014)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Order (638)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Power (771)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Remainder (7)  |  Required (108)  |  Result (700)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Right (473)  |  Say (989)  |  See (1094)  |  Sight (135)  |  Sound (187)  |  Stand (284)  |  State (505)  |  Still (614)  |  Term (357)  |  Through (846)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Want (504)  |  Wire (36)

I hate and fear 'science' because of my conviction that, for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts.
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), 268-9.
Science quotes on:  |  Barbarism (8)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Fear (212)  |  Gentleness (4)  |  Hate (68)  |  Heart (243)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mask (12)  |  Mind (1377)  |  See (1094)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

I have destroyed almost the whole race of frogs, which does not happen in that savage Batrachomyomachia of Homer. For in the anatomy of frogs, which, by favour of my very excellent colleague D. Carolo Fracassato, I had set on foot in order to become more certain about the membranous substance of the lungs, it happened to me to see such things that not undeservedly I can better make use of that [saying] of Homer for the present matter—
“I see with my eyes a work trusty and great.”
For in this (frog anatomy) owing to the simplicity of the structure, and the almost complete transparency of the vessels which admits the eye into the interior, things are more clearly shown so that they will bring the light to other more obscure matters.
De Pulmonibus (1661), trans. James Young, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (1929-30), 23, 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Anatomy (75)  |  Become (821)  |  Better (493)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Complete (209)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Eye (440)  |  Frog (44)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Homer (11)  |  Interior (35)  |  Light (635)  |  Lung (37)  |  Matter (821)  |  Membrane (21)  |  More (2558)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Obscurity (28)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Owing (39)  |  Present (630)  |  Race (278)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Structure (365)  |  Substance (253)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Transparency (7)  |  Use (771)  |  Vessel (63)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
Attributed. Quoted in James GleickChaos (1988), 38. Contact webmaster if you know a primary print source.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Delight (111)  |  Fabric (27)  |  Falsity (16)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Know (1538)  |  Live (650)  |  Most (1728)  |  Oblige (6)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Teach (299)  |  Thread (36)  |  Truth (1109)

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: “If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.” I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.
Lecture in Japan (1922). The quote is footnoted in Michael White, John Gribbin, Einstein: a Life in Science (1995), 128, saying the talk is known as the 'Kyoto address', reported in J. Ishiwara, Einstein Koen-Roku (1977).
Science quotes on:  |  Chair (25)  |  Deep (241)  |  Fall (243)  |  Falling (6)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Free (239)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Impelling (2)  |  Impression (118)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Office (71)  |  Patent (34)  |  Patent Office (3)  |  Person (366)  |  Simple (426)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Startling (15)  |  Sudden (70)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Gravitation (6)  |  Thought (995)  |  Weight (140)  |  Will (2350)

I wish they don’t forget to keep those treasures pure which they have in excellence over the west: their artistic building of life, the simplicity a nd modesty in personal need, and the pureness and calmness of Japanese soul.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Artistic (24)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Calmness (2)  |  Excellence (40)  |  Forget (125)  |  Japanese (7)  |  Keep (104)  |  Life (1870)  |  Modesty (18)  |  Nd (2)  |  Need (320)  |  Personal (75)  |  Pure (299)  |  Soul (235)  |  Treasure (59)  |  West (21)  |  Wish (216)

If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.
In 'Dionysians and Apollonians', Science (2 Jun 1972), 176, 966. Reprinted in Mary Ritchie Key, The Relationship of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication (1980), 318.
Science quotes on:  |  Coherence (13)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Everything (489)  |  Fringe (7)  |  Incoherence (2)  |  Incoherent (7)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mix (24)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Research (753)  |  Simple (426)  |  Smooth (34)  |  Smoothness (3)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Unknown (195)

If the brain were so simple
That we could understand it,
We would be so simple
That we couldn’t.
From c. 1938. Quoted and cited by his son, George Edgin Pugh, as a footnoted epigraph, in The Biological Origin of Human Values (1978), 154. The quote is also widely seen slightly paraphrased, attributed to Lyall Watson (q.v. on the Lyall Watson web page of this site, beginning, “If the brain were so simple…”). For example, introduced as “Biologist Lyall Watson spoke of the Catch-22 of brain research:” in Marilyn Ferguson The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (1987), 539. The quote is also widely seen in various paraphrases, attributed to others, including Pat Bahn and Ian Stewart.
Science quotes on:  |  Brain (281)  |  Simple (426)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

If this seems complex, the reason is because Tao is both simple and complex. It is complex when we try to understand it, and simple when we allow ourselves to experience it.
In Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature (2000), 327.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Experience (494)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Reason (766)  |  Simple (426)  |  Tao (2)  |  Try (296)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

If we seek for the simplest arrangement, which would enable it [the eye] to receive and discriminate the impressions of the different parts of the spectrum, we may suppose three distinct sensations only to be excited by the rays of the three principal pure colours, falling on any given point of the retina, the red, the green, and the violet; while the rays occupying the intermediate spaces are capable of producing mixed sensations, the yellow those which belong to the red and green, and the blue those which belong to the green and violet.
'Chromatics', in Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1824), Vol. 3, 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Belong (168)  |  Blue (63)  |  Capable (174)  |  Color (155)  |  Different (595)  |  Discrimination (9)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Enable (122)  |  Eye (440)  |  Green (65)  |  Impression (118)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Mixed (6)  |  Point (584)  |  Principal (69)  |  Pure (299)  |  Ray (115)  |  Receive (117)  |  Reception (16)  |  Red (38)  |  Retina (4)  |  Seek (218)  |  Seeking (31)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Space (523)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Violet (11)  |  Yellow (31)

If you disregard the very simplest cases, there is in all of mathematics not a single infinite series whose sum has been rigorously determined. In other words, the most important parts of mathematics stand without a foundation.
In Letter to a friend, as quoted in George Finlay Simmons, Calculus Gems (1992), 188.
Science quotes on:  |  Case (102)  |  Disregard (12)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Importance (299)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinite Series (8)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Rigor (29)  |  Series (153)  |  Single (365)  |  Stand (284)  |  Sum (103)  |  Word (650)

If your new theorem can be stated with great simplicity, then there will exist a pathological exception.
In Howard W. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, (1988), 157.
Science quotes on:  |  Exception (74)  |  Exist (458)  |  Great (1610)  |  New (1273)  |  Pathological (21)  |  State (505)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Will (2350)

In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.
Speech, quoted in Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh (2000), 347. In 1949, Lindbergh gave a speech when he received the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy.
Science quotes on:  |  Balance (82)  |  Biography (254)  |  Brother (47)  |  Character (259)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Customary (18)  |  Emphasize (25)  |  Equally (129)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Kitty Hawk (5)  |  Life (1870)  |  Lift (57)  |  Man (2252)  |  Modesty (18)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Pioneer (37)  |  Produced (187)  |  Progress (492)  |  Proper (150)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Represent (157)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Progress (14)  |  Sense (785)  |  Success (327)  |  Support (151)  |  Wing (79)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)  |  Orville Wright (10)  |  Wilbur Wright (14)

In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.
Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach (1972), 44
Science quotes on:  |  Clarity (49)  |  Crime (39)  |  Duty (71)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Lack (127)  |  Lucidity (7)  |  Moral (203)  |  Sin (45)  |  View (496)

In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things—we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.
Letter to H.P.E. Hansen (20 Jul 1935), Niels Bohr Archive. In Jan Faye, Henry J. Folse, Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy (1994), 83.
Science quotes on:  |  Affair (29)  |  Again (4)  |  Allow (51)  |  Concept (242)  |  Deal (192)  |  Dealing (11)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Essence (85)  |  Event (222)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Manner (62)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  State (505)  |  Task (152)  |  Thing (1914)

In this communication I wish first to show in the simplest case of the hydrogen atom (nonrelativistic and undistorted) that the usual rates for quantization can be replaced by another requirement, in which mention of “whole numbers” no longer occurs. Instead the integers occur in the same natural way as the integers specifying the number of nodes in a vibrating string. The new conception can be generalized, and I believe it touches the deepest meaning of the quantum rules.
'Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem', Annalen der Physik (1926), 79, 361. Trans. Walter Moore, Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989), 200-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Case (102)  |  Communication (101)  |  Conception (160)  |  First (1302)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Integer (12)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Mention (84)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Occur (151)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Rule (307)  |  Show (353)  |  String (22)  |  Vibration (26)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wish (216)

Indeed, the most important part of engineering work—and also of other scientific work—is the determination of the method of attacking the problem, whatever it may be, whether an experimental investigation, or a theoretical calculation. … It is by the choice of a suitable method of attack, that intricate problems are reduced to simple phenomena, and then easily solved.
In Engineering Mathematics: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Union College (1911, 1917), Vol. 2, 275.
Science quotes on:  |  Attack (86)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Choice (114)  |  Determination (80)  |  Ease (40)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Intricacy (8)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Problem (731)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Simple (426)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Suitability (11)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Work (1402)

Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow. ... The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself....Man is not the center of the universe as once we thought in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful—the arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life. Man alone constitutes the last-born, the freshest, the most complicated, the most subtle of all the successive layers of life. ... The universe has always been in motion and at this moment continues to be in motion. But will it still be in motion tomorrow? ... What makes the world in which we live specifically modern is our discovery in it and around it of evolution. ... Thus in all probability, between our modern earth and the ultimate earth, there stretches an immense period, characterized not by a slowing-down but a speeding up and by the definitive florescence of the forces of evolution along the line of the human shoot.
In The Phenomenon of Man (1975), pp 218, 220, 223, 227, 228, 277.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Arrow (22)  |  Bow (15)  |  Center (35)  |  Characterize (22)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Continue (179)  |  Curve (49)  |  Definitive (3)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Final (121)  |  Follow (389)  |  Force (497)  |  General (521)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Illuminating (12)  |  Immense (89)  |  Last (425)  |  Layer (41)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Line (100)  |  Live (650)  |  Looking (191)  |  Man (2252)  |  Modern (402)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Must (1525)  |  Period (200)  |  Pointing (4)  |  Probability (135)  |  Reflecting (3)  |  Satisfy (29)  |  Shoot (21)  |  Something (718)  |  Still (614)  |  Subtle (37)  |  Successive (73)  |  System (545)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thinkable (5)  |  Thought (995)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  True (239)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Unification (11)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wonderful (155)  |  World (1850)

It [mathematics] is in the inner world of pure thought, where all entia dwell, where is every type of order and manner of correlation and variety of relationship, it is in this infinite ensemble of eternal verities whence, if there be one cosmos or many of them, each derives its character and mode of being,—it is there that the spirit of mathesis has its home and its life.
Is it a restricted home, a narrow life, static and cold and grey with logic, without artistic interest, devoid of emotion and mood and sentiment? That world, it is true, is not a world of solar light, not clad in the colours that liven and glorify the things of sense, but it is an illuminated world, and over it all and everywhere throughout are hues and tints transcending sense, painted there by radiant pencils of psychic light, the light in which it lies. It is a silent world, and, nevertheless, in respect to the highest principle of art—the interpenetration of content and form, the perfect fusion of mode and meaning—it even surpasses music. In a sense, it is a static world, but so, too, are the worlds of the sculptor and the architect. The figures, however, which reason constructs and the mathematic vision beholds, transcend the temple and the statue, alike in simplicity and in intricacy, in delicacy and in grace, in symmetry and in poise. Not only are this home and this life thus rich in aesthetic interests, really controlled and sustained by motives of a sublimed and supersensuous art, but the religious aspiration, too, finds there, especially in the beautiful doctrine of invariants, the most perfect symbols of what it seeks—the changeless in the midst of change, abiding things hi a world of flux, configurations that remain the same despite the swirl and stress of countless hosts of curious transformations.
In 'The Universe and Beyond', Hibbert Journal (1904-1906), 3, 314.
Science quotes on:  |  Abide (12)  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Alike (60)  |  Architect (32)  |  Art (680)  |  Artistic (24)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Behold (19)  |  Being (1276)  |  Change (639)  |  Changeless (2)  |  Character (259)  |  Cold (115)  |  Color (155)  |  Configuration (8)  |  Construct (129)  |  Content (75)  |  Control (182)  |  Correlation (19)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Countless (39)  |  Curious (95)  |  Delicacy (8)  |  Derive (70)  |  Despite (7)  |  Devoid (12)  |  Doctrine (81)  |  Dwell (19)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Ensemble (8)  |  Especially (31)  |  Eternal (113)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Figure (162)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flux (21)  |  Form (976)  |  Fusion (16)  |  Glorify (6)  |  Grace (31)  |  Grey (10)  |  High (370)  |  Home (184)  |  Host (16)  |  Hue (3)  |  Illuminate (26)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Inner (72)  |  Interest (416)  |  Intricacy (8)  |  Invariant (10)  |  Lie (370)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Logic (311)  |  Manner (62)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Midst (8)  |  Mode (43)  |  Mood (15)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motive (62)  |  Music (133)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Order (638)  |  Paint (22)  |  Pencil (20)  |  Penetration (18)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Poise (4)  |  Principle (530)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Pure (299)  |  Radiant (15)  |  Really (77)  |  Reason (766)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Religious (134)  |  Remain (355)  |  Respect (212)  |  Restrict (13)  |  Rich (66)  |  Same (166)  |  Sculptor (10)  |  Seek (218)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sensuous (5)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Silent (31)  |  Solar (8)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Static (9)  |  Statue (17)  |  Stress (22)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Swirl (10)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Temple (45)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Tint (3)  |  Transcend (27)  |  Transformation (72)  |  True (239)  |  Type (171)  |  Variety (138)  |  Verity (5)  |  Vision (127)  |  World (1850)

It is a peculiar feature in the fortune of principles of such high elementary generality and simplicity as characterise the laws of motion, that when they are once firmly established, or supposed to be so, men turn with weariness and impatience from all questionings of the grounds and nature of their authority. We often feel disposed to believe that truths so clear and comprehensive are necessary conditions, rather than empirical attributes of their subjects: that they are legible by their own axiomatic light, like the first truths of geometry, rather than discovered by the blind gropings of experience.
In An Introduction to Dynamics (1832), x.
Science quotes on:  |  Attribute (65)  |  Authority (99)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Blind (98)  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Condition (362)  |  Discover (571)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feel (371)  |  First (1302)  |  Fortune (50)  |  Generality (45)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Ground (222)  |  High (370)  |  Impatience (13)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Motion (14)  |  Laws Of Motion (10)  |  Light (635)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Principle (530)  |  Question (649)  |  Subject (543)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Weariness (6)

It is always the nearest, plainest and simplest principles that learned men comprehend last.
In Elbert Hubbard (ed. and publ.), The Philistine (Mar 1908), 26, No. 4, cover.
Science quotes on:  |  Always (7)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Last (425)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Learning (291)  |  Nearest (4)  |  Principle (530)

It is because simplicity and vastness are both beautiful that we seek by preference simple facts and vast facts; that we take delight, now in following the giant courses of the stars, now in scrutinizing the microscope that prodigious smallness which is also a vastness, and now in seeking in geological ages the traces of a past that attracts us because of its remoteness.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Attract (25)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Both (496)  |  Course (413)  |  Delight (111)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Follow (389)  |  Geological (11)  |  Giant (73)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Past (355)  |  Preference (28)  |  Prodigious (20)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Scrutinize (7)  |  Seek (218)  |  Simple (426)  |  Smallness (7)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Trace (109)  |  Vast (188)  |  Vastness (15)

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
Quoted in Return to Mathematical Circles H. Eves (Boston 1988).
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Achievement (187)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Apollonius (6)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Computation (28)  |  First (1302)  |  Genius (301)  |  Grandeur (35)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Invention (400)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Merit (51)  |  Method (531)  |  More (2558)  |  Number (710)  |  Produced (187)  |  Profound (105)  |  Rank (69)  |  Remember (189)  |  Simple (426)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Two (936)  |  Useful (260)  |  Value (393)

It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts.
Edward Teller, Wendy Teller, Wilson Talley, Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991, 2002), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Belief (615)  |  Claim (154)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Course (413)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Everything (489)  |  Follow (389)  |  Following (16)  |  Incorrect (6)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Main (29)  |  More (2558)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Purpose Of Science (5)  |  Rapidity (29)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Simpler (8)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)

It is often the scientist’s experience that he senses the nearness of truth when … connections are envisioned. A connection is a step toward simplification, unification. Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.
In Toward the Habit of Truth (1990).
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Connection (171)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Envision (3)  |  Experience (494)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sense (785)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Step (234)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Unification (11)

It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!
Curiosities of Literature (1824), Vol. 3, 277-278.
Science quotes on:  |  Detract (2)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Effect (414)  |  Egg (71)  |  Great (1610)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Originality (21)

It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory...
'On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation', Scientific American (Apr 1950), 13. In David H. Levy (Ed.), The Scientific American Book of the Cosmos (2000), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Astray (13)  |  Basic (144)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Completely (137)  |  Concept (242)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Danger (127)  |  Depth (97)  |  Disprove (25)  |  Effort (243)  |  Experience (494)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Greater (288)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Increase (225)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Physical (518)  |  Proof (304)  |  Quest (39)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)

It seems to me that the view toward which we are tending is that the specificity in gene action is always a chemical specificity, probably the production of enzymes which guide metabolic processes along particular channels. A given array of genes thus determines the production of a particular kind of protoplasm with particular properties—such, for example, as that of responding to surface forces by the formation of a special sort of semipermeable membrane, and that of responding to trivial asymmetries in the play of external stimuli by polarization, with consequent orderly quantitative gradients in all physiologic processes. Different genes may now be called into play at different points in this simple pattern, either through the local formation of their specific substrates for action, or by activation of a mutational nature. In either case the pattern becomes more complex and qualitatively differentiated. Successive interactions of differentiated regions and the calling into play of additional genes may lead to any degree of complexity of pattern in the organism as a largely self-contained system. The array of genes, assembled in the course of evolution, must of course be one which determines a highly self­regulatory system of reactions. On this view the genes are highly specific chemically, and thus called into play only under very specific conditions; but their morphological effects, if any, rest on quantitative influences of immediate or remote products on growth gradients, which are resultants of all that has gone on before in the organism.
In 'Genetics of Abnormal Growth in the Guinea Pig', Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology (1934), 2, 142.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Activation (6)  |  Asymmetry (6)  |  Become (821)  |  Call (781)  |  Channel (23)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Course (413)  |  Degree (277)  |  Determine (152)  |  Different (595)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enzyme (19)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Force (497)  |  Formation (100)  |  Gene (105)  |  Gradient (2)  |  Growth (200)  |  Guide (107)  |  Immediate (98)  |  Influence (231)  |  Interaction (47)  |  Kind (564)  |  Lead (391)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Metabolism (15)  |  More (2558)  |  Morphological (3)  |  Must (1525)  |  Mutation (40)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Organism (231)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Physiology (101)  |  Point (584)  |  Polarization (4)  |  Product (166)  |  Production (190)  |  Protoplasm (13)  |  Qualitative (15)  |  Quantitative (31)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Remote (86)  |  Rest (287)  |  Self (268)  |  Simple (426)  |  Special (188)  |  Specific (98)  |  Stimulus (30)  |  Successive (73)  |  Surface (223)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Trivial (59)  |  View (496)

It was his [Leibnitz’s] love of method and order, and the conviction that such order and harmony existed in the real world, and that our success in understanding it depended upon the degree and order which we could attain in our own thoughts, that originally was probably nothing more than a habit which by degrees grew into a formal rule. This habit was acquired by early occupation with legal and mathematical questions. We have seen how the theory of combinations and arrangements of elements had a special interest for him. We also saw how mathematical calculations served him as a type and model of clear and orderly reasoning, and how he tried to introduce method and system into logical discussions, by reducing to a small number of terms the multitude of compound notions he had to deal with. This tendency increased in strength, and even in those early years he elaborated the idea of a general arithmetic, with a universal language of symbols, or a characteristic which would be applicable to all reasoning processes, and reduce philosophical investigations to that simplicity and certainty which the use of algebraic symbols had introduced into mathematics.
A mental attitude such as this is always highly favorable for mathematical as well as for philosophical investigations. Wherever progress depends upon precision and clearness of thought, and wherever such can be gained by reducing a variety of investigations to a general method, by bringing a multitude of notions under a common term or symbol, it proves inestimable. It necessarily imports the special qualities of number—viz., their continuity, infinity and infinite divisibility—like mathematical quantities—and destroys the notion that irreconcilable contrasts exist in nature, or gaps which cannot be bridged over. Thus, in his letter to Arnaud, Leibnitz expresses it as his opinion that geometry, or the philosophy of space, forms a step to the philosophy of motion—i.e., of corporeal things—and the philosophy of motion a step to the philosophy of mind.
In Leibnitz (1884), 44-45. [The first sentence is reworded to better introduce the quotation. —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Acquired (77)  |  Algebraic (5)  |  Applicable (31)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Attain (126)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Bring (95)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Clear (111)  |  Clearness (11)  |  Combination (150)  |  Common (447)  |  Compound (117)  |  Continuity (39)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Corporeal (5)  |  Deal (192)  |  Degree (277)  |  Depend (238)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Discussion (78)  |  Early (196)  |  Elaborate (31)  |  Elaborated (7)  |  Element (322)  |  Exist (458)  |  Express (192)  |  Favorable (24)  |  Form (976)  |  Formal (37)  |  Gain (146)  |  Gap (36)  |  General (521)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Grow (247)  |  Habit (174)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Highly (16)  |  Idea (881)  |  Import (5)  |  Increase (225)  |  Inestimable (4)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Interest (416)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Language (308)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Legal (9)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Letter (117)  |  Logical (57)  |  Love (328)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mental (179)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Model (106)  |  More (2558)  |  Motion (320)  |  Multitude (50)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notion (120)  |  Number (710)  |  Occupation (51)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Order (638)  |  Orderly (38)  |  Original (61)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Precision (72)  |  Probable (24)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Prove (261)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Quality (139)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Question (649)  |  Quotation (19)  |  Real World (15)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Rule (307)  |  Saw (160)  |  See (1094)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Serve (64)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Special (188)  |  Special Interest (2)  |  Step (234)  |  Strength (139)  |  Success (327)  |  Symbol (100)  |  System (545)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Try (296)  |  Type (171)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Universal (198)  |  Use (771)  |  Variety (138)  |  Wherever (51)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

It would seem that more than function itself, simplicity is the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation. One might call the process beauty through function and simplification.
As quoted in Christian Science Monitor (7 May 1952).
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Call (781)  |  Decision (98)  |  Equation (138)  |  Factor (47)  |  Function (235)  |  Invention (400)  |  More (2558)  |  Process (439)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Through (846)

Its [mathematical analysis] chief attribute is clearness; it has no means for expressing confused ideas. It compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies which unite them. If matter escapes us, as that of air and light because of its extreme tenuity, if bodies are placed far from us in the immensity of space, if man wishes to know the aspect of the heavens at successive periods separated by many centuries, if gravity and heat act in the interior of the solid earth at depths which will forever be inaccessible, mathematical analysis is still able to trace the laws of these phenomena. It renders them present and measurable, and appears to be the faculty of the human mind destined to supplement the brevity of life and the imperfection of the senses, and what is even more remarkable, it follows the same course in the study of all phenomena; it explains them in the same language, as if in witness to the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make more manifest the unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes.
From Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822), Discours Préliminaire, xiv, (Theory of Heat, Introduction), as translated by Alexander Freeman in The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Air (366)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Appear (122)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Body (557)  |  Brevity (8)  |  Cause (561)  |  Century (319)  |  Chief (99)  |  Clearness (11)  |  Compare (76)  |  Confused (13)  |  Course (413)  |  Depth (97)  |  Destined (42)  |  Discover (571)  |  Diverse (20)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Escape (85)  |  Explain (334)  |  Express (192)  |  Extreme (78)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Far (158)  |  Follow (389)  |  Forever (111)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Heat (180)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Inaccessible (18)  |  Interior (35)  |  Know (1538)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manifest (21)  |  Mathematical Analysis (23)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Measurable (3)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Order (638)  |  Period (200)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Place (192)  |  Plan (122)  |  Present (630)  |  Preside (3)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Render (96)  |  Same (166)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sense (785)  |  Separate (151)  |  Solid (119)  |  Space (523)  |  Still (614)  |  Study (701)  |  Successive (73)  |  Supplement (7)  |  Tenuity (2)  |  Trace (109)  |  Unchangeable (11)  |  Unite (43)  |  Unity (81)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Witness (57)

Let us ... consider the ovum [egg] as a physical system. Its potentialities are prodigious and one's first impulse is to expect that such vast potentialities would find expression in complexity of structure. But what do we find? The substance is clouded with particles, but these can be centrifuged away leaving it optically structureless but still capable of development.... On the surface of the egg there is a fine membrane, below it fluid of high viscosity, next fluid of relatively low viscosity, and within this the nucleus, which in the resting stage is simply a bag of fluid enclosed in a delicate membrane.... The egg's simplicity is not that of a machine or a crystal, but that of a nebula. Gathered into it are units relatively simple but capable by their combinations of forming a vast number of dynamical systems...
As guest of honour, closing day address (Jun 1928), Sixth Colloid Symposium, Toronto, Canada, 'Living Matter', printed in Harry Boyer Weiser (ed.), Colloid Symposium Monograph (1928), Vol. 6, 15. Quoted in Joseph Needham, Chemical Embryology (1931), Vol. 1, 612-613.
Science quotes on:  |  Capable (174)  |  Cloud (111)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Development (441)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dynamic (16)  |  Dynamical (15)  |  Egg (71)  |  Expect (203)  |  Expression (181)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Fluid (54)  |  Forming (42)  |  Gather (76)  |  High (370)  |  Impulse (52)  |  Low (86)  |  Machine (271)  |  Membrane (21)  |  Nebula (16)  |  Next (238)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Number (710)  |  Ovum (4)  |  Particle (200)  |  Physical (518)  |  Potential (75)  |  Prodigious (20)  |  Simple (426)  |  Stage (152)  |  Still (614)  |  Structure (365)  |  Substance (253)  |  Surface (223)  |  System (545)  |  Vast (188)  |  Viscosity (3)

Life and business are rather simple after all—to make a success of either, you've got to hang on to the knack of putting yourself into the other person's place.
c. 1891. On Wrigley Company web site.
Science quotes on:  |  Business (156)  |  Hang (46)  |  Knack (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Other (2233)  |  Person (366)  |  Place (192)  |  Putting (2)  |  Simple (426)  |  Success (327)  |  Yourself (7)

Many inventions are not suitable for the people at large because of their carelessness. Before a thing can be marketed to the masses, it must be made practically fool-proof. Its operation must be made extremely simple. That is one reason, I think, why the phonograph has been so universally adopted. Even a child can operate it. … Another reason is that people are far more willing to pay for being amused than for anything else.
As quoted from an interview by B.C. Forbes in The American Magazine (Jan 1921), 86.
Science quotes on:  |  Amusement (37)  |  Being (1276)  |  Carelessness (7)  |  Child (333)  |  Fool (121)  |  Foolproof (5)  |  Invention (400)  |  Large (398)  |  Market (23)  |  Marketing (3)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Operation (221)  |  Pay (45)  |  People (1031)  |  Phonograph (8)  |  Proof (304)  |  Reason (766)  |  Simple (426)  |  Success (327)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Why (491)  |  Willing (44)

Mathematicians attach great importance to the elegance of their methods and their results. This is not pure dilettantism. What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration? It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details. But this is exactly what yields great results, in fact the more we see this aggregate clearly and at a single glance, the better we perceive its analogies with other neighboring objects, consequently the more chances we have of divining the possible generalizations. Elegance may produce the feeling of the unforeseen by the unexpected meeting of objects we are not accustomed to bring together; there again it is fruitful, since it thus unveils for us kinships before unrecognized. It is fruitful even when it results only from the contrast between the simplicity of the means and the complexity of the problem set; it makes us then think of the reason for this contrast and very often makes us see that chance is not the reason; that it is to be found in some unexpected law. In a word, the feeling of mathematical elegance is only the satisfaction due to any adaptation of the solution to the needs of our mind, and it is because of this very adaptation that this solution can be for us an instrument. Consequently this esthetic satisfaction is bound up with the economy of thought.
In 'The Future of Mathematics', Monist, 20, 80. Translated from the French by George Bruce Halsted.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Aggregate (24)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Attach (57)  |  Balance (82)  |  Better (493)  |  Both (496)  |  Bound (120)  |  Chance (244)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Comprehend (44)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Demonstration (120)  |  Detail (150)  |  Dilettante (2)  |  Diverse (20)  |  Due (143)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Ensemble (8)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Glance (36)  |  Great (1610)  |  Happy (108)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Meeting (22)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Neighboring (5)  |  Object (438)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Permit (61)  |  Possible (560)  |  Problem (731)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reason (766)  |  Result (700)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  See (1094)  |  Set (400)  |  Single (365)  |  Solution (282)  |  Study And Research In Mathematics (61)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Together (392)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Unforeseen (11)  |  Unity (81)  |  Word (650)  |  Yield (86)

Mathematics is a study which, when we start from its most familiar portions, may be pursued in either of two opposite directions. The more familiar direction is constructive, towards gradually increasing complexity: from integers to fractions, real numbers, complex numbers; from addition and multiplication to differentiation and integration, and on to higher mathematics. The other direction, which is less familiar, proceeds, by analysing, to greater and greater abstractness and logical simplicity; instead of asking what can be defined and deduced from what is assumed to begin with, we ask instead what more general ideas and principles can be found, in terms of which what was our starting-point can be defined or deduced. It is the fact of pursuing this opposite direction that characterises mathematical philosophy as opposed to ordinary mathematics.
In Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1920), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstractness (2)  |  Addition (70)  |  Analyse (4)  |  Assume (43)  |  Characterise (2)  |  Complex Numbers (2)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Constructive (15)  |  Definition (238)  |  Differentiation (28)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fraction (16)  |  Higher Mathematics (7)  |  Idea (881)  |  Integer (12)  |  Integration (21)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Principle (530)  |  Real Number (2)  |  Study (701)

Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not a special, unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of nature.
In The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974, 1979), 147.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Gift (105)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Mark (47)  |  Mind (1377)  |   Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (19)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Reason (766)  |  Rest (287)  |  Say (989)  |  Special (188)  |  Turn (454)  |  Turning (5)  |  Unique (72)  |  Uniqueness (11)  |  Want (504)  |  Whatever (234)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)

Mr. Dalton's aspect and manner were repulsive. There was no gracefulness belonging to him. His voice was harsh and brawling; his gait stiff and awkward; his style of writing and conversation dry and almost crabbed. In person he was tall, bony, and slender. He never could learn to swim: on investigating this circumstance he found that his spec. grav. as a mass was greater than that of water; and he mentioned this in his lectures on natural philosophy in illustration of the capability of different persons for attaining the art of swimming. Independence and simplicity of manner and originality were his best qualities. Though in comparatively humble circumstances he maintained the dignity of the philosophical character. As the first distinct promulgator of the doctrine that the elements of bodies unite in definite proportions to form chemical compounds, he has acquired an undying fame.
Dr John Davy's (brother of Humphry Davy) impressions of Dalton written in c.1830-31 in Malta.
John Davy
Quoted in W. C. Henry, Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton (1854), 217-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquired (77)  |  Art (680)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Awkward (11)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Best (467)  |  Biography (254)  |  Brother (47)  |  Capability (44)  |  Character (259)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Compound (117)  |  Conversation (46)  |  John Dalton (25)  |  Definite (114)  |  Different (595)  |  Dignity (44)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Dry (65)  |  Element (322)  |  Fame (51)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Greater (288)  |  Humble (54)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Impression (118)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Learn (672)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mention (84)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Philosophy (52)  |  Never (1089)  |  Person (366)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Swim (32)  |  Swimming (19)  |  Unite (43)  |  Water (503)  |  Writing (192)

My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?
Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1969), in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.),Les Prix Nobel en 1969 (1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Astonish (39)  |  Astonishment (30)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Correctness (12)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Delight (111)  |  Delightful (18)  |  Down (455)  |  Drive (61)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Formula (102)  |  Frequently (21)  |  Game (104)  |  Govern (66)  |  Government (116)  |  Insatiable (7)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Particle (200)  |  Particle Physics (13)  |  Poem (104)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Regularity (40)  |  Result (700)  |  Rule (307)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Short (200)  |  Simple (426)  |  Sonnet (5)  |  Strict (20)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Universal (198)  |  Universality (22)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writing (192)

My guiding principle was simplicity.
As quoted in Toby Howard, 'Seymour Cray: An Appreciation', Computer World (Feb 1997).
Science quotes on:  |  Guide (107)  |  Principle (530)

Nature becomes fertile only by virtue of laws that oblige matter to organize itself into one of a number of necessarily very simple primitive forms. Because of their very simplicity, these are capable of constituting the basis for increasingly complex bodies, by the addition of organs calculated according to identical laws of possibility.
'Matiere', Dictionnaire Classique d' Histoire Naturelle (1822-31), Vol. 10, 277, trans. J. Mandelbaum. Quoted in Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck (1988), 225.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Addition (70)  |  Basis (180)  |  Become (821)  |  Capable (174)  |  Complex (202)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fertile (30)  |  Form (976)  |  Identical (55)  |  Law (913)  |  Matter (821)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Number (710)  |  Oblige (6)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organize (33)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Simple (426)  |  Virtue (117)

Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
In Isaac Newton and Andrew Motte (trans.), The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1803), Vol. 2, 160. Newton's comment on his Rules of Reasoning Philosophy, Rule 1. Newton’s reference to “Nature does nothing in vain” recalls the axiom from Aristotle, which may be seen as “Natura nihil agit frustra” in the Aristotle Quotes on this web site.
Science quotes on:  |  Affect (19)  |  Cause (561)  |  Less (105)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Please (68)  |  Pomp (2)  |  Serve (64)  |  Superfluous (21)  |  Vain (86)  |  Will (2350)

Nature, as far as we can judge from the plan and scheme of things surrounding us, delights in simplicity and uniformity, and, by general laws applied to particular bodies, produces a vast variety of operations; nor is it at all improbable that an animal body is a system regulated much after the same manner.
In An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals (1751), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Regulate (11)  |  Uniformity (38)

No irrational exaggeration of the claims of Mathematics can ever deprive that part of philosophy of the property of being the natural basis of all logical education, through its simplicity, abstractness, generality, and freedom from disturbance by human passion. There, and there alone, we find in full development the art of reasoning, all the resources of which, from the most spontaneous to the most sublime, are continually applied with far more variety and fruitfulness than elsewhere;… The more abstract portion of mathematics may in fact be regarded as an immense repository of logical resources, ready for use in scientific deduction and co-ordination.
In Auguste Comte and Harriet Martineau (trans.), Positive Philosophy (1854), Vol. 2, 528-529.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Abstractness (2)  |  Apply (170)  |  Basis (180)  |  Claim (154)  |  Coordination (11)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Deprive (14)  |  Development (441)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Education (423)  |  Exaggeration (16)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Fruitful (61)  |  Generality (45)  |  Immense (89)  |  Irrational (16)  |  Logical (57)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Natural (810)  |  Passion (121)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Portion (86)  |  Property (177)  |  Ready (43)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Regard (312)  |  Repository (5)  |  Resource (74)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Sublime (50)  |  Variety (138)

Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in its elf, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Accord (36)  |  Action (342)  |  Almighty (23)  |  Ascribe (18)  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Being (1276)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Combine (58)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Deed (34)  |  Deny (71)  |  Elf (7)  |  Existence (481)  |  Extent (142)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Give (208)  |  God (776)  |  Goodness (26)  |  Guidance (30)  |  Help (116)  |  Himself (461)  |  History (716)  |  Hold (96)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Thought (7)  |  Idea (881)  |  Include (93)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Omnipotent (13)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pass (241)  |  Passing (76)  |  Personal (75)  |  Possible (560)  |  Punishment (14)  |  Responsible (19)  |  Reward (72)  |  Righteousness (6)  |  Solace (7)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Undeveloped (6)  |  Virtue (117)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Nothing could be more admirable than the manner in which for forty years he [Joseph Black] performed this useful and dignified office. His style of lecturing was as nearly perfect as can well be conceived; for it had all the simplicity which is so entirely suited to scientific discourse, while it partook largely of the elegance which characterized all he said or did … I have heard the greatest understandings of the age giving forth their efforts in its most eloquent tongues—have heard the commanding periods of Pitt’s majestic oratory—the vehemence of Fox’s burning declamation—have followed the close-compacted chain of Grant’s pure reasoning—been carried away by the mingled fancy, epigram, and argumentation of Plunket; but I should without hesitation prefer, for mere intellectual gratification (though aware how much of it is derived from association), to be once more allowed the privilege which I in those days enjoyed of being present while the first philosopher of his age was the historian of his own discoveries, and be an eyewitness of those experiments by which he had formerly made them, once more performed with his own hands.
In 'Philosophers of the Time of George III', The Works of Henry, Lord Brougham, F.R.S. (1855), Vol. I, 19-21.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Association (49)  |  Being (1276)  |  Joseph Black (14)  |  Burning (49)  |  Compact (13)  |  Dignified (13)  |  Effort (243)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fancy (50)  |  First (1302)  |  Follow (389)  |  Grant (76)  |  Gratification (22)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Hesitation (19)  |  Historian (59)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Lecture (111)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Office (71)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perform (123)  |  Period (200)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Present (630)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Tongue (44)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Useful (260)  |  Year (963)

Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development in Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through a process of continuous differentiation, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is that in which Progress essentially consists.
'Progress: Its Law and Cause', Westminster Review (1857), 67, 446-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Change (639)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Commerce (23)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Consist (223)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Development (441)  |  Differentiation (28)  |  Down (455)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Find (1014)  |  First (1302)  |  Government (116)  |  Heterogeneity (4)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Homogeneous (17)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Literature (116)  |  Manufacture (30)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Organic (161)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Result (700)  |  Show (353)  |  Simple (426)  |  Society (350)  |  Surface (223)  |  Through (846)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Trace (109)  |  Traceable (5)  |  Transformation (72)

Numbers … were his friends. In the simplest array of digits [Ramanujan] detected wonderful properties: congruences, symmetries and relationships which had escaped the notice of even the outstandingly gifted theoreticians.
In James R. Newman (ed.), 'Commentary on Srinivasa Ramanujan', The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 1, 367.
Science quotes on:  |  Array (5)  |  Congruence (3)  |  Detect (45)  |  Detection (19)  |  Digit (4)  |  Escape (85)  |  Friend (180)  |  Gift (105)  |  Gifted (25)  |  Notice (81)  |  Number (710)  |  Outstanding (16)  |  Property (177)  |  Srinivasa Ramanujan (17)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Wonderful (155)

One feature which will probably most impress the mathematician accustomed to the rapidity and directness secured by the generality of modern methods is the deliberation with which Archimedes approaches the solution of any one of his main problems. Yet this very characteristic, with its incidental effects, is calculated to excite the more admiration because the method suggests the tactics of some great strategist who foresees everything, eliminates everything not immediately conducive to the execution of his plan, masters every position in its order, and then suddenly (when the very elaboration of the scheme has almost obscured, in the mind of the spectator, its ultimate object) strikes the final blow. Thus we read in Archimedes proposition after proposition the bearing of which is not immediately obvious but which we find infallibly used later on; and we are led by such easy stages that the difficulties of the original problem, as presented at the outset, are scarcely appreciated. As Plutarch says: “It is not possible to find in geometry more difficult and troublesome questions, or more simple and lucid explanations.” But it is decidedly a rhetorical exaggeration when Plutarch goes on to say that we are deceived by the easiness of the successive steps into the belief that anyone could have discovered them for himself. On the contrary, the studied simplicity and the perfect finish of the treatises involve at the same time an element of mystery. Though each step depends on the preceding ones, we are left in the dark as to how they were suggested to Archimedes. There is, in fact, much truth in a remark by Wallis to the effect that he seems “as it were of set purpose to have covered up the traces of his investigation as if he had grudged posterity the secret of his method of inquiry while he wished to extort from them assent to his results.” Wallis adds with equal reason that not only Archimedes but nearly all the ancients so hid away from posterity their method of Analysis (though it is certain that they had one) that more modern mathematicians found it easier to invent a new Analysis than to seek out the old.
In The Works of Archimedes (1897), Preface, vi.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Add (42)  |  Admiration (61)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Anyone (38)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Approach (112)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Assent (12)  |  Bear (162)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blow (45)  |  Calculate (58)  |  Certain (557)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Conducive (3)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Cover (40)  |  Dark (145)  |  Deceive (26)  |  Decidedly (2)  |  Deliberation (5)  |  Depend (238)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Discover (571)  |  Easier (53)  |  Easiness (4)  |  Easy (213)  |  Effect (414)  |  Elaboration (11)  |  Element (322)  |  Eliminate (25)  |  Equal (88)  |  Everything (489)  |  Exaggeration (16)  |  Excite (17)  |  Execution (25)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Extort (2)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Feature (49)  |  Final (121)  |  Find (1014)  |  Finish (62)  |  Foresee (22)  |  Generality (45)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grudge (2)  |  Hide (70)  |  Himself (461)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Impress (66)  |  Incidental (15)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Invent (57)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Involve (93)  |  Late (119)  |  Lead (391)  |  Leave (138)  |  Lucid (9)  |  Main (29)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematicians and Anecdotes (141)  |  Method (531)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nearly (137)  |  New (1273)  |  Object (438)  |  Obscure (66)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Old (499)  |  Order (638)  |  Original (61)  |  Outset (7)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Plan (122)  |  Plutarch (16)  |  Position (83)  |  Possible (560)  |  Posterity (29)  |  Precede (23)  |  Present (630)  |  Probably (50)  |  Problem (731)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Question (649)  |  Rapidity (29)  |  Read (308)  |  Reason (766)  |  Remark (28)  |  Result (700)  |  Same (166)  |  Say (989)  |  Scarcely (75)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Secret (216)  |  Secure (23)  |  Secured (18)  |  Seek (218)  |  Set (400)  |  Simple (426)  |  Solution (282)  |  Spectator (11)  |  Stage (152)  |  Step (234)  |  Strike (72)  |  Study (701)  |  Successive (73)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Suggest (38)  |  Tactic (9)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Troublesome (8)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  John Wallis (3)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)

One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.
In letter published in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1881), 420.
Science quotes on:  |  Appear (122)  |  Department (93)  |  Find (1014)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Object (438)  |  Point (584)  |  Point Of View (85)  |  Principal (69)  |  Research (753)  |  Subject (543)  |  Theoretical (27)  |  View (496)

One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:—we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.
The Will to Power (Notes written 1883-1888), book 3, no. 521. Trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale and ed. W. Kaufmann (1968), 282.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrange (33)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Concept (242)  |  Construct (129)  |  Create (245)  |  Enable (122)  |  Existence (481)  |  Form (976)  |  Identical (55)  |  Law (913)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Possible (560)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Real (159)  |  Species (435)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  World (1850)

Our experience up to date justifies us in feeling sure that in Nature is actualized the ideal of mathematical simplicity. It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to understanding nature… In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.
In Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford (10 Jun 1933), 'On the Methods of Theoretical Physics'. Printed in Discovery (Jul 1933), 14, 227. Also quoted in Stefano Zambelli and Donald A. R. George, Nonlinearity, Complexity and Randomness in Economics (2012).
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Certain (557)  |  Concept (242)  |  Connection (171)  |  Construction (114)  |  Conviction (100)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Dream (222)  |  Enable (122)  |  Enabling (7)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Grasp (65)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Justification (52)  |  Key (56)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reality (274)  |  Sense (785)  |  Thought (995)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understanding (527)

Our job in physics is to see things simply, to understand a great many complicated phenomena in a unified way, in terms of a few simple principles.
In Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1989), 'Conceptual Foundations of the Unified Theory of Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions.'
Science quotes on:  |  Complicated (117)  |  Complication (30)  |  Great (1610)  |  Job (86)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Principle (530)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Simple (426)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Unification (11)  |  Way (1214)

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. … In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written “to be continued in our next.”
'On Certain Modern Writers and the institution of the Family' Heretics (1903). Collected in G. K. Chesterton and Dale Ahlquist (ed.), In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton (2011), 82.
Science quotes on:  |  Alphabet (14)  |  Book (413)  |  Continuation (20)  |  Fire (203)  |  Form (976)  |  Literature (116)  |  Merely (315)  |  Metaphysics (53)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Next (238)  |  Novel (35)  |  People (1031)  |  Popular (34)  |  Read (308)  |  Reading (136)  |  Reason (766)  |  Simple (426)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Why (491)  |  Wonder (251)  |  Writing (192)

Perhaps we see equations as simple because they are easily expressed in terms of mathematical notation already invented at an earlier stage of development of the science, and thus what appears to us as elegance of description really reflects the interconnectedness of Nature's laws at different levels.
Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1969), in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.),Les Prix Nobel en 1969 (1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Description (89)  |  Development (441)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Early (196)  |  Ease (40)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Equation (138)  |  Express (192)  |  Expression (181)  |  Invention (400)  |  Law (913)  |  Level (69)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Notation (28)  |  Reflection (93)  |  See (1094)  |  Simple (426)  |  Stage (152)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)

Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science. (1931)
In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Development (441)  |  Matter (821)  |  Other (2233)  |  Owing (39)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Reach (286)  |  State (505)  |  Subject (543)

Prejudice for regularity and simplicity is a source of error that has only too often infected philosophy.
'De litteraria expeditione per pontificiam ditionem', Accademia della scienze, Bologna, Commentarii, 1757, 4, 353, 361. Trans. J. L. Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables and Other Quantitative Science around 1800 (1993), 227.
Science quotes on:  |  Error (339)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Regularity (40)

Progress can…be defined as man’s ability to complicate simplicity.
In Fatu-Hiva, (1974), 262. Slightly paraphrased as, “Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity,” by Richard R. Lineman when reviewing the book Fatu-Hiva, in 'Two-Way Ticket to Paradise', New York Times (29 Aug 1975), 58.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Complication (30)  |  Man (2252)  |  Progress (492)

Radioimmunoassay (RIA) is simple in principle.
'Radioimmunoassay: A Probe for the Fine Structure of Biologic Systems', Nobel Lecture, 1977. In Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine 1971-1980 (1992), 450.
Science quotes on:  |  Principle (530)  |  Simple (426)

Rutherford was as straightforward and unpretentious as a physicist as he was elsewhere in life, and that no doubt was one of the secrets of his success. “I was always a believer in simplicity, being a simple man myself,” he said. If a principle of physics could not be explained to a barmaid, he insisted, the problem was with the principle, not the barmaid.
In Great Physicists (2001), 328.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Believer (26)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Explain (334)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Myself (211)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Sir Ernest Rutherford (55)  |  Secret (216)  |  Simple (426)  |  Straightforward (10)  |  Success (327)

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.
The Pursuit of Simplicity (1980), 17.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Order (638)  |  Thought (995)

Science has thus, most unexpectedly, placed in our hands a new power of great but unknown energy. It does not wake the winds from their caverns; nor give wings to water by the urgency of heat; nor drive to exhaustion the muscular power of animals; nor operate by complicated mechanism; nor summon any other form of gravitating force, but, by the simplest means—the mere contact of metallic surfaces of small extent, with feeble chemical agents, a power everywhere diffused through nature, but generally concealed from our senses, is mysteriously evolved, and by circulation in insulated wires, it is still more mysteriously augmented, a thousand and a thousand fold, until it breaks forth with incredible energy.
Comment upon 'The Notice of the Electro-Magnetic Machine of Mr. Thomas Davenport, of Brandon, near Rutland, Vermont, U.S.', The Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, & Chemistry; and Guardian of Experimental Science (1838), 2, 263.
Science quotes on:  |  Agent (73)  |  Animal (651)  |  Augment (12)  |  Augmentation (4)  |  Break (109)  |  Cavern (9)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Circulation (27)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Concealed (25)  |  Concealment (10)  |  Contact (66)  |  Dynamo (4)  |  Electromagnetism (19)  |  Energy (373)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Extent (142)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Great (1610)  |  Heat (180)  |  Incredible (43)  |  Insulation (2)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Mere (86)  |  Metal (88)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Muscle (47)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Operation (221)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Sense (785)  |  Small (489)  |  Still (614)  |  Summon (11)  |  Surface (223)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Through (846)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Urgency (13)  |  Water (503)  |  Wind (141)  |  Wing (79)  |  Wire (36)

Science proceeds by exposing the true simplicity that underlies perceived complexity. Scientists are hewers of simplicity from complexity.
From transcript of debate (Apr 1998) with William Lane Craig at the Carter Presidential Center, Atlanta, Georgia, 'What is the evidence for/against the existence of God?' on reasonablefaith.org website.
Science quotes on:  |  Complexity (121)  |  Expose (28)  |  Perceive (46)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Scientist (881)  |  True (239)  |  Underly (3)

Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature.
In ‘Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge’, Scientific American (Jul 1992), 119. Cited in Gerald L. Schroeder The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom (2009), 18 & 220.
Science quotes on:  |  God (776)  |  Issue (46)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Possible (560)  |  Science And Religion (337)

Scientific progress is the discovery of a more and more comprehensive simplicity... The previous successes give us confidence in the future of science: we become more and more conscious of the fact that the universe is cognizable.
In O. Godart and M. Heller (eds.), Cosmology of Lemaitre (1985), 162.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Comprehensive (29)  |  Confidence (75)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Future (467)  |  More (2558)  |  Progress (492)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Progress (14)  |  Success (327)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Universe (900)

Simple molecules combine to make powerful chemicals. Simple cells combine to make powerful life-forms. Simple electronics combine to make powerful computers. Logically, all things are created by a combination of simpler, less capable components. Therefore, a supreme being must be in our future, not our origin. What if “God” is the consciousness that will be created when enough of us are connected by the Internet?!!
Thoughts by character Dogbert in Dilbert cartoon strip (11 Feb 1996).
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Capability (44)  |  Capable (174)  |  Cell (146)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Combination (150)  |  Combine (58)  |  Component (51)  |  Computer (131)  |  Connect (126)  |  Connection (171)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Creation (350)  |  Electronics (21)  |  Enough (341)  |  Form (976)  |  Future (467)  |  God (776)  |  Internet (24)  |  Life (1870)  |  Life-Form (6)  |  Logic (311)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Must (1525)  |  Origin (250)  |  Power (771)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Simple (426)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Supreme Being (8)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Will (2350)

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Prerequisite (9)  |  Reliability (18)

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Sophistication (12)  |  Ultimate (152)

Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, “an old and trained engineer,” and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else.
In G.K. Chesterton, 'The Maxims of Maxim', Daily News (25 Feb 1905). Collected in G. K. Chesterton and Dale Ahlquist (ed.), In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton (2011), 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (254)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Danger (127)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Else (4)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Everything (489)  |  Example (98)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Expression (181)  |  Full (68)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Hearty (3)  |  Himself (461)  |  Honorable (14)  |  Honour (58)  |  Indemnification (2)  |  Inhuman (4)  |  Little (717)  |  Logic (311)  |  Man (2252)  |  Sir Hiram Maxim (4)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Old (499)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Real (159)  |  Required (108)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Romance (18)  |  Romantic (13)  |  Romanticism (5)  |  Superhuman (6)  |  Train (118)  |  Training (92)  |  Typical (16)  |  Vague (50)  |  Vagueness (15)

Sometimes one has got to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.
In A Mathematician's Apology (1940, 2012), 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Difficult (263)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Say (989)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  Thing (1914)

Strive for design simplicity. You never have to fix anything you leave out.
In J.S. "Torch" Lewis, 'Lear the Legend', Aviation Week & Space Technology (2 Jul 2001), 155 Supplement, No 1, 116.
Science quotes on:  |  Design (203)  |  Fix (34)  |  Leave (138)  |  Never (1089)  |  Striving (3)

Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity.
In Catastrophe Theory: selected papers, 1972-1977 (1977).
Science quotes on:  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Creativity (84)  |  Mastery (36)  |  Skill (116)

That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable. Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion due to our ignorance. This is encouraging, for, if the world in which we live were as complicated as some of our friends would have us believe we might well despair that biology could ever become an exact science.
The Physical Basis of Heredity (1919), 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Aspect (129)  |  Become (821)  |  Biology (232)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Complication (30)  |  Despair (40)  |  Due (143)  |  Encouraging (12)  |  Exact (75)  |  Friend (180)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Heredity (62)  |  Hope (321)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Inscrutability (2)  |  Live (650)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Simple (426)  |  Support (151)  |  Turn (454)  |  World (1850)

The advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth; it is seen in the unfolding of every single organism on its surface, and in the multiplication of kinds of organisms; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggregate of races; it is seen in the evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economical organization; and it is seen in the evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of yesterday, that in which Progress essentially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Activity (218)  |  Advance (298)  |  Advancement (63)  |  Aggregate (24)  |  Aggregation (6)  |  Alike (60)  |  Back (395)  |  Change (639)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Climate (102)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Consist (223)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Daily (91)  |  Daily Life (18)  |  Differentiation (28)  |  Early (196)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Economy (59)  |  Endless (60)  |  Environment (239)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Fathom (15)  |  Geology (240)  |  Heterogeneity (4)  |  Homogeneity (9)  |  Homogeneous (17)  |  Human (1512)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Individual (420)  |  Induction (81)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Novelty (31)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Past (355)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Process (439)  |  Product (166)  |  Progress (492)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Remoteness (9)  |  Respect (212)  |  Simple (426)  |  Single (365)  |  Society (350)  |  Succession (80)  |  Successive (73)  |  Surface (223)  |  Through (846)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Unfolding (16)  |  Universe (900)  |  Way (1214)  |  Yesterday (37)

The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.
Science and Hypothesis, translated by William John Greenstreet, (1905, 1952), xxiv.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Dogmatist (4)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.
In The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 (1920), 163.
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Apt (9)  |  Complex (202)  |  Distrust (11)  |  Error (339)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fall (243)  |  Goal (155)  |  Guiding (3)  |  Life (1870)  |  Motto (29)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Philosophy (52)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Quest (39)  |  Seek (218)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplest (10)  |  Thinking (425)

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Puzzle (46)

The assumption we have made … is that marriages and the union of gametes occur at random. The validity of this assumption may now be examined. “Random mating” obviously does not mean promiscuity; it simply means, as already explained above, that in the choice of mates for marriage there is neither preference for nor aversion to the union of persons similar or dissimilar with respect to a given trait or gene. Not all gentlemen prefer blondes or brunettes. Since so few people know what their blood type is, it is even safer to say that the chances of mates being similar or dissimilar in blood type are determined simply by the incidence of these blood types in a given Mendelian population.
[Co-author with Theodosius Dobzhansky]
In Radiation, Genes and Man (1960), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Author (175)  |  Aversion (9)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blood (144)  |  Chance (244)  |  Choice (114)  |  Determined (9)  |  Dissimilar (6)  |  Examined (3)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Gamete (5)  |  Gene (105)  |  Gentleman (26)  |  Incidence (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Mate (7)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Means (587)  |  Occur (151)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Population (115)  |  Preference (28)  |  Promiscuity (3)  |  Random (42)  |  Respect (212)  |  Safety (58)  |  Say (989)  |  Similar (36)  |  Trait (23)  |  Type (171)  |  Union (52)  |  Validity (50)

The beauty of physics lies in the extent which seemingly complex and unrelated phenomena can be explained and correlated through a high level of abstraction by a set of laws which are amazing in their simplicity.
In Principles of Electrodynamics (1972, 1987), 105.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Amazing (35)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Complex (202)  |  Correlation (19)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Extent (142)  |  High (370)  |  Law (913)  |  Lie (370)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Seemingly (28)  |  Set (400)  |  Through (846)  |  Unrelated (6)

The construction of an analogue computer or a supersonic airplane is simple when compared to the mixture of space and evolutionary eons represented by a cell.
In 'The Wisdom of Wilderness', Life (22 Dec 1967), 63, No. 25, 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Airplane (43)  |  Analog (4)  |  Cell (146)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Computer (131)  |  Construction (114)  |  Eon (12)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Mixture (44)  |  Represent (157)  |  Simple (426)  |  Space (523)  |  Supersonic (4)

The first [quality] to be named must always be the power of attention, of giving one's whole mind to the patient without the interposition of anything of oneself. It sounds simple but only the very greatest doctors ever fully attain it. … The second thing to be striven for is intuition. This sounds an impossibility, for who can control that small quiet monitor? But intuition is only interference from experience stored and not actively recalled. … The last aptitude I shall mention that must be attained by the good physician is that of handling the sick man's mind.
In 'Art and Science in Medicine', The Collected Papers of Wilfred Trotter, FRS (1941), 98.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Aptitude (19)  |  Attain (126)  |  Attainment (48)  |  Attention (196)  |  Control (182)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Good (906)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Handling (7)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Interference (22)  |  Interposition (2)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Last (425)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Monitor (10)  |  Must (1525)  |  Oneself (33)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Power (771)  |  Quality (139)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Recall (11)  |  Sick (83)  |  Sickness (26)  |  Simple (426)  |  Small (489)  |  Sound (187)  |  Store (49)  |  Strive (53)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Whole (756)

The general disposition of the land [in the Periodic Kingdom] is one of metals in the west, giving way, as you travel eastward, to a varied landscape of nonmetals, which terminates in largely inert elements at the eastern shoreline. To the south of the mainland, there is an offshore island, which we shall call the Southern Island. It consists entirely of metals of subtly modulated personality. North of the mainland, situated rather like Iceland off the northwestern edge of Europe, lies a single, isolated region-hydrogen. This simple but gifted element is an essential outpost of the kingdom, for despite its simplicity it is rich in chemical personality. It is also the most abundant element in the universe and the fuel of the stars.
In The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey Into the Land of the Chemical Elements (1995), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundant (23)  |  Call (781)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Consist (223)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Edge (51)  |  Element (322)  |  Essential (210)  |  Fuel (39)  |  General (521)  |  Gift (105)  |  Gifted (25)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Inert (14)  |  Island (49)  |  Kingdom (80)  |  Landscape (46)  |  Lie (370)  |  Metal (88)  |  Most (1728)  |  Outpost (2)  |  Periodic Table (19)  |  Personality (66)  |  Rich (66)  |  Simple (426)  |  Single (365)  |  South (39)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Travel (125)  |  Universe (900)  |  Varied (6)  |  Way (1214)

The genius of Laplace was a perfect sledge hammer in bursting purely mathematical obstacles; but, like that useful instrument, it gave neither finish nor beauty to the results. In truth, in truism if the reader please, Laplace was neither Lagrange nor Euler, as every student is made to feel. The second is power and symmetry, the third power and simplicity; the first is power without either symmetry or simplicity. But, nevertheless, Laplace never attempted investigation of a subject without leaving upon it the marks of difficulties conquered: sometimes clumsily, sometimes indirectly, always without minuteness of design or arrangement of detail; but still, his end is obtained and the difficulty is conquered.
In 'Review of “Théorie Analytique des Probabilites” par M. le Marquis de Laplace, 3eme edition. Paris. 1820', Dublin Review (1837), 2, 348.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Clumsiness (2)  |  Conquer (39)  |  Design (203)  |  Detail (150)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  End (603)  |  Leonhard Euler (35)  |  Feel (371)  |  Finish (62)  |  First (1302)  |  Genius (301)  |  Hammer (26)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Pierre-Simon Laplace (63)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Minuteness (8)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Obstacle (42)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Please (68)  |  Power (771)  |  Purely (111)  |  Result (700)  |  Sledge Hammer (3)  |  Still (614)  |  Student (317)  |  Subject (543)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Useful (260)

The geometrical problems and theorems of the Greeks always refer to definite, oftentimes to rather complicated figures. Now frequently the points and lines of such a figure may assume very many different relative positions; each of these possible cases is then considered separately. On the contrary, present day mathematicians generate their figures one from another, and are accustomed to consider them subject to variation; in this manner they unite the various cases and combine them as much as possible by employing negative and imaginary magnitudes. For example, the problems which Apollonius treats in his two books De sectione rationis, are solved today by means of a single, universally applicable construction; Apollonius, on the contrary, separates it into more than eighty different cases varying only in position. Thus, as Hermann Hankel has fittingly remarked, the ancient geometry sacrifices to a seeming simplicity the true simplicity which consists in the unity of principles; it attained a trivial sensual presentability at the cost of the recognition of the relations of geometric forms in all their changes and in all the variations of their sensually presentable positions.
In 'Die Synthetische Geometrie im Altertum und in der Neuzeit', Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung (1902), 2, 346-347. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 112. The spelling of the first “Apollonius” has been corrected from “Appolonius” in the original English text. From the original German, “Die geometrischen Probleme und Sätze der Griechen beziehen sich allemal auf bestimmte, oft recht komplizierte Figuren. Nun können aber die Punkte und Linien einer solchen Figur häufig sehr verschiedene Lagen zu einander annehmen; jeder dieser möglichen Fälle wird alsdann für sich besonders erörtert. Dagegen lassen die heutigen Mathematiker ihre Figuren aus einander entstehen und sind gewohnt, sie als veränderlich zu betrachten; sie vereinigen so die speziellen Fälle und fassen sie möglichst zusammen unter Benutzung auch negativer und imaginärer Gröfsen. Das Problem z. B., welches Apollonius in seinen zwei Büchern de sectione rationis behandelt, löst man heutzutage durch eine einzige, allgemein anwendbare Konstruktion; Apollonius selber dagegen zerlegt es in mehr als 80 nur durch die Lage verschiedene Fälle. So opfert, wie Hermann Hankel treffend bemerkt, die antike Geometrie einer scheinbaren Einfachheit die wahre, in der Einheit der Prinzipien bestehende; sie erreicht eine triviale sinnliche Anschaulichkeit auf Kosten der Erkenntnis vom Zusammenhang geometrischer Gestalten in aller Wechsel und in aller Veränderlichkeit ihrer sinnlich vorstellbaren Lage.”
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Apollonius (6)  |  Applicable (31)  |  Attain (126)  |  Book (413)  |  Case (102)  |  Change (639)  |  Combine (58)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Consider (428)  |  Consist (223)  |  Construction (114)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Cost (94)  |  Definite (114)  |  Different (595)  |  Figure (162)  |  Form (976)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Greek (109)  |  Hermann Hankel (16)  |  Imaginary Number (6)  |  Line (100)  |  Magnitude (88)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  More (2558)  |  Negative (66)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Possible (560)  |  Present (630)  |  Principle (530)  |  Problem (731)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Relation (166)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Sense (785)  |  Separate (151)  |  Single (365)  |  Subject (543)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Today (321)  |  Trivial (59)  |  Two (936)  |  Unite (43)  |  Unity (81)  |  Universal (198)  |  Variation (93)  |  Various (205)

The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science “more geometrico.”
In Space,Time, Matter, translated by Henry Leopold Brose (1952), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Belief (615)  |  Carry (130)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Church (64)  |  Classical (49)  |  Cling (6)  |  Crumble (5)  |  Despotism (2)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Expression (181)  |  Fixed (17)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Greek (109)  |  Grow (247)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Later (18)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Matter (821)  |  Middle Age (19)  |  Middle Ages (12)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Rock (176)  |  Scepticism (17)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Seem (150)  |  Skepticism (31)  |  Sovereignty (6)  |  Space (523)  |  Subject (543)  |  Subject-Matter (8)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Sweep (22)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wave (112)

The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification—the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.
Karl Raimund Popper and William Warren Bartley (ed.), The Open Universe: an Argument for Indeterminism (1991), 44. by Karl Raimund Popper, William Warren Bartley - Science - 1991
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Art (680)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Become (821)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Depend (238)  |  Describe (132)  |  Description (89)  |  Discern (35)  |  Discerning (16)  |  Happen (282)  |  Method (531)  |  Omit (12)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Test (221)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Truth (1109)  |  World (1850)

The other book you may have heard of and perhaps read, but it is not one perusal which will enable any man to appreciate it. I have read it through five or six times, each time with increasing admiration. It will live as long as the ‘Principia’ of Newton. It shows that nature is, as I before remarked to you, a study that yields to none in grandeur and immensity. The cycles of astronomy or even the periods of geology will alone enable us to appreciate the vast depths of time we have to contemplate in the endeavour to understand the slow growth of life upon the earth. The most intricate effects of the law of gravitation, the mutual disturbances of all the bodies of the solar system, are simplicity itself compared with the intricate relations and complicated struggle which have determined what forms of life shall exist and in what proportions. Mr. Darwin has given the world a new science, and his name should, in my opinion, stand above that of every philosopher of ancient or modem times. The force of admiration can no further go!!!
Letter to George Silk (1 Sep 1860), in My Life (1905), Vol. I, 372-373.
Science quotes on:  |  Admiration (61)  |  Alone (324)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Book (413)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Cycle (42)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Depth (97)  |  Disturbance (34)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Effect (414)  |  Enable (122)  |  Endeavour (63)  |  Exist (458)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  Geology (240)  |  Grandeur (35)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Growth (200)  |  Immensity (30)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Gravitation (23)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  New (1273)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Perusal (2)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Principia (14)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Read (308)  |  Show (353)  |  Slow (108)  |  Solar (8)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Stand (284)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Study (701)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Vast (188)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Yield (86)

The path to understanding is to peel away appearances in order to expose the core, which is always of unsurpassed simplicity.
From Preface, The Creation Revisited, (1992), vii.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Core (20)  |  Expose (28)  |  Path (159)  |  Peel (6)  |  Understand (648)

The plan followed by nature in producing animals clearly comprises a predominant prime cause. This endows animal life with the power to make organization gradually more complex, and to bring increasing complexity and perfection not only to the total organization but also to each individual apparatus when it comes to be established by animal life. This progressive complication of organisms was in effect accomplished by the said principal cause in all existing animals. Occasionally a foreign, accidental, and therefore variable cause has interfered with the execution of the plan, without, however, destroying it. This has created gaps in the series, in the form either of terminal branches that depart from the series in several points and alter its simplicity, or of anomalies observable in specific apparatuses of various organisms.
Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres (1815-22), Vol. 1, 133. In Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France 1790-1830, trans. J. Mandelbaum (1988), 189.
Science quotes on:  |  Accidental (31)  |  Alter (64)  |  Animal (651)  |  Animal Life (21)  |  Anomaly (11)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Cause (561)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Complication (30)  |  Creation (350)  |  Effect (414)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Execution (25)  |  Follow (389)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Form (976)  |  Gap (36)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Individual (420)  |  Life (1870)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observable (21)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Plan (122)  |  Point (584)  |  Power (771)  |  Principal (69)  |  Series (153)  |  Specific (98)  |  Total (95)  |  Variable (37)  |  Variation (93)  |  Various (205)

The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of this universe, it could state the respective position, motions, and general affects of all these entities at any time in the past or future. Physical astronomy, the branch of knowledge that does the greatest honor to the human mind, gives us an idea, albeit imperfect, of what such an intelligence would be. The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motions up to a certain point; and in order to determine the state of the system of these great bodies in past or future centuries, it suffices for the mathematician that their position and their velocity be given by observation for any moment in time. Man owes that advantage to the power of the instrument he employs, and to the small number of relations that it embraces in its calculations. But ignorance of the different causes involved in the production of events, as well as their complexity, taken together with the imperfection of analysis, prevents our reaching the same certainty about the vast majority of phenomena. Thus there are things that are uncertain for us, things more or less probable, and we seek to compensate for the impossibility of knowing them by determining their different degrees of likelihood. So it was that we owe to the weakness of the human mind one of the most delicate and ingenious of mathematical theories, the science of chance or probability.
'Recherches, 1º, sur l'Intégration des Équations Différentielles aux Différences Finies, et sur leur Usage dans la Théorie des Hasards' (1773, published 1776). In Oeuvres complètes de Laplace, 14 Vols. (1843-1912), Vol. 8, 144-5, trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 26.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Branch (155)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Cause (561)  |  Celestial (53)  |  Certain (557)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Chance (244)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Degree (277)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Determine (152)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Distance (171)  |  Embrace (47)  |  Employ (115)  |  Event (222)  |  Evidently (26)  |  Follow (389)  |  Future (467)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Honor (57)  |  Honour (58)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Ingenious (55)  |  Instant (46)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Involved (90)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Likelihood (10)  |  Majority (68)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Moment (260)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Move (223)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Number (710)  |  Observation (593)  |  Order (638)  |  Owe (71)  |  Past (355)  |  Permit (61)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physical (518)  |  Point (584)  |  Position (83)  |  Power (771)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Present (630)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Probability (135)  |  Production (190)  |  Relation (166)  |  Seek (218)  |  Small (489)  |  State (505)  |  System (545)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Together (392)  |  Uncertain (45)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Universe (900)  |  Vast (188)  |  Velocity (51)  |  Weakness (50)

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.
In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1862), 382.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Cause (561)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Known (453)  |  Last (425)  |  Law (913)  |  Method (531)  |  Mode (43)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Process (439)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revelation (51)  |  Simple (426)  |  Success (327)  |  Successful (134)  |  System (545)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Want (504)  |  Weariness (6)  |  Will (2350)

The progress of synthesis, or the building up of natural materials from their constituent elements, proceeds apace. Even some of the simpler albuminoids, a class of substances of great importance in the life process, have recently been artificially prepared. ... Innumerable entirely new compounds have been produced in the last century. The artificial dye-stuffs, prepared from materials occurring in coal-tar, make the natural colours blush. Saccharin, which is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, is a purely artificial substance. New explosives, drugs, alloys, photographic substances, essences, scents, solvents, and detergents are being poured out in a continuous stream.
In Matter and Energy (1912), 45-46.
Science quotes on:  |  Alloy (4)  |  Artificial (38)  |  Being (1276)  |  Blush (3)  |  Building (158)  |  Century (319)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Class (168)  |  Coal (64)  |  Coal Tar (2)  |  Color (155)  |  Compound (117)  |  Constituent (47)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Detergent (3)  |  Drug (61)  |  Dye (10)  |  Element (322)  |  Entirely (36)  |  Essence (85)  |  Explosive (24)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Importance (299)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Material (366)  |  Natural (810)  |  New (1273)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Photograph (23)  |  Pour (9)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Proceeding (38)  |  Process (439)  |  Produced (187)  |  Production (190)  |  Progress (492)  |  Purely (111)  |  Recent (78)  |  Saccharin (2)  |  Scent (7)  |  Solvent (7)  |  Stream (83)  |  Substance (253)  |  Sugar (26)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Time (1911)

The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty. It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.
From Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1939), 59 122. In A. Pais, 'Playing With Equations, the Dirac Way'. Behram N. Kursunoglu (Ed.) and Eugene Paul Wigner (Ed.), Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Consideration (143)  |  Effort (243)  |  Express (192)  |  Form (976)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Happen (282)  |  Law (913)  |  Mathematical Beauty (19)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Research (753)  |  Way (1214)

The simplicity of nature is not to be measured by that of our conceptions. Infinitely varied in its effects, nature is simple only in its causes, and its economy consists in producing a great number of phenomena, often very complicated, by means of a small number of general laws.
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1825), trans. Andrew I. Dale (1995), book 1, chap. 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Cause (561)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Conception (160)  |  Consist (223)  |  Economy (59)  |  Effect (414)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Law (913)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Number (710)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Simple (426)  |  Small (489)  |  Variation (93)

The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.
From Fidel Castro (1968).
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Ask (420)  |  Birth (154)  |  Concept (242)  |  Family (101)  |  Field (378)  |  Growth (200)  |  Imperialism (2)  |  Incredible (43)  |  Interest (416)  |  Making (300)  |  People (1031)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Population (115)  |  Population Growth (9)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Problem (731)  |  Quintessence (4)  |  Resort (8)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Science And Technology (46)  |  Short (200)  |  Society (350)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Sum (103)  |  Suppression (9)  |  Technology (281)  |  Way (1214)  |  Women (9)

The techniques and criteria of religion and science are so extraordinarily different. Science seeks simplicity publicly and encourages the overthrow of authority; religion accepts complexity privately and encourages deference to authority.
In 'Religion - The Antithesis to Science', Chemistry & Industry (Feb 1997).
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Authority (99)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Criterion (28)  |  Deference (2)  |  Different (595)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Overthrow (5)  |  Publicly (3)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Seek (218)  |  Technique (84)

The Unexpected stalks a farm in big boots like a vagrant bent on havoc. Not every farmer is an inventor, but the good ones have the seeds of invention within them. Economy and efficiency move their relentless tinkering and yet the real motive often seems to be aesthetic. The mind that first designed a cutter bar is not far different from a mind that can take the intractable steel of an outsized sickle blade and make it hum in the end. The question is how to reduce the simplicity that constitutes a problem (“It's simple; it’s broke.”) to the greater simplicity that constitutes a solution.
In Making Hay (2003), 33-34.
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Aestheticism (2)  |  Blade (11)  |  Boot (5)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Cutter (2)  |  Design (203)  |  Different (595)  |  Economy (59)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  End (603)  |  Farm (28)  |  Farmer (35)  |  First (1302)  |  Good (906)  |  Greater (288)  |  Havoc (7)  |  Hum (4)  |  Intractable (3)  |  Invention (400)  |  Inventor (79)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Motive (62)  |  Move (223)  |  Problem (731)  |  Question (649)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Relentless (9)  |  Seed (97)  |  Simple (426)  |  Solution (282)  |  Stalk (6)  |  Steel (23)  |  Tinkering (6)  |  Unexpected (55)  |  Vagrant (5)

The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found.
In Floyd Merrell, Unthinking Thinking: Jorge Luis Borges, Mathematics, and the New Physics (1991), 156.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Accident (92)  |  Accidental (31)  |  Artifice (4)  |  Blame (31)  |  Call (781)  |  Completely (137)  |  Completeness (19)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Complication (30)  |  Devising (7)  |  Domain (72)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Permit (61)  |  Simple (426)  |  Something (718)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  World (1850)

There is synthesis when, in combining therein judgments that are made known to us from simpler relations, one deduces judgments from them relative to more complicated relations.
There is analysis when from a complicated truth one deduces more simple truths.
In James R. Hofmann, André-Marie Ampère (1996), 158. Cites Académie des Sciences Ampère Archives, lecture notes, box 261.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Complication (30)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Known (453)  |  More (2558)  |  Relation (166)  |  Simple (426)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Truth (1109)

There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was “style” and a result obtained with simple equipment was more elegant than one obtained with complicated apparatus, just as a mathematical proof derived neatly was better than one involving laborious calculations. Rutherford's first disintegration experiment, and Chadwick's discovery of the neutron had a “style” that is different from that of experiments made with giant accelerators.
From 'Physics in a University Laboratory Before and After World War II', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, (1975), 342, 463. As cited in Alan McComas, Galvani's Spark: The Story of the Nerve Impulse (2011), 107.
Science quotes on:  |  Accelerator (11)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Best (467)  |  Better (493)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Sir James Chadwick (9)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Derivation (15)  |  Different (595)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Disintegration (8)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Elegant (37)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Feeling (259)  |  First (1302)  |  Giant (73)  |  Labor (200)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Neatness (6)  |  Neutron (23)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Obtaining (5)  |  Proof (304)  |  Result (700)  |  Sir Ernest Rutherford (55)  |  Simple (426)  |  Style (24)  |  Think (1122)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)

Therefore, these [geotectonic] models cannot be expected to assume that the deeper parts of the earth’s crust were put together and built in a simpler way. The myth about the increasing simplicity with depth results from a general pre-scientific trend according to which the unknown or little known has to be considered simpler than the known. Many examples of this myth occur in the history of geology as, for instance, the development of views on the nature of the seafloor from the past to the present.
In 'Stockwerktektonik und Madelle van Esteinsdifferentiation', in Geotektonisches Symposium zu Ehren von Hans Stille, als Festschrift zur Vollendung seines 80, Lebensjahres (1956), 17, trans. Albert V. and Marguerite Carozzi.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crust (43)  |  Depth (97)  |  Development (441)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Example (98)  |  Expect (203)  |  General (521)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Known (453)  |  Little (717)  |  Model (106)  |  Myth (58)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occur (151)  |  Past (355)  |  Plate Tectonics (22)  |  Pre-Scientific (5)  |  Present (630)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seafloor (2)  |  Together (392)  |  Trend (23)  |  Unknown (195)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)

These Disciplines [mathematics] serve to inure and corroborate the Mind to a constant Diligence in Study; to undergo the Trouble of an attentive Meditation, and cheerfully contend with such Difficulties as lie in the Way. They wholly deliver us from a credulous Simplicity, most strongly fortify us against the Vanity of Scepticism, effectually restrain from a rash Presumption, most easily incline us to a due Assent, perfectly subject us to the Government of right Reason, and inspire us with Resolution to wrestle against the unjust Tyranny of false Prejudices. If the Fancy be unstable and fluctuating, it is to be poized by this Ballast, and steadied by this Anchor, if the Wit be blunt it is sharpened upon this Whetstone; if luxuriant it is pared by this Knife; if headstrong it is restrained by this Bridle; and if dull it is rouzed by this Spur. The Steps are guided by no Lamp more clearly through the dark Mazes of Nature, by no Thread more surely through the intricate Labyrinths of Philosophy, nor lastly is the Bottom of Truth sounded more happily by any other Line. I will not mention how plentiful a Stock of Knowledge the Mind is furnished from these, with what wholesome Food it is nourished, and what sincere Pleasure it enjoys. But if I speak farther, I shall neither be the only Person, nor the first, who affirms it; that while the Mind is abstracted and elevated from sensible Matter, distinctly views pure Forms, conceives the Beauty of Ideas, and investigates the Harmony of Proportions; the Manners themselves are sensibly corrected and improved, the Affections composed and rectified, the Fancy calmed and settled, and the Understanding raised and excited to more divine Contemplations. All which I might defend by Authority, and confirm by the Suffrages of the greatest Philosophers.
Prefatory Oration in Mathematical Lectures (1734), xxxi.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Affection (44)  |  Against (332)  |  Anchor (10)  |  Assent (12)  |  Attentive (15)  |  Authority (99)  |  Ballast (2)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Calm (32)  |  Chemical Biodynamics (2)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Constant (148)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Credulous (9)  |  Dark (145)  |  Deliver (30)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Diligence (22)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Divine (112)  |  Due (143)  |  Dull (58)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Farther (51)  |  First (1302)  |  Food (213)  |  Form (976)  |  Fortify (4)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Government (116)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Idea (881)  |  Intricate (29)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Knife (24)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Labyrinth (12)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Lie (370)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Matter (821)  |  Maze (11)  |  Meditation (19)  |  Mention (84)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Person (366)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Pleasure (191)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Presumption (15)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Pure (299)  |  Rash (15)  |  Reason (766)  |  Rectified (4)  |  Resolution (24)  |  Right (473)  |  Scepticism (17)  |  Settled (34)  |  Sharpen (22)  |  Sound (187)  |  Speak (240)  |  Spur (4)  |  Step (234)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Suffrage (4)  |  Surely (101)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thread (36)  |  Through (846)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Tyranny (15)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Value Of Mathematics (60)  |  Vanity (20)  |  View (496)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whetstone (2)  |  Wholesome (12)  |  Wholly (88)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wit (61)

These sciences, Geometry, Theoretical Arithmetic and Algebra, have no principles besides definitions and axioms, and no process of proof but deduction; this process, however, assuming a most remarkable character; and exhibiting a combination of simplicity and complexity, of rigour and generality, quite unparalleled in other subjects.
In The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1858), Part 1, Bk. 2, chap. 1, sect. 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Algebra (117)  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Assume (43)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Character (259)  |  Combination (150)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Definition (238)  |  Exhibit (21)  |  Generality (45)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Other (2233)  |  Principle (530)  |  Process (439)  |  Proof (304)  |  Remarkable (50)  |  Rigour (21)  |  Subject (543)  |  Theoretical (27)  |  Unparalleled (3)

This whole theory of electrostatics constitutes a group of abstract ideas and general propositions, formulated in the clear and precise language of geometry and algebra, and connected with one another by the rules of strict logic. This whole fully satisfies the reason of a French physicist and his taste for clarity, simplicity and order. The same does not hold for the Englishman. These abstract notions of material points, force, line of force, and equipotential surface do not satisfy his need to imagine concrete, material, visible, and tangible things. 'So long as we cling to this mode of representation,' says an English physicist, 'we cannot form a mental representation of the phenomena which are really happening.' It is to satisfy the need that he goes and creates a model.
The French or German physicist conceives, in the space separating two conductors, abstract lines of force having no thickness or real existence; the English physicist materializes these lines and thickens them to the dimensions of a tube which he will fill with vulcanised rubber. In place of a family of lines of ideal forces, conceivable only by reason, he will have a bundle of elastic strings, visible and tangible, firmly glued at both ends to the surfaces of the two conductors, and, when stretched, trying both to contact and to expand. When the two conductors approach each other, he sees the elastic strings drawing closer together; then he sees each of them bunch up and grow large. Such is the famous model of electrostatic action imagined by Faraday and admired as a work of genius by Maxwell and the whole English school.
The employment of similar mechanical models, recalling by certain more or less rough analogies the particular features of the theory being expounded, is a regular feature of the English treatises on physics. Here is a book* [by Oliver Lodge] intended to expound the modern theories of electricity and to expound a new theory. In it are nothing but strings which move around pulleys, which roll around drums, which go through pearl beads, which carry weights; and tubes which pump water while others swell and contract; toothed wheels which are geared to one another and engage hooks. We thought we were entering the tranquil and neatly ordered abode of reason, but we find ourselves in a factory.
*Footnote: O. Lodge, Les Théories Modernes (Modern Views on Electricity) (1889), 16.
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906), 2nd edition (1914), trans. Philip P. Wiener (1954), 70-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Action (342)  |  Algebra (117)  |  Approach (112)  |  Being (1276)  |  Book (413)  |  Both (496)  |  Carry (130)  |  Certain (557)  |  Clarity (49)  |  Closer (43)  |  Conceivable (28)  |  Conceive (100)  |  Concrete (55)  |  Conductor (17)  |  Connect (126)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contact (66)  |  Create (245)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Drum (8)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electrostatic (7)  |  Electrostatics (6)  |  Employment (34)  |  End (603)  |  Engage (41)  |  Existence (481)  |  Expand (56)  |  Factory (20)  |  Family (101)  |  Find (1014)  |  Force (497)  |  Form (976)  |  General (521)  |  Genius (301)  |  Geometry (271)  |  German (37)  |  Grow (247)  |  Happening (59)  |  Idea (881)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Language (308)  |  Large (398)  |  Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (13)  |  Logic (311)  |  Long (778)  |  Material (366)  |  Materialize (2)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Mental (179)  |  Model (106)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Move (223)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Notion (120)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Point (584)  |  Precise (71)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Reason (766)  |  Regular (48)  |  Representation (55)  |  Roll (41)  |  Rubber (11)  |  Rule (307)  |  Say (989)  |  School (227)  |  See (1094)  |  Small (489)  |  Space (523)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Surface (223)  |  Tangible (15)  |  Taste (93)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Together (392)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Treatise (46)  |  Trying (144)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Visible (87)  |  Water (503)  |  Weight (140)  |  Wheel (51)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

Thought-economy is most highly developed in mathematics, that science which has reached the highest formal development, and on which natural science so frequently calls for assistance. Strange as it may seem, the strength of mathematics lies in the avoidance of all unnecessary thoughts, in the utmost economy of thought-operations. The symbols of order, which we call numbers, form already a system of wonderful simplicity and economy. When in the multiplication of a number with several digits we employ the multiplication table and thus make use of previously accomplished results rather than to repeat them each time, when by the use of tables of logarithms we avoid new numerical calculations by replacing them by others long since performed, when we employ determinants instead of carrying through from the beginning the solution of a system of equations, when we decompose new integral expressions into others that are familiar,—we see in all this but a faint reflection of the intellectual activity of a Lagrange or Cauchy, who with the keen discernment of a military commander marshalls a whole troop of completed operations in the execution of a new one.
In Populär-wissenschafliche Vorlesungen (1903), 224-225.
Science quotes on:  |  Accomplishment (102)  |  Activity (218)  |  Already (226)  |  Assistance (23)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Avoidance (11)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Calculation (134)  |  Call (781)  |  Carry (130)  |  Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (11)  |  Complete (209)  |  Completed (30)  |  Decompose (10)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Digit (4)  |  Discernment (4)  |  Economy (59)  |  Employ (115)  |  Equation (138)  |  Execution (25)  |  Expression (181)  |  Faint (10)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Form (976)  |  Formal (37)  |  Frequently (21)  |  High (370)  |  Highly (16)  |  Instead (23)  |  Integral (26)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Keen (10)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Lie (370)  |  Logarithm (12)  |  Long (778)  |  Marshal (4)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Military (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  Multiplication (46)  |  Multiplication Table (16)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  New (1273)  |  Number (710)  |  Numerical (39)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Order (638)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perform (123)  |  Previously (12)  |  Reach (286)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Replace (32)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Seem (150)  |  Several (33)  |  Solution (282)  |  Strange (160)  |  Strength (139)  |  Symbol (100)  |  System (545)  |  Table (105)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Troop (4)  |  Unnecessary (23)  |  Use (771)  |  Utmost (12)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wonderful (155)

Time is defined so that motion looks simple.
In Gravitation (1973).
Science quotes on:  |  Look (584)  |  Motion (320)  |  Simple (426)  |  Time (1911)

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.
In What Mad Pursuit (1990), 139.
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Basic (144)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Build (211)  |  Clutter (6)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Good (906)  |  Lying (55)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Process (439)  |  Produced (187)  |  See (1094)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Through (846)  |  Try (296)

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
'Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation'. In Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974), 120.
Science quotes on:  |  Confusion (61)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Truth (1109)

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Long (778)  |  Middle East (3)  |  Politics (122)  |  University (130)

We have simply arrived too late in the history of the universe to see this primordial simplicity easily ... But although the symmetries are hidden from us, we can sense that they are latent in nature, governing everything about us. That's the most exciting idea I know: that nature is much simpler than it looks. Nothing makes me more hopeful that our generation of human beings may actually hold the key to the universe in our hands—that perhaps in our lifetimes we may be able to tell why all of what we see in this immense universe of galaxies and particles is logically inevitable.
Quoted in Nigel Calder, The Key to the Universe: A Report on the New Physics (1978), 185.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Everything (489)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Exciting (50)  |  Galaxies (29)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Generation (256)  |  Governing (20)  |  Hidden (43)  |  History (716)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hopeful (6)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immense (89)  |  Inevitability (10)  |  Inevitable (53)  |  Key (56)  |  Know (1538)  |  Late (119)  |  Latent (13)  |  Lifetime (40)  |  Logic (311)  |  Look (584)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Particle (200)  |  See (1094)  |  Sense (785)  |  Symmetry (44)  |  Tell (344)  |  Universe (900)  |  Why (491)

What attracted me to immunology was that the whole thing seemed to revolve around a very simple experiment: take two different antibody molecules and compare their primary sequences. The secret of antibody diversity would emerge from that. Fortunately at the time I was sufficiently ignorant of the subject not to realise how naive I was being.
From Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1984), collected in Tore Frängsmyr and Jan Lindsten (eds.), Nobel Lectures in Physiology Or Medicine: 1981-1990 (1993), 248.
Science quotes on:  |  Antibody (6)  |  Attraction (61)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Being (1276)  |  Compare (76)  |  Comparison (108)  |  Different (595)  |  Diversity (75)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fortunately (9)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Ignorant (91)  |  Immunology (14)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Naive (13)  |  Primary (82)  |  Realisation (4)  |  Revolve (26)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sequence (68)  |  Simple (426)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Whole (756)

What I’m really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.
Told to Ernst Straus. As quoted in Gerald Holton, The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies (1978), xii.
Science quotes on:  |  Different (595)  |  Freedom (145)  |  God (776)  |  Interest (416)  |  Logic (311)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Way (1214)  |  World (1850)

What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating. … The restricted theory changed our ideas of space and time in a way that may be summarised by stating that the group of transformations to which the space-time continuum is subject must be changed from the Galilean group to the Lorentz group.
From Lecture delivered on presentation of the James Scott prize, (6 Feb 1939), 'The Relation Between Mathematics And Physics', printed in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1938-1939), 59, Part 2, 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Acceptable (14)  |  Against (332)  |  Art (680)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Continuum (8)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Great (1610)  |  Idea (881)  |  Mathematical Beauty (19)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  People (1031)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Principle (530)  |  Quality (139)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Space (523)  |  Space And Time (38)  |  Space-Time (20)  |  Spite (55)  |  Study (701)  |  Subject (543)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Time (1911)  |  Time And Space (39)  |  Transformation (72)  |  Usually (176)  |  Way (1214)

Whenever … a controversy arises in mathematics, the issue is not whether a thing is true or not, but whether the proof might not be conducted more simply in some other way, or whether the proposition demonstrated is sufficiently important for the advancement of the science as to deserve especial enunciation and emphasis, or finally, whether the proposition is not a special case of some other and more general truth which is as easily discovered.
In Mathematical Essays and Recreations (1898), 88.
Science quotes on:  |  Advancement (63)  |  Arise (162)  |  Conduct (70)  |  Controversy (30)  |  Demonstrate (79)  |  Deserve (65)  |  Discover (571)  |  Ease (40)  |  Emphasis (18)  |  Enunciation (7)  |  General (521)  |  Important (229)  |  Issue (46)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Other (2233)  |  Proof (304)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Special (188)  |  Special Case (9)  |  Thing (1914)  |  True (239)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whenever (81)

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.
In 'Groups and Matrices, an Excursion in the Practical, The Queen of the Sciences (1938), Chap. 6, 73.
Science quotes on:  |  Chaos (99)  |  Crystallize (12)  |  Group Theory (5)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Wherever (51)

While Occam’s razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research.
In What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988), 138.
Science quotes on:  |  Biological (137)  |  Biology (232)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Guide (107)  |  Implement (13)  |  Occam�s Razor (3)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  Rash (15)  |  Research (753)  |  Tool (129)  |  Use (771)  |  Useful (260)

While the biological properties of deoxypentose nucleic acid suggest a molecular structure containing great complexity, X-ray diffraction studies described here … show the basic molecular configuration has great simplicity. [Co-author with A.R. Stokes, H.R. Wilson. Thanks include to “… our colleagues R.E. Franklin, R.G. Gosling … for discussion.”]
From 'Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids', Nature (25 Apr 1953), 171, No. 4356, 738. (Note: in W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 226, this quote is listed under Rosalind Elsie Franklin and cited, incorrectly, as from “Rosalind Franklin and R. G. Gosling, 'Molecular Structures of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid', Nature, 1953, 171, 741.” However, the Franklin and Gosling article on p.741 is the second of two pages titled 'Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate'.)
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Author (175)  |  Basic (144)  |  Biological (137)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Configuration (8)  |  Diffraction (5)  |  Discussion (78)  |  DNA (81)  |  Rosalind Franklin (18)  |  Great (1610)  |  Include (93)  |  Molecular Structure (9)  |  Nucleic Acid (23)  |  Ray (115)  |  Show (353)  |  Structure (365)  |  Thank (48)  |  Thanks (26)  |  X-ray (43)  |  X-ray Crystallography (12)  |  X-ray Diffraction (5)

Why it is that animals, instead of developing in a simple and straightforward way, undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they often acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace ... To the Darwinian, the explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish.
In The Works of Francis Maitland Balfour (1885), Vol. 1, 702.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquisition (46)  |  Advance (298)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Animal (651)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Change (639)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Complication (30)  |  Course (413)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  Development (441)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Disappearance (28)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fish (130)  |  Frog (44)  |  Function (235)  |  Gill (3)  |  Growth (200)  |  Leaving (10)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Organ (118)  |  Remain (355)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Repetition (29)  |  Scale (122)  |  Series (153)  |  Short (200)  |  Simple (426)  |  Stage (152)  |  Straightforward (10)  |  Tadpole (3)  |  Time (1911)  |  Trace (109)  |  Undergo (18)  |  Visibility (6)  |  Visible (87)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)

William Blake called division the sin of man; Faraday was a great man because he was utterly undivided. His whole, very harmonious, very well balanced, … and used the brain in the limited way in which it is useful…. [H]e built up his few but precious speculations. Their simplicity rivals with their forcefulness.
In 'The Scientific Grammar of Michael Faraday’s Diaries', Part I, 'The Classic of Science', A Classic and a Founder (1937), collected in Rosenstock-Huessy Papers (1981), Vol. 1, 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Balance (82)  |  William Blake (38)  |  Brain (281)  |  Call (781)  |  Divided (50)  |  Division (67)  |  Michael Faraday (91)  |  Great (1610)  |  Harmonious (18)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Man (2252)  |  Precious (43)  |  Rival (20)  |  Simple (426)  |  Sin (45)  |  Speculation (137)  |  Useful (260)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you have any experience—because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. … The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.
In The Character of Physical Law (1965), 171.
Science quotes on:  |  Beauty (313)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Count (107)  |  Experience (494)  |  Guess (67)  |  Happen (282)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Inexperienced (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Look (584)  |  More (2558)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Right (473)  |  See (1094)  |  Simple (426)  |  Student (317)  |  Thought (995)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Usually (176)  |  Wrong (246)

You may object that by speaking of simplicity and beauty I am introducing aesthetic criteria of truth, and I frankly admit that I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of mathematical schemes which nature presents us. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationship, which nature suddenly spreads out before us.
Letter to Albert Einstein. In Ian Stewart, Why Beauty is Truth (), 278.
Science quotes on:  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Attract (25)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Criteria (6)  |  Frightening (3)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Present (630)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Spread (86)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Wholeness (9)


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.