Solvent Quotes (7 quotes)
[William Henry] Flower [the Anglican] too praised evolution as a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross which had “encrusted” Christianity “in the days of ignorance and superstition.”
Huxley: From Devil's Disciple To Evolution's High Priest (1997), 305.
Similia similibus solvuntur
Like dissolves like.
Like dissolves like.
Aphorism used in chemistry to indicate the polar solvents dissolve polar solutes, whereas non-polar solvents will dissolve non-polar solutes. Seen, for example, in Corpus Pharmaceutico-Chymico-Medicum Universale (1711), 4. It appears in this context: “Sic spiritus vini cum camphora, item oleum destillatum cum sulfure se intimè unit. Quae separando homogeneas saltem particulas adsciscunt, & sibi uniunt, his competit regula: Similia similibus solvuntur: & est genuina solutio.”
Heat is a universal solvent, melting out of things their power of resistance, and sucking away and removing their natural strength with its fiery exhalations so that they grow soft, and hence weak, under its glow.
In De Architectura, Book 1, Chap 4, Sec. 3. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 18.
The El Nino phenomenon, the geophysicists' equivalent of the universal solvent.
In 'Great Greenhouse in the Sky?', Nature (1983), 306, 221.
The idea formed itself in my mind that if I could get a solution of alumina in something which contained no water, and in a solvent which was chemically more stable than the alumina, this would probably give a bath from which aluminum could be obtained by electrolysis.
In 'The Perkin Medal Award', The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (Mar 1911), 3, No. 3, 147.
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.
We are … led to a somewhat vague distinction between what we may call “hard” data and “soft” data. This distinction is a matter of degree, and must not be pressed; but if not taken too seriously it may help to make the situation clear. I mean by “hard” data those which resist the solvent influence of critical reflection, and by “soft” data those which, under the operation of this process, become to our minds more or less doubtful.
Our Knowledge of the External World (1925), 75.
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) -- 
