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 have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their arithmetical magnitude.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index T > Category: Tradition

Tradition Quotes (76 quotes)


[The] second fundamental rule of historical science may be thus simply expressed:—we should not wish to explain every thing. Historical tradition must never be abandoned in the philosophy of history—otherwise we lose all firm ground and footing. But historical tradition, ever so accurately conceived and carefully sifted, doth not always, especially in the early and primitive ages, bring with it a full and demonstrative certainty.
In Friedrich von Schlegel and James Burton Robertson (trans.), The Philosophy of History (1835), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Age (509)  |  Carefully (65)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Demonstrative (14)  |  Early (196)  |  Everything (489)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Express (192)  |  Firm (47)  |  Footing (2)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Ground (222)  |  Historical (70)  |  History (716)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Lose (165)  |  Must (1525)  |  Never (1089)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Rule (307)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Wish (216)

Eine brennendste Zeitfrage allerdings! Es brennt in allen Ecken und Enden der ethnologischen Welt, brennt hell, lichterloh, in vollster Brunst, es brennt ringsum, Gross Feuer! und Niemand regt eine Hand.
A most burning question of time, though. It burns in every nook and cranny of the ethnological world, burning, bright, brightly, in the fullest blaze, and it burns all around, huge fire! and no one lifts a hand.
[Expressing his desperation over the loss of the cultural memory of ethnic traditions as so many cultures were no longer living in isolation.]
From Das Besẗandige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweite ihrer Veränderlichkeit (1868), 180, footnote. Approximate translation by Webmaster using Google Translate.
Science quotes on:  |  Blaze (14)  |  Bright (81)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Culture (157)  |  Desperation (6)  |  Ethnology (9)  |  Fire (203)  |  Hand (149)  |  Isolation (32)  |  Lift (57)  |  Living (492)  |  Loss (117)  |  Memory (144)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nook And Cranny (2)  |  Question (649)  |  Time (1911)  |  World (1850)

All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.
In G. Barry Golson (ed.), The Playboy Interview II (1983), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Classical (49)  |  Incorporate (9)  |  Incorporation (5)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Painting (46)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)

Almost everyone... seems to be quite sure that the differences between the methodologies of history and of the natural sciences are vast. For, we are assured, it is well known that in the natural sciences we start from observation and proceed by induction to theory. And is it not obvious that in history we proceed very differently? Yes, I agree that we proceed very differently. But we do so in the natural sciences as well.
In both we start from myths—from traditional prejudices, beset with error—and from these we proceed by criticism: by the critical elimination of errors. In both the role of evidence is, in the main, to correct our mistakes, our prejudices, our tentative theories—that is, to play a part in the critical discussion, in the elimination of error. By correcting our mistakes, we raise new problems. And in order to solve these problems, we invent conjectures, that is, tentative theories, which we submit to critical discussion, directed towards the elimination of error.
The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality (1993), 140.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Correction (42)  |  Critical (73)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Difference (355)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discussion (78)  |  Do (1905)  |  Elimination (26)  |  Error (339)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Evidence (267)  |  History (716)  |  Induction (81)  |  Known (453)  |  Methodology (14)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Myth (58)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  New (1273)  |  Observation (593)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Order (638)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Problem (731)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Role (86)  |  Solve (145)  |  Start (237)  |  Tentative (18)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Vast (188)

Always be suspicious of conclusions that reinforce uncritical hope and follow comforting traditions of Western thought.
From The Flamingo's Smile (1987), 401.
Science quotes on:  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Follow (389)  |  Hope (321)  |  Reinforce (5)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Thought (995)  |  Uncritical (3)  |  Western (45)

An Englishman, unless asleep, feels an invisible compulsion to be doing something, to consider time as of some importance. With us, according to custom and tradition, the charm of life consists in ease—ease from the absence of compulsion to do anything.
Comparing English and Indian culture in Address to Mysore Civil Engineers Association (14 Nov 1910), collected in Speeches by Sir M. Visvesvaraya, KCIE. Dewan of Mysore. 1910-11 to 1916-17 (1917), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Absence (21)  |  Asleep (4)  |  Charm (54)  |  Compulsion (19)  |  Consider (428)  |  Custom (44)  |  Ease (40)  |  Englishman (5)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indian (32)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Life (1870)  |  Time (1911)

Anthropology is the study of human beings as creatures of society. It fastens its attention upon those physical characteristics and industrial techniques, those conventions and values, which distinguish one community from all others that belong to a different tradition.
In 'The Science of Custom', Patterns of Culture (1934, 2005), 1.
Science quotes on:  |  Anthropology (61)  |  Attention (196)  |  Being (1276)  |  Belong (168)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Community (111)  |  Convention (16)  |  Creature (242)  |  Different (595)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Industrial (15)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Society (350)  |  Study (701)  |  Technique (84)  |  Value (393)

As compared with Europe, our climate and traditions all pre-dispose us to a life of inaction and ease. We are influenced either by religious sentiment, class patriotism or belief in kismet, whereas the activities of Western nations rest on an economic basis. While they think and act in conformity with economic necessities, we expect to prosper without acquiring the scientific precision, the inventive faculty, the thoroughness, the discipline and restraints of modern civilisation.
Speech (16 Mar 1912), at Central College Bangalore Visvesvaraya. Collected in Speeches: 1910-11 to 1916-17: by Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1917), 23.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquire (46)  |  Act (278)  |  Activity (218)  |  Belief (615)  |  Civilisation (23)  |  Class (168)  |  Climate (102)  |  Compare (76)  |  Conformity (15)  |  Discipline (85)  |  Ease (40)  |  Economics (44)  |  Europe (50)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Inaction (4)  |  Influence (231)  |  Inventive (10)  |  Modern (402)  |  Nation (208)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Patriotism (9)  |  Precision (72)  |  Prosper (8)  |  Religious (134)  |  Restraint (16)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sentiment (16)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thoroughness (4)  |  West (21)

As one penetrates from seam to seam, from stratum to stratum and discovers, under the quarries of Montmartre or in the schists of the Urals, those animals whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, the mind is startled to catch a vista of the milliards of years and the millions of peoples which the feeble memory of man and an indestructible divine tradition have forgotten and whose ashes heaped on the surface of our globe, form the two feet of earth which furnish us with bread and flowers.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated as The Wild Ass’s Skin (1906) trans. Herbert J. Hunt, The Wild Ass's Skin (1977), 40-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Antediluvian (5)  |  Ash (21)  |  Belong (168)  |  Bread (42)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Discover (571)  |  Divine (112)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Globe (51)  |  Heap (15)  |  Indestructible (12)  |  Man (2252)  |  Memory (144)  |  Million (124)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Montmartre (3)  |  Penetrate (68)  |  People (1031)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Remain (355)  |  Schist (4)  |  Seam (3)  |  Stratum (11)  |  Surface (223)  |  Two (936)  |  Under (7)  |  Urals (2)  |  Vista (12)  |  Year (963)

As regards religion, on the other hand, one is generally agreed that it deals with goals and evaluations and, in general, with the emotional foundation of human thinking and acting, as far as these are not predetermined by the inalterable hereditary disposition of the human species. Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship. These ideals religion attempts to attain by exerting an educational influence on tradition and through the development and promulgation of certain easily accessible thoughts and narratives (epics and myths) which are apt to influence evaluation and action along the lines of the accepted ideals.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accessible (27)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Agree (31)  |  Apt (9)  |  Attain (126)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Attitude (84)  |  Certain (557)  |  Communal (7)  |  Concern (239)  |  Deal (192)  |  Development (441)  |  Disposition (44)  |  Easily (36)  |  Educational (7)  |  Emotional (17)  |  Epic (12)  |  Establish (63)  |  Evaluation (10)  |  Exert (40)  |  Far (158)  |  Foundation (177)  |  General (521)  |  Generally (15)  |  Goal (155)  |  Hereditary (7)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Relationship (2)  |  Human Species (11)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Individual (420)  |  Influence (231)  |  Large (398)  |  Life (1870)  |  Line (100)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Myth (58)  |  Narrative (9)  |  Nature (2017)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Other (2233)  |  Predetermined (3)  |  Promulgation (5)  |  Regard (312)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Religion (369)  |  Species (435)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Toward (45)

As they discover, from strata to strata and from layer to layer, deep in the quarries of Montmartre or the schists of the Urals, these creatures whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, it will strike terror into your soul to see many millions of years, many thousands of races forgotten by the feeble memory of mankind and by the indestructible divine tradition, and whose piles of ashes on the surface of our globe form the two feet of soil which gives us our bread and our flowers.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated as by Helen Constantine The Wild Ass’s Skin (2012), 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Antediluvian (5)  |  Ash (21)  |  Belong (168)  |  Bread (42)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Creature (242)  |  Deep (241)  |  Discover (571)  |  Divine (112)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Globe (51)  |  Indestructible (12)  |  Layer (41)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Memory (144)  |  Million (124)  |  Montmartre (3)  |  Pile (12)  |  Piles (7)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Race (278)  |  Remain (355)  |  Schist (4)  |  See (1094)  |  Soil (98)  |  Soul (235)  |  Strata (37)  |  Stratum (11)  |  Strike (72)  |  Surface (223)  |  Terror (32)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Two (936)  |  Urals (2)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

At the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, we have long had a tradition of close cooperation between physicists and technicians.
From Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1968). Collected in Yong Zhou (ed.), Nobel Lecture: Physics, 1963-1970 (2013), 250.
Science quotes on:  |  Close (77)  |  Cooperation (38)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (2)  |  Long (778)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Radiation (48)  |  Technician (9)

Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of the bricks, perhaps even the keystone, of truth’s temple. Now most scientists of vision hope to foment revolution. We are, therefore, awash in revolutions, most self-proclaimed.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Brick (20)  |  Bright (81)  |  Follow (389)  |  Hope (321)  |  Keystone (3)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lay (3)  |  Most (1728)  |  Proclaim (31)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Self (268)  |  Stone (168)  |  Tell (344)  |  Temple (45)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vision (127)

But it is precisely mathematics, and the pure science generally, from which the general educated public and independent students have been debarred, and into which they have only rarely attained more than a very meagre insight. The reason of this is twofold. In the first place, the ascendant and consecutive character of mathematical knowledge renders its results absolutely insusceptible of presentation to persons who are unacquainted with what has gone before, and so necessitates on the part of its devotees a thorough and patient exploration of the field from the very beginning, as distinguished from those sciences which may, so to speak, be begun at the end, and which are consequently cultivated with the greatest zeal. The second reason is that, partly through the exigencies of academic instruction, but mainly through the martinet traditions of antiquity and the influence of mediaeval logic-mongers, the great bulk of the elementary text-books of mathematics have unconsciously assumed a very repellant form,—something similar to what is termed in the theory of protective mimicry in biology “the terrifying form.” And it is mainly to this formidableness and touch-me-not character of exterior, concealing withal a harmless body, that the undue neglect of typical mathematical studies is to be attributed.
In Editor’s Preface to Augustus De Morgan and Thomas J. McCormack (ed.), Elementary Illustrations of the Differential and Integral Calculus (1899), v.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Academic (20)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Ascendant (2)  |  Assume (43)  |  Attain (126)  |  Attribute (65)  |  Begin (275)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Biology (232)  |  Body (557)  |  Book (413)  |  Bulk (24)  |  Character (259)  |  Conceal (19)  |  Consecutive (2)  |  Consequent (19)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Debar (2)  |  Devotee (7)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Educated (12)  |  Elementary (98)  |  End (603)  |  Exigency (3)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Exterior (7)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Formidable (8)  |  General (521)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Harmless (9)  |  Independent (74)  |  Influence (231)  |  Insight (107)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Meager (2)  |  Medieval (12)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Neglect (63)  |  Part (235)  |  Patient (209)  |  Person (366)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Presentation (24)  |  Protective (5)  |  Public (100)  |  Pure (299)  |  Pure Science (30)  |  Rarely (21)  |  Reason (766)  |  Render (96)  |  Repellent (4)  |  Result (700)  |  Something (718)  |  Speak (240)  |  Student (317)  |  Study (701)  |  Term (357)  |  Terrify (12)  |  Textbook (39)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thorough (40)  |  Through (846)  |  Touch (146)  |  Typical (16)  |  Unacquainted (3)  |  Unconscious (24)  |  Undue (4)  |  Zeal (12)

Darwin's theory was received in Russia with profound sympathy. While in Western Europe it met firmly established old traditions which it had first to overcome, in Russia its appearance coincided with the awakening of our society after the Crimean War and here it immediately received the status of full citizenship and ever since has enjoyed widespread popularity.
Quoted in Thomas F. Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (1988), 229-30.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (145)  |  Awakening (11)  |  Crimean War (2)  |  Charles Darwin (322)  |  First (1302)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Old (499)  |  Overcome (40)  |  Profound (105)  |  Russia (14)  |  Society (350)  |  Status (35)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Theory (1015)  |  War (233)  |  Western (45)  |  Widespread (23)

Deprived, therefore, as regards this period, of any assistance from history, but relieved at the same time from the embarrassing interference of tradition, the archaeologist is free to follow the methods which have been so successfully pursued in geology—the rude bone and stone implements of bygone ages being to the one what the remains of extinct animals are to the other. The analogy may be pursued even further than this. Many mammalia which are extinct in Europe have representatives still living in other countries. Our fossil pachyderms, for instance, would be almost unintelligible but for the species which still inhabit some parts of Asia and Africa; the secondary marsupials are illustrated by their existing representatives in Australia and South America; and in the same manner, if we wish clearly to understand the antiquities of Europe, we must compare them with the rude implements and weapons still, or until lately, used by the savage races in other parts of the world. In fact, the Van Diemaner and South American are to the antiquary what the opossum and the sloth are to the geologist.
Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, (2nd ed. 1869, 1890), 429-430.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  Age (509)  |  America (143)  |  Analogy (76)  |  Animal (651)  |  Antiquary (4)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Archaeologist (18)  |  Assistance (23)  |  Australia (11)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bone (101)  |  Bygone (4)  |  Compare (76)  |  Europe (50)  |  Extinct (25)  |  Extinction (80)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Follow (389)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Free (239)  |  Geologist (82)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Implement (13)  |  Interference (22)  |  Living (492)  |  Marsupial (2)  |  Method (531)  |  Must (1525)  |  Opossum (3)  |  Other (2233)  |  Period (200)  |  Race (278)  |  Regard (312)  |  Remain (355)  |  Savage (33)  |  Sloth (7)  |  South (39)  |  South America (6)  |  Species (435)  |  Still (614)  |  Stone (168)  |  Time (1911)  |  Understand (648)  |  Unintelligible (17)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Wish (216)  |  World (1850)

Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'être. Virtually all of our aunts and uncles had Ph.D.s in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chu's were to follow the family tradition. When the dust had settled, my two brothers and four cousins collected three MDs, four Ph.D.s and a law degree. I could manage only a single advanced degree.
Autobiography in Gösta Ekspong (ed.), Nobel Lectures: Physics 1996-2000 (2002), 115.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (254)  |  Brother (47)  |  Cousin (12)  |  Degree (277)  |  Dust (68)  |  Education (423)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Family (101)  |  Follow (389)  |  Generation (256)  |  Grant (76)  |  Law (913)  |  Manage (26)  |  Merely (315)  |  Next (238)  |  Settled (34)  |  Single (365)  |  Two (936)

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
What I Believe (1925). In The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959 (1992), 370.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  End (603)  |  First (1302)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Great (1610)  |  Myth (58)  |  Open (277)  |  Space (523)  |  Splendor (20)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vigor (12)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Window (59)

Faced with the challenge of an endless universe, Man will be forced to mature further, just as the Neanderthal—faced with an entire planet—had no choice but to grow away from the tradition of savagery.
That Moon Plaque: Comments by Science Fiction Writers (1969)
Science quotes on:  |  Challenge (91)  |  Choice (114)  |  Endless (60)  |  Grow (247)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mature (17)  |  Neanderthal (7)  |  Planet (402)  |  Progress (492)  |  Universe (900)  |  Will (2350)

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
As quoted in interview by Charles Wheeler, Chicago Tribune (25 May 1916). Often misquoted, and misunderstood out of context, as “History is bunk”. There is much important context needed to interpret what Ford really meant by it. Articles have been written on that subject, for example, Roger Butterfield, 'Henry Ford, the Wayside Inn, and the Problem of “History Is Bunk”', Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1965), 3rd Series, 77, 53-66.
Science quotes on:  |  History (716)  |  Live (650)  |  More (2558)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Present (630)  |  Today (321)  |  Want (504)  |  Worth (172)

I ... express a wish that you may, in your generation, be fit to compare to a candle; that you may, like it, shine as lights to those about you; that, in all your actions, you may justify the beauty of the taper by making your deeds honourable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellow-men.
[Concluding remarks for the final lecture (Christmas 1860-61) for children at the Royal Institution. These six lectures were the first series in the tradition of Christmas lectures continued to the present day.]
A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle (1861), 183.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Candle (32)  |  Children (201)  |  Christmas (13)  |  Compare (76)  |  Deed (34)  |  Discharge (21)  |  Express (192)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Final (121)  |  First (1302)  |  Fit (139)  |  Generation (256)  |  Institution (73)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Light (635)  |  Making (300)  |  Present (630)  |  Royal (56)  |  Royal Institution (4)  |  Series (153)  |  Wish (216)

I had no books as a child. I had real machines, and I went out to work in the fields. I was driving farm machinery at five, and fixing it at age seven or eight. It’s no accident that I worked on Hubble 50 to 60 years later. My books were nature; it was very important to how I related to the Earth, and the Earth from space. No doubt when I go into space, I go back into the cool soil of Earth. I’m always thinking of it. Nature was my book. Other people come from that tradition - Emerson, Thoreau, and especially Whitman. Look at what they said in their philosophy - go out and have a direct relationship with nature.
When asked by Discover magazine what books helped inspire his passion as an astronaut.
'The 1998 Discover Science Gift Guide: Fantastic Voyages Children's Books That Mattered', Discover (Dec 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Age (509)  |  Ask (420)  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Back (395)  |  Biography (254)  |  Book (413)  |  Child (333)  |  Direct (228)  |  Discover (571)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Driving (28)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Farm (28)  |  Field (378)  |  Look (584)  |  Machine (271)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Other (2233)  |  Passion (121)  |  People (1031)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Soil (98)  |  Space (523)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)

I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background ... I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Anywhere (16)  |  Background (44)  |  Baseball (3)  |  Become (821)  |  Capricious (9)  |  Career (86)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Commitment (28)  |  Contingency (11)  |  Contingent (12)  |  Destined (42)  |  Eastern (3)  |  Entirely (36)  |  European (5)  |  Family (101)  |  Feature (49)  |  Fortunate (31)  |  Inherit (35)  |  Inherited (21)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Jewish (15)  |  Lifelong (10)  |  Locate (7)  |  Major (88)  |  Manner (62)  |  Mentality (5)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Paleontologist (19)  |  Purely (111)  |  Same (166)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Serious (98)  |  Set (400)  |  Side (236)  |  View (496)

I’m convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive—that challenge conventional thinking—and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way … why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don’t be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there’s a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do—and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don’t let your mind be stunted by a limited view.
1988
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Better (493)  |  Break (109)  |  Breakthrough (18)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Change (639)  |  Conventional (31)  |  Counterintuitive (4)  |  Dissatisfaction (13)  |  Do (1905)  |  Easier (53)  |  End (603)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flow (89)  |  High (370)  |  Horizon (47)  |  Idea (881)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Innovation (49)  |  Interest (416)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Mind (1377)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Question (649)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Start (237)  |  Stunt (7)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Thought (995)  |  Track (42)  |  View (496)  |  Water (503)  |  Way (1214)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

It did not cause anxiety that Maxwell’s equations did not apply to gravitation, since nobody expected to find any link between electricity and gravitation at that particular level. But now physics was faced with an entirely new situation. The same entity, light, was at once a wave and a particle. How could one possibly imagine its proper size and shape? To produce interference it must be spread out, but to bounce off electrons it must be minutely localized. This was a fundamental dilemma, and the stalemate in the wave-photon battle meant that it must remain an enigma to trouble the soul of every true physicist. It was intolerable that light should be two such contradictory things. It was against all the ideals and traditions of science to harbor such an unresolved dualism gnawing at its vital parts. Yet the evidence on either side could not be denied, and much water was to flow beneath the bridges before a way out of the quandary was to be found. The way out came as a result of a brilliant counterattack initiated by the wave theory, but to tell of this now would spoil the whole story. It is well that the reader should appreciate through personal experience the agony of the physicists of the period. They could but make the best of it, and went around with woebegone faces sadly complaining that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they must look on light as a wave; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, as a particle. On Sundays they simply prayed.
The Strange Story of the Quantum (1947), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Agony (7)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Apply (170)  |  Appreciate (67)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Best (467)  |  Bridge (49)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Cause (561)  |  Dilemma (11)  |  Dualism (4)  |  Electricity (168)  |  Electron (96)  |  Enigma (16)  |  Entity (37)  |  Equation (138)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Expect (203)  |  Experience (494)  |  Face (214)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flow (89)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Interference (22)  |  Light (635)  |  Look (584)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Must (1525)  |  New (1273)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Particle (200)  |  Period (200)  |  Photon (11)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Proper (150)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  Remain (355)  |  Result (700)  |  Saturday (11)  |  Side (236)  |  Situation (117)  |  Soul (235)  |  Spread (86)  |  Story (122)  |  Tell (344)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Through (846)  |  Trouble (117)  |  Two (936)  |  Vital (89)  |  Water (503)  |  Wave (112)  |  Way (1214)  |  Whole (756)

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and literacy, of superstition and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people. ... The future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science.
Address to the Indian Institute of Science, Proceedings of the National Institute of Science of India (1960), 27, 564, cited in Mary Midgley, The myths We live By (2004), 14., x. In Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping our World (2008), 172.
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Belong (168)  |  Country (269)  |  Friend (180)  |  Future (467)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Inhabit (18)  |  Insanitation (2)  |  Literacy (10)  |  People (1031)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Problem (731)  |  Resource (74)  |  Rich (66)  |  Run (158)  |  Running (61)  |  Solve (145)  |  Starvation (13)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Vast (188)  |  Waste (109)

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people… Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid … the future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
From address to the Indian Science Congress (26 Dec 1937). As cited in M.J. Vinod and Meena Deshpande, Contemporary Political Theory (2013), 507. An earlier, longer version of the quote is in Atma Ram, 'The Making of Optical Glass in India: Its Lessons for Industrial Development', Proceedings of the National Institute of Sciences of India (1961), 27, 564-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (101)  |  Alone (324)  |  Belong (168)  |  Country (269)  |  Custom (44)  |  Friend (180)  |  Future (467)  |  Hunger (23)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Illiteracy (8)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Insanitation (2)  |  People (1031)  |  Poverty (40)  |  Problem (731)  |  Resource (74)  |  Running (61)  |  Sanitation (6)  |  Seek (218)  |  Solve (145)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Today (321)  |  Turn (454)  |  Vast (188)  |  Waste (109)  |  Wealth (100)

It is this mythical, or rather this symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which be long in the domain of science. Thus, it is of vital importance for the preservation of true religion that such conflicts be avoided when they arise from subjects which, in fact, are not really essential for the pursuance of the religious aims.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aim (175)  |  Arise (162)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Conflict (77)  |  Contain (68)  |  Content (75)  |  Domain (72)  |  Essential (210)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fix (34)  |  Idea (881)  |  Importance (299)  |  Likely (36)  |  Long (778)  |  Mythical (3)  |  Occur (151)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Really (77)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Statement (148)  |  Stock (7)  |  Subject (543)  |  Symbolic (16)  |  True (239)  |  Vital (89)  |  Whenever (81)

Logic it is called [referring to Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica] and logic it is, the logic of propositions and functions and classes and relations, by far the greatest (not merely the biggest) logic that our planet has produced, so much that is new in matter and in manner; but it is also mathematics, a prolegomenon to the science, yet itself mathematics in its most genuine sense, differing from other parts of the science only in the respects that it surpasses these in fundamentally, generality and precision, and lacks traditionality. Few will read it, but all will feel its effect, for behind it is the urgence and push of a magnificent past: two thousand five hundred years of record and yet longer tradition of human endeavor to think aright.
In Science (1912), 35, 110, from his book review on Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica.
Science quotes on:  |  Aright (3)  |  Class (168)  |  Differ (88)  |  Effect (414)  |  Endeavor (74)  |  Function (235)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Generality (45)  |  Genuine (54)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Lack (127)  |  Logic (311)  |  Long (778)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Manner (62)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mathematics And Logic (27)  |  Matter (821)  |  New (1273)  |  Past (355)  |  Planet (402)  |  Precision (72)  |  Principia Mathematica (2)  |  Produce (117)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Push (66)  |  Read (308)  |  Record (161)  |  Relation (166)  |  Bertrand Russell (198)  |  Sense (785)  |  Surpass (33)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Urgent (15)  |  Alfred North Whitehead (140)  |  Year (963)

Mathematical instruction, in this as well as in other countries, is laboring under a burden of century-old tradition. Especially is this so with reference to the teaching of geometry. Our texts in this subject are still patterned more or less closely after the model of Euclid, who wrote over two thousand years ago, and whose text, moreover, was not intended for the use of boys and girls, but for mature men.
In Lectures on Fundamental Concepts of Algebra and Geometry (1911), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Boy (100)  |  Burden (30)  |  Century (319)  |  Euclid (60)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Girl (38)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Intend (18)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mature (17)  |  More Or Less (71)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Subject (543)  |  Teach (299)  |  Text (16)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Use (771)  |  Year (963)

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.
As co-author with Herbert Robbins, in What Is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods (1941, 1996), x.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Activity (218)  |  Aesthetic (48)  |  Aesthetics (12)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Antithesis (7)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Basic (144)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Construction (114)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Desire (212)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Element (322)  |  Emphasis (18)  |  Emphasize (25)  |  Expression (181)  |  Force (497)  |  Generality (45)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Individuality (25)  |  Interplay (9)  |  Intuition (82)  |  Life (1870)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Supreme (73)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Value (393)  |  Will (2350)

My thesis is that what we call 'science' is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition—that of critically discussing the myth. … In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is.
Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (2002), 170-171.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Call (781)  |  Certain (557)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Differentiation (28)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Making (300)  |  Myth (58)  |  Order (638)  |  Religion (369)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Sense (785)  |  Something (718)  |  Thesis (17)

Natural historians tend to avoid tendentious preaching in this philosophical mode (although I often fall victim to such temptations in these essays). Our favored style of doubting is empirical: if I wish to question your proposed generality, I will search for a counterexample in flesh and blood. Such counterexamples exist in abundance, for the form a staple in a standard genre of writing in natural history–the “wonderment of oddity” or “strange ways of the beaver” tradition.
In 'Reversing Established Orders', Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (2011), 394.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundance (26)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Beaver (8)  |  Blood (144)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Empirical (58)  |  Essay (27)  |  Exist (458)  |  Fall (243)  |  Favor (69)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Form (976)  |  Generality (45)  |  Genre (3)  |  Historian (59)  |  History (716)  |  Mode (43)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Historian (2)  |  Natural History (77)  |  Oddity (4)  |  Often (109)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Preach (11)  |  Propose (24)  |  Question (649)  |  Search (175)  |  Standard (64)  |  Staple (3)  |  Strange (160)  |  Style (24)  |  Temptation (14)  |  Tend (124)  |  Victim (37)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Wonderment (2)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)

Nobody knows more than a tiny fragment of science well enough to judge its validity and value at first hand. For the rest he has to rely on views accepted at second hand on the authority of a community of people accredited as scientists. But this accrediting depends in its turn on a complex organization. For each member of the community can judge at first hand only a small number of his fellow members, and yet eventually each is accredited by all. What happens is that each recognizes as scientists a number of others by whom he is recognized as such in return, and these relations form chains which transmit these mutual recognitions at second hand through the whole community. This is how each member becomes directly or indirectly accredited by all. The system extends into the past. Its members recognize the same set of persons as their masters and derive from this allegiance a common tradition, of which each carries on a particular strand.
Personal Knowledge (1958), 163.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Acceptance (56)  |  Allegiance (5)  |  Authority (99)  |  Become (821)  |  Carrying (7)  |  Chain (51)  |  Common (447)  |  Community (111)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Depend (238)  |  Dependance (4)  |  Derivation (15)  |  Derive (70)  |  Directly (25)  |  Enough (341)  |  Eventually (64)  |  Extend (129)  |  Extension (60)  |  Fellow (88)  |  First (1302)  |  Form (976)  |  Fragment (58)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happening (59)  |  Indirectly (7)  |  Judge (114)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Master (182)  |  Member (42)  |  More (2558)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Number (710)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Particular (80)  |  Past (355)  |  People (1031)  |  Person (366)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Recognize (136)  |  Relationship (114)  |  Rest (287)  |  Return (133)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Secondhand (6)  |  Set (400)  |  Small (489)  |  Strand (9)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Turn (454)  |  Validity (50)  |  Value (393)  |  View (496)  |  Whole (756)

One never finds fossil bones bearing no resemblance to human bones. Egyptian mummies, which are at least three thousand years old, show that men were the same then. The same applies to other mummified animals such as cats, dogs, crocodiles, falcons, vultures, oxen, ibises, etc. Species, therefore, do not change by degrees, but emerged after the new world was formed. Nor do we find intermediate species between those of the earlier world and those of today's. For example, there is no intermediate bear between our bear and the very different cave bear. To our knowledge, no spontaneous generation occurs in the present-day world. All organized beings owe their life to their fathers. Thus all records corroborate the globe's modernity. Negative proof: the barbaritY of the human species four thousand years ago. Positive proof: the great revolutions and the floods preserved in the traditions of all peoples.
'Note prese al Corso di Cuvier. Corso di Geologia all'Ateneo nel 1805', quoted in Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck, trans. J. Mandelbaum (1988), 183.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Bear (162)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bone (101)  |  Cat (52)  |  Change (639)  |  Crocodile (14)  |  Degree (277)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Emergence (35)  |  Falcon (2)  |  Father (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  Flood (52)  |  Form (976)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Generation (256)  |  Great (1610)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Species (11)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Men (20)  |  Mummy (7)  |  Negative (66)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Occur (151)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Owe (71)  |  Ox (5)  |  Oxen (8)  |  People (1031)  |  Positive (98)  |  Present (630)  |  Present Day (5)  |  Preservation (39)  |  Proof (304)  |  Record (161)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Revolution (133)  |  Same (166)  |  Show (353)  |  Species (435)  |  Spontaneity (7)  |  Spontaneous (29)  |  Spontaneous Generation (9)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Today (321)  |  Vulture (5)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

Only the inertia of tradition keeps the contraction hypothesis alive—or rather, not alive, but an unburied corpse. But if we decide to inter the corpse, let us frankly recognize the position in which we are left. A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown to us. This reservoir can scarcely be other than the subatomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter.
From Presidential address to Section A of the British Association at Cardiff (24 Aug 1920). Published in 'The Internal Constitution of the Stars', The Observatory: A Monthly Review of Astronomy (Oct 1920), 43, No. 557, 353.
Science quotes on:  |  Abundantly (2)  |  Alive (97)  |  Contraction (18)  |  Corpse (7)  |  Energy (373)  |  Exist (458)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inertia (17)  |  Inter (12)  |  Matter (821)  |  Means (587)  |  Reservoir (9)  |  Star (460)  |  Unknown (195)

Our enmity to the serpent, which often exists together with a mythic and anthropomorphic belief in the serpent’s enmity to us, might be regarded as purely traditional, having its origin in the Scriptural narrative of man’s disobedience and expulsion from Paradise.
In The Book of a Naturalist (1919), 178.
Science quotes on:  |  Anthropomorphic (4)  |  Belief (615)  |  Disobedience (4)  |  Exist (458)  |  Expulsion (2)  |  Man (2252)  |  Myth (58)  |  Narrative (9)  |  Origin (250)  |  Paradise (15)  |  Purely (111)  |  Regard (312)  |  Serpent (5)  |  Snake (29)  |  Together (392)

Our most distinguished “man of science” was the then veteran John Dalton. He was rarely absent from his seat in a warm corner of the room during the meetings of the Literary and Philosophical Society. Though a sober-minded Quaker, he was not devoid of some sense of fun; and there was a tradition amongst us, not only that he had once been a poet, but that, although a bachelor, two manuscript copies were still extant of his verses on the subject of matrimonial felicity; and it is my belief there was foundation for the tradition. The old man was sensitive on the subject of his age. Dining one day ... he was placed between two ladies ... [who] resolved to extract from him some admission on the tender point, but in vain. Though never other than courteous, Dalton foiled all their feminine arts and retained his secret. ... Dalton's quaint and diminutive figure was a strongly individualized one.
In Reminiscences of a Yorkshire Naturalist (1896), 73-74.
Science quotes on:  |  Absent (3)  |  Admission (17)  |  Age (509)  |  Art (680)  |  Bachelor (3)  |  Belief (615)  |  Biography (254)  |  Corner (59)  |  Courteous (2)  |  John Dalton (25)  |  Devoid (12)  |  Diminutive (3)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Extract (40)  |  Felicity (4)  |  Feminine (4)  |  Figure (162)  |  Foiled (2)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Fun (42)  |  Individual (420)  |  Lady (12)  |  Man (2252)  |  Manuscript (10)  |  Meeting (22)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Poet (97)  |  Point (584)  |  Quaint (7)  |  Quaker (2)  |  Resolve (43)  |  Retain (57)  |  Room (42)  |  Seat (7)  |  Secret (216)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sensitive (15)  |  Society (350)  |  Still (614)  |  Subject (543)  |  Two (936)  |  Vain (86)  |  Verse (11)  |  Warm (74)

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Collective (24)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Continue (179)  |  Dialectic (6)  |  Dream (222)  |  Expectation (67)  |  Expel (4)  |  Find (1014)  |  Form (976)  |  Frame (26)  |  Future (467)  |  Habit (174)  |  History (716)  |  Individual (420)  |  Live (650)  |  Memory (144)  |  Myth (58)  |  Past (355)  |  Response (56)  |  Revenge (10)  |  Revolutionize (8)  |  Rush (18)  |  Science And Technology (46)  |  Stamp (36)  |  Technology (281)  |  Unconsciousness (2)  |  Value (393)  |  Will (2350)

Science is a body of truths which offers clear and certain knowledge about the real world and is therefore superior to tradition philosophy religion dogma and superstition which offer shadowy knowledge about an ideal world.
Need primary source (can you help?).
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Certain (557)  |  Clear (111)  |  Dogma (49)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Offer (142)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Real World (15)  |  Religion (369)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Superior (88)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Truth (1109)  |  World (1850)

Science is a progressive activity. The outstanding peculiarity of man is that he stumbled onto the possibility of progressive activities. Such progress, the accumulation of experience from generation to generation, depended first on the development of language, then of writing and finally of printing. These allowed the accumulation of tradition and of knowledge, of the whole aura of cultural inheritance that surrounds us. This has so conditioned our existence that it is almost impossible for us to stop and examine the nature of our culture. We accept it as we accept the air we breathe; we are as unconscious of our culture as a fish, presumably, is of water.
In The Nature of Natural History (1950, 1961), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Activity (218)  |  Air (366)  |  Breathe (49)  |  Condition (362)  |  Culture (157)  |  Depend (238)  |  Development (441)  |  Examine (84)  |  Existence (481)  |  Experience (494)  |  First (1302)  |  Fish (130)  |  Generation (256)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Inheritance (35)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Language (308)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Outstanding (16)  |  Peculiarity (26)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Printing (25)  |  Progress (492)  |  Stumble (19)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)  |  Writing (192)

Science is an integral part of culture. It’s not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It’s one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.
Independent (London, Jan. 24, 1990).
Science quotes on:  |  Arcane (4)  |  Culture (157)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Glory (66)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Intellectual (2)  |  Integral (26)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Part (235)  |  Priesthood (3)  |  Thing (1914)

Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.
The Social System (1951, 1977), Chap. 8, 111. As a functionalist, Parsons argued that social practices had to be studied in terms of their function in maintaining society.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Certain (557)  |  Continuous (83)  |  Culture (157)  |  Development (441)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Flourishing (6)  |  Function (235)  |  Health (210)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Integrated (10)  |  Integration (21)  |  Mutual (54)  |  Other (2233)  |  Social (261)  |  Society (350)  |  Structure (365)  |  Support (151)  |  Type (171)  |  Whole (756)

Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
Against Method, p. 238 (1975).The author's warning against allowing scientists to become the new 'high priests' of society.
Science quotes on:  |  Accustom (52)  |  Accustomed (46)  |  Become (821)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Best (467)  |  Church (64)  |  Democracy (36)  |  Disadvantage (10)  |  People (1031)  |  Presence (63)  |  Separate (151)  |  Single (365)  |  State (505)

Science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders. Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles.
In The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968, 2001), Preface, xi.
Science quotes on:  |  Backward (10)  |  Culture (157)  |  Event (222)  |  Forward (104)  |  Human (1512)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Logic (311)  |  Major (88)  |  Outsider (7)  |  Proceed (134)  |  Role (86)  |  Seldom (68)  |  Step (234)  |  Straightforward (10)

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Teacher in America (1954), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Regard (312)  |  Teaching (190)

The alchemists call in many varieties out of astrology, auricular traditions, and feigned testimonies.
As quoted, without source, in Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations From Socrates to Macaulay (1876), 28. Although two other quotes by Bacon under the heading 'Alchemy' do have sources indicated, the subject quote appears without source—which leaves the authenticity of the subject quote in question. As yet, Webmaster has found no primary source. Can you help? [Note: auricular means received by the sense of hearing. -Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemist (23)  |  Astrology (46)  |  Call (781)  |  Testimony (21)

The fear of mathematics is a tradition handed down from days when the majority of teachers knew little about human nature and nothing at all about the nature of mathematics itself. What they did teach was an imitation.
in Mathematician’s Delight (1946), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Down (455)  |  Fear (212)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Imitation (24)  |  Know (1538)  |  Little (717)  |  Majority (68)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Aspiration (35)  |  Christian (44)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Give (208)  |  Goal (155)  |  High (370)  |  Jewish (15)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Power (771)  |  Principle (530)  |  Reach (286)  |  Religious (134)  |  Valuation (4)  |  Weak (73)

The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive.
In 'Scientific Education: Notes of an After-Dinner Speech' (Delivered to Liverpool Philomathic Society, Apr 1869), published in Macmillan’s Magazine (Jun 1869), 20, No. 116, 177. Collected in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1871), Chap 4, 66.
Science quotes on:  |  Authority (99)  |  Call (781)  |  Consist (223)  |  Data (162)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Deductive (13)  |  Evident (92)  |  Furnish (97)  |  General (521)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mental (179)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Practise (7)  |  Proof (304)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Rest (287)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Evident (22)  |  Start (237)  |  Subtle (37)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Work (1402)

The methods of science aren’t foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered. The methods of science, like everything else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny, as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. Methodology in turn falls under the gaze of epistemology, the investigation of investigation itself—nothing is off limits to scientific questioning. The irony is that these fruits of scientific reflection, showing us the ineliminable smudges of imperfection, are sometimes used by those who are suspicious of science as their grounds for denying it a privileged status in the truth-seeking department—as if the institutions and practices they see competing with it were no worse off in these regards. But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday’s heresies have become today’s new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Arent (6)  |  Badly (32)  |  Become (821)  |  Being (1276)  |  Compete (6)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Deny (71)  |  Department (93)  |  Discover (571)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Epistemology (8)  |  Everything (489)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Example (98)  |  Exhibit (21)  |  Face (214)  |  Fall (243)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Foolproof (5)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Gaze (23)  |  Ground (222)  |  Heresy (9)  |  History (716)  |  Imperfection (32)  |  Important (229)  |  Improvement (117)  |  Indefinitely (10)  |  Institution (73)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Irony (9)  |  Irresistible (17)  |  Limit (294)  |  Method (531)  |  Methodology (14)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Orthodoxy (11)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Practice (212)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Question (649)  |  Reflection (93)  |  Regard (312)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scrutiny (15)  |  See (1094)  |  Show (353)  |  Simply (53)  |  Smudge (2)  |  Sometimes (46)  |  Status (35)  |  Sun (407)  |  Suspicious (3)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Today (321)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Turn (454)  |  Whenever (81)  |  Wherever (51)  |  Yesterday (37)

The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Appreciation (37)  |  Bear (162)  |  Best (467)  |  Brain (281)  |  Cause (561)  |  Consist (223)  |  Custom (44)  |  Depend (238)  |  Develop (278)  |  Disapprobation (2)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Education (423)  |  Efficient (34)  |  Element (322)  |  Embody (18)  |  Enforce (11)  |  Enforcement (2)  |  Excellence (40)  |  Founded (22)  |  Good (906)  |  Hardly (19)  |  High (370)  |  Important (229)  |  Inculcate (7)  |  Instinct (91)  |  Law (913)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nation (208)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Selection (98)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Originally (7)  |  Other (2233)  |  Progress (492)  |  Public (100)  |  Seem (150)  |  Selection (130)  |  Social (261)  |  Standard (64)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  Through (846)  |  Whilst (3)  |  Youth (109)

The picture of scientific method drafted by modern philosophy is very different from traditional conceptions. Gone is the ideal of a universe whose course follows strict rules, a predetermined cosmos that unwinds itself like an unwinding clock. Gone is the ideal of the scientist who knows the absolute truth. The happenings of nature are like rolling dice rather than like revolving stars; they are controlled by probability laws, not by causality, and the scientist resembles a gambler more than a prophet. He can tell you only his best posits—he never knows beforehand whether they will come true. He is a better gambler, though, than the man at the green table, because his statistical methods are superior. And his goal is staked higher—the goal of foretelling the rolling dice of the cosmos. If he is asked why he follows his methods, with what title he makes his predictions, he cannot answer that he has an irrefutable knowledge of the future; he can only lay his best bets. But he can prove that they are best bets, that making them is the best he can do—and if a man does his best, what else can you ask of him?
The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (1951, 1973), 248-9. Collected in James Louis Jarrett and Sterling M. McMurrin (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy: A Book of Readings (1954), 376.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Absoluteness (4)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Best (467)  |  Bet (13)  |  Better (493)  |  Causality (11)  |  Clock (51)  |  Conception (160)  |  Cosmos (64)  |  Course (413)  |  Dice (21)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Draft (6)  |  Follow (389)  |  Foretelling (4)  |  Future (467)  |  Gambler (7)  |  Goal (155)  |  Green (65)  |  Happening (59)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Irrefutable (5)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Law (913)  |  Making (300)  |  Man (2252)  |  Method (531)  |  Modern (402)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Picture (148)  |  Posit (2)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Probability (135)  |  Proof (304)  |  Prophet (22)  |  Prove (261)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Roll (41)  |  Rule (307)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Stake (20)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Statistics (170)  |  Superior (88)  |  Superiority (19)  |  Table (105)  |  Tell (344)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

The present knowledge of the biochemical constitution of the cell was achieved largely by the use of destructive methods. Trained in the tradition of the theory of solutions, many a biochemist tends, even today, to regard the cell as a “bag of enzymes”. However, everyone realizes now that the biochemical processes studied in vitro may have only a remote resemblance to the events actually occurring in the living cell.
Nucleo-cytoplasmic Relations in Micro-Organisms: Their Bearing on Cell Heredity and Differentiation (1953), 108.
Science quotes on:  |  Biochemist (9)  |  Cell (146)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Enzyme (19)  |  Event (222)  |  In Vitro (3)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Living (492)  |  Method (531)  |  Present (630)  |  Realize (157)  |  Regard (312)  |  Remote (86)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Tend (124)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Today (321)  |  Train (118)  |  Use (771)

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.
In Process and Reality (1929), 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Characterization (8)  |  Consist (223)  |  Do (1905)  |  Europe (50)  |  Extract (40)  |  Footnote (5)  |  General (521)  |  Idea (881)  |  Mean (810)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Safest (7)  |  Scheme (62)  |  Scholar (52)  |  Series (153)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Thought (995)  |  Through (846)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Writing (192)

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.
Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (2002), 66.
Science quotes on:  |  Attitude (84)  |  Critical (73)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Layer (41)  |  Pre-Scientific (5)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Two (936)

The seer of the past was the man of mysteries. The veil within which none but the high-priest must enter, … whose traditions are the cement in which the stones of all these temples rising around us are laid. The seer of to-day is the man of explorations and explanations. Moses is busy with his microscope, and Daniel prophesies from the meteorological headquarters at Washington.
From 'Professor Jeffries Wyman: A Memorial Outline', The Atlantic Monthly (Nov 1874), 622.
Science quotes on:  |  Cement (10)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Headquarters (2)  |  Meteorology (36)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Moses (8)  |  Mystery (188)  |  National Weather Service (2)  |  Priest (29)  |  Prophesy (11)  |  Seer (5)  |  Stone (168)  |  Temple (45)  |  Veil (27)

The traditional mathematics professor of the popular legend is absentminded. He usually appears in public with a lost umbrella in each hand. He prefers to face a blackboard and to turn his back on the class. He writes a, he says b, he means c, but it should be d. Some of his sayings are handed down from generation to generation:
“In order to solve this differential equation you look at it till a solution occurs to you.”
“This principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.”
“Geometry is the science of correct reasoning on incorrect figures.”
“My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it.”
“What is the difference between method and device? A method is a device which you used twice.”
In How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (2004), 208.
Science quotes on:  |  Absent-Minded (4)  |  Application (257)  |  Back (395)  |  Blackboard (11)  |  Class (168)  |  Correct (95)  |  Device (71)  |  Difference (355)  |  Differential Equation (18)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Down (455)  |  Equation (138)  |  Face (214)  |  Figure (162)  |  General (521)  |  Generality (45)  |  Generation (256)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Handed Down (2)  |  Incorrect (6)  |  Legend (18)  |  Look (584)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mean (810)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Means (587)  |  Method (531)  |  Occur (151)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Order (638)  |  Overcome (40)  |  Overcoming (3)  |  Particular (80)  |  Popular (34)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Principle (530)  |  Professor (133)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Say (989)  |  French Saying (67)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solve (145)  |  Turn (454)  |  Twice (20)  |  Umbrella (4)  |  Using (6)  |  Usually (176)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)

The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is far from a cumulative process, one achieved by an articulation or extension of the old paradigm. Rather it is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field's most elementary theoretical generalizations as well as many of its paradigm methods and applications. During the transition period there will be a large but never complete overlap between the problems that can be solved by the old and by the new paradigm. But there will also be a decisive difference in the modes of solution. When the transition is complete, the profession will have changed its view of the field, its methods, and its goals.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), 84-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Application (257)  |  Change (639)  |  Complete (209)  |  Crisis (25)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Difference (355)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Extension (60)  |  Field (378)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Generalization (61)  |  Goal (155)  |  Large (398)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Old (499)  |  Overlap (9)  |  Paradigm (16)  |  Period (200)  |  Problem (731)  |  Process (439)  |  Profession (108)  |  Reconstruction (16)  |  Solution (282)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Transition (28)  |  View (496)  |  Will (2350)

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.
From address to the Mathematical and Physical Science Section of the British Association, Newcastle-on-Tyne (1916). In The Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science (22 Sep 1916), 142.114, No. 2965,
Science quotes on:  |  Adherent (6)  |  Deduction (90)  |  End (603)  |  Induction (81)  |  Opposition (49)  |  Quarrel (10)  |  Sensible (28)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Worm (47)

Therefore on long pondering this uncertainty of mathematical traditions on the deduction of the motions of the system of the spheres, I began to feel disgusted that no more certain theory of the motions of the mechanisms of the universe, which has been established for us by the best and most systematic craftsman of all, was agreed by the philosophers, who otherwise theorised so minutely with most careful attention to the details of this system. I therefore set myself the task of reading again the books of all philosophers which were available to me, to search out whether anyone had ever believed that the motions of the spheres of the, universe were other than was supposed by those who professed mathematics in the schools.
'To His Holiness Pope Paul III', in Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), trans. A. M. Duncan (1976), 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Attention (196)  |  Available (80)  |  Best (467)  |  Book (413)  |  Certain (557)  |  Craftsman (5)  |  Deduction (90)  |  Detail (150)  |  Disgust (10)  |  Feel (371)  |  Long (778)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Motion (320)  |  Myself (211)  |  Other (2233)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Profess (21)  |  Reading (136)  |  School (227)  |  Search (175)  |  Set (400)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Sphere (118)  |  System (545)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Task (152)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Universe (900)

These two orders of mountains [Secondary and Tertiary] offer the most ancient chronicle of our globe, least liable to falsifications and at the same time more legible than the writing of the primitive ranges. They are Nature's archives, prior to even the most remote records and traditions that have been preserved for our observant century to investigate, comment on and bring to the light of day, and which will not be exhausted for several centuries after our own.
Observations sur la Formation des Montagnes', Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae (1777) [1778], 46. Trans. Albert Carozzi.
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Archive (5)  |  Century (319)  |  Chronicle (6)  |  Comment (12)  |  Exhaustion (18)  |  Falsification (11)  |  Globe (51)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Least (75)  |  Legibility (2)  |  Liability (7)  |  Light (635)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observation (593)  |  Offer (142)  |  Order (638)  |  Preparation (60)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Range (104)  |  Record (161)  |  Remote (86)  |  Secondary (15)  |  Tertiary (4)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Will (2350)  |  Writing (192)

They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.
The Advancement of Learning, Bk IV, Ch. II.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Do (1905)  |  Education (423)  |  Experience (494)  |  Great (1610)  |  Learning (291)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Physician (284)  |  Practice (212)

This [the fact that the pursuit of mathematics brings into harmonious action all the faculties of the human mind] accounts for the extraordinary longevity of all the greatest masters of the Analytic art, the Dii Majores of the mathematical Pantheon. Leibnitz lived to the age of 70; Euler to 76; Lagrange to 77; Laplace to 78; Gauss to 78; Plato, the supposed inventor of the conic sections, who made mathematics his study and delight, who called them the handles or aids to philosophy, the medicine of the soul, and is said never to have let a day go by without inventing some new theorems, lived to 82; Newton, the crown and glory of his race, to 85; Archimedes, the nearest akin, probably, to Newton in genius, was 75, and might have lived on to be 100, for aught we can guess to the contrary, when he was slain by the impatient and ill mannered sergeant, sent to bring him before the Roman general, in the full vigour of his faculties, and in the very act of working out a problem; Pythagoras, in whose school, I believe, the word mathematician (used, however, in a somewhat wider than its present sense) originated, the second founder of geometry, the inventor of the matchless theorem which goes by his name, the pre-cognizer of the undoubtedly mis-called Copernican theory, the discoverer of the regular solids and the musical canon who stands at the very apex of this pyramid of fame, (if we may credit the tradition) after spending 22 years studying in Egypt, and 12 in Babylon, opened school when 56 or 57 years old in Magna Græcia, married a young wife when past 60, and died, carrying on his work with energy unspent to the last, at the age of 99. The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.
In Presidential Address to the British Association, Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 2 (1908), 658.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Act (278)  |  Action (342)  |  Age (509)  |  Aid (101)  |  Akin (5)  |  Analytic (11)  |  Apex (6)  |  Archimedes (63)  |  Art (680)  |  Aught (6)  |  Babylon (7)  |  Become (821)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blow (45)  |  Bring (95)  |  Call (781)  |  Called (9)  |  Canon (3)  |  Carry (130)  |  Clog (5)  |  Conic Section (8)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Copernican Theory (3)  |  Credit (24)  |  Crown (39)  |  Delight (111)  |  Die (94)  |  Discoverer (43)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drop (77)  |  Dusty (8)  |  Early (196)  |  Egypt (31)  |  Energy (373)  |  Leonhard Euler (35)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Faculty (76)  |  Fame (51)  |  Founder (26)  |  Full (68)  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  General (521)  |  Genius (301)  |  Geometry (271)  |  Glory (66)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Guess (67)  |  Handle (29)  |  Harmonious (18)  |  Highway (15)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Impatient (4)  |  Invent (57)  |  Inventor (79)  |  Count Joseph-Louis de Lagrange (26)  |  Pierre-Simon Laplace (63)  |  Last (425)  |  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (51)  |  Let (64)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  Longevity (6)  |  Manner (62)  |  Marry (11)  |  Master (182)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Musical (10)  |  Name (359)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Old (499)  |  Open (277)  |  Originate (39)  |  Pantheon (2)  |  Particle (200)  |  Past (355)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Plato (80)  |  Pore (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Probably (50)  |  Problem (731)  |  Pursuit (128)  |  Pyramid (9)  |  Pythagoras (38)  |  Race (278)  |  Regular (48)  |  Roman (39)  |  Say (989)  |  School (227)  |  Second (66)  |  Send (23)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sergeant (2)  |  Solid (119)  |  Soul (235)  |  Spend (97)  |  Spending (24)  |  Stand (284)  |  Study (701)  |  Studying (70)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Undoubtedly (3)  |  Vigour (18)  |  Vulgar (33)  |  Wide (97)  |  Wife (41)  |  Wing (79)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)  |  Year (963)  |  Young (253)

To seek in the great accumulation of the already-said the text that resembles "in advance" a later text, to ransack history in order to rediscover the play of anticipations or echoes, to go right back to the first seeds or to go forward to the last traces, to reveal in a work its fidelity to tradition or its irreducible uniqueness, to raise or lower its stock of originality, to say that the Port -Royal grammarians invented nothing, or to discover that Cuvier had more predecessors than one thought, these are harmless enough amusements for historians who refuse to grow up.
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), trans. M. Sheridan Smith (1972), 144.
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulation (51)  |  Advance (298)  |  Already (226)  |  Amusement (37)  |  Anticipation (18)  |  Back (395)  |  Baron Georges Cuvier (34)  |  Discover (571)  |  Enough (341)  |  First (1302)  |  Forward (104)  |  Great (1610)  |  Grow (247)  |  Historian (59)  |  History (716)  |  History Of Science (80)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Last (425)  |  More (2558)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Order (638)  |  Predecessor (29)  |  Refuse (45)  |  Resemble (65)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Right (473)  |  Royal (56)  |  Say (989)  |  Seed (97)  |  Seek (218)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trace (109)  |  Uniqueness (11)  |  Work (1402)

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), 251.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Good (906)  |  Hindsight (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Method (531)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Tell (344)  |  Test (221)  |  Think (1122)  |  Truth (1109)

Traditions may be very important, but they can be extremely hampering as well, and whether or not tradition is of really much value I have never been certain. Of course when they are very fine, they do good, but it is very difficult of course ever to repeat the conditions under which good traditions are formed, so they may be and are often injurious and I think the greatest progress is made outside of traditions.
Quoted as the notations of an unnamed student in the auditorium when Councilman made impromptu biographical remarks at his last lecture as a teacher of undergraduates in medicine (19 Dec 1921). As quoted in obituary, 'William Thomas Councilman', by Harvey Cushing, Science (30 Jun 1933), 77, No. 2009, 613-618. Reprinted in National Academy Biographical Memoirs, Vol. 18, 159-160. The transcribed lecture was published privately in a 23-page booklet, A Lecture Delivered to the Second-Year Class of the Harvard Medical School at the Conclusion of the Course in Pathology, Dec. 19, 1921.
Science quotes on:  |  Certain (557)  |  Condition (362)  |  Course (413)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fine (37)  |  Form (976)  |  Good (906)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Hamper (7)  |  Hampering (2)  |  Important (229)  |  Injurious (14)  |  Injury (36)  |  Never (1089)  |  Outside (141)  |  Progress (492)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Think (1122)  |  Value (393)

Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
The Homiletic Review, Vol. 83-84 (1922), Vol. 83, 208.
Science quotes on:  |  Flow (89)  |  Perpetual (59)  |  Progress (492)  |  Progression (23)  |  Research (753)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Water (503)

Very few people, including authors willing to commit to paper, ever really read primary sources–certainly not in necessary depth and contemplation, and often not at all ... When writers close themselves off to the documents of scholarship, and then rely only on seeing or asking, they become conduits and sieves rather than thinkers. When, on the other hand, you study the great works of predecessors engaged in the same struggle, you enter a dialogue with human history and the rich variety of our own intellectual traditions. You insert yourself, and your own organizing powers, into this history–and you become an active agent, not merely a ‘reporter.’
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Agent (73)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Author (175)  |  Become (821)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Close (77)  |  Commit (43)  |  Conduit (3)  |  Contemplation (75)  |  Depth (97)  |  Dialogue (10)  |  Document (7)  |  Engage (41)  |  Enter (145)  |  Great (1610)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Include (93)  |  Insert (4)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Merely (315)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Often (109)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Organize (33)  |  Other (2233)  |  Paper (192)  |  People (1031)  |  Power (771)  |  Predecessor (29)  |  Primary (82)  |  Read (308)  |  Really (77)  |  Rely (12)  |  Reporter (5)  |  Rich (66)  |  Same (166)  |  Scholarship (22)  |  See (1094)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Sieve (3)  |  Source (101)  |  Struggle (111)  |  Study (701)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thinker (41)  |  Variety (138)  |  Willing (44)  |  Work (1402)  |  Writer (90)

We are the inheritors of a great scientific tradition and of a beautiful structure of knowledge. It is the duty of our generation to add to the perfection of this structure and to pass on to the next generation the best traditions of our science for the edification and entertainment of all mankind.
Concluding sentences of 'The Physicist Returns from the War', The Atlantic Monthly (Oct 1945), 176, No. 4, 114. Collected in 'Physics: A Physicist Surveys the Scene', American Thought 1947 (1947), 342.
Science quotes on:  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Best (467)  |  Duty (71)  |  Entertainment (19)  |  Generation (256)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inheritor (2)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Next (238)  |  Pass (241)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Structure (365)

What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft repeated, than the story of a large research program that impaled itself upon a false central assumption accepted by all practitioners? Do we regard all people who worked within such traditions as dishonorable fools? What of the scientists who assumed that the continents were stable, that the hereditary material was protein, or that all other galaxies lay within the Milky Way? These false and abandoned efforts were pursued with passion by brilliant and honorable scientists. How many current efforts, now commanding millions of research dollars and the full attention of many of our best scientists, will later be exposed as full failures based on false premises?
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Accept (198)  |  Assume (43)  |  Assumption (96)  |  Attention (196)  |  Base (120)  |  Best (467)  |  Brilliant (57)  |  Central (81)  |  Command (60)  |  Continent (79)  |  Current (122)  |  Dishonorable (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dollar (22)  |  Effort (243)  |  Expose (28)  |  Exposed (33)  |  Failure (176)  |  False (105)  |  Fool (121)  |  Full (68)  |  Galaxies (29)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Hereditary (7)  |  Honorable (14)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Large (398)  |  Late (119)  |  Lie (370)  |  Material (366)  |  Milky Way (29)  |  Millions (17)  |  More (2558)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  Passion (121)  |  People (1031)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Practitioner (21)  |  Premise (40)  |  Program (57)  |  Protein (56)  |  Pursue (63)  |  Regard (312)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Research (753)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Stable (32)  |  Story (122)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)

When Hitler arrived in 1933, the tradition of scholarship in Germany was destroyed, almost overnight. … Europe was no longer hospitable to the imagination—and not just the scientific imagination. A whole conception of culture was in retreat…. Silence fell, as after the trial of Galileo. The great men went out into a threatened world. Max Born. Erwin Schrödinger. Albert Einstein. Sigmund Freud. Thomas Mann. Bertolt Brecht. Arturo Toscanini. Bruno Walter. Marc Chagall. Enrico Fermi. Leo Szilard….
In Ch. 11, 'Knowledge or Certainty', The Ascent of Man, (1973), 367.
Science quotes on:  |  Arrive (40)  |  Max Born (16)  |  Bertolt Brecht (6)  |  Conception (160)  |  Culture (157)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Europe (50)  |  Fall (243)  |  Enrico Fermi (20)  |  Sigmund Freud (70)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Germany (16)  |  Adolf Hitler (20)  |  Hospitable (3)  |  Imagination (349)  |   Thomas Mann (7)  |  Overnight (2)  |  Retreat (13)  |  Scholarship (22)  |  Erwin Schrödinger (68)  |  Silence (62)  |  Leo Szilard (7)  |  Threaten (33)  |  Trial (59)  |  Whole (756)  |  World (1850)

When the fossil bones of animals belonging to civilisations before the Flood are turned up in bed after bed and layer upon layer of the quarries of Montmartre or among the schists of the Ural range, the soul receives with dismay a glimpse of millions of peoples forgotten by feeble human memory and unrecognised by permanent divine tradition, peoples whose ashes cover our globe with two feet of earth that yields bread to us and flowers.
From 'La Peau de Chagrin' (1831). As translated by Ellen Marriage in The Wild Ass’s Skin (1906), 21.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Belonging (36)  |  Bone (101)  |  Bread (42)  |  Civilisation (23)  |  Dismay (5)  |  Divine (112)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Feeble (28)  |  Flood (52)  |  Flower (112)  |  Forget (125)  |  Forgotten (53)  |  Fossil (143)  |  Glimpse (16)  |  Human (1512)  |  Layer (41)  |  Memory (144)  |  Million (124)  |  Montmartre (3)  |  People (1031)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Quarry (14)  |  Range (104)  |  Receive (117)  |  Schist (4)  |  Soul (235)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Yield (86)

When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of ‘popular’ writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as ‘conjecture and refutation.’
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Abound (17)  |  Bad (185)  |  Case (102)  |  Celebrate (21)  |  Certain (557)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Conjecture (51)  |  Correction (42)  |  Course (413)  |  Deep (241)  |  Disappointment (18)  |  Discredit (8)  |  Equate (3)  |  Error (339)  |  Establishment (47)  |  Falsely (2)  |  Far (158)  |  Give (208)  |  Heroic (4)  |  Hunch (5)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Insight (107)  |  Instruction (101)  |  Label (11)  |  Light (635)  |  Literature (116)  |  Loss (117)  |  Methodology (14)  |  Mode (43)  |  More (2558)  |  Of Course (22)  |  Offer (142)  |  Operation (221)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Karl Raimund Popper (48)  |  Popular (34)  |  Probable (24)  |  Promise (72)  |  Proper (150)  |  Refutation (13)  |  Seek (218)  |  Story (122)  |  Sweetness (12)  |  Tale (17)  |  Textbook (39)  |  Tough (22)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Worst (57)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)

Why are you so sure parallel lines exist?
Believe nothing, merely because you have been told it, or because it is traditional, or because you have imagined it.
In George Edward Martin, The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane (1982), 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Line (100)  |  Merely (315)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Parallel (46)  |  Why (491)

With respect to those points, on which the declaration of Scripture is positive and decisive, as, for instance, in asserting the low antiquity of the human race; the evidence of all facts that have yet been established in Geology coincides with the records of Sacred History and Profane Tradition to confirm the conclusion that the existence of mankind can on no account be supposed to have taken its beginning before that time which is assigned to it in the Mosaic writings.
Vindiciae Geologicae (1820), 23.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Antiquity (34)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Confirm (58)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Declaration (10)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Geology (240)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Low (86)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Point (584)  |  Positive (98)  |  Race (278)  |  Record (161)  |  Respect (212)  |  Sacred (48)  |  Time (1911)  |  Writing (192)


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.