The Philosophy of Freedom
Chapter 5

Reference #: 2997

Steinman, D.B.
General Category: BRIDGE

Between two towers soaring high
A parabolic arc is swung
To form a cradle for the stars;
And from this curve against the sky
A span of gleaming steel is hung-
A highway of speeding cars.

Between the cable and the span
A web of silver strands is spaced,
With sky above and ships below
In human dream was
Born the plan
Of strength and beauty interplaced-
A harp against the sunset glow!

American Engineer
SUSPENSION BRIDGE, February 22-28, 1953
(p. 33)

Reference #: 4299

Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
General Category: ENGINEERING

Indeed, the most important part of engineering work - and also of other scientific work - is the determination of the method of attacking the problem, whatever it may be.

In John Charles Lounsbury
Fish
The Engineering Method
(p. 1)

Reference #: 6867

Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional.

In E.T. Bell
Men of Mathematics
(p. xvii)
Simon and Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America 1937

Reference #: 3687

Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
General Category: ERROR

With the most brilliant engineering design, however, if in the numerical calculation of a single structural member an error has been made and its strength thereby calculated wrong, the rotor of the machine flies to pieces by centrifugal forces, or the bridge collapses, and with it the reputation of the engineer.

Engineering Mathematics
(p. 293)

Reference #: 13556

Steinmetz, Charles Proteus
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering investigations evidently are of no value, unless they can be communicated to those to whom they are of interest.

The Engineering Method
(p. 290)

Reference #: 6500

Stekel, Wilhelm
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.

Marriage at the Crossroads
Chapter II
(p. 20)

Reference #: 5268

Stendhal (Henri Beyle)
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I used to love mathematics for its own sake, and I still do, because it allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness...

La vie d'Henri Brulard
Chapter 10

Reference #: 7781

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

Scientists speak of the Law of Inertia or the Second Law of Thermodynamics as if some great legislature in the sky once met and set down rules to govern the universe.

Not By Design
(p. 14)

Reference #: 8890

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: EXPERIMENT

The instruments of modern science have provided us with greatly enhanced capabilities for gathering data about the universe. With our microscopes, telescopes, and particle detectors, we are no longer bound by the limitations of human sensory apparatus or of our confinement to this tiny planet. And we have learned to rely more on the rational interpretation of the reading of these instruments than on preconceived notions based on everyday experience.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8891

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

I have learned that obtaining new knowledge is not easy and that we shouldn't expect it to be easy. All the easy stuff was discovered a long time ago. Today, new knowledge is accumulated only through the greatest effort and concentration of resources, often by teams of hundreds of scientists.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8893

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: SPACE TIME

Great physicists from Galileo to Einstein have clarified the meanings of space and time for us, not overthrown their basic conceptions nor declared them obsolete.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8888

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Most humans on this planet use the fruits of science in every phase of their lives. I become very irritated at those who decry science while accepting its every benefit. It is especially ironic how the antiscientists use modern communications to get their messages to the public.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8894

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: THEORY

The fact that a theory may eventually test wrong does not detract from its original merit as a worthy try. On the other hand, if an idea is poorly formulated, often because the terms used are not clearly defined, then how can we even test it? ...We cannot determine that gibberish is anything but gibberish.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8895

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: OCCAM RAZOR

The use of Occam's razor, along with the related critical, skeptical view toward any speculations about the unknown, is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the scientific method. People confuse doubt with denial. Science doesn't deny anything, but it doubts everything not required by the data. Note, however, that doubt does not necessarily mean rejection, just an attitude of disbelief that can be changed when the facts require it.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8897

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: NEUTRINO

Neutrinos are neither rare nor anomalous-just hard to detect.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses
Physics and Psychics, Chapter 1
(p. 20)

Reference #: 8892

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: QUARK

Today's quarks and leptons can be viewed as metaphors of the underlying reality of nature, though metaphors that are objectively and rationally defined and are components of theories that have great predictive power. And that's the difference between the metaphors of science and those of myth: scientific metaphors work. ...In the pragmatic view of truth of William James, science is true because it works. Science may not be the only path to the truth, but it is the best one we have yet been able to discover.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8889

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: QUANTUM

This type of schizophrenic behavior is not confined to photons alone. Electrons, neutrons, and other entities that normally appear as localized particles also can't seem to decide whether they are waves or particles. It all depends on what you try to measure. If you look for localized electrons, neutrons, or photons, you find them. If, on the other hand, you set up an experiment designed to measure wave properties, you find these too. We look at the world through colored glasses, and so it should not surprise us that the world appears a different color when we change to another pair.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 8896

Stenger, Victor J.
General Category: SCIENCE

No one ever said science was easy, and nobody, scientist or not, should be expected to fall over and play dead when a challenge to existing knowledge is made. If a new idea has sufficient merit, it should ultimately overcome any resistance, no matter how strong. ...Resistance to new ideas is part of the process of science. A worthy new idea must overcome barriers of doubt and skepticism, and even occasional irrational objections. But if an idea has merit, it will eventually climb over these barriers.

Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Reference #: 11842

Stensen, Niels
General Category: BRAIN

There are those among us who would have us say that the mysteries of the brain are completely solved and little needs to be added to its knowledge. It is as if these fortunate persons had been present when this magnificent organ was created.

In H.K. Ulatowska (ed.)
The Aging Brain
Quoted by H. BrodyFrom a lecture in 1664

Reference #: 178

Stephen William Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988)
General Category: SCIENCE

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Chapter 8
(p. 122)
Bantam Books, Toronto, 1988

Reference #: 10434

Stephenson, Neil
General Category: OPINION

If I took time out to have an opinion about everything, I wouldn't get any work done.

Snow Crash

Reference #: 8988

Sterling, John
General Category: TREE SPICE

The Spice Tree lives in the garden green,
Beside it the fountain flows;
And a fair Bird sits the boughs between,
And sings his melodious woes.

Poems
The Spice Tree, Stanza 1

Reference #: 8316

Stern, S. Alan
General Category: UNIVERSE

The place we call our Universe is, for the most part, cold and dark and all but endless. It is the emptiest of empties. It is old, and yet very young. It contains much that is dead, and yet much that is alive, forever reinventing itself, and sometimes inventing something wholly new.

Our Universe
The Frontier Universe: At the Edge of the Night
(p. 1)

Reference #: 17526

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: SCIENCE

Sciences may be learned by rote, but Wisdom not.

Tristram Shandy
Book V, Chapter 32
(p. 409)

Reference #: 17148

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.

Tristram Shandy
Book 2, Chapter 19

Reference #: 17527

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: STATISTICAL

It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous mass of heterogeneous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the nose, whilst the infant was in Utero, without destroying the statistical balance of the foetus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months before the time.

Tristram Shandy
Book IV

Reference #: 17528

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: ERROR

The laws of nature will defend themselves; - but error - (he would add, looking earnestly at my mother) - error, Sir, creeps in thro' the minute holes and small crevices which human nature leaves unguarded.

Tristram Shandy
Book II, Chapter 19
(p. 151)

Reference #: 17529

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: ERROR

In a word, he would say, error was error, - no matter where it fell, - whether in a fraction, - or a pound, - 'twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by mistake in the dust of a butterfly's win, - as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put together.

Tristram Shandy
Book II, Chapter 19
(p. 150)

Reference #: 17052

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: MATHEMATICS

[My Uncle Tody] proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise part to be a "Parabola"—or else an "Hyperbola,"—and that the parameter, or "latus rectum," of the conic section of the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct ration, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech upon the horizontal line;—and that the semiparameter,—stop! my dear uncle Toby—stop!

Quoted in James R. Newman
The World of Mathematics
Vol. II
(p. 734)
Simon and Schuster, New York. 1956

Reference #: 17146

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: SICK

I am sick as a horse...

Tristram Shandy
Vol. VII, Chapter II
(p. 4)

Reference #: 17147

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: MAL DE MER

...the cells are broke loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fix'd and volatile salts, are all jumbled into one mass - good g - ! everything turns round in it like a thousand whirlpools...

Tristram Shandy
Vol. VII, Chapter II
(p. 4)

Reference #: 574

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: DOCTOR

...there are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse.

A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
The Pulse
(p. 97)

Reference #: 573

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: OBSERVATION

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything and who, having eyes to see what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.

A Sentimental Journey
In the Street

Reference #: 14300

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

It is in the nature of a hypothesis when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates everything to itself, as proper nourishment, and from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows stronger by everything you see, hear or understand.

The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Book II, Chapter XVIII
(p. 100)

Reference #: 14426

Sterne, Laurence
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

'I just finished up in the budget review meeting,' and exhausted manager told a friend. 'It was tough. We were way off on our projections, and I had to explain why.'

'How did you do?' the friend asked.

'At first, I tried to tell them we simply made a mistake, but they wouldn't accept that explanation. So then I said that our hypothesis had not included the entire scope of probabilities, and the outcome fell outside of the range we had used.'

'And?'

'They loved it.'

The Little Black Book of Business Statistics
(p. 164)
AMACOM, New York, New York, United States of America; 1990

Reference #: 2992

Sterrett, The Right Reverend Frank W.
General Category: ENGINEER

Many a battle has been lost because men lacked confidence in the outcome. That has not been characteristic of the Engineer. He is accustomed to face hard tasks demanding his best. The rebuilding and restoring of an ordered world present such a problem. It seems to me there is a continuing place of dignity for the Engineer of tomorrow.

American Engineer
June 1951
(p. 3)

Reference #: 24

Stetson, Harlan T.
General Category: ERROR

The more closely emotional response is entwined with error, the more difficult does it become to change one's thinking.

In Joseph Jastrow (ed.)
The Story of Human Error
Error in Astronomy
(p. 45)

Reference #: 1000

Stevens, Rosemary
General Category: SPECIALIST

In the whole process of reassessment…of the medical profession…has come the recognition of medicine as an interdependent, not independent, profession and as one consisting of a complex of specialties rather than one general discipline.

American Medicine and the Public Interest
(p. 413)
Yale University Press, New Haven; 1971

Reference #: 11420

Stevenson, Adlai
General Category: ATOM

There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

Speech
Hartford Connecticut, 18 September 1952

Reference #: 4358

Stevenson, Adlai E.
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Technology, while adding daily to our physical ease, throws daily another loop of fine wire around our souls. It contributes hugely to our mobility, which we must not confuse with freedom. The extensions of our senses, which we find so fascinating, are not adding to the discrimination of our minds, since we need increasingly to take the reading of a needle on a dial to discover whether we think something is good or bad, or right or wrong.

Fortune Magazine
My Faith in Democratic Capitalism, October, 1955
(p. 156)

Reference #: 11430

Stevenson, Adlai E.
General Category: NATURE

Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the deserts bloom.

Speech
Hartford, Connecticut, September 18, 1952

Reference #: 4161

Stevenson, R.L.
General Category: TIME

She is settling fast? said the First Lieutenant as he returned from shaving.
"Fast, Mr. Spoker?" asked the Captain. "The expression is a strange one, for Time (if you will think of it) is only relative."

Fables
The Sinking Ship

Reference #: 385

Stevenson, R.L.
General Category: BOOK

There is no quite good book without a good morality; but the world is wide, and so are morals.

A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's

Reference #: 17711

Stevenson, Robert Lewis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: SCIENCE

Science writes of the world as if with the cold finger of a starfish; it is all true; but what is it when compared to the reality of which it discourses, where hearts beat high in April, and death strikes, and hills totter in the earthquake, and there is a glamour over all the objects of sight, and a thrill in all noises for the ear, and Romance herself has made her dwelling among men? So we come back to the old myth, and hear the goat-footed piper making the music which is itself the charm and terror of things; and when a glen invites our visiting footsteps, fancy that Pan leads us thither with a gracious tremulo; or when our hearts quail at the thunder of the cataract, tell ourselves that he has stamped his hoof in the nigh thicket.

Virginibus Puerisque

Reference #: 17713

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: THEORY

It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. 

Virginibus Puerisque
Crabbed Age and Youth

Reference #: 17626

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: PHYSICIAN

There are men and classes of men that stand above the common herd; the soldier, the sailor, and the shepherd not unfrequently; the artist rarely; rarelier still, the clergyman; the physician almost as a rule. He is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization; and when that stage of man is done with, and only remembered to be marveled at in history, he will be thought to have shared as little as any in the defects of the period, and most notably exhibited the virtue of the race. Generosity he has, such as is possible to those who practice an art, never to those who drive a trade; discretion, tested by a hundred secrets; tact, tried in a thousand embarrassments; and what are more important, Herculean cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings air and cheer into the sick-room, and often enough, though not so often as he wishes, brings healing.

Underwoods
Preface

Reference #: 17118

Stevenson, Robert Louis
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Sculpture is a kind of architecture.

The Wrecker
III

Reference #: 17712

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: THEORY

It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity.

Virginibus Puerisque
Crabbed Age and Youth
(p. 102)

Reference #: 17500

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: NIGHT

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
A Night Among the Pines
(p. 79)

Reference #: 17504

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: DOCTOR

Doctors is all swabs.

Treasure Island
Chapter 3
(p. 14)

Reference #: 186

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: WORLD

The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

A Child's Garden of Verses
Happy Thought

Reference #: 9746

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: ENGINEER

The engineer of to-day is confronted with a library of acquired results; tables and formulae to the value of folios full have been calculated and recorded; and the student finds everywhere in front of him the footprints of the pioneers. In the eighteenth century the field was largely unexplored; the engineer must read with his own eyes the face of nature.

Records of a Family of Engineers
Chapter I
(p. 212)

Reference #: 9747

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: ENGINEER

The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the sea; he must often ford his way by land to remote and scarce accessible places, beyond reach of the mail or the post-chaise, even the tracery of the bridle-path, and guided by natives across bog and heather.

Records of a Family of Engineers
Chapter II, Part I
(p. 241)

Reference #: 9745

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: ENGINEER

The duty of the engineer is twofold-to design the work, and to see the work done.

Records of a Family of Engineers
Chapter II, Part III
(p. 265)

Reference #: 9742

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: ENGINEER

With the civil engineer, more properly so called (if anything can be proper with this awkward coinage), the obligation starts with the beginning. He is always the practical man. The rains, the winds and the waves, the complexity and the fitfulness of nature, are always before him. He has to deal with the unpredictable, with those forces (in Smeaton's phrase) that `are subject to no calculation'; and still he must predict, still calculate them, at his peril.

Records of a Family of Engineers
Chapter II, Part III
(p. 261)

Reference #: 12300

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: STATISTICS

Here he comes, big with statistics,

The Complete Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson
Troubled and sharp about fac's, LXVI

Reference #: 9744

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: ENGINEER

Even the mechanical engineer comes at last to an end of his figures, and must stand up, a practical man, face to face with the discrepancies of nature and the hiatuses of theory.

Records of a Family of Engineers
Chapter II, Part III
(p. 261)

Reference #: 9743

Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born: 13 September, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 3 December, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa
General Category: ENGINEER

The seas into which his labours carried the new engineer were still scarce charted, the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the convenience of any road; the isles in which he must sojourn were still partly savage. He must toss much in boats; he must often adventure on horseback by the dubious bridle-track through unfrequented wildernesses; he must sometimes plant his lighthouse in the very camp of wreckers; and he was continually enforced to the vicissitudes of outdoor life.

Records of a Family of Engineers
Chapter I
(p. 213)

Reference #: 10432

Steward, J.H.
General Category: SCIENCE

It is the unhappy lot of science that it must clear the ground of flimsy and fanciful structures built upon false premises and errors of fact before it can build anew.

Smithsonian Institution Annual Report
Petroglyphs of the United States1936

Reference #: 15785

Stewart, Alan
General Category: AVERAGE

Sir, - In your issue of December 31 you quoted Mr. B.S. Morris as saying that many people are disturbed that about half the children in the country are below the average in reading ability. This is only one of many similarly disturbing facts. About half the church steeples in the country are below average height; about half our coal scuttles below average capacity, and about half our babies below average weight. The only remedy would seem to be to repeal the law of averages.

The Times
Averages, Monday, January 4, 1954
(p. 7)

Reference #: 3609

Stewart, Dugald
General Category: PHYSICS

Certain branches of natural philosophy (such as physical astronomy and optics)...are, in a great measure, inaccessible to those who have not received a regular mathematical education.

Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind
Part 3, Chapter 1, section 3

Reference #: 3608

Stewart, Dugald
General Category: PHYSICS

According to the doctrine now stated, the highest, or rather the only proper object of physics, is to ascertain those established conjunctions of successive events, which constitute the order of the universe; to record the phenomena which it exhibits to our observations, or which it discloses to our experiments; and to refer these phenomena to their general laws.

Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind
Vol. 2, Chapter iv, section 1

Reference #: 3607

Stewart, Dugald
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...the speculative propositions of mathematics do not relate to facts; ...all that we are convinced of by any demonstration in the science, is of a necessary connection subsisting between certain suppositions and certain conclusions. When we find these suppositions actually take place in a particular instance, the demonstration forces us to apply the conclusion. Thus, if I could form a triangle, the three sides of which were accurately mathematical lines, I might affirm of this individual figure, that its three angles are equal to two right angles; but, as the imperfection of my senses puts it out of my power to be, in any case, certain of the exact correspondence of the diagram which I delineate, with the definitions given in the elements of geometry, I never can apply with confidence to a particular figure, a mathematical theorem. On the other hand, it appears from the daily testimony of our senses that the speculative truths of geometry may be applied to material objects with a degree of accuracy sufficient for the purposes of life; and from such applications of them, advantages of the most important kind have been gained to society.

Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind
Part 2, Chapter 1, section 3

Reference #: 12685

Stewart, Dugald
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

...I have never met with a mere mathematician who was not credulous to a fault...

The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart
Vol. IV
(p. 209)

Reference #: 13526

Stewart, Dugald
General Category: PREMISE

In Pure Mathematics, where all the various truths are necessarily connected with each other, (being all necessarily connected with those hypotheses which are the principles of the science), an arrangement is beautiful in proportion as the principles are few; and what we admire perhaps chiefly in the science, is the astonishing variety of consequences which may be demonstrably deduced from so small a number of premises.

The Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind
Part 3, Chapter 1, section 3

Reference #: 12684

Stewart, Dugald
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...the study of it [mathematics] is peculiarly calculated to strengthen the power of steady and concatenated thinking - a power which, in all the pursuits of life, whether speculative or active, is one of the most valuable endowments we can possess. This command of attention, however, it may be proper to add, is to be acquired, not by the practice of modern methods, but by the study of the Greek geometry...

The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart
Vol. IV
(p. 201)

Reference #: 16087

Stewart, I.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

In 1985 there was a flurry of publicity for an announced proof of the Riemann Hypothesis...This announcement was premature and the zeta function retains its secrets. Fame, fortune and many sleepless nights await whoever uncovers them.

The Problems of Mathematics
(p. 164)

Reference #: 16086

Stewart, Ian
General Category: IDEA

Really good mathematical ideas are hard to come by. They result from the combined work of many people over long periods of time. Their discovery involves wrong turnings and intellectual dead ends. They cannot be proved at will: truly novel mathematics is not amenable to an industrial `Research and Development' approach. But they pay for all that effort by their durability and versatility.

The Problems of Mathematics

Reference #: 2442

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The true mathematician is not a juggler of numbers, but a juggler of concepts.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Reference #: 2441

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MODEL

Construction of models, I said, was an art. On this occasion the art is conjuring: I can do no better than wave the magic wand and extract the rabbit from the hat.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Reference #: 2440

Stewart, Ian
General Category: PROOF

An intuitive proof allows you to understand why the theorem must be true; the logic merely provides firm grounds to show that it is true.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Reference #: 7508

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics is the science of patterns, and nature exploits just about every pattern that there is.

Nature's Numbers
Chapter 2
(p. 18)

Reference #: 3274

Stewart, Ian
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

I may not understand it, but it sure looks important to me.

Does God Play Dice? (2nd Edition)
Chapter 6
(p. 109)

Reference #: 3272

Stewart, Ian
General Category: LANGUAGE

A farmer, it is said, hired a team of scientists to advise him on improving his dairy production. After six months' work they prepared their report. The farmer began to read, only to encounter the opening sentence: 'Consider a spherical cow.'
There's an important message behind this hoary tale. The shapes that we see in nature, and the traditional geometric shapes of mathematics, do not always bear much resemblance to one another.
Sometimes they do. In 1610 Galileo said that the language of nature is mathematics, and 'its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures'. His dramatic successes in dynamics explain his viewpoint. But by 1726 Jonathan Swift was ridiculing such a philosophy in Gulliver's Voyage to Laputa: 'If they would praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms.'
These quotations find a modern echo in a much-quoted statement of Benoit Mandelbrot in 'The Fractal Geometry of Nature: 'Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.'

Does God Play Dice? (2nd Edition)
Chapter 11
(p. 201)
Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2002

Reference #: 7509

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is not just a collection of isolated facts: it is more like a landscape; it has an inherent geography that its users and creators employ to navigate through what would otherwise be an impenetrable jungle.

Nature's Numbers
(p. 38)

Reference #: 2439

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Many pages have been expended on polemics in favour of rigour over intuition, or of intuition over rigour.
Both extremes miss the point: the power of mathematics lies precisely in the combination of intuition and rigour.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Reference #: 2438

Stewart, Ian
General Category: UNDERSTANDING

A person who insists on understanding every tiny step before going on to the next is liable to concentrate so much on looking at his feet that he fails to realize he is walking in the wrong direction.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Reference #: 7510

Stewart, Ian
General Category: PROOF

Proofs knit the fabric of mathematics together, and if a single thread is weak, the entire fabric may unravel.

Nature's Numbers
(p. 45)

Reference #: 7511

Stewart, Ian
General Category: RESEARCH

The really important breakthroughs are always unpredictable. It is their very unpredictability that makes them important: they change our world in ways we didn't see coming. ...There is nothing wrong with goal-oriented research as a way of achieving specific feasible goals. But the dreamers and the mavericks must be allowed some free rein, too. Our world is not static: new problems constantly arise, and old answers often stop working. Like Lewis Carroll's Red Queen, we must run very fast in order to stand still.

Nature's Numbers: The Unreal
Reality of Mathematics(1995)

Reference #: 7512

Stewart, Ian
General Category: OBVIOUS

It's amazing how long it can take to see the obvious. But of course it's only obvious now.

Nature's Numbers: The Unreal Reality of Mathematics

Reference #: 6162

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is not a long-dead subject preserved in dusty tomes, in which all the questions have been solved and all the answers are listed at the back of the book. It is a vibrant, lively, ever-growing subject: Indeed, more new mathematics is being created today than ever before. Further, this new mathematics is not just ever-more-complicated answers to bigger and bigger sums. It lies on a far higher conceptual level. Mathematics is the study of patterns, regularities, rules, and their consequences—the science of significant form—and nowhere is form more significant than in biology.

Life's Other Secret:The New Mathematics
Living World

Reference #: 7507

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is to nature as Sherlock Holmes is to evidence.

Nature's Numbers
(p. 2)

Reference #: 10410

Stewart, Ian
General Category: PRIME

Who would have imagined that something as straightforward as the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4,...) could give birth to anything so baffling as the prime numbers (2, 3 ,5, 7, 11, ...)?

Scientific American
Jumping Champions, December 2000

Reference #: 14937

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is much like the Mississippi. There are sideshoots and dead ends and minor tributaries; but the mainstream is there, and you can find it where the current - the mathematical power - is strongest. Its delta is research mathematics: it is growing, it is going somewhere (but it may not always be apparent where), and what today looks like a major channel may tomorrow clog up with silt and be abandoned. Meanwhile a minor trickle may suddenly open out into a roaring torrent. The best mathematics always enriches the mainstream, sometimes by diverting it in an entirely new direction.

The Nature of Mathematics
(p. 12)

Reference #: 14938

Stewart, Ian
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Not all ideas are mathematics; but all good mathematics must contain an idea.

The Nature of Mathematics
(p. 6)

Reference #: 15099

Stewart, Michael M.
General Category: NURSE

When doctors doctor, and nurses nurse,
Most patients get better, though some get worse.
The system's not perfect, but one of the facts is
That no one is suing the nurse for malpractice:
She knows what her job is, and does it with grace,
While doctors make sure that she stays in her place.

The New England Journal of Medicine
Help?, Vol. 285, No. 24, 1971
(p. 1384)

Reference #: 15096

Stewart, Michael M.
General Category: DOCTOR

What do you want to be, my son,
When you're all grown up like me?
A doctor like you,
With nothing to do
But handing out pills for a fee.

The New England Journal of Medicine
Manpower Planning (By Degrees), Vol. 287, No. 13, September 28, 1972
(p. 673)

Reference #: 14078

Stigler, Stephen M.
General Category: STATISTICS

...elementary statistics texts tell us that the method of least squares was first discovered about 1805. Whether it had one or two or more discoverers can be argued; still the method dates from no later than 1805. We also read that Sir Francis Galton discovered regression about 1885, in studies of heredity. Already we have a puzzle - a modern course in regression analysis is concerned almost entirely with the method of least squares and its variations. How could the core of such a course date from both 1805 and 1885? Is there more than one way a sum of squared deviations can be made small?

The History of Statistics
Introduction
(p. 2)

Reference #: 7082

Stillingfleet, Benjamin
General Category: NATURE

...each moss,
Each shell, each crawling insect holds a rank
Important in the plan of Him, who fram'd
This scale of beings; holds a rank, which lost
Wou'd break the chain, and leave behind a gap
Which nature's self would rue.

Miscellaneous Tracts to Natural History, Husbandry, and Physick
(p. 128)

Reference #: 11948

Stinton, D.
General Category: IDEA

One should never have too much reverence for ideas, no matter whose they are. Ideas are meant to be kicked around, stood upon their heads, and looked at backwards through mirrors. It is only in this way that they can grow up in the way that they should, without excessive self-importance. The ideas of one man are the food for thought of another.

The Anatomy of the Aeroplane
Preface
(p. ix)

Reference #: 13826

Stirling, Charles J. M.
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

It might be thought that the politico-economic-social structure of Europe in the early 19th century was determined by the military alignments in Europe of the period. This is another misapprehension. It was, perhaps surprisingly, determined by the allotropy of tin. This shiny familiar metal turns below 13¦C into a yellow powder ...The buttons on the uniforms of the soldiers of Napoleon's armies were largely composed of tin and in the long drown out campaign against the Russians, the buttons turned to powder and fell off the soldiers' uniforms. This made them more concerned with wrapping their uniforms round them in the hostile climate than pointing their rifles at the Russians. The retreat from Moscow ...was the result.

The Future of Science Has Begun: The Communication of Science to the Public
Science and The Media

Reference #: 2602

Stockbridge, Frank B.
General Category: BIOLOGIST

A little bit of this, a little more of that, a pinch of something else, boil blank minutes, and set aside in the same vessel - thus might read the biologists' formula for creating life...

Cosmopolitan
Creating Life in the Laboratory, May 1912
(p. 775)

Reference #: 2601

Stockbridge, Frank B.
General Category: LIFE

Life is a chemical reaction; death is the cessation of that reaction; living matter, from the microscopic yeast spore to humanity itself, is merely the result of certain accidental groupings of otherwise inert matter, and life can actually be created by repeating in the laboratory nature's own methods and processes!

Cosmopolitan
Creating Life in the Laboratory, Vol. 52, 1912
(pp. 774-781)

Reference #: 7649

Stocking, Martha
General Category: MODEL

Building statistical models is just like this. You take a real situation with real data, messy as this is, and build a model that works to explain the behavior of real data.

New York Times
February 10, 2000

Reference #: 1859

Stoddard, Richard Henry
General Category: NATURE

Once, when the days were ages,
And the old Earth was young,
The high gods and the sages
From Nature's golden pages
Her open secrets wrung.

Brahma's Answer

Reference #: 5112

Stoddard, Richard Henry
General Category: OCEAN

Thou wert before the Continents, before
The hollow heavens, which like another sea
Encircles them and thee, but whence thou wert,
And when thou wast created, is not known,
Antiquity was young when thou wast old.

Hymn to the Sea
l. 104

Reference #: 3139

Stoddard, Richard Henry
General Category: OCEAN

I loved the Sea.
Whether in calm it glassed the gracious day
With all its light, the night with all its fires;
Whether in storm it lashed its sullen spray,
Wild as the heart when passionate youth expires;
Or lay, as now, a torture to my mind,
In yonder land-locked bay, unwrinkled by the wind.

Carmen Naturoe Triumphale
l. 192

Reference #: 3452

Stoker, Bram
General Category: ANIMAL

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till,
Borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night.

Dracula

Reference #: 3451

Stoker, Bram
General Category: SCIENCE

There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.

Dracula

Reference #: 3450

Stoker, Bram
General Category: ANIMAL

I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.

Dracula

Reference #: 1234

Stokes W.
General Category: STETHOSCOPE

The stethoscope is an instrument, not, as some represent it, the bagatelle of a day, the brain-
Born fancy of some speculative enthusiast, the use of which, like the universal medicine of animal magnetism, will be soon forgotten, or remembered only to be ridiculed. It is one of those rich and splendid gifts which Science now and then bestows upon her most favoured votaries, which, while they extended our views and open to us wide and fruitful fields of inquiry, confer in the meantime the richest benefits and blessings on mankind.

An Introduction to the Use of the Stethescope
Machlachlan & Stewart, Edinburgh; 1825

Reference #: 13202

Stoll, Clifford
General Category: ASTRONOMER

The astronomer's rule of thumb: if you don't write it down, it didn't happen.

The Cuckoo's Egg
Chapter 5
(p. 28)

Reference #: 8595

Stoller, Robert
General Category: CHROSOME

What to the unempathic scientist is a chromosome is the heavy hand of immutable destiny to the victims: on receiving the genetic information, the patient may feel transformed into a freak, no longer fully human. Those who feel this is an exaggeration have not treated people afflicted with depression, hopelessness, or psychosis as a result of learning such a truth.

In Michael A. Sperber and Lissy F. Jarvik
Psychiatry and Genetics
Genetics, Constitution, and Gender Disorder(
(p. 54)

Reference #: 8037

Stone, David
General Category: SIMPLICITY

One man's 'simple' is another man's 'huh?'

OMNI Magazine
May 1979

Reference #: 7298

Stone, John
General Category: INTERN

The old man asked, "Are you an Intern?" Hearing the young doctor's tired, "Yes," the old man followed with another question: "Do you know what it takes to be a good Intern? It takes the heart of a lion, the eye of an eagle, and the hand of a woman."

In D. Abse (ed.)
My Medical School
(p. 196)
Robson Books, London, England; 1978

Reference #: 1991

Stone, Marshall H.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...science is reasoning; reasoning is mathematics; and, therefore, science is mathematics.

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Association
Mathematics and the Future of Science, Vol. 63, No. 2 March 1957
(p. 61)

Reference #: 4840

Stone, Samuel John
General Category: FORCE

All things are molded by some plastic force
Out of some atoms somewhere up in space.

Harper's Monthly
Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken, September 1875

Reference #: 3048

Stoney, G. Johnstone
General Category: NUMBERS

When interpreting nature's work, we are obliged frequently to speak of high numbers and small fractions.

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1899
Survey of That Part of the Range of Nature's Operations Which Man is Competent to Study
(p. 207)

Reference #: 17927

Stoney, Johnstone
General Category: SUPPOSITION

A theory is a supposition which we hope to be true, a hypothesis is a supposition which we expect to be useful; fictions belong to the realm of art; if made to intrude elsewhere, they become either makebelieves or mistakes.

In Sir William Ramsay
Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
Radium and Its Products
(p. 179)

Reference #: 17503

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: LANGUAGE

If there is any point in using language at all it is that a word is taken to stand for a particular fact or idea and not for other facts or ideas.

Travesties
Act I
(p. 22)

Reference #: 1462

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: TEACH

THOMASINA: If you do not teach me the true meaning of things, who will?
SEPTIMUS: Ah. Yes, I am ashamed. Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y, and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2. (Pause.)
THOMASINA: Eurghhh!
SEPTIMUS: Nevertheless, that is the theorem.
THOMASINA: It is disgusting and incomprehensible. Now when I am grown to practice it myself I shall never do so without thinking of you.

Arcadia
Act I, scene I
(p. 3)

Reference #: 1460

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: COSMOS

A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe.'

Arcadia
Introduction

Reference #: 4552

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

An electron can be here or there at the same moment. You can choose. It can go from here to there without going in between; it can pass through two doors at the same time, or from one door to another by a path which is there for all to see until someone looks, and then the act of looking has made it take a different path. Its movements cannot be anticipated because it has no reasons. It defeats surveillance because when you know what it's doing you can't be certain where it is, and when you know where it is you can't be certain what it's doing: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle; and this is not because you're not looking carefully enough, it is because there is no such thing as an electron with a definite position and a definite momentum; you fix one, you lose the other, and it's all done without tricks, it's the real world, it is awake.

Hapgood
Act I, Scene 5

Reference #: 4553

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: ATOM

There is a straight ladder from the atom to the grain of sand, and the only real mystery in physics is the missing rung. Below it, particle physics; above it, classical physics; but in between, metaphysics. All the mystery in life turns out to be this same mystery, the join between things which are distinct and yet continuous, mind and body, free will and causality, living cells and life itself; the moment before the foetus. Who needed God when everything worked like billiard balls?

Hapgood
(p. 544)

Reference #: 4554

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: ELECTRON

So now make a fist, and if your fist is as big as the nucleus of one atom then the atom is as big as St Paul's, and if it happens to be a hydrogen atom then it has a single electron flitting about like a moth in the empty cathedral, now by the dome, now by the altar ...Every atom is a cathedral. I cannot stand the pictures of atoms they put in schoolbooks, like a little solar system: Bohr's atom. Forget it. You can't make a picture of what Bohr proposed, an electron does not go round like a planet, it is like a moth which was there a moment ago, it gains or loses a quantum of energy and it jumps, and at the moment of quantum jump it is like two moths, one to be here and one to stop being there; an electron is like twins, each one unique, a unique twin.

Hapgood
Act I, scene 5

Reference #: 1461

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: FORMULA

THOMASINA: If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really, good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

Arcadia
Act I, scene I
(p. 5)

Reference #: 5756

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: ANALYSIS

I can put two and two together, you know. Putting two and two together is my subject. I do not leap to hasty conclusions. I do not deal in suspicion and wild surmise. I examine the data; I look for logical inferences.

Jumpers
Act One
(p. 32)

Reference #: 7705

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: FACT

Comment is free but facts are on expense.

Night and Day
Act 2

Reference #: 12286

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: PROBABILITY

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

The Bible
I Corinthians 13:9

Reference #: 12868

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: AVERAGE

Expectation in the general sense may be considered as a kind of average.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica
11th Edition, Probability

Reference #: 9921

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: ODDS

Life is a gamble at terrible odds—if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Reference #: 9923

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: AVERAGE

GUIL: The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their - -

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Act One
(p. 13)

Reference #: 9922

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: AVERAGE

The equanimity of your average tosser of coins depends upon a law, or rather a tendency, or let us say a probability, or at any rate a mathematically calculable chance, which ensures that he will not upset himself by losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Act One
(p. 19)

Reference #: 9924

Stoppard, Tom
General Category: PROBABILITY

If we postulate that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor with un-, sub- or supernatural forces. And since it obviously hasn't been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Act One
(p. 17)

Reference #: 3671

Stott, Henry G.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering is the art of organizing and directing men and controlling the forces and materials of nature for the benefit of the human race.

In Ralph J. Smith
Engineering as a Career
(p. 6)

Reference #: 2852

Stout, Rex
General Category: STATISTICS

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

Death of a Doxy
(p. 90)

Reference #: 2851

Stout, Rex
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics show that seventy-four per cent of wives open letters, with or without a teakettle.

Death of a Doxy
(p. 120)

Reference #: 6745

Straus, Bernard
General Category: DISEASE

Almost as fast as one disease is conquered new ones are discovered and sometimes created. We exchange new ones for old. The balance is clearly on the credit side and it is a fact that many of the old scourges, real or imaginary, are gone or are vanishing.

Medical Counterpoint
Disappearing Diseases, Vol. 2, 1970

Reference #: 1821

Strauss, Maurice B.
General Category: WATER

In the beginning the abundance of the sea
Led to profligacy.
The ascent through the brackish waters of the estuary
To the salt-poor lakes and ponds
Made immense demands
Upon the glands.
Salt must be saved, water is free.
In the never-ending struggle for security,
Man's chiefest enemy.
According to the bard of Stratford on the Avon,
The banks were climbed and life established on dry land
Making the incredible demand
Upon another gland
That water, too, be saved.

Body Water in Man
Salt and Water, Chapter XII
(p. 238)

Reference #: 6783

Strauss, Maurice B.
General Category: DISCOVERY

Discoveries do not arise de novo, like Athene from the brow of Zeus, but are more akin to the living layers of a coral reef built on the past labors of countless predecessors.

Medicine
Vol. 43, 1964
(p. 619)

Reference #: 9097

Stravinsky, Igor
General Category: PAST

The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories....Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.

Poetics of the Music in the Form-Six Essays
Chapter 2
(pp. 25-26)

Reference #: 15221

Streatfield, Mr. Justice Geoffrey
General Category: FACT

Facts speak louder than statistics.

The Observer
Sayings of the Week, 19 March, 1950

Reference #: 9713

Streeter, B.H.
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science is the great cleanser of the human thinking; it makes impossible any religion but the highest.

Reality
Chapter IX
(p. 272)

Reference #: 929

Strehler, Bernard
General Category: DEATH

Aging and death do seem to be what Nature has planned for us. But what if we have other plans?

In J. Lyon and P. Gorner
Altered Fates
Part II
(p. 295)

Reference #: 8973

Strindberg, August
General Category: ANALOGY

Twice two - is two, and this I will demonstrate by analogy, the highest form of proof. Listen! Once one is one, therefore twice two is two. For that which applies to the one must also apply to the other.

Plays
Dream Play
(p. 561-2)

Reference #: 6372

Strong, Lydia
General Category: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

Your sales last year just paralleled the sales of rum cokes in Rio de Janeiro, as modified by the sum of the last digits of all new telephone numbers in Toronto. So, why bother with surveys of your own market? Just send away for the data from Canada and Brazil.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956
(p. 803)

Reference #: 6374

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

A forecast is a forecast is a forecast. What if an important new trend developed? All the possibilities were considered three months ago, and it's too late to discuss any further changes in this year's projections.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 6375

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

His forecasts could have been presented at the deadline date - but he's held it up six weeks waiting for information which will clear up one "crucial" point - crucial only to him.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 6376

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

The charts rustle as the wind murmurs through the sacred grove. The high priest interprets the prophecy to the waiting supplicant. Business will improve, he says ...unless it takes a turn for the worse.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 6373

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

Why fool around with market research? Why try to correlate economic indicators? The correct prediction will strike suddenly - like a bolt from the blue.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 6377

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

Will he ever be able to correlate all these facts into one forecast that makes sense? What does it matter? He's just obtained a new and exclusive figure on discretionary consumer income in Hudson N.Y. - and he's sublimely happy.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 6378

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

Two plus two is four? Not to this forecaster. He knows the sales manager (who hired him) wants a different answer.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 6379

Strong, Lydia
General Category: FORECAST

He's fed in enough data for a dozen forecasts - let the electronic brains do the rest. While the THINK machines grind out prophecies, he can relax and contemplate the cosmos.

Management Review
Sales Forecasting: Problems and Prospects, September 1956

Reference #: 352

Struik, Dirk J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is a vast adventure of ideas; its history reflects some of the noblest thoughts of countless generations.

A Concise History of Mathematics
Introduction
(p. xi)

Reference #: 17445

Strunsky, Simeon
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics are the heart of democracy.

Topics of the Times
November 30, 1944

Reference #: 6130

Strutt, John William
General Category: PHYSICIST

The different habits of mind of the two schools of physicists sometimes lead them to the adoption of antagonistic views on doubtful and difficult questions. The tendency of the purely experimental school is to rely almost exclusively upon direct evidence, even when it is obviously imperfect, and to disregard arguments which they stigmatize as theoretical. The tendency of the mathematician is to over-rate the solidity of his theoretical structures, and to forget the narrowness of the experimental foundation upon which many of them rest.

Life of John William Strutt
(p. 132)

Reference #: 6132

Strutt, Robert John
General Category: SCIENCE

There are some great men of science whose charm consists in having said the first word on a subject, in having introduced some new idea which has proved fruitful; there are others whose charm consists perhaps in having said the last word on the subject, and who have reduced the subject to logical consistency and clearness.

Life of John William Strutt: Third Baron Rayleigh
Chapter XVII
(p. 310)

Reference #: 1894

Strutt, Robert John
General Category: ETHICS

...the application of fundamental discoveries in science is altogether too remote for it to be possible to control such discoveries at the source.

British Association Report
1938
(p. 20)

Reference #: 16831

Struve, Otto
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy has had three great revolutions in the past four hundred years: The first was the Copernican revolution that removed the earth from the center of the solar system and placed it 150 million kilometers away from it; the second occurred between 1920 and 1930 when, as a result of the work of H. Shapley and R.J. Trumpler, we realized that the solar system is not at the center of the Milky Way but about 30,000 light years away from it, in a relatively dim spiral arm; the third is occurring now, and, whether we want it or not, we must take part in it. This is the revolution embodied in the question: Are we alone in the universe?

The Universe
Chapter VI
(p. 157)

Reference #: 8708

Stuart, Copans A.
General Category: JOURNALS

Why, dear colleagues, must our findings
Now be put in sterile bindings?
Once physicians wrote for recreation.
Our great teachers through the ages,
Fracastro, and other sages,
Found writing could be fun, like fornication...

Perspectives in Biological Medicine
Winter 1973
(p. 232)

Reference #: 1748

Student (William Sealy Gossett)
General Category: PROBABLE ERROR

An experiment may be regarded as forming an individual of a "population" of experiments which might be performed under the same conditions. A series of experiments is a sample drawn from this population. Now any series of experiments is only of value in so far as it enables us to form a judgment as to the statistical constants of the population to which the experiments belong. In a great number of cases the question finally turns on the value of a mean, either directly, or as the mean difference between the two quantities.

Biometrika
The Probable Error of a Mean, Vol. 6, 1908

Reference #: 8964

Stuessy, Tod F.
General Category: TAXONOMY

We as taxonomists celebrate diversity. We celebrate the wildness of the planet. We celebrate the numerous human attempts to understand this wilderness, and we mourn its loss through human miscalculation. We sense the aesthetic of life and much of our efforts are aimed at reflecting this composition. Above all we celebrate the challenges of being alive and dealing with the living world. There is no greater responsibility, privilege, nor satisfaction.

Plant Taxonomy
Epilogue
(p. 406)

Reference #: 18142

Stukeley, William
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

When so great and unusual a phenomenon, as an earthquake, and that repeated, happens among us; it will naturally excite a serious reflexion in every one that is capable of thinking.

The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious
To Martin Folkes
(p. 5)
C. Corbet, London, England; 1750

Reference #: 18143

Stukeley, William
General Category: NATURE

…in the works of nature, there are no degrees of great, and little; comparisons are incompatible. We indeed are more affected with what seems great in our own apprehensions: I would rather say, what is rare and unusual.

The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious
To Martin Folkes
(p. 5)
C. Corbet, London, England; 1750

Reference #: 960

Stumpf, LaNore
General Category: PILL

How is it that a little pill
Without a pair of eyes to see
Can travel down, and round and round
And figure out what's wrong with me?

American Journal of Nursing
Needed: Remote Control, April 1969
(p. 902)

Reference #: 2766

Sturgeon, Theodore
General Category: PERCENTAGES

'That would be a little like saying '102 percent normal,' said the Master smugly.
'If you like statistical scales better than the truth,' Bux growled.

In Harlon Ellison
Dangerous Visions
f All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?
(p. 350)

Reference #: 16144

Sturluson, Snorri
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

Erst was the age when nothing was:
Nor sand nor sea, nor chilling stream-waves;
Earth was not found, nor Ether-Heaven,
-A Yawning Gap, but grass was none.

The Prose Edda
Here Begins the Beguiling of Gylfi
(p. 16)

Reference #: 10082

Sturtevant, A.H.
General Category: GENETIC

Man is one of the most unsatisfactory of all organisms for genetic study.

Science
Social Implications of the Genetics of Man, Vol. 120, September 10, 1954
(p. 405)

Reference #: 11446

Suber, Peter
General Category: MATHEMATICS

t follows -have courage!- that some infinite sets can be put into one-to-one correspondence with proper subsets of themselves....The very idea that a set can be put into one-to-one correspondence with one of its proper subsets is deeply counter-intuitive. If you're feeling a barrier of resistance, this is probably the cause.
Cantor's theory faced intense opposition in the late 19th century, from mathematicians as well as from philosophers and theologians. It wasn't just denied and disbelieved; it was hated. Yet despite this heat, no opponent of the theory has been able to show that self-nesting is contradictory for infinite sets. The objections that self-nesting is contradictory for finite sets, or counter-intuitive for infinite sets, are clearly beside the point. Today, Cantor's theory is standard mathematics even though there are still a few holdouts. Beyond consistency, it [also] has the virtue of..

St. John's Review
Infinite Reflections, XLIV, 2(1998)

Reference #: 12872

Suess, Eduard
General Category: CONTINENT

If we imagine an observer to approach our planet from outer space, and, pushing aside the belts of red-brown clouds which obscure our atmosphere, to gaze for a whole day on the surface of the earth as it rotates beneath him, the feature beyond all others most likely to arrest his attention would be the wedge-like outlines of the continents as they narrow away to the South.
This is indeed the most striking character presented by our map of the world, and has been so regarded ever since the chief features of our planet have become known to us.

The Face of the Earth
Vol. II, ntroduction
(p. B)

Reference #: 12870

Suess, Eduard
General Category: TIME

The astronomer, in order to render conceivable the immensity of celestial space, points to the parallelism of the stellar rays or to the white clouds of the Milky Way. There is no such means of comparison by which we can illustrate directly the great length of cosmic periods, and we do not even possess a unit with which such periods might be measured. The distance in space of many stars from the earth has been determined; for the distance in time of the latest strand-line on Capri or the last shell-bed on Tromsö, we cannot suggest an estimate even in approximate figures. We hold the organic remains of the remote past in our hand and consider their physical structure, but we nnow not what interval of time separates their epoch from our own; they are like those celestial bodies without parallax, which inform us of their physical constitution by their spectrum, but furnish no clue to their distance. As Rama looks out upon the Ocean, its limits mingling and uniting with heaven on the horizon, and as he ponders whether a path might not be built into the Immeasurable, so we look over the Ocean of time, but nowhere do we see signs of a shore.

The Face of the Earth
Vol. II, Part III, Chapter XIV
(p. 556)

Reference #: 12871

Suess, Eduard
General Category: CONTINENT

It is in the history of the seas that we discover the history of the continents.

The Face of the Earth
Vol. II
(p. 537)

Reference #: 18106

Sufi creation myth
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

I was a hidden treasure and desired to be known: therefore I created the creation in order to be known.

In George Smoot
Wrinkles in Time
Chapter 1
(p. 1)

Reference #: 2374

Suidas
General Category: DICE

Midas in tesseris consultor optimus.
Midas on the dice gives the best advice.

Collected Works of Erasmus
Adages II vii 1 to III iii 100
(p. 124)

Reference #: 10821

Suits, C.G.
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

I've never met that 'coldly calculating man of science' whom the novelists extol....I doubt that he exists; and if he did exist I greatly fear that he would never make a startling discovery or invention.

In Frederic Brownell
The American Magazine
Heed That Hunch, December 1945
(p. 142)

Reference #: 10016

Sukoff, Albert
General Category: NUMBER

Huge numbers are commonplace in our culture, but oddly enough the larger the number the less meaningful it seems to be ....Anthropologists have reported on the primitive number systems of some aboriginal tribes. The Yancos in the Brazilian Amazon stop counting at three. Since their word for 'three' is 'poettarrarorincoaroac,' this is understandable.

Saturday Review of the Society
Lotsa Hamburgers, March 1973
(p. 6)

Reference #: 1182

Sullivan, H.
General Category: SCIENCE

Real science, which is the reasoned explanation of all things in the light of their causes, is concerned with the study of universals or characteristics common to many entities.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Natural and Mathematical Sciences

Reference #: 199

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: ABSTRACTION

Science, indeed, tells us a very great deal less about the universe than we have been accustomed to suppose, and there is no reason to believe that all we can ever know must be couched in terms of its thin and largely arbitrary abstractions.

Beethoven, His Spiritual Development
Art and Reality
(pp. 21-22)

Reference #: 1506

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

...outside their views on purely scientific matters there is nothing characteristic of men of science.

Aspects of Science
Scientific Citizen
(p. 120)

Reference #: 1507

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the expression of this life so far as the intellect is concerned.

Aspects of Science
(p. 193)

Reference #: 14398

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, as the history of science proves, is an aim with an irresistible fascination for mankind, and which needs no defence. The mere fact that science does, to a great extent, gratify our intellectual curiosity, is a sufficient reason for its existence.

The Limitations of Science
Chapter 7, section 3
(p. 164)

Reference #: 14394

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, like everything else that man has created, exists, of course, to gratify certain human needs and desires. The fact that it has been steadily pursued for so many centuries, that it has attracted an ever-wider extent of attention, and that it is now the dominant intellectual interest of mankind, shows that it appeals to a very powerful and persistent group of appetites.

The Limitations of Science
Introduction
(p. 7)

Reference #: 14395

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts. Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with.

The Limitations of Science

Reference #: 14396

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: BIOLOGY

It is possible, nevertheless, that our outlook on the physical universe will again undergo a profound change. This change will come about through the development of biology. If biology finds it absolutely necessary, for the description of living things, to develop new concepts of its own, then the present outlook on "inorganic nature" will also be profoundly affected..The notions of physics will have to be enriched, and this enrichment will come from biology.

The Limitations of Science
Towards the Future
(pp. 188, 189)

Reference #: 12115

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: AESTHETIC

Since the primary object of the scientific theory is to express the harmonies which are found to exist in nature, we see at once that these theories must have an aesthetic value. The measure of the success of a scientific theory is, in fact, a measure of its aesthetic value, since it is a measure of the extent to which it has introduced harmony in what was before chaos.

The Athenaeum
The Justification of the Scientific Method, No. 4644, 2 May 1919
(p. 275)

Reference #: 14072

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...a history of mathematics is largely a history of discoveries which no longer exist as separate items, but are merged into some more modern generalization, these discoveries have not been forgotten or made valueless. They are not dead, but transmuted.

The History of Mathematics in Europe
Introduction
(p. 10)

Reference #: 12174

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: ELECTRON

The electron is not, for example, an enduring something that can be tracked through time. Its mathematical description does not involve that degree of definiteness. Any picture we form of the atom errs, as it were, by excess of solidity. The mathematical symbols refer to entities more indefinite than our pictorial imagination, limited as it is by experience of "gross matter," can construct.

The Bases of Modern Science
Chapter XI
(pp. 252-253)

Reference #: 12175

Sullivan, J.W.N.
General Category: PHYSICS

The present tendency of physics is toward describing the universe in terms of mathematical relations between unimaginable entities.

The Bases of Modern Science
(p. 226)

Reference #: 1505

Sullivan, John William Navin
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics, as much as music or any other art, is one of the means by which we rise to a complete self-consciousness. The significance of mathematics resides precisely in the fact that it is an art; by informing us of the nature of our own minds it informs us of much that depends on our minds.

Aspects of Science

Reference #: 6184

Sullivan, Louis Henry
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Form ever follows function.

Lippincott's Magazine
The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, March 1896

Reference #: 12176

Sullivan. J.W.N.
General Category: ELECTRON

The electron is not, for example, an enduring something that can be tracked through time. Its mathematical description does not involve that degree of definiteness. Any picture we form of the atom errs, as it were, by excess of solidity. The mathematical symbols refer to entities more indefinite than our pictorial imagination, limited as it is by experience of 'gross matter,' can construct.

The Bases of Modern Science
Chapter XI
(pp. 252-253)

Reference #: 9499

Susann, Jacqueline
General Category: BOOK

A new book is just like any new product. Like a new detergent. You have to acquaint people with it. They have to know it's there. You only get to be number one when the public knows about you.

Quote, The Weekly Digest
May 28, 1967
(p. 422)

Reference #: 7006

Sutherland, Earl W., Jr.
General Category: RESEARCH

I am fully convinced that medical research can offer one a happy and productive life. And if one has a little viking spirit he can explore the world and people as no one else can do. The whole medical research area is wide open for exploration

Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1971

Reference #: 2456

Svevo, Italo
General Category: VOLCANO

Whenever I look at a mountain I always expect it to turn into a volcano.

Confessions of Zeno

Reference #: 2713

Swann, W.F.C.
General Category: NATURE

There are times...in the growth of human thought when nature, having led man to the hope that he may understand her glories, turns for a time capricious and mockingly challenges his powers to harmonize her mysteries by revealing new treasures.

In Bernard Jaffe
Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry
Chapter XVI
(p. 322)

Reference #: 2098

Swann, W.F.G.
General Category: INVENTOR

The inventor walks in the territory which the man of science has mapped out into regions of assured fertility, dubious fertility, and almost certain sterility. The man of science, and indeed the engineer, are inclined to conserve their efforts by walking in the rather limited realm which, on the basis of the laws with which they operate, represent regions of assured fertility. However, the inventor walks with courage everywhere. He sees a pasture which he thinks has promise. The physicist would explain to him that his reasons for expecting something from that region are invalid, and in 90 per cent of the cases they are, but the inventor walks nevertheless.

In Lenox R. Lohr
Centennial of Engineering
The Engineer and the Scientist
(pp. 260-26)

Reference #: 11984

Swann, W.F.G.
General Category: UNIVERSE

There is one great work of art; it is the universe. Ye men of letters find the imprints of its majesty in your sense of the beauty of words. Ye men of song find it in the harmony of sweet sounds. Ye painters feel it in the design of beauteous forms, and in the blending of rich soft colors do your souls mount on high to bask in the brilliance of nature's sunshine. Ye lovers are conscious of its beauties in forms ye can but ill define. Ye men of science find it in the rich harmonies of nature's mathematical design.

The Architecture of the Universe
Chapter 12
(p. 424)

Reference #: 10057

Swann, W.F.G.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science walks hand in hand with human development as its constant benefactor, as the guardian of its peace, in a universe rich to provide happiness and security for all.

In D.W. Hill
Science
Chapter 3
(p. 37)

Reference #: 11997

Swann, W.F.G.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

It has been said that the pure mathematician is never as happy as when he does not know what he is talking about...

The Architecture of the Universe
(p. 117)

Reference #: 11996

Swann, W.F.G.
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...the mathematical physicist [is] one who obtains much prestige from the physicists because they are impressed with the amount of mathematics he knows, and much prestige from the mathematicians, because they are impressed with the amount of physics he knows.

The Architecture of the Universe
(p. 14)

Reference #: 13124

Swartz, Norman
General Category: AUTONOMY

If the physical laws of this world are autonomous, we are not free; if we are free, then the physical laws are not autonomous.

The Concept of Physical Law
Chapter 10

Reference #: 8315

Swedenborg, Emanuel
General Category: PLANET

(There are) very many earths, inhabited by man...thousands, yea, ten thousands of earths, all full of inhabitants...not only in this solar system, but also beyond it, in the starry heaven.

Our Solar System, Which are Called Planets, and Earths in the Starry Heavens

Reference #: 16148

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: SICK

Poor Miss, she's sick as a Cushion...

The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift
Vol. the Fourth, Polite Conversation, Dialogue I
(p. 153)

Reference #: 16146

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: TEETH

...sweet Things are bad for the Teeth.

The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift
Vol. the Fourth, Polite Conversation, Dialogue II
(p. 181)

Reference #: 16147

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: DOCTOR

...the best Doctors in the World are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift
Vol. the Fourth, Polite ConversationSecond Conversation
(p. 182)

Reference #: 4826

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

The knowledge I had in mathematicks gave me great assistance in acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science and musick; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat. I observed in the king's kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the joynts that were served to his Majesty's table.

Gulliver's Travels
Part III, Chapter II

Reference #: 4828

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: COMET

...the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes...

Gulliver's Travels
Part III, Chapter II

Reference #: 4859

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: NATURE

He said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined.

He said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined
Gulliver's Travels, Part III, Chapter VIII
(pp. 118-119)

Reference #: 4827

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: SUN

These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute's peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehension arises from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies. For instance...that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and all the planets that receive their light from it.

Gulliver's Travels
A Voyage to Laputa, Chapter II
(p. 98)

Reference #: 7288

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: INVESTIGATION

Hail, fellow, well met,
All dirty and wet:
Find out, if you can,
Who's master, who's man.

My Lady's Lamentation

Reference #: 4825

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: ASTRONOMER

This load-stone is under the care of certain astronomers, who from time to time give it such positions as the monarch directs. They spend the greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness.

Gulliver's Travels
A Voyage to Laputa, Chapter III

Reference #: 3889

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures.

Gulliver's Travels
A Voyage to Laputa, Chapter 2

Reference #: 630

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: BRAIN

Books, the children of the brain.

A Tale of a Tub
Dedication

Reference #: 3890

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: UNDERSTAND

...where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath...

Gulliver's Travels, The Tale of A Tub, Battle of the Books, Etc.
Tale of a Tub, The Preface
(p. 403)

Reference #: 3888

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

My dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered to have seen very near the king's person, did me the honor to dine with me. We had two courses of three dishes each. In the first course there was a shoulder of mutton, cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboids, and a pudding into a cycloid. The second course was two ducks, trussed up into the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures.

Gulliver's Travels
Part III, Chapter II

Reference #: 3887

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

...what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them [the mathematicians of Laputal] towards news and politicks; perpetually enquiring into publick affairs; giving their judgments in matters of state; and passionately disputing every inch of party opinions. I have indeed observed the same disposition among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe; although I could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences...

Gulliver's Travels
Part III, Chapter II

Reference #: 4829

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne was a large table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all kinds.

Gulliver's Travels
Part III, Chapter II

Reference #: 4824

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: ASTRONOMER

There was an astronomer who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the great weather-cock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and diurnal motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coincide with all accidental turnings of the wind.

Gulliver's Travels
A Voyage to Balnibarbi, Chapter V

Reference #: 4823

Swift, Jonathan
General Category: MARS

They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distances from the centre of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation, that influences the other heavenly bodies.

In Great Books of the Western World. Volume 36
Gulliver's Travels
A Voyage to Laputa, Chapter 3
(p. 102)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952

Reference #: 8069

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: ANIMAL ELEPHANT

So Geographers in Afric-Maps
With Savage Pictures fill their gaps;
And o'er unhabitable Downs
Place Elephants for want of Towns.

On Poetry
A Rhapsody
l. 177-180

Reference #: 16010

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: INFINITE

So, Na4 ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller Fleas to bite `em
And so proceed, ad infinitum.

The Portable Swift
On Nature

Reference #: 8095

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: MOON

I with borrow'd silver shine,
What you see is none of mine.
First I show you but a quarter,
Like the bow that guards the Tartar:
Then the half, and then the whole,
Ever dancing round the pole.

On the Moon

Reference #: 10006

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: INVENTION

The greatest Inventions were produced in the Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nations, as the Germans.

Satires and Personal Writings
Thoughts on Various Subjects
(p. 407)

Reference #: 12180

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet if the materials be...spun out of your own entrails...the edifice will conclude at last in cobwebs....As for us the ancients, we are content with the bee to pretend to nothing of our own, beyond our wings and our voice, that is to say, our flights and our language. For the rest, whatever we have got, has been by infinite labour and search, and ranging through every corner of nature.

The Battle of the Books

Reference #: 10004

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: OBSERVATION

That was excellently observ'd, say I, when I read a Passage in an Author, where his Opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Satires and Personal Writings
Thoughts on Various Subjects

Reference #: 11606

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: COMET

Lo! From the dread immensity of spaceVReturning with accelerated course,
The rushing comet to the sun descends:And as he sinks below the shading earth,
With awful train projected o'er the heavens,
The guilty nations tremble....

Summer

Reference #: 10005

Swift, Jonathan
Born: 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 19 October, 1745 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Physicians ought not to give their Judgment of Religion, for the same Reason that Butchers are not admitted to be Jurors upon Life and Death.

Satires and Personal Writings
Thoughts On Various Subjects
(p. 410)

Reference #: 3061

Swigert, Jack
General Category: ASTRONAUT

Okay, Houston; we've had a problem.

Apollo 13

Reference #: 4067

Swimme, Brian
General Category: UNIVERSE

I am convinced that the story of the universe that has come out of three centuries of modern scientific work will be recognized as a supreme human achievement, the scientific enterprise's central gift to humanity, a revelation having a status equal to that of the great religious revelations of the past.

In Connie Barlow, ed.
Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life

Reference #: 12775

Swinburne, Algernon Charles
General Category: FLOWER LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Loves lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses Lean with smiling mouths or pleading;
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.

The Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne
Poetical Works, Vol. I, Love Lies Bleeding

Reference #: 12776

Swinburne, Algernon Charles
General Category: FLOWER MARSH MARIGOLD

A little marsh-plant, yellow green,
And pricked at lip with tender red,
Tread close, and either way you tread,
Some faint black water jets between
Least you should bruise the curious head.

The Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne
Poetical Works, Vol. I, The Sundew

Reference #: 13626

Swinburne, Richard
General Category: TIME

It would be an error to suppose that if the universe is infinitely old, and each state of the universe at each instant of time has a complete explanation which is a scientific explanation in terms of a previous state of the universe and natural laws (and so God is not invoked), that the existence of the universe throughout infinite time has a complete explanation, or even a full explanation. It has not. It has neither. It is totally inexplicable.

The Existence of God
Chapter 7
(p. 122)

Reference #: 16428

Swings, Pol
General Category: SKY

The sky belongs to everyone, with stars to spare for all.

In Henry Margenau and David Bergamini (eds.)
The Scientist
(p. 116)

Reference #: 17033

Sydenham, Thomas
General Category: MEDICINE

Inasmuch as the structure of the human frame has been so set together by Nature, that it is unable, from the continuous flux of particles, to remain unchanged; whilst, from the action of external causes, it is subjected to influences beyond its own: and since, for these reasons, a numerous train of diseases has pressed upon the earth since the beginning of time; so without doubt the necessity of investigations into the Art of Healing has exercised the wit of mankind for many ages.

The Works of Thomas Sydenham, MD
3rd ed., Volume 1
Classics of Medicine Library, Birmingham; 1979

Reference #: 7396

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: NAMES

Perhaps I may without immodesty lay claim to the appellation of Mathematical Adam, as I believe that I have given more names (passed into general circulation) of the creatures of the mathematical reason than all the other mathematicians of the age combined.

Nature
Volume 37, 1887-1888
(p. 162)

Reference #: 7413

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: ANALOGY

Induction and analogy are the special characteristics of modern mathematics, in which theorems have given place to theories and no truth is regarded otherwise than as a link in an infinite chain. "Omne exit in infinitum" is their favorite motto and accepted axiom.

Nature
A Plea for the Mathematician, Vol. 1
(p. 261)

Reference #: 12618

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Little could Plato have imagined, when indulging his instinctive love of the true and beautiful for their own sakes, he entered upon these refined speculations and reveled in a world of his own creation, that he was writing the grammar of the language in which it [mathematics] would be demonstrated in after ages that the pages of the universe are written.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
A Probationary Lecture on Geometry
(p. 7)

Reference #: 12623

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Some people have been found to regard all mathematics, after the 47th proposition of Euclid, as a sort of morbid secretion, to be compared only with the pearl said to be generated in the diseased oyster…

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
Execter British Association Report (1869)
(p. 658)

Reference #: 12622

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: CONIC SECTIONS

The discovery of the conic sections, attributed to Plato, first threw open the higher species of form to the contemplation of geometers. But for this discovery, which was probably regarded in Plato's time and long after him, as the unprofitable amusement of a speculative brain, the whole course of practical philosophy of the present day, of the science of astronomy, of the theory of projectiles, of the art of navigation, might have run a different channel; and the greatest discovery that has ever been made in the history of the world, the law of universal gravitation, with its innumerable direct and indirect consequences and applications to every department of human research and industry, might never to this hour have been elicited.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
A Probationary Lecture on Geometry
Gresham Committee and the Members of the Common Council of the City of London
4 December, 1854
(p. 7)

Reference #: 12621

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: CONTINUITY

Geometry formerly was the chief borrower from arithmetic and algebra, but it has since repaid its obligation with abundant usury; and if I were asked to name, in one word, the pole-star round which the mathematical firmament revolves, the central idea which pervades as a hidden spirit the whole corpus of mathematical doctrine, I should point to Continuity as contained in our notions of space, and say, it is this, it is this!

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
(p. 659)

Reference #: 12619

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: EUCLID

The early study of Euclid made me a hater of geometry…

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
(P. 660)

Reference #: 12617

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: INTEGRAL

It seems to be expected of every pilgrim up the slopes of the mathematical Parnassus, that he will at some point or other of his journey sit down and invent a definite integral or two towards the increase of the common stock.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Notes to the Meditation on Poncelet's Theorem, Including a Valuation of the Two New Definite Integrals
(p. 214, fn 2)

Reference #: 12416

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: RAMIFICATION

The theory of ramification is one of pure colligation, for it takes no account of magnitude or position; geometrical lines are used, but these have no more real bearing on the matter than those employed in genealogical tables have in explaining the laws of procreation.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
On Recent Discoveries in Mechanical Conversion of Motion
(p. 23)

Reference #: 12415

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: PUBLIC SPEAKING

When called upon to speak in public he [the mathematician] feels as a man might do who has passed all his life in peering through a microscope, and is suddenly called upon to take charge of a astronomical observatory. He has to get out of himself, as it were, and change the habitual focus of his vision.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(p. 73)

Reference #: 12414

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty…as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematics.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(p. 72)

Reference #: 12620

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: INVARIANTS

As all roads are said to lead to Rome, so I find, in my own case at least, that all algebraic inquiries sooner or later end at the Capitol of Modern Algebra over whose shining portal is inscribed "Theory of Invariants."

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
An Inquiry into Newton's Rule for the Discovery of Imaginary Roots
(p. 380, fn 1)

Reference #: 12616

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry, and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end; they are drawn together and are constantly becoming more and more intimately related and connected by a thousand fresh ties, and we may confidently look forward to a time when they shall form but one body with one soul.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
(p. 659)

Reference #: 12629

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: SELF-DELUSION

It is difficult to estimate the lengths to which human self-delusion can be carried.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(p. 82)

Reference #: 12630

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: PROOF

divide et impera: is as true in algebra as in statecraft; but no less true and even more fertile is the maxim auge et impera. The more to do or to prove, the easier the doing or the proof.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Invariants (1878)
(p. 126)

Reference #: 12625

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: SPACE

Space is the Grand Continuum from which, as from an inexhaustible reservoir, all the fertilizing ideas of modern analysis are derived…

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
Execter British Association Report (1869)
(p. 659)

Reference #: 12615

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: DETERMINANTS

For what is the theory of determinants? It is an algebra upon algebra; a calculus which enables us to combine and foretell the results of algebraical operations, in the same way as algebra itself enable us to dispense with the performance of the special operations of arithmetic. All analysis must ultimately clothe itself under this form.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume I)
On the Relation Between the Minor Determinants of Linearly Equivalent Quadratic Functions
(pp. 246-247)

Reference #: 12624

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: THEOREMS

No mathematician now-a-days sets any store on the discovery of isolated theorems, except as affording hints of an unsuspected new sphere of thought, like meteorites detached from some undiscovered planetary orb of speculation.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Notes to the Exeter Association Address
(p. 717)

Reference #: 12413

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: TEACHING

…the two functions of teaching and working in science should never be divorced.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(p. 75)

Reference #: 12418

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

It is the constant aim of the mathematician to reduce all his expressions to their lowest terms, to retrench every superfluous word and phrase, and to condense the Maximum of meaning into the Minimum of Language.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(pp. 72-73)

Reference #: 12417

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: TEACHING

May the time never come when the two offices of teaching and researching shall be sundered in this University [Johns Hopkins]! So long as man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual replenishment.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(p. 77)

Reference #: 12628

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: PARADOX

As lightning clears the air of impalpable vapours, so an incisive paradox frees the human intelligence from the lethargic influence of latent and unsuspected assumptions. Paradox is the slayer of Prejudice.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
A Lady's Fan On Parallel Motion, and On An Orthogonal Web of Jointed Rods
(p. 36)

Reference #: 12627

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: LANGUAGE

Would it sound too presumptuous to speak of perception as a quintessence of sensation, language (that is, communicable thought) of perception, mathematics of language? We should then have four terms differentiating from inorganic matter and from each other the Vegetable, Animal, Rational, and Supersensual modes of existence.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
(p. 652)

Reference #: 12626

Sylvester J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

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.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
Presidential Address to the British Association
(p. 658)

Reference #: 2299

Sylvester, J.J.
General Category: PHYSICS

The object of pure Physic is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure Mathematic that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

Collected Mathematical Papers (Volume III)
On a Theorem Connected With Newton's Rule for the Discovery of Imaginary Roots of Equations
(p. 424)

Reference #: 2298

Sylvester, J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATIC

I think it would be desirable that this form of word [mathematics] should be reserved for the applications of the science, and that we should use mathematic in the singular to denote the science itself, in the same way as we speak of logic, rhetoric, or (own sister to algebra) music

Collected Mathematical Papers
Presidential Address to the British Association, Exeter British Association Report (1869), Vol. 2
(p. 659)

Reference #: 6992

Sylvester, J.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...there is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the faculties of the mind than the one [mathematics] of which I as the humble representative and advocate. There is none other which prepares so many agreeable surprises for its followers, more wonderful than the transformation scene of a pantomime, or, like this, seems to raise them, by successive steps of initiation to higher and higher states of conscious intellectual being.

Nature
A Plea for the Mathematician, Vol. 1
(p. 261)

Reference #: 7412

Sylvester, J.J.
General Category: INVENTION

As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to stimulate the faculty of invention.

Nature
A Plea for the Mathematician
Vol. 1
(p. 261)

Reference #: 14928

Sylvester, J.J.
General Category: PRIME

[Tschebycheff] was the only man ever able to cope with the refractory character and erratic flow of prime numbers and to confine the stream of their progression with algebraic limits, building up, if I may so say, banks on either side which that stream, devious and irregular as are its windings, can never overflow.

In E. Kramer
The Nature and Growth of Mathematics

Reference #: 12419

Sylvester, James J.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it needs only patience to ransack; it is not a mine whose treasures may take long to reduce into possession, but which fill only a limited number of veins and lodes; it is not a soil, whose fertility can be exhausted by the yield of successive harvests, it is not a continent or an ocean, whose area can be mapped out and its contour defined: it is limitless as that space which it finds too narrow for its applications; its possibilities are as infinite as the worlds which are forever crowding in and multiplying upon the astronomer's gaze; it is as incapable of being within assigned boundaries or being reduced to definitions of permanent validity, as the consciousness, the life, which seems to slumber in each monad, in every atom of matter, in each leaf and bud and cell, and is forever ready to burst forth into new forms of vegetable and animal existence.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume III)
Address
Johns Hopkins University
22 February, 1877
(p. 77)
W.H. Freeman, New York, New York, United States of America 1983

Reference #: 3003

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I think that young chemists desirous of raising their science to its proper rank would act wisely in making themselves master betimes of the theory of algebraic forms. What mechanics is to physics, that I think is algebraic morphology, founded at option on the theory of partitions or ideal elements, or both, is destined to be to the chemistry of the futute....invariants and isomerism are sister theories.

American Journal of Mathematics
Vol. 1, 1878
(p. 126)

Reference #: 2300

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty...as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize. It is the constant aim of the mathematician to reduce all his expressions to their lowest terms, to retrench every superfluous word and phrase, and to condense the Maximum of meaning into the Minimum of language. He has to turn his eye ever inwards, to see everything in its dryest light, to train and inure himself to a habit of internal and impersonal reflection and elaboration of abstract thought, which makes it most difficult for him to touch or enlarge upon of those themes which appeal to the emotional nature of his fellow-men. When called upon to speak in public he feels as a man might do who has passed all his life in peering through a microscope, and is suddenly called upon to take charge of a astronomical observatory. He has to get our of himself, as it were, and change the habitual focus of his vision.

Collected Mathematical Works
Vol. III, Address on Commemoration Day at Johns Hopkins University
(pp. 72-73)

Reference #: 7457

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: OBSERVATION

Most, if not all, of the great ideas of modern mathematics have had their origin in observation.

Nature
A Plea for the Mathematician, Vol. 1, 1869
(p. 238)

Reference #: 12420

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: PRIME NUMBER

I have sometimes thought that the profound mystery which envelops our conceptions relative to prime numbers depends upon the limitations of our faculties in regard to time, which like space may be in essence poly-dimensional and that this and other such sort of truths would become self-evident to a being whose mode of perception is according to superficially as opposed to our own limitation to linearly extended time.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume IV)
On Certain Inequalities Relating to Prime Numbers
(p. 600)

Reference #: 8752

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

Number, place, and combination...the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred.

Philosophical Magazine
Vol. 24, (1844)
(p. 285)

Reference #: 8739

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: GEOMETRY

Geometry may sometimes appear to take the lead over analysis but in fact precedes it only as a servant goes before the master to clear the path and light him on his way.

Philosophic Magazine
Vol. 31, 1866
(p. 521)

Reference #: 12609

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The object of pure Physic is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure Mathematic that of the unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. III, On a Theorem Connected with Newton's Rule (p. 424)
(p. 424)

Reference #: 10984

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do his pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.

Source undetermined

Reference #: 12610

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...we are told that "Mathematics is that study which knows nothing of observation, nothing of induction, nothing of causation." I think no statement could have been made more opposite to the undoubted facts of the case, that mathematical analysis is constantly invoking the aid of new principles, new ideas, and new methods, not capable of being defined by any form of words, but springing direct from the inherent powers and activity of the human mind, and from continually renewed introspection of that inner world of thought of which the phenomena are as varied and require as close attention to discern as those of the outer physical (to which the inner one in each individual man may, I think, be conceived to stand in somewhat the same general relation of correspondence as a shadow to the object from which it is projected, or as the hollow palm of one hand to the closed fist which it grasps of the other), that it is unceasingly calling forth the faculties of observation and comparison, that one of its principal weapons is induction, that it has frequent recourse to experimental trial and verification, and that it affords a boundless scope for the exercise of the highest efforts of imagination and invention.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. II, Presidential Address to Section `A' of the British Association
(p. 654)

Reference #: 12614

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: PROOF

It always seems to me absurd to speak of a complete proof, or of a theorem being rigorously demonstrated. An incomplete proof is no proof, and a mathematical truth not rigorously demonstrated is not demonstrated at all.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. 2
(p. 200)

Reference #: 12613

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The world of ideas which it [mathematics] discloses or illuminates, the contemplation of divine beauty and order which it induces, the harmonious connection of its parts, the infinite hierarchy and absolute evidence of the truths with which mathematical science is concerned, these, and such like, are the surest grounds of its title of human regard, and would remain unimpaired were the plan of the universe unrolled like a map at our feet, and the mind of man qualified to take in the whole scheme of creation at a glance.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. II, Presidential Address to Section 'A' of the British Association
(p. 659)

Reference #: 12612

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

There are three ruling ideas, three so to say, spheres of thought, which pervade the whole body of mathematical science, to some one or other of which, or to two or all three of them combined, every mathematical truth admits of being referred; these are the three cardinal notions, of Number, Space and Order.

Arithmetic has for its object the properties of number in the abstract. In algebra, viewed as a science of operations, order is the predominating idea. The business of geometry is with the evolution of the properties of space, or of bodies viewed as existing in space...

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. II, A Probationary Lecture on Geometry, Delivered before the Gresham Committee and the Members of the Common Council of the City of London, 4 December, 1854
(p. 5)

Reference #: 12611

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...I think it would be desirable that this form of the word [mathematics] should be reserved for the application of the science, and that we should use mathematic in the singular to denote the science itself, in the same was as we speak of logic, rhetoric, or (own sister to algebra) music.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. II, Presidential Address to Section 'A' of the British Association
(p. 659)

Reference #: 12608

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: GEOMETRY

He who would know what geometry is, must venture boldly into its depths and learn to think and feel as a geometer. I believe that it is impossible to do this, and to study geometry as it admits of being studied and am conscious it can be taught, without finding the reason invigorated, the invention quickened the sentiment of the orderly and beautiful awakened and enhanced, and reverence for truth, the foundation of all integrity of character, converted into a fixed principle of the mental and moral constitution, according to the old and expressive adage "abeunt studia in mores.

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester
Vol. II, A Probationary Lecture on Geometry, Delivered before the Gresham Committee and the Members of the Common Council of the City of London, 4 December, 1854
(p. 9)

Reference #: 12606

Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

May not Music be described as the Mathematic of sense, Mathematic as the Music of the reason? the soul of each the same! Thus the musician feels Mathematic, the mathematician thinks Music,-Music the dream, Mathematic the working life-each to receive its consummation from the other when the human intelligence, elevated to its perfect type, shall shine forth glorified in some future Mozart-Dirichlet or Beethoven-Gauss-a union already not indistinctly foreshadowed in the genius and labours of a Helmholtz!

The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester (Volume II)
On Newton's Rule for the Discovery of Imaginary Roots
(fn, p. 419)

Reference #: 5780

Synge, J. L.
General Category: MONKEYS TYPEWRITERS

...`But not the sonnets?' asked the Orc, quizzically.`Yes, of course,' retorted the Plumber, `The sonnets too. And the Bible. And the Koran. And that poem of mine which you have just recited.' ...`But suppose,' said the Orc, `that our monkey became very fond of some particular word, perhaps some naughty little four-letter word, and went on typing that word over and over again and never any other. I cannot see, in that case, how he would type even one play.' `That would be quite an exceptional case,' answered the Plumber. `Eddington had in mind a haphazard performance. The monkey types the keys at random, and the outcome is governed by pure chance. And by pure chance the plays of Shakespeare emerge, after a long time of course.' `Doubtless, doubtless,' muttered the Orc, reflectively. `Poor monkey! How bored he would get! For he would reproduce the plays of Shakespeare not once but many times, in fact an infinite number of times.'

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Eleven
(p. 145)
London, England: Jonathan Cape, 1957

Reference #: 5777

Synge, J.L.
General Category: HYPOTHETICAL

Life is complicated enough...without inventing hypothetical complications.

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Five
(p. 89)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 5776

Synge, J.L.
General Category: DOUBT

The beginning of doubt is the beginning of wisdom.)

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Four
(p. 85)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 5779

Synge, J.L.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics begins in bewilderment and ends in bewilderment.

Kandelman's Krim
(p. 17)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 5775

Synge, J.L.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is alive. It creeps, it grows, it crawls, it jumps. It never stays quite still. We add to it. We tear it in pieces. We put it together again, and then it is a different knowledge.

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Four
(p. 85)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 5773

Synge, J.L.
General Category: IMPOSSIBLE

There is a fascination about the impossible...which is responsible for the dreams and fantasies with which we are all familiar. Everything which is possible becomes banal. Only the inaccessible is worthy of our passions.

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Eight
(p. 115)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 5774

Synge, J.L.
General Category: MEANING

A statement acquires meaning (and truth or falsehood) only when interpreted against a background.

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Four
(p. 83)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 9346

Synge, J.L.
General Category: THEORY

A well built theory has three merits: (i) it has an aesthetic appeal, (ii) it is comparatively easy to understand, and (iii), if its postulates are clearly stated, it may be taken out of its original physical context and applied in another.

Proceedings of the Irish Academy
The Hamiltonian Method and its Application to Water Waves, Vol. 63, Section A, No. 1, May 1962
(p. 1)

Reference #: 9786

Synge, J.L.
General Category: SPACETIME

Anyone who studies relativity without understanding how to use simple space-time diagrams is as much inhibited as a student of functions of a complex variable who does not understand the Argads diagram.

Relativity: The Special Theory
(p. 63)

Reference #: 988

Synge, J.L. Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Logic is the railway track along which the mind glides easily. It is the axioms that determine our destination by setting us on this track or the other, and it is in the matter of choice of axioms that applied mathematics differs most fundamentally from pure. Pure mathematics is controlled (or should we say "uncontrolled"?) by a principle of ideological isotropy: any line of thought is as good as another, provided that it is logically smooth. Applied mathematics on the other hand follows only those tracks which offer a view of natural scenery; if sometimes the track dives into a tunnel it is because there is prospect of scenery at the far end.

American Mathematical Monthly
Postcards on Applied Mathematics, Vol. 46, No. 3, March 1939
(p. 156)

Reference #: 5778

Synge, John
General Category: NUMBER

The northern ocean is beautiful, said the Orc, and beautiful the delicate intricacy of the snowflake before it melts and perishes, but such beauties are as nothing to him who delights in numbers, spurning alike the wild irrationality of life and the baffling complexities of nature's laws.

Kandelman's Krim
Chapter Six
(p. 101)
Jonathan Cape, London, England, 1957

Reference #: 16441

Synge, John L.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Mathematicians are human beings.

The Scripta Mathematical Studies Number 2
The Life and Early Works of Sir William Rowan Hamilton
(p. 13)

Reference #: 16440

Synge, John L.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The modern mathematician weaves an intricate pattern of microscopic precision. To him, a false statement - an exception to a general statement - is an unforgiven sin. The heroic mathematician, on the otherhand, painted with broad splashes of color, with a grand contempt for singular cases until they could no longer be avoided.

The Scripta Mathematical Studies Number 2
The Life and Early Works of Sir William Rowan Hamilton
(p. 16)

Reference #: 9697

Syrus, Publilius
General Category: DOCTOR

Male secum agit æger, medicum qui hæredem facit.
A sick man does ill for himself who makes the doctor his heir.

Sententiµ
No. 333

Reference #: 9698

Syrus, Publilius
General Category: REMEDY

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

Sententiae
No. 301

Reference #: 16470

Szasz, Thomas
General Category: CURE

Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.

The Second Sin
Sex
(p. 10)

Reference #: 16469

Szasz, Thomas
General Category: MEDICINE

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

The Second Sin
Science and Scientism
(p. 115)

Reference #: 5095

Szego, Gabor
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is a human activity almost as diverse as the human mind itself.

In Jozef Kurschak
Hungarian Problem Book I
(p. 6)
Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C. 1963

Reference #: 6168

Szent-Györgi, Albert
General Category: LIFE

It is common knowledge that the ultimate source of all our energy and negative entropy is the radiation of the sun. When a photon interacts with a material particle on our globe it lifts one electron from an electron pair to a higher level. This excited state as a rule has but a short lifetime and the electron drops back within 10^-7 to 10^-8 seconds to the ground state giving off its excess energy one way or another. Life has learned to catch the electron in the excited state, uncouple it from its partner and let it drop back to the ground state through its biological machinery utilizing its excess energy for life processes.

In W. D. McElroy and B. Glass (eds.)
Light and Life

Reference #: 10280

Szent-Györgi, Albert
General Category: SCIENTIST

The real scientist ...is ready to bear privations and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take.

Science Needs Freedom

Reference #: 7135

Szent-Gyorgyi, A.
General Category: RANDOMN

The usual answer to this question is that there was plenty of time to try everything. I could never accept this answer. Random shuttling of bricks will never build a castle or a Greek temple, however long the available time. A random process can build meaningful structures only if there is some kind of selection between meaningful and nonsense mutations.

Molecular Evolution: Prebiological and Biological
The Evolutionary Paradox and Biological Stability
(p. 111)

Reference #: 7010

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert
General Category: SCIENTIST

In the great struggle between ignorance, distrust and brutality on one side, knowledge, understanding and peace on the other the scientist must stand fearlessly on the side of the latter, strengthening link between man and man and preaching that the only effective weapon of self-defence is good-will to others.

Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1937

Reference #: 7794

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert
General Category: ENERGY

A living cell requires energy not only for all its functions, but also for the maintenance of its structure. Without energy life would be extinguished instantaneously, and the cellular fabric would collapse.

In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1937

Reference #: 8710

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert
General Category: SCIENCE

Good science is made by good scientists, poor science by poor scientists, and the most brilliant project is worthless in the hands of a poor scientist, while, conversely, a good scientist has a good chance to come up with something valuable whatever he touches, because 'die Welt rundet sich im Tautropfen' (Goethe), which could be translated by saying that all the great laws of nature are represented in a drop of dew.

Perspectives in Biological Medicine
Research Grants(1974) 18, 41-43

Reference #: 8699

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert
General Category: RESEARCH

Research means going out into the unknown with the hope of finding something new to bring home....The unknown is the unknown because one does not know what is there. If one knows what one will do and find in it, then it is not research any more and is not worth doing.

Perspectives in Biological Medicine
Research Grants(1974) 18, 41-43

Reference #: 16438

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: DISCOVERY

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

In Irving John Good (ed.)
The Scientist Speculates
Chapter I, 6
(p. 15)

Reference #: 4432

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: BOOK

The trouble with books is that they cannot be read. Who the hell has the time to read 300 pages? There is nothing you cannot say in two hours if it is essential.

In R.W. Moss
Free Rradical

Reference #: 1726

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: ORGANIZATION

One of the most basic principles of biology is organization, which means that two things put together in a specific way form a new unit, a system, the properties of which are not additive and cannot be described in terms of the properties of the constituents. As points may be connected to letters, letters to words, words to sentences, etc., so atoms can join to molecules, molecules to organelles, organelles to cells, etc., every level of organization having a new meaning of its own and offering exciting vistas and possibilities.

Bioenergetics
Chapter 6
(p. 39)

Reference #: 10104

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my problem will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.

Science
Teaching and the Expanding Knowledge, Vol. 146, No. 3649, 4 December 1964
(p. 1278)

Reference #: 14507

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: LIFE

Every biologist has at some time asked 'What is life?' and none has ever given a satisfactory answer. Science is built on the premise that Nature answers intelligent questions intelligently; so if no answer exists, there must be something wrong with the question.

The Living State
(p. 1)

Reference #: 8703

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: PROBLEM

Somehow, problems get into my blood and they don't give me peace, they torture me. I have to get them out of my system, and there is but one way to get them out-by solving them. A problem solved is no problem at all, it just disappears.

Perspectives in Biological Medicine
On Scientific Creativity, Vol. V, No. 2, Winter 1962
(p. 176)

Reference #: 14340

Szent-Györgyi, Albert
General Category: CELL

The cell knows but one fuel:—hydrogen.

In Kenneth Thimann
The Life of Bacteria
Chapter V
(p. 167)

Reference #: 12687

Szilard, Leo
General Category: FACT

'I don't intend to publish it; I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God.' 'Don't you think God knows the facts?' Bethe asked. 'Yes,' said Szilard. 'He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts.'

The Collected Works of Leo Szilard: Scientific Papers
Vol. I, Preface
(p. xix)

Reference #: 15982

Tabb, John Banister
General Category: BIRD HUMMING-BIRD

A flash of harmless lightning,
A mist of rainbow dyes,
The burnished sunbeams brightening,
From flower to flower he flies:...

The Poetry of Father Tabb
Birds, The Humming-Bird

Reference #: 15981

Tabb, John Banister
General Category: CONSTELLATION PLEIADES

'Who are ye with clustered light,
Little Sisters seven?'
'Crickets, chirping all the night
On the hearth of heaven.'

In Francis A. Litz (ed.)
The Poetry of Father Tabb
Humorous Verse, The Pleiads

Reference #: 15980

Tabb, John Banister
General Category: ANIMAL BAT

To his cousin the Bat
Squeaked the envious Rat,
'How fine to be able to fly!'
Tittered she, 'Leather wings
Are convenient things;
But nothing to sit on have I.'

The Poetry of Father Tabb
Humerous Verse, An Inconvenience

Reference #: 15979

Tabb, John Bannister
General Category: SEEDS

Bearing a life unseen,
Thou lingerest between
A flower withdrawn,
And—what thou ne'er shalt see-
A blossom yet to be
When thou art gone.

The Poetry of Father Tabb
Nature - Miscellaneous, The Seed

Reference #: 2337

Tagore, Rabindranath
General Category: LOGIC

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade,
It makes the hand bleed that uses it!

Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore
(p. 312)

Reference #: 3865

Tagore, Rabindranath
General Category: NATURE

In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.

Gardener
74

Reference #: 8317

Tagore, Rabindranath
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

It seems to me that, perhaps, creation is not fettered by rules,
That all the hubbub, meeting and mingling are blind happenings of fate.

Our Universe
(p. 75)

Reference #: 8389

Tagore, Rabindranath
General Category: PLANET

Through millions and millions of years,
The stars shine,
Fiery whirlpools revolve and rise
In the dark ever-moving current of time.
In this current
The earth is a bubble of mud...

Our Universe
(p. 43)

Reference #: 18167

Tait, P.G.
General Category: REALITY

Reason and experience force on all who rightly them the conviction of the objective reality of the Physical Universe.

Newton's Laws of Motion
Matter and Energy
(p. 1)
Adam & Charles Black, London, England; 1899

Reference #: 51

Tait, P.G.
General Category: SCIENTIST

The life of a genuine scientific man is, from the common point of view, almost always uneventful. Engrossed with the paramount claims of inquiries raised high above the domain of mere human passions, he is with difficulty tempted to fome forward in political discussions, even when they are of national importance; and he regards with surprise, if not with contempt, the petty municipal squables in which local notoriety is so eagerly sought. To him the discovery of a new law of nature, or even of a new experimental fact, or the invention of a novel mathematical method, no matter who has been the first to reach it, is an event of an order altogether different from, and higher than, those which are so profusely chronicled in the newspapers.

In W.J. Miller (ed.)
Scientific Papers: by W.J. MacquornRankine
Memoir
(p. ix)
Charles Griffin and Company, London, England; 1881

Reference #: 5934

Tait, P.G.
General Category: MATTER

Nothing is so preposterously unscientific than to assert ...that with the utmost strides attempted by science we should necessarily be sensibly nearer to a conception of the ultimate nature of matter.

Lectures on Some Recent Advances in Physical Science
(p. 284)
London, England 1876

Reference #: 5935

Tait, Peter
General Category: MATTER

Only sheer ignorance could assert that there is any limit to the amount of information which human beings may in time acquire of the constitution of matter. However far we may manage to go, there will still appear before us something further to be assailed. The small spearate particles of a gas are each, no doubt less complex in structure than the whole visible universe, but the comparison is a comparison of two infinities.

Lectures on Some Recent Advances in Physical Science
Lecture XII
(pp. 288-289)
London, England 1876

Reference #: 1699

Talbot, Michael
General Category: PARTICLES

Most of these particles have lifetimes so incredibly brief that they are virtually nonexistent, and hence are known as "virtual particles." However, physicists know that virtual particles are more than just abstractions that pop up in their equations because, ghostly and short-lived though these particles may be, they still jostle around the atoms in our own world a bit when they appear, and these effects can be physically measured. Indeed, a growing number of physicists are coming to believe that everything we know as real in the entire universe may ultimately have sprung out of this empty and seething vacuum.
If quanta are ultimately constituted out of the vacuum—ultimately just structures in the nothingness—what does this mean? What is structured nothingness but just another word for information? ...Something that has always been thought of as being "no-thing" may prove to be the only thing. ...Perhaps we should give this vacuum in our thinking another look.

Beyond The Quantum

Reference #: 1698

Talbot, Michael
General Category: UNIVERSE

We have to begin to view the universe as ultimately constituted not of matter and energy, but of pure information.

Beyond The Quantum

Reference #: 7326

Talbot, Michael
General Category: CONCEPT

We have dreamed the world. Our concepts of time and space, the very structure of the universe, are more intimately related to the problems and phenomenon of consciousness than we have seriously suspected.

Mysticism and the New Pysics
(p. 2)
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, England & Henley, 1981

Reference #: 2707

Talking Heads
General Category: FACT

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are early and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to.

Crosseyed and Painless

Reference #: 12480

Tannery, Paul
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

The scientist in so far as he is a scientist is only drawn to the history of the particular science that he studies himself; he will demand that this history be written with every possible technical detail, for it is only thus that it can supply him with materials of any possible utility. But what he will particularly require is the study of the thread of ideas and the linking together of discoveries. His chief object is to rediscover in its original form the expression of his predecessors' actual thoughts, in order to compare them with his own; and to unravel the methods that served in the construction of current theories, in order to discover at what point and towards what goal an effort towards innovation may be made.

In A. Rupert Hall
The British Journal for the History of Science
Can the History of Science be History?, Vol. IV, Part III, No. 15, June 1969
(p. 212)

Reference #: 5621

Tansley, A.G.
General Category: FACT

We must never conceal from ourselves that our concepts are creations of the human mind which we impose on the facts of nature, that they are derived from incomplete knowledge, and therefore will never exactly fit the facts, and will require constant revision as knowledge increases.

Journal of Ecology
The Classification of Vegitation and the Concept of Development, Vol. 8, No. 2, June 1920
(p. 120)

Reference #: 9194

Tansley, A.G.
General Category: ECOLOGY

Every genuine worker in science is an explorer, who is continually meeting fresh things and fresh situation, to which he has to adapt his material and mental equipment. This is conspicuously true of our subject, and is one of the greatest attractions of ecology to the student who is at once eager, imaginative, and determined. To the lover of prescribed routine methods with the certainty of 'safe' results the study of ecology is not to be recommended.

Practical Plant Ecology
(p. 97)

Reference #: 16943

Tarbell, Ida
General Category: FIGURE

There is no more effective medicine to apply to feverish public sentiment than figures. To be sure, they must be properly proposed, must cover the case, must confine themselves to a quarter of it, and they must be gathered for their own sake, not for the sake of a theory.

The Ways of Woman
(p. 3)

Reference #: 5453

Tarski, Alfred
General Category: MATHEMATICS

In the opinion of many laymen mathematics is today already a dead science: after having reached an unusually high degree of development, it has become petrified in rigid perfection. This is an entirely erroneous view of the situation; there are but few domains of scientific research which are passing through a phase of such intensive development at present as mathematics. Moreover, this development is extraordinarily manifold: mathematics is expanding its domain in all possible directions, it is growing in height, in width, and in depth. It is growing in height, since, on the soil of its old theories which look back upon hundreds if not thousands of years of development, new problems appear again and again, and ever more perfect results are being achieved. It is growing in width, since its methods permeate other branches of sciences, while its domain of investigation embraces increasingly more comprehensive ranges of phenomena and ever new theories are being included in the large circle of mathematical disciplines. And finally it is growing in depth, since its foundations become more and more firmly established, its methods perfected, and its principles stabilized.

Introduction to Logic
(p. xvii)
Oxford University Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1946

Reference #: 5547

Tasso, Torquato
General Category: COMET

As shaking terrors from his blazing hair,
A sanguine comet gleams through dusky air.

Jerusalem Delivered
l. 581

Reference #: 15138

Tate, Allen
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Scientific approaches, because each has its own partial conventions momentarily arrogating to themselves the authority of total explanation, must invariably fail to see all the experience latent in the work.

The New Republic
Critical Responsibility, Vol. 51, No. 663, August 17, 1927
(p. 340)

Reference #: 8041

Tatishchev, Vasilii Nikitich
General Category: SCIENCE

Freedom is not an essential and basic condition for the growth of science; the care and diligence of government authorities are the most important conditions for this development.

OMNI Magazine
USA, Vol. 3, No. 1, October 1980
(p. 41)

Reference #: 197

Tattersall, Ian
General Category: BRAIN

Behavior is ultimately the product of the brain, the most mysterious organ of them all.

Becoming Human. Evolution and Human Uniqueness

Reference #: 7808

Tatum, Edward
General Category: PROBLEM

As in any scientific research, a problem clearly seen is already half solved.

Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1958

Reference #: 16865

Tax, Sol
General Category: ANTHROPOLOGIST

It is characteristic of the anthropologist that if he does continue his work of education into what is closest to the political realm, he acts as an independent agent, taking upon himself the ultimate responsibility for satisfying his conscience in terms of the obligations he feels toward his colleagues and toward his fellow men.

The Uses of Anthropology

Reference #: 8190

Taylor Family
General Category: ARACHNID SPIDER

'O look at that great ugly Spider,' said Ann,
And screaming, she knocked it away with her fan;'T is a great ugly creature, as ever can be,
I wish that it would not come crawling on me.'

Original Poems for Infant Minds
The Spider, Stanza I

Reference #: 608

Taylor W.W.
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGIST

Archaeology per se is no more than a method and a set of specialized techniques for the gathering of cultural information. The archaeologist, as archaeologist, is really nothing but a technician.

A Study of Archaeology
Part I, Chapter 2
(p. 41)

Reference #: 4574

Taylor, A.M.
General Category: SCIENTIST

The three attributes of commitment, imagination, and tenacity seem to be the distinguishing marks of greatness in a scientist. A scientist must be as utterly committed to the pursuit of truth as the most dedicated of mystics ; he must be as pertinacious in his struggle to advance into uncharted country as the most indomitable pioneers ; his imagination must be as vivid and ingenious as a poet's or a painter's. Like other men, for success he needs ability and some luck ; his imagination may be sterile if he has not a flair for asking the right questions, questions to which nature's reply is intelligible and significant.

IMAGINATION and the Growth of Science
Chapter I
(p. 5)

Reference #: 6781

Taylor, A.W.
General Category: CIRCUMSION

Not infrequently marital unhappiness would be better relieved by circumcising the husband than by suing for divorce.

Medical Record
Circumcision-Its Moral and Physical Necessities and Advantages, Vol. 56, 1899
(p. 174)

Reference #: 1022

Taylor, Angus E.
General Category: DISCOVERY

The process of discovery in mathematics is one in which we are concerned with both the particular and the general. Induction and imagination are as important as purely deductive reasoning. Very often it is some simple insight into a particular fact at a particular level of abstraction that provides the illumination for an important advance. Later, from the heights newly won, the practiced eye may see the opportunity to broaden the advance all along a higher level of abstraction.

American Scientist
Some Aspects of Mathematical Research, Vol. 35, No. 2, April 1947
(p. 223)

Reference #: 1019

Taylor, Angus E.
General Category: ESOTERIC

One of the difficulties which a mathematician has in describing his work to non-mathematicians is that the present day language of mathematics has become so esoteric that a well educated layman, or even a group of scientists, can comprehend essentially nothing of the discourse which mathematicians hold with each other, or of the accounts of their latest researches which are published in their professional journals.

American Scientist
Some Aspects of Mathematical Research, Vol. 35, No. 2, April 1947
(p. 211)

Reference #: 9881

Taylor, Anne
General Category: STARS

Twinkle, twinkle, little star!

Rhymes for the Nursery
The Star

Reference #: 16927

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: OCEAN

We follow and race
In shifting chase,
Over the boundless ocean-space!
Who hath beheld when the race begun?
Who shall behold it run?

The Waves

Reference #: 5858

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: STAR

Each separate star
Seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars
Break up the night, and make it beautiful.

Lars
Book III, Conclusion

Reference #: 15697

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: FLOWER POPPY

And far and wide, in a scarlet tide,
The poppy's bonfire spread.

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor
The Poet in the East, Stanza 4

Reference #: 15903

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: FLOWER ROSE, WILD

A waft from the roadside bank
Tells where the wild rose nods.

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor
The Guests of Night, Stanza 2

Reference #: 15902

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: FLOWER AQUILEGIA

The aquilegia sprinkled on the rocks
A scarlet rain; the yellow violets
Sat in the chariot of its leaves; the phlox
Held spikes of purple flame in meadows wet,
And all the streams with vernal-scented reed
Were fringed, and streaky bells of miskodeed.

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor
Mon-Da-Min, stanza 17

Reference #: 16002

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: AUTHOR

Shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.

The Poet's Journal
Third Evening

Reference #: 15901

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: AURORA BOREALIS

The amber midnight smiles in dreams of dawn.

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor
From the North

Reference #: 15900

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: FLOWER ORCHID

Around the pillars of the palm-tree bower
The orchids cling, in rose and purple spheres;
Shield-broad the lily floats; the aloe flower
Foredates its hundred years.

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor
Canopus, Stanza 11

Reference #: 15899

Taylor, Bayard
General Category: TREE PINE

Ancient Pines,
Ye bear no record of the years of man.
Spring is your sole historian...

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor
The Pine Forest of Monterey, Stanza 4

Reference #: 3497

Taylor, Calvin W.
General Category: INVENTOR

...practically all of the mighty rivers of industry spring from the headwaters of lone wolf inventors or creators.

In Daniel de Simone
Education for Innovation
Factors influencing Creativity
(p. 49)

Reference #: 5630

Taylor, E.S.
General Category: ENGINEERING

The analytical part of an engineering education now seems to be considered the most difficult, most challenging part, while the remainder of engineering is considered to be an exercise of a lower order, conducted in a physical region located nearer the seat of the pants than the brain.

Journal of Engineering Education
Report on Engineering Design, Vol. 51, No. 8, April 1961
(p. 655)

Reference #: 5633

Taylor, E.S.
General Category: DECISION

...the most important decisions in a design problem must often be made without assistance from higher mathematics.

Journal of Engineering Education
Report on Engineering Design, Vol. 51, No. 8, April 1961
(p. 649)

Reference #: 5634

Taylor, E.S.
General Category: CONCEPT

It is necessary to have a concept before it can be analyzed.

Journal of Engineering Education
Report on Engineering Design, Vol. 51, No. 8, April 1961
(p. 649)

Reference #: 11403

Taylor, Edwin F.Wheeler, John A.
General Category: SPACETIME

Never make a calculation until you know the answer: Make an estimate before every calculation, try a simple physical argument (symmetry! invariance! conservation!) before every derivation, guess the answer to every puzzle. Courage: no one else needs to know what the guess is. Therefore make it quickly, by instinct. A right guess reinforces this instinct. A wrong guess brings the refreshment of surprise. In either case life as a spacetime expert, however long, is more fun!

Spacetime Physics
Chapter 1
(p. 60)

Reference #: 15093

Taylor, Isaac
General Category: INVENTOR

The great inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil.

In Tyron Edwards
The New Dictionary of Thoughts

Reference #: 6233

Taylor, J.P.
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Looking for long-term causes of things is like ascribing motor accidents to the existence of the internal combustion engine.

London Review Books
3(1)

Reference #: 4994

Taylor, Jeremy
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances, and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him...

Holy Living and Holy Dying
Vol. II, Chapter I, section 1
l. 7-9

Reference #: 11870

Taylor, John
General Category: POLLUTION

Then by the Lords Commissioners, and also
By my good King (whom all true subjects call so),
I was commanded with the Water Baylie,
To see the rivers cleaned, both night and dayly.
Dead Hogges, Dogges, Cates and well flayed Carryon Horses,
Their Noysom Corpses soyled the Water Courses;
Both Swines' and Stable dynge, beasts guts and garbage,
Street dirt, with Gardners' Weeds and Rotten Herbage.
And from those Waters' filthy putrification
Our Meat and Drinke were made, which bred Infection.
Myself and partner, with cost paines and Travell,
Saw all made clean, from Carryon, Mud and Gravell,
And now and then was punisht a Delinquent,
By which good meanes away the filth and stink went.

The American Biology Teacher
Unknown, An Echo from the Past, Vol. 35, No. 4, April 1973
(p. 208)

Reference #: 8927

Taylor, Lloyd W.
General Category: SCIENCE

In the sciences ...is to be found the first large body of knowledge that is both sequential and cumulative. As a unified army, organized for a sustained assault upon the citadel of human ignorance, there has been nothing to compare with the sciences in the whole recorded development of human thought.

Physics: The Pioneer Science

Reference #: 7740

Taylor, Richard E.
General Category: QUARKS

The quarks and the stars were here when you came, and they will be here when you go. They have no sense of humor so, if you want a world where more people smile, you will have to fix things yourselves.

Nobel Banquet Speech
December 10, 1990

Reference #: 610

Taylor, W.
General Category: DESTRUCTION

The archivist and the experimental scientist may with impunity select from their sources those facts which have for them a personal and immediate significance in terms of some special problem. Their libraries and experimental facilities may be expected to endure, so that in the future there may be access to the same or a similar body of data. If, however, it were certain that, after the archivis4 s first perusal, each document would be utterly and forever destroyed it would undoubtedly be required of him that he transcribe the entire record rather than just that portion which at the moment interests him. He would have difficulty in justifying his research if, knowingly, he caused the destruction of a unique record for the sake of abstracting only a narrowly selected part.

The gathering of data from archeological sites, in nearly every instance, involves the destruction of the original record.

A Study of Archeology
Part II, Chapter 6
(p. 152)

Reference #: 609

Taylor, Walter W.
General Category: TYPOLOGY

It is possible to type automobiles on the basis of the length of the scratches in their paint, to classify sandtempered potsherds on the number of sand grains in each, or to group together all chipped stone points which have side notches. It would be possible, but the pertinent question is "so what?".

A Study of Archaeology
Part II, Chapter 5
(p. 127)

Reference #: 938

Taylor, Walter W.
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGY

Archeology is neither history nor anthropology. As an autonomous discipline, it consists of a method and a set of specialized techniques for the gathering or "production" of cultural information.

American Anthropologist
A Study of Archeology Memoir No. 69, Vol. 50, No.3 Part 2
(p. 44)

Reference #: 2647

Tazieff, Haroun
General Category: VOLCANO

In all ages volcanoes have frightened, fascinated and attracted man, because what they hold is at once terrifying, splendid, and mysterious.

Craters of Fire
Chapter XVIII
(p. 209)

Reference #: 11643

Tazieff, Haroun
General Category: VOLCANOLOGIST

Studying dormant volcanoes is of no more profit to the volcanologist who is attempting to make forecasts than is the study of healthy people for the practicing physician.

In Stanley Williams and Fen Montaigne
Surviving Galeras
Chapter 6
(p. 101)

Reference #: 11727

Tchekhov, Anton
General Category: STATISTICS

Everything is quiet, peaceful and against it all is only the silent protest of statistics...

Tchekhov's Plays and Stories
Gooseberries

Reference #: 8034

Teague, Freeman Jr.
General Category: SIMPLICITY

Nothing is so simple it cannot be misunderstood.

OMNI Magazine
May 1979

Reference #: 2213

Teale, Edwin Way
General Category: DEATH

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.

Circle of the Season
July 5
(p. 143)

Reference #: 2215

Teale, Edwin Way
General Category: BOTANIST

Today I had lunch in the city with two scientists, a botanist and an ichthyologist. The botanist said he never kept a garden and the ichthyologist said he never went fishing.

Circle of the Seasons
December 8
(p. 282)

Reference #: 2216

Teale, Edwin Way
General Category: OBSERVATION

For observing nature, the best pace is a snail's pace.

Circle of the Seasons
July 14
(p. 150)

Reference #: 2217

Teale, Edwin Way
General Category: NATURE

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most.

Circle of the Seasons
May 4
(p. 85)

Reference #: 7513

Teale, Edwin Way
General Category: INSECT

If insects had the gift of speech, as we understand it, I am sure a main topic of conversation would begin: 'Let me tell you about my molt.'

Near Horizons: The Story of an Insect Garden
Chapter 10
(p. 97)

Reference #: 1376

Teall, J.J. Harris
General Category: THEORY

It is only when a theory has proved its usefulness as a coordinator of fact that it becomes worthy of the dignity of publication. It may be true or false, most likely the latter; but if it coordinates more facts than any other it is at any rate useful and may be conveniently retained until replaced by a better.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1902
The Evolution of Petrological Ideas
(p. 289)

Reference #: 1377

Teall, J.J. Harris
General Category: FACT

Armchair philosophy, apart from actual work in the field, the laboratory, and the museum, is by no means to be commended. But the worship of fact, as fact, may easily be overdone. The number of discoverable facts is practically infinite, and it is therefore possible to get into such a condition as not to be able to see the wood for the trees, to lose the due sense of proportion, and to become mere machines for tabulating interminable trivalities.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1902
The Evolution of Petrological Ideas
(p. 289)

Reference #: 1378

Teall, J.J. Harris
General Category: IMAGINATION

…it is well to remember that there is a scientific, as well as an unscientific, use of the imagination.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1902
The Evolution of Petrological Ideas
(p. 288)

Reference #: 1379

Teall, J.J. Harris
General Category: SCIENCE

The chief glory of science is, not that it produces an amelioration of the conditions under which we live, but that it continually enlarges our view, introduces new ideas, new ways of looking at things, and thus contributes in no small degree to the intellectual development of the human race.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1902
The Evolution of Petrological Ideas
(p. 288)

Reference #: 12643

Teasdale, Sara
General Category: STAR

Stars over snow,
And in the west a planet
Swinging below a star-
Look for a lovely thing and you will find it
It is not far-It will never be far.

The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale
Night

Reference #: 12644

Teasdale, Sara
General Category: CONSTELLATION ORION

But when I lifted up my head
From the shadows shaken on the snow,
I saw Orion in the east
Burn steadily as long ago.

The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale
Winter Stars

Reference #: 12645

Teasdale, Sara
General Category: METEOR

I saw a star slide down the sky,
Blinding the north as it went by,
Too burning and too quick to hold,
Too lovely to be bought or sold,
Good only to make wishes on
And then forever to be gone.

The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale
The Falling Star

Reference #: 12646

Teasdale, Sara
General Category: CONSTELLATION ARCTURUS

When, in the gold October dusk, I saw you near to setting,
Arcturus, bringer of spring,
Lord of the summer nights, leaving us now in autumn,
Having no pity on our withering;...

The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale
Arcturus in Autumn

Reference #: 14202

Teeple, John E.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry is a science, a branch of knowledge, and there is no law to prevent anyone who has the least bit of chemical information - such, for instance, as thechemical symbol for water - from calling himself a chemist.

The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
Vol. 17, No. 7

Reference #: 14203

Teeple, John E.
General Category: CHEMICAL

The manufacturer of chemicals has all the griefs of a maker of shoes, or bolts and nuts, or ready-to-wear clothes, and has just one more grief in addition - i.e., troubles occurring in chemical transformations.

The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
Vol. 17, No. 7

Reference #: 11976

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre
General Category: CAVE

Caves are the privileged homes of the documents of prehistory.

The Appearance of Man
Chapter I
(p. 18)

Reference #: 15410

Teilhard De Chardin, Pierre
General Category: MATTER

We do not get what we call matter as a result of the simple aggregation and juxtaposition of atoms. For that, a mysterious identity must absorb and cement them, an influence at which our mind rebels in bewilderment at first, but which in the end must perforce accept.

The Phenomenon of Man
Chapter I, Section B
(p. 42)

Reference #: 15405

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre
General Category: TRUTH

We are given to boasting of our age being an age of science....Yet though we may exalt research and derive enormous benefits from it, with what pettiness of spirit, poverty of means and general haphazardness do we pursue truth in the world today!....[W]e leave it to grow as best it can, hardly tending it, like those wild plants whose fruits are plucked by primitive peoples in their forests.

The Phenomenon of Man
Book Four, Chapter III, Section 2A
(p. 278, 278, 279)

Reference #: 15404

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion and science are the two conjugated faces of phases of one and the same act of complete knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfill them.

The Phenomenon of Man
Chapter Three, section 2
(p. 285)

Reference #: 13818

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre
General Category: PLANET EARTH

We can only bow before this universal law, whereby, so strangely to our minds, the play of large numbers is mingled and confounded with a final purpose. Without being overawed by the improbable, let us now concentrate our attention on the planet we call Earth. Enveloped in the blue mist of oxygen which its life breathes, it floats at exactly the right distance from the sun to enable the higher chemisms to take place on its surface. We do well to look at it with emotion. Tiny and isolated though it is, it bears clinging to its flanks the destiny and future of the Universe.

The Future of Man
Chapter VI, Section I
(p. 110)

Reference #: 13817

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre
General Category: PLANET

Despite their vastness and splendor the stars cannot carry the evolution of matter much beyond the atomic series: it is only on the very humble planets, on them alone, that the mysterious ascent of the world into the sphere of higher complexity has a chance to take place. However inconsiderable they may be in the history of sidereal bodies, however accidental their coming into existence, the planets are finally nothing less than the key-points of the Universe. It is through them that the axis of life now passes; it is upon them that the energies of an Evolution principally concerned with the building of large molecules is now concentrated.

The Future of Man
Chapter VI, Section I
(p. 109)

Reference #: 1678

Teller, E.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, like Music or art, is not something that can or should be practiced by everybody. But we want all children to be able to enjoy music, to be able to tell good music from poor music, so we teach them to appreciate music in a discriminating manner. That should be the aim in science education for the nonscientist.

Better a Shield Than a Sword: Perspectives in Defence and Technology
Epilogue

Reference #: 16157

Teller, Edward
General Category: SIMPLE

No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.

The Pursuit of Simplicity
Chapter Five
(p. 152)
Pepperdine University Press, Malibu; 1981

Reference #: 1677

Teller, Edward
General Category: DOUBT

I havte doubt, and yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worthwhile believing in.

Better a Shield Than a Sword: Perspective in Defence and Technology
(p. 237)

Reference #: 2529

Teller, Edward
General Category: e

...the first nine digits after the decimal can be remembered by e = 2.7(Andrew Jackson)2, or e = 2.718281828..., because Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States in 1828. For those good in mathematics on the other hand, this is a good way to remember their American History.

Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics
(p. 87)

Reference #: 2528

Teller, Edward
General Category: FISSION

F stands for fission
That is what things do
When they get wobbly and big
And must split in two.
And just to complete
The atomic confusion,
What fission has done
Can be undone by fusion.

Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics
(p. 215)

Reference #: 4433

Teller, Edward
General Category: ENERGY

It took us eighteen months to build the first nuclear power generator; it now takes twelve years; that's progress.

In Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman
Free to Choose
(p. 191)

Reference #: 16158

Teller, Edward Sylvester, James Joseph
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

The Pursuit of Simplicity
(p. 17)

Reference #: 2527

Teller, Edward Teller, Wendy Talley, Wilson
General Category: SCIENCE

If there ever was a misnomer, it is "exact science." Science has always been full of mistakes. The present day is no exception. And our mistakes are good mistakes; they require a genius to correct them. Of course, we do not see our own mistakes.

Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics
Chapter 3
(p. 37)

Reference #: 7616

Telsa, Nikola
Born: 9 July, 1865 in Smiljan, Lika, Croatia
Died: 1 July, 1943 in New York City, United States of America
General Category: COSMIC BALANCE

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance. There is no constellation or nebula, no sun or planet, in all the depths of limitless space, no passing wander of the starry heavens, that does not exercise some control over its destiny - not in the vague and delusive sense of astrology, but in the rigid and positive meaning of physical science. More than this can be said. There is nothing endowed with life - from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the humblest creature - in all this world that does not sway it in turn. Whenever action is
Born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and universal motion results.

New York American
How Cosmic Forces Shape Our Destiny, February 7, 1915

Reference #: 5907

Telsa, Nikola
Born: 9 July, 1865 in Smiljan, Lika, Croatia
Died: 1 July, 1943 in New York City, United States of America
General Category: MATTER

…but now a echanism of a finite number of parts and few at that, cannot perform an infinite number of definite motions, hence the impulses which govern its movements must come from the environment. So the atom, the ulterior element of the Universe's structure is tossed about in space eternally, a play of external influences, like a boat in a troubled sea. Were it to stop its motion it would die. Matter at rest, if such a thing could exist, would be matter dead. Death of matter! Never has a sentence of deeper philosophical meaning been uttered….There is no death of matter, for throughout the infinite universe, all has to move to vibrate, that is, to live.

Lecture
On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena
Franklin Institute, Philadelphis
February 1893

Reference #: 16193

Temple, Frederick
General Category: EVOLUTION

...the enormous evidence in favor of the evolution of plants and animals is enormously great and increasing daily.

The Relations between Religion and Science

Reference #: 16192

Temple, Frederick
General Category: SCIENCE

The regularity of nature is the first postulate of Science; but it requires the very slightest observation to show us that, along with this regularity, there exists a vast irregularity which Science can only deal with by exclusion from its province.

The Relations between Religion and Science
(p. 99)

Reference #: 16191

Temple, Frederick
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science postulates uniformity; Religion postulates liberty.

The Relations between Religion and Science
(p. 70)

Reference #: 16190

Temple, Frederick
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science and Religion seem very often to be the most determined foes to each other that can be found. The scientific man often asserts that he cannot find God in Science; and the religious man often asserts that he cannot find Science in God.

The Relations between Religion and Science
(p. 4)

Reference #: 9226

Temple, Frederick
General Category: GOD

The fixed laws of science can supply natural religion with numberless illustrations of the wisdom, the beneficence, the order, the beauty that characterizes the workmanship of God; while they illustrate His infinity by the marvelous complexity of natural combinations, by the variety and order f His creatures, by the exquisite finish alike bestowed on the very greatest and on the very least of His works, as if size were absolutely nothing in His sight.

Present Relations of Science to Religion
(p. 13)

Reference #: 17555

Temple, G.
General Category: SCIENCE

...any serious examination of the basic concepts of any science is far more difficult than the elaboration of their ultimate consequences.

Turning Points in Physics
(p. 68)

Reference #: 5428

Tenenbaum, G.
General Category: PRIME

Addition and multiplication equip the set of positive natural numbers {1,2,3,...} with a double structure of Abelian semigroup. The first is associated with a total order relation, and is generated by the single number 1. The second, reflecting the partial order of divisibility has an infinite number of generators: the prime numbers. Defined since antiquity, this key concept has yet to deliver up all its secrets - and there are plenty of them.

Introduction
Analytic and Probabilistic No. Theory
(p. 299)

Reference #: 16046

Tenenbaum, G.
France, M.
Mendés
General Category: PRIME

One of the remarkable aspects of the distribution of prime numbers is their tendency to exhibit global regularity and local irregularity. The prime numbers behave like the 'ideal gases' which physicists are so fond of. Considered from an external point of view, the distribution is - in broad terms - deterministic, but as soon as we try to describe the situation at a given point, statistical fluctuations occur as in a game of chance where it is known that on average the heads will match the tail but where, at any one moment, the next throw cannot be predicted. Prime numbers try to occupy all the room available (meaning that they behave as randomly as possible), given that they need to be compatible with the drastic constraint imposed on them, namely to generate the ultra-regular sequence of integers. This idea underpins the majority of conjectures concerning prime numbers: everything which is not trivially forbidden should actually happen.

The Prime Numbers and Their Distribution
(p. 51)

Reference #: 16047

Tenenbaum, G.
France, M.
Mendés
General Category: PRIME

As archetypes of our representation of the world, numbers form, in the strongest sense, part of ourselves, to such an extent that it can legitimately be asked whether the subject of study of arithmetic is not the human mind itself. From this a strange fascination arises: how can it be that these numbers, which lie so deeply within ourselves, also give rise to such formidable enigmas? Among all these mysteries, that of the prime numbers is undoubtedly the most ancient and most resistant.'

The Prime Numbers and Their Distribution
(p. 1)

Reference #: 8760

Tennant, F.R.
General Category: METHOD

Half a century ago, it was taught that the scientific method is the sole means of approach to the whole realm of possible knowledge: that there were no reasonably propounded questions worth discussing to which its method was inapplicable. Such belief is less widely held today. Since many men of science became their own epistemologists, science has been more modest.

Philosophical Theology
Vol. I, Chapter XIII
(p. 333)

Reference #: 16054

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: METEOR

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

The Princess
VII

Reference #: 16053

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: SUN

There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun.

The Princess
pt. IV

Reference #: 17331

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: OTHER WORLDS

The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth
And harmony of planet-girded suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch'd the wan sapphire. Nay—the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

Timbuctoo

Reference #: 887

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: CHANGE

O earth, what changes hast thou seen!

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
In Memoriam
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 886

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: EARTH

Many an aeon moulded earth before her highest, man, was
Born,
Many an aeon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn,
Earth so huge and yet so bounded—pools of salt and plots of land—Shallow skin of green and azure—chains of mountains, grains of sand!

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2987

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

And this grey spirit yearning in desire,
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Ulysses
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 885

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: PLANET

While Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade
Sleeps on his luminous ring.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
The Palace of Art
l. 15-16
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2988

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: PLANET VENUS

For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Maude
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2986

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: BIRD HAWK

The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared with his foot on the prey.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
The Poet's Song
l. 11-12
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 883

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: CHANGE

Forward, Forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing groves of change.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Locksley Hall
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2982

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: VOLCANO

Had the fierce ashes of some fiery Peak
Been hurled so high they ranged round the World,
For day by day through many a blood-red eve
The wrathful sunset glared.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
St Telemachus
Oxford University Press, London, England.1953

Reference #: 882

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: NATURE

A void was made in Nature;
all her bonds
Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-streams
And torrents of her myriad universe
Ruining along the illimitable inane,
Fly on to clash together again,...

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Lucretius
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2989

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought....

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Ulysses
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2990

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: FLOWER WATER-LILY

...the water-lily starts and slides
Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
Tho' anchor'd to the bottom...

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
The Princess, IV
l. 236
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 884

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: MOON

All night, through archways of the bridged pearl
And portals of pure silver, walks the moon.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Sonnet
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2985

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: GALAXY

The fires that arch this dusty dot—
Yon myriad worlded-ways—
The vast sun-cluster' gathered blaze,
World-isles in lonely skies,
Whole heavens within themselves amaze
Our brief Humanities.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Epilogue
l. 51-56
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2991

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: FLOWER HONEYSUCKLE

The honeysuckle round the porch has woven its wavy bowers...

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
The May Queen, Stanza 8
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2983

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: BIRD ROOK

The building rook'll caw from the windy tall elm-tree...

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
The May Queen, New Year's Eve, Stanza 5
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 888

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: PLANET

This world was once a fluid haze of light,
Till toward the centre set the starry tides,
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast
The planets.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
The Princess, Part II, 101
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2981

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: VOLCANO

Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 889

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: PLANET

Mars
As he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Maude, Part III, I
l, 13-14
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2980

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: ASTRONOMY

We fronted there the learning of all Spain,
All their cosmogonies, their astronomies...

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Columbus
l. 41-42
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 890

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: CONSTELLATION ORION

...those three stars of the airy Giants' zone
That glitter burnished by the frosty dark.

Alfred Tennyson's Poetical Works
Oxford University Press, London, England, 1953

Reference #: 2913

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: OTHER WORLDS

And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled and shone in the sky,
Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie—Bright as with deathless hone—but, however they sparkled and shone,
The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own.

Despair

Reference #: 1876

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: OCEAN

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, oh sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

Break, Break, Break

Reference #: 5187

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: BRAIN

But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise
Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

In Memoriam
Stanza 2

Reference #: 6286

Tennyson , Alfred (Lord)
Born: 6 August, 1809 in Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 6 October, 1892 in Aldworth, Surrey, England
General Category: NATURE

Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful.