Reference #: 11464

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

I'm a doctor, not an escalator.


Star Trek
Friday's Child


Reference #: 11469

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

I'm a doctor, not a mechanic.


Star Trek
The Doomsday Machine


Reference #: 11468

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

I'm a doctor, not a brick layer.


Star Trek
The Devil In The Dark


Reference #: 11466

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

I'm not a magician, I'm just an old country doctor.


Star Trek
The Deadly Years


Reference #: 11459

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: SURGEON

I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist.


Star Trek
The City On The Edge Of Forever


Reference #: 11465

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

I'm a doctor, not an engineer.


Star Trek
Mirror, Mirror


Reference #: 11461

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

What am I, a doctor or a space shuttle conductor?


Star Trek
The Corbomite Maneuver


Reference #: 11460

McCoy, Dr. Leonard
General Category: DOCTOR

I'm a doctor, not a coal miner.


Star Trek
The Empath


Reference #: 11463

McCoy, Dr. Leonard H. (%Bones%)
General Category: BRAIN

Blast medicine anyway! We've learned to tie into every organ in the human body but one. The brain! The brain is what life is all about.


Star Trek
The Menagerie


Reference #: 9235

McCrea, William Hunter
General Category: COSMOLOGY

I am always surprised when a young man tells me he wants to work at cosmology; I think of cosmology as something that happens to one, not something one can choose.


Presidential Address
Royal Astronomical Society, February 1963


Reference #: 11974

McCrone, John
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is designed to grab what input it can and then boil it up into a froth of understanding.


The Ape That Spoke. Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind


Reference #: 2240

McCullers, Carson
General Category: DEATH

Death is always the same, but each man dies in his own way.


Clock Without Hands
Chapter 1
(p. 1)


Reference #: 2223

McCullough, David
General Category: ENGINEER

Engineers who read, who paint, who grow roses and collect fossils and write poetry, who fall asleep in lectures, very human-like, even civilized civil engineers are scattered all through the historical record. Civil engineers have been known to go to the theater, yes indeed; they have taken pleasure in good music and fine wine and the company of charming women. There is even historical evidence of the existence among a few civil engineers of a sense of humor.


Civil Engineering
Civil Engineers Are People, December 1978
(p. 47)


Reference #: 3595

McCune, Francis K.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering's prime mission is the creation of technical things and services useful to man.


Elements of Competitive Engineering
1965 Engineering Deans' symposium, Pamphlet by General Electric Co., nd


Reference #: 3594

McCune, Francis K.
General Category: ENGINEERING

The characteristics of a productive facility and the signals from a social system furnish very specific facts which must become every bit as much a part of an engineering idea as any technology or scientific principle..


Elements of Competitive Engineering
1965 Engineering Deans' symposium, Pamphlet by General Electric Co., nd


Reference #: 3596

McCune, Francis K.
General Category: ENGINEERING

...at the very core of engineering there is just one thing - an act of creative thought, or in other words the process of having an idea.


Elements of Competitive Engineering
1965 Engineering Deans' symposium, Pamphlet by General Electric Co., nd


Reference #: 5304

McDuff, Dusa
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Gel'fand amazed me by talking of mathematics as though it were poetry. He once said about a long paper bristling with formulas that it contained the vague beginnings of an idea which could only hint at and which he had never managed to bring out more clearly. I had always thought of mathematics as being much more straightforward: a formula is a formula, and an algebra is an algebra, but Gel'fand found hedgehogs lurking in the rows of his spectral sequences!


Mathematical Notices
Vol. 38, no. 3, March 1991
(p. 186)


Reference #: 8620

McElwee, Tom
General Category: FEE

Cardiologist's Fee - Heart-earned money.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
June 2, 1968
(p. 437)


Reference #: 12579

McEwan, Ian
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you `arts' people, you're not only ignorant of these magnificent things, You're rather proud of knowing nothing.


The Child in Time
Chapter 2


Reference #: 2159

McGee, H.A., Jr.
General Category: CHEMICAL AFFINITIES

As a profession we are justly proud of our great breadth, for we are the only applied science profession with in-depth training in chemistry as well as in physics and mathematics. Our background and perspective as scientist-engineers make for flexibility and adaptability that is the envy of our sister disciplines.


Chemical Engineering Education
Vol. 9, No. 2, 1974(
(p. 94)


Reference #: 14868

McGinn, Colin
General Category: BRAIN

Brains cause technology, society, art, science, soap operas, sin. A remarkable set of effects for such a small chunk of coagulated atoms.


The Mysterious Flame
Conscious Minds in a Material World


Reference #: 9083

McGonagall, William
General Category: BRIDGE

Oh! ill fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly and without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance of being killed.


Poetic Gems
The Tay Bridge Disaster
(p. 92)


Reference #: 17685

McGregor, James
General Category: FISH SALMON

Oh! For the thrill of a Highland stream,
With the bending rod of a fisherman's dream,
The screaming reel and flying line,
Where the far-flung pearl-drops wetly shine—
The sudden leap, then the silent strife,
While the salmon grimly fights for life;
As a worthy foe, or a regal dish,
We respect this gallant fighting fish.


In Arnold Silcock
Verse and Worse
Ode to a Salmon
(p. 21)


Reference #: 8043

McKay, Christopher
General Category: LIFE

If some alien called me up...


OMNI Magazine
July 1992


Reference #: 16811

McKenzie, John L.
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Happily, we have survived into a day when science and theology no longer speak to each other in the language of fishmongers.


The Two-Edged Sword
Cosmic Origins
(p. 74)


Reference #: 13529

McKibben, Bill
General Category: NATURE

The end of nature sours all my material pleasures. The prospect of living in a genetically engineered world sickens me. And yet it is toward such a world that our belief in endless material advancement hurries us. As long as that desire drives us, here is no way to set limits.


The End of Nature
A Path of More Resistance
(p. 173)


Reference #: 13530

McKibben, Bill
General Category: DARWINISM

Science, of course, replaced God as a guiding concept for many people after Darwin. Or, really, the two were rolled up into a sticky ball. To some degree this was mindless worship of a miracle future, the pursuit of which has landed us in the fix we now inhabit.


The End of Nature
The End of Nature
(pp. 80-81)


Reference #: 6185

McKuen, Rod
General Category: ANSWER

Think of all the men who never knew the answers
think of all those who never even cared.
Still there are some who ask why
who want to know, who dare to try.


Listen to the Warm
Here He Comes Again


Reference #: 15082

McLaughlin, Mignon
General Category: DERMATOLOGIST

Psychiatrists are terrible ads for themselves, like a dermatologist with acne.


The Neurotic's Notebook
(p. 73)


Reference #: 15081

McLaughlin, Mignon
General Category: IDEA

No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half-thought of it ourselves. 


The Neurotic's Notebook


Reference #: 2592

McLennan, Evan
General Category: NATURE

There is a charm for man in the study of Nature. It elevates his soul to real greatness. It frees his mind from stormy life, and thrills him with the purest joy.


Cosmical Evolution
Introduction
(p. 23)


Reference #: 14731

McLuhan, Marshall Fiore, Quentin
General Category: TIME

Our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categories-for probing around.


The Medium is the Message
(p. 10)


Reference #: 12858

McMenamin, Mark McMenamin, Dianna
General Category: FOSSIL

The worst problem in the search for the oldest animal fossils is mistaken identity.


The Emergence of Animals: The Cambrian Breakthrough
Chapter III
(p. 31)


Reference #: 3688

McNeil, I. Joseph
General Category: HEAT

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth are the opening words of the Bible, which goes on, in verse 3, and God said Let there be light: and there was light. It must be assumed that the Cosmic Illuminator had to abide by the laws of physics like the rest of us for, after all, He had created them. In the nature of things, sensible heat comes long before visible light in the spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths. Thus, when God Let there be light, he implied, Let there also be heat-and there was heat.


In R. Angus Buchanan
Engineers and Engineering
Blast: From Blowpipe to Blowing Engine
(p. 79)


Reference #: 1636

McPhee, John
General Category: GEOLOGIST

A roadcut is to a geologist as a stethoscope is to a doctor.


Basin and Range
(p. 11)
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York,
1981


Reference #: 1639

McPhee, John
General Category: GEOLOGIC TIME

With your arms spread wide...to represent all time on earth, look at one hand with its line of life. The Cambrian begins in the writs, and the Permian extinction is at the outer end of the palm. All of the Cenozoic is in a fingerprint, and in a single stroke with a medium-grained nail file you could eradicate human history.


Basin and Range
(p. 126)
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York,
1981


Reference #: 1638

McPhee, John
General Category: GEOLOGIST

I used to sit in class and listen to the terms come floating down the room like paper airplanes Geology was called a descriptive science, and with its pitted outwash plains and drowned rivers, its nothing if not descriptive. It was a fountain of metaphors....Geologists communicated in English; and they could name things in a manner that sent shivers through the bones.


Basin and Range
(pp. 24, 25)
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York,
1981


Reference #: 1637

McPhee, John
General Category: GEOLOGIST

Geologists, in their all but closed conversation, inhabit scenes that no one ever saw, scenes of global sweep, gone and gone again, including seas, mountains, rivers, forests, and archipelagoes of aching beauty rising in volcanic violence to settle down quietly and then forever disappear-almost disappear.


Basin and Range
(p. 82)
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York,
1981


Reference #: 10624

McReynolds, J.W.
General Category: INTEGRAL

I am a mathematician to this extent: I can follow triple integrals if they are done slowly on a large blackboard by a personal friend.


Scripta Mathematica
Georges Problem, Vol. 15, 1949


Reference #: 2487

McRobie, George
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

The choice of technology, whether for a rich or a poor country, is probably the most important decision to be made.


Conservation Foundation Letter
October 1976
(p. 1)


Reference #: 2006

McShane, E. J.
General Category: INTEGRAL

There are in this world optimists who feel that any symbol that starts off with an integral sign must necessarily denote something that will have every property that they should like an integral to possess.
This of course is quite annoying to us rigorous mathematicians; what is even more annoying is that by doing so they often come up with the right answer.


Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
Vol. 69, 1963
(p. 611)


Reference #: 15440

Mead, George H.
General Category: EXPERIENCE

...in the world of immediate experience, the world of things is there. Trees grow, day follows night, and death supervenes upon life. One may not say that relations here are external or even internal. They are not relations at all. They are lost in the indiscerptibility of things and events, which are what they are. The world which is the test of all observations and all scientific hypothetical reconstruction has in itself no system that can be isolated as a structure of laws, or uniformities, though all laws and formulations of uniformities must be brought to its court for its imprimatur.


The Philosophy of the Act
Chapter II
(p. 31)


Reference #: 15439

Mead, George H.
General Category: REALITY

...the ultimate touchstone of reality is a piece of experience found in an unanalyzed world. The approach to the crucial experiment may be a piece of torturing analysis, in which things are physically and mentally torn to shreds, so that we seem to be viewing the dissected tissues of objects in ghostly dance before us, but the actual objects in the experimental experience are the common things of which we say that seeing is believing, and of whose reality we convince ourselves by handling. We extravagantly advertise the photograph of the path of an electron, but in fact we could never have given as much reality to the electrical particle as does now inhabit it, if the photograph had been of naught else than glistening water vapour.


The Philosophy of the Act
Chapter II
(p. 32)


Reference #: 2379

Mead, Margaret
General Category: SCIENCE

The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue try the harder to give a short-cut answer.


Coming of Age in Samoa
Chapter 1


Reference #: 2380

Mead, Margaret
General Category: SCIENCE

...the negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer.


Coming of Age in Samoa
Chapter 1
(p. 3)


Reference #: 6408

Mead, Margaret
General Category: ANTHROPOLOGY

Everything is grist for anthropology's mill.


In Jane Howard
Margaret Mead
Chapter Twenty-One
(p. 319)


Reference #: 14409

Meadows, Donella H.Meadows, Dennis L.Randers, J°rgen Behrens, William W., III
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Technology can relieve the symptoms of a problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem—the problem of growth in a finite system—and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it.


The Limits to Growth
Chapter IV
(p. 154)


Reference #: 7017

Mechnikov, Ilya
General Category: IMMUNITY

There is no need to be a doctor or a scientist to wonder why the human body is capable of resisting so many harmful agents in the course of everyday life. It is often seen that in households where all members are exposed to the same danger, or again in schools or troops where everyone lives the same life, disease does not strike everyone indifferently. For some individuals who go down at the attack, there are others who have immunity to a greater or lesser extent.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1908


Reference #: 14386

Medawar, Peter Medawar, J.S.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

For a biologist the alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all.


The Life Science
Chapter Two
(p. 24)


Reference #: 14387

Medawar, Peter Medawar, J.S.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

...the testimony of Design is only for those who, secure in their beliefs already, are in no need of confirmation. This is just as well, for there is no theological comfort in the ampliation of DNA and it is no use looking to evolution. The balance sheet of evolution has so closely written a debit column of all the blood and pain that goes with the natural process that not even the smoothest accountancy can make the transaction seem morally solvent to any standards of morals that human beings are accustomed to.


The Life Science
Chapter Twenty-Three
(p. 169)


Reference #: 1479

Medawar, Peter Medawar, Jean
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.


Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology


Reference #: 16619

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: CREATIVE

The romantic view of the creative process of science as something cognate with poetic invention is often sneered at by people who pride themselves as shrewd, practical-minded men of the world with a sound sense of the value of money. But they don't do any better than the rest of us, and it is they, indeed - people who believe that there is a cut and dried scientific method and that they can buy scientific results by paying for them - who are the incurable daydreamers with their heads in the clouds and no real understanding of the way the mind works.


The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice
(New York Review of Books, 15 April 1976) reprinted in The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science


Reference #: 16620

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: QUESTIONS

I do not believe that there is any intrinsic limitation upon our ability to answer the questions that belong to the domain of natural knowledge and fall therefore within the agenda of scientific enquiry.


The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science
On "the Effecting of All Things Possible"


Reference #: 5512

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

I have chosen for my title a question: Is the scientific paper a fraud? I ought to explain that a scientific 'paper' is a printed communication to a learned journal, and scientists make their work known almost wholly through papers and not through books, so papers are very important in scientific communication. As to what I mean by asking 'is the scientific paper a fraud?' - I do not of course mean 'does the scientific paper misrepresent facts', and I do not mean that the interpretations you find in a scientific paper are wrong or deliberately mistaken. I mean the scientific paper may be a fraud because it misrepresents the processes of thought that accompanied or gave rise to the work that is described in the paper. That is the question, and I will say right away that my answer to it is 'yes'. The scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific thought.


Is the Scientific Paper a Fraud?


Reference #: 7623

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Watson's childlike vision makes them seem like the creatures of a Wonderland, all at a strange contentious noisy tea-party which made room for him because for people like him, at this particular kind of party, there is always room.


New York Review of Books
Lucky Jim, 28 March 1968


Reference #: 5121

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The formulation of a natural law begins as an imaginative exploit and imagination is a faculty essential to the scientist's task. ...In a modern professional vocabulary a hypothesis is an imaginative preconception of what might be true in the form of a declaration with verifiable deductive consequences. It no longer tows 'gratuitous,' 'mere,' or 'wild' behind it, and the pejorative usage ('Evolution is a mere hypothesis,' 'It is only a hypothesis that smoking causes lung cancer') is one of the outward signs of little learning.


Hypothesis and Imagination
Times Literary Supplement, 25 Oct 1963


Reference #: 5122

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: GUESS

To say that Einstein formulated a theory of relativity by guesswork is on all fours with saying that Wordsworth wrote rhymes and Mozart tuneful music. It is cheeky where something grave is called for.


Hypothesis and Imagination
Times Literary Supplement, 25 Oct 1963


Reference #: 5123

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

The formulation of a hypothesis carries with it an obligation to test it as rigorously as we can command skills to do so.


Hypothesis and Imagination
Times Literary Supplement, 25 Oct 1963


Reference #: 5120

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists are building explanatory structures, telling stories which are scrupulously tested to see if they are stories about real life.


Hypothesis and Imagination
Times Literary Supplement, 25 Oct 1963


Reference #: 2971

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

If we accept, as I fear we must, that science cannot answer questions about first and last things or about purposes, there is yet no known or conceivable limit to its power to answer questions of the kind science can answer. ...Science will dry up only if scientists lose or fail to exercise the power or incentive to imagine what the truth might be. One can envisage an end of science no more readily than one can envisage an end of imaginative literature or the fine arts.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 11
(p. 90)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 787

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: CONVICTION

I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not. The importance of the strength of our conviction is only to provide a proportionately strong incentive to find out if the hypothesis will stand up to critical evaluation.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 6
(p. 39)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 5429

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth.


Introduction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
(p. 28)


Reference #: 789

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: P0SSIBLE

Following the lead of Bismarck and Cavour, who described the art of politics as 'the art of the possible,' I have described the art of research as 'the art of the soluble.'By some people this was almost willfully misunderstood to mean that I advocated the study of easy problems yielding quick solutions - unlike my critics, who were studying problems of which the main attraction (to them) was that they could not be solved. What I mean of course was that the art of research is that of making a problem soluble by finding out ways of getting at it - soft underbellies and the like.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 4
(p. 18)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 788

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: COMPREHENSION

A strong sense of unease and dissatisfaction always goes with lack of comprehension. Laymen feel it too; how can we otherwise account for the relief they feel when they learn that some odd and disturbing phenomenon can be explained? It cannot be the explanation itself that brings relief, for it may easily be too technical to be widely understood. It is not the knowledge itself, but the satisfaction of knowing that something is known.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 2
(p. 7)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 7598

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

Much of a scientist's pride and sense of accomplishment turns therefore upon being the first to do something—upon being the man who did actually speed up or redirect the flow of thought and the growth of understanding. There is no spiritual copyright in scientific discoveries, unless they should happen to be quite mistaken. Only in making a blunder does a scientist do something which, conceivably, no one else might ever do again. Artists are not troubled by matters of priority, but Wagner would certainly not have spent twenty years on The Ring if he had thought it at all possible for someone else to nip in ahead of him with Götterdämmerung.


New Statesman
The Act of Creation, 19 June 1964


Reference #: 6813

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Laymen and philosophers who have been brought up to think that scientists wield a weapon known as 'the scientific method' may well wonder how I could allow myself to fritter away my time as I did, but there is not such thing as the scientific method and I don't regard my own messings-about as any more discreditable than those of a writer who, before writing the novel or play which makes his reputation, spends his time on potboilers and half-finished manuscripts. A scientist who wants to do something original and important must experience, as I did, some kind of shock that forces upon his intention the kind of problem that it should be his duty and will become his pleasure to investigate.


Memoirs of a Thinking Radish


Reference #: 2972

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: METHOD

The scientific method, as it is sometimes called, is a potentiation of common sense.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 11
(p. 93)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 7597

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: RESEARCH

If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.


New Statesman
Summer Books, 19 June 1964
(p. 950)


Reference #: 4543

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.


H. L. Mencken, 1930


Reference #: 7595

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.


New Statesman
The Act of Creation, 19 June 1964


Reference #: 4306

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Before a good scientist tries to persuade others that he is on to something good, he must first convince himself.


Florey Story
(London Review of Books, 20 December 1979) reprinted in The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science


Reference #: 786

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: DISCOVERY

It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield duff of piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be 'interesting' - almost any problem is interesting if it is studied in sufficient depth. ...No, the problem must be such that it matters what the answer is - whether to science generally or to mankind.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 3
(p. 13)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 783

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

To be creative, scientists need libraries and laboratories and the company of other scientists; certainly a quiet and untroubled life is a help. A scientist's work is in no way deepened or made more cogent by privation, anxiety, distress, or emotional harassment. To be sure, the private lives of scientists may be strangely and even comically mixed up, but not in ways that have any special bearing n the nature and quality of their work. If a scientist were to cut off an ear, no one would interpret such an action as evidence of an unhappy torment of creativity; nor will a scientist be excused any bizarrerie, however extravagant, on the grounds that he is a scientist, however brilliant.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 5
(p. 40)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 784

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: TRUTH

The truth is not in nature waiting to declare itself, and we cannot know a priori which observations are relevant and which are not; every discovery, every enlargement of the understanding begins as an imaginative preconception of what the truth might be. This imaginative preconception-a 'hypothesis'- arises by a process as easy or as difficult to understand as any other creative act of mind; it is a brainwave, an inspired guess, the product of a blaze of insight. It comes, anyway, from within and cannot be arrived at by the exercise of any known calculus of discovery.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 11
(p. 84)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 1943

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: INFORMATION

The ballast of factual information, so far from being just about to sink us, is growing daily less. The factual burden of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity. As a science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and compass - whereupon the facts need no longer be known explicitly, that is, spelled out and kept in mind. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular. We need no longer record the fall of every apple.


Encounter
Two Conceptions of Science ,143, August 1965


Reference #: 1944

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is no more a classified inventory of factual information than history a chronology of dates. The equation of science with facts and of the humane arts with ideas is one of the shabby genteelisms that bolster up the humanist's self-esteem.


Encounter
Two Conceptions of Science, 143, August 1965, Reprinted in The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science


Reference #: 7622

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists are entitled to be proud of their accomplishments, and what accomplishments can they call 'theirs' except the things they have done or thought of first? People who criticize scientists for wanting to enjoy the satisfaction of intellectual ownership are confusing possessiveness with pride of possession. Meanness, secretiveness and, sharp practice are as much despised by scientists as by other decent people in the world of ordinary everyday affairs; nor, in my experience, is generosity less common among them, or less highly esteemed.


New York Review of Books
Lucky Jim, 28 March 1968


Reference #: 1945

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: RESEARCH

The scientist values research by the size of its contribution to that huge, logically articulated structure of ideas which is already, though not yet half built, the most glorious accomplishment of mankind.


Encounter
Two Conceptions of Science, 143, August 1965


Reference #: 5511

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

What is wrong with the traditional form of scientific paper is simply this: that all scientific work of an experimental or exploratory character starts with some expectation about the outcome of the enquiry. This expectation one starts with, this hypothesis one formulates, provides the initiative and incentive for the enquiry and governs its actual form. It is in the light of this expectation that some observations are held relevant and others not; that some methods are chosen, others discarded; that some experiments are done rather than others. It is only in the light of this prior expectation that the activities the scientist reports in his scientific papers really have any meaning at all.


Is the Scientific Paper a Fraud?


Reference #: 7621

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them [i.e., his classmates in other disciplines]: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about. This is an advantage which scientists enjoy over most other people engaged in intellectual pursuits, and they enjoy it at all levels of capability. To be a first-rate scientist it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) to be extremely clever, anyhow in a pyrotechnic sense. One of the great social revolutions brought about by scientific research has been the democratization of learning. Anyone who combines strong common sense with an ordinary degree of imaginativeness can become a creative scientist, and a happy one besides, in so far as happiness depends upon being able to develop to the limit of one's abilities.


New York Review of Books
Lucky Jim, 28 March 1968


Reference #: 5219

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

...scientific reasoning is a kind of dialogue between the possible and the actual, what might be and what is in fact the case...


Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
Chapter III, section 1
(p. 48)


Reference #: 5218

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

The layman's interpretation of scientific practice contains two elements which seem to be unrelated and all but impossible to reconcile. In the one conception the scientist is a discoverer, an innovator, an adventurer into the domain of what is not yet known or not yet understood. Such a man must be speculative, surely, at least in the sense of being able to envisage what might happen or what could be true. In the other conception the scientist is a critical man, a skeptic, hard to satisfy; a questioner of received beliefs. Scientists (in this second view) are men of facts and not of fancies, and science is antithetical to, perhaps even an antidote to, imaginative activity in all its forms.


Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
(p. 2)


Reference #: 5217

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: EXPERIMENT

It is a truism to say that a 'good' experiment is precisely that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we have to worry about its interpretation, about what it 'really' means.


Induction and Intuition
Chapter I
(p. 15)


Reference #: 790

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

It is not methodologically an exaggeration to say that Fleming eventually found penicillin because he had been looking for it. A thousand people might have observed whatever it was that he did observe without making anything of it or building upon the observation in any way; but Fleming had the right slot in his mind, waiting for it. Good luck is almost always preceded by an expectation that it will gratify. Pasteur is well known to have said that fortune favors the prepared mind, and Fontenelle observed, 'Ces hasards ne sont que pour ceux qui jouent bien!' ('These strokes of good fortune are only for those who play well!').


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 11
(p. 90)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 5119

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

There is no such thing as a Scientific Mind. Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics. What sort of mind or temperament can all these people be supposed to have in common? Obligative scientists must be very rare, and most people who are in fact scientists could easily have been something else instead.


Hypothesis and Imagination
Times Literary Supplement, 25 Oct 1963


Reference #: 8983

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

Scientific theories...begin as imaginative constructions. They begin, if you like, as stories, and the purpose of the critical or rectifying episode in scientific reasoning is precisely to find out whether or not these stories are about real life.


Pluto's Republic
Science and Literature, section 4
(p. 53)


Reference #: 14407

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

It is a layman's illusion that in science we caper from pinnacle to pinnacle of achievement and that we exercise a Method which preserves us from error. Indeed we do not; our way of going about things takes it for granted that we guess less often right than wrong, but at the same time ensures that we need not persist in error if we earnestly and honestly endeavor not to do so.


The Limits of Science
(p. 101)


Reference #: 8981

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an option; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no option to declare.


Pluto's Republic
Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, Part I, section 2
(p. 80)


Reference #: 15414

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

I feel that what distinguishes the natural scientist from laymen is that we scientists have the most elaborate critical apparatus for testing ideas: we need not persist in error if we are determined not to do so.


The Philosophy of Karl Popper


Reference #: 8982

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior, then scientists seem able to get on very well without it.


Pluto's Republic
Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
(p. 78)


Reference #: 14406

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: DEDUCTION

Philosophers and logicians since the days of Bacon have been entirely clear on this point: deduction merely makes explicit information that is already there. It is not a procedure by which new information can be brought into being.


The Limits of Science
(p. 80)


Reference #: 8062

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

It is the great glory and also the great threat of science that anything which is possible in principle - which does not flout a bedrock law of physics - can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute and long sustained.


On Living a Bit Longer
Memoir of a Thinking Radish


Reference #: 8984

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of Natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature. It begins as a story about a Possible World - a story which we invent and criticize and modify as we go along, so that it winds by being, as nearly as we can make it, a story about real life.


Pluto's Republic
Mainly About Intuition, section 4
(pp. 110-111)


Reference #: 13816

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

...scientists tend not to ask themselves questions until they can see the rudiments of an answer in their minds. Embarrassing questions tend to remain unasked or, if asked, to be answered rudely.


The Future of Man
Chapter 4
(p. 62)


Reference #: 14405

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science can only proceed on a basis of confidence, so that scientists do not suspect each other of dishonesty or sharp practice, and believe each other unless there is very good reason to do otherwise.


The Limits of Science
(p. 6)


Reference #: 13819

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: PALEONTOLOGY

It may seem that palaeontology is a science of pure speculation or inquisitiveness, and the palaeontologist the most unreal and useless of researchers; a man dedicated to retrospection, plunged living into the past, where he spends his days collecting the debris of dead things.


The Future of Man
Some Reflections on Progress
(p. 63)


Reference #: 10835

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The scientific method is not deductive in character: it is a well-known fallacy to regard it as such.


The Art of the Soluble
(p. 131)


Reference #: 8985

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: CREATIVITY

Obviously 'having an idea' or framing a hypothesis is an imaginative exploit of some kind, the work of a single mind; obviously 'trying it out' must be a ruthlessly critical process to which many skills and many hands may contribute.


Pluto's Republic


Reference #: 10926

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE PROGRESS

Advances in medicine and the possibilities of human happiness created by the relief of suffering are a great embarrassment to those determined to think nothing but evil of science and technology. Their only recourse is to point to the population problem as the direct consequence of medicine and medical technology and to say or imply that modern drugs cause as many ailments as they cure. In spite of these dissonant voices, most people believe as we do that medical science has a moral credit balance.


Some Reflections on Science and Civilization


Reference #: 13178

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

I am afraid we shall have to regard the funding of 'pure' research as a tax levied upon society that is not dissimilar in kind from that which maintains art galleries and opera houses - a 'civilization tax', perhaps.


The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Pure Research
Hospital Practice, Sept 1973


Reference #: 10836

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

...the factual burden of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity. As a science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general statements of steadily increasing explanatory powers and compass. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular. We need no longer record the fall of every apple.


The Art of the Soluble
Two Conceptions of Science
(p. 114)


Reference #: 10834

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.


The Art of the Soluble
Hypothesis and Imagination
(p. 132)


Reference #: 14401

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science will persevere just as long as we retain a faculty we show no signs of losing: the ability to conceive—in no matter how imperfect or rudimentary a form—what the truth might be and retain also the inclination to ascertain whether our imaginings correspond to real life or not.


The Limits of Science
(pp. 86-87)


Reference #: 10837

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

...it is no use looking to scientific 'papers,' for they not merely conceal but actively misrepresent the reasoning that goes into the work they describe....Nor is it any use listening to accounts of what scientists say they do, for their opinions vary widely enough to accommodate almost any methodological hypothesis we may care to devise. Only unstudied evidence will do - and that means listening at a keyhole.


The Art of the Soluble
Hypothesis and Imagination
(p. 151)


Reference #: 15789

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

It is high time that laymen abandoned the misleading belief that scientific enquiry is a cold dispassionate enterprise, bleached of imaginative qualities, and that a scientist is a man who turns the handle of discovery; for at every level of endeavor scientific research is a passionate undertaking and the Promotion of Natural Knowledge depends above all on a sortée into what can be imagined but is not yet known.


The Times Literary Supplement [London]
October 25, 1963: 850


Reference #: 13177

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The accusation is sometimes directed against scientists that there is in reality no such thing as the scientific method, i.e., that there is no logically accountable and intellectually rigorous process by which we may proceed directly to the solution of a given problem. Scientific method works only in retrospect. This accusation is perfectly just but it doesn't in practice amount to anything more than saying that there is no set of cut-and-dried rules for writing a poem or passage of music or conducting any other imaginative exercise.


The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Pure Research
Hospital Practice, Sept 1973


Reference #: 8986

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: BIOLOGIST

Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding. Biology is complex, messy and richly various, like real life; it travels faster nowadays than physics or chemistry (which is just as well, because it has so much farther to go), and it travels nearer to the ground.


Pluto's Republic
Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
(p. 73)


Reference #: 14402

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

The most heinous offense a scientist as a scientist can commit is to declare to be true that which is not so; if a scientist cannot interpret the phenomenon he is studying, it is a binding obligation upon him to make it possible for another to do so.


The Limits of Science
(p. 6)
Harper & Row Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1984


Reference #: 13179

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Money can't buy ideas, that's for sure, but lack of it can prevent one having them.


The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Pure Research
Hospital Practice, Sept 1973


Reference #: 14106

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: IMAGINATION

All advances of scientific understanding, at every level, begin with a speculative adventure, an imaginative preconception of what might be true....[This] conjecture is then exposed to criticism to find out whether or not that imagined world is anything like the real one. Scientific reasoning is, therefore, at all levels an interaction between two episodes of thought - a dialogue between two voices, the one imaginative and the other critical...


The Hope of Progress
Science and Literature
(p. 16)


Reference #: 14404

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: ILLNESS

Twice in my life I very nearly
Died as a result of cerebral vascular accidents, and I don't look forward a bit to making, in due course, a clean job of it. I neither cursed God for depriving me of the use of two limbs nor thanked and praised Him for sparing me the use of two others. On these two occasions I derived no comfort from religion or from the thought that God was looking after me.


The Limits of Science
(pp. 96-97)
Harper & Row Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1984


Reference #: 13815

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists tend not to ask themselves questions until they can see the rudiments of an answer in their minds. Embarrassing questions tend to remain unasked for or, if asked, to be asked rudely.


The future of man


Reference #: 10838

Medawar, Sir Peter B.
Born: 28 February, 1915 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died: 2 October, 1987 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Nowadays we all give too much thought to the material blessings or evils that science has brought with it, and too little to its power to liberate us from the confinements of ignorance and superstition. The greatest liberation of thought achieved by the scientific revolution was to have given human beings a sense of future in this world.


The Art of the Soluble
(p. 15)


Reference #: 17381

Mehlberg, Henry
General Category: TIME

It seems to me that it would be either a miracle or an unbelievable coincidence if all the major scientific theories…somehow managed to co-operate with each other so as to conceal tie's arrow from us. There would be neither a miracle not an unbelievable coincidence in the concealment of time's arrow from us only if there were nothing to conceal—that is, if time had no arrows.


In Robert S. Cohen (ed.)
Time, Causality, and the Quantum Theory
Vol. I
(p. 207)
Reidel, Dordrecht; 1980


Reference #: 4989

Meitzen, August
General Category: STATISTICAL

No statistical judgment deals with the unit, but strictly and only with the aggregate. The variable elements of persons and things otherwise typical, that are enumerated, are always counted in a specific aggregate and under certain specific circumstances. The qualities of the objects themselves, so far as they are not typical, or the subject of the investigation, are completely unknown.


History, Theory and Techniques of Statistics
(p. 163)


Reference #: 4988

Meitzen, August
General Category: STATISTICAL

No matter what the statistical problem may be, it must proceed according to a plan. It is always a specific question which may be answered in several more or less accurate ways. The end in view and the reasoning which can be drawn upon will indicate in which manner and within which limits the answer is to be given. According to the choice made, it may be very simple or very complicated. But under all circumstances a definite plan providing for all the detail is an absolute prerequisite.


History, Theory and Techniques of Statistics
(p. 168)


Reference #: 363

Meixner, J.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

A careful study of the thermodynamics of electrical networks has given considerable insight into these problems and also produced a very interesting result: the non-existence of a unique entropy value in a state which is obtained during an irreversible process....I would say, I have done away with entropy. The next step might be to let us also do away with temperature.


In Edward B. Stuart, Benjamin Gal-Or [and] Alan J. Brainard (eds.)
A Critical Review of Thermodynamics


Reference #: 18095

Melancon, Robert
General Category: CATALOGUE

A great public library, in its catalogue and its physical disposition of its books on shelves, is the monument of literary genres.


World Literature Today
Spring 1982
(p. 231)


Reference #: 7582

Mellanby, Kenneth
General Category: ADMINISTRATION OF SCIENCE

...the corridors of power have a strong attraction for even the most devoted investigator, and these corridors seldom lead back to the laboratory.


New Scientist
Disorganisation of Scientific Research, Vol. 59, No. 86023 August 1973
(p. 436)


Reference #: 4917

Mellor, J.W.
General Category: FORECAST

Nearly every inference we make with respect to any future event is more or less doubtful. If the circumstances are favorable, a forecast may be made with a greater degree of confidence than if the conditions are not so disposed.


Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics
Probability and Theory of Errors
(p. 498)


Reference #: 4914

Mellor, J.W.
General Category: DATA

By no process of sound reasoning can a conclusion drawn from limited data have more than a limited application.


Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics
(p. 4)


Reference #: 4912

Mellor, J.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Higher Mathematics is the art of reasoning about numerical relations between natural phenomena; and the several sections of Higher Mathematics are different modes of viewing these relations


Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics
Prologue
New York, New York, United States of America 1902


Reference #: 15465

Melneckuk, Theodore
General Category: QUARK

Poor Gell-Man seeks
But fails to find
The fractioned freaks
He bore in mined.

And yet a Quarck,
Yea, better, three,
Exist in stark
Reality.


The Physics Teacher
The Hunting of the Quark, Vol. 7, No. 7, October 1969
(p. 415)


Reference #: 16006

Melrose, A.R.
General Category: MULTIPLICATION

Twy-stymes, noun: 1 arithmetic if it has to do with the number two {2} {which is always a good number to have when doing anything}. 2 multiplication table of the number two {2}.


The Pooh Dictionary


Reference #: 3089

Melton, John, Sir
General Category: DOCTOR

...the Sunne doth always behold your good successe, and the Earth covers all your ignorances.


Astrologaster
(p. 17)


Reference #: 17479

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: CHEMISTRY

In physical chemistry, as in other sciences, progress usually occurs by a series of rather discontinuous steps separated by periods of consolidation. Thus certain topics and branches of a subject become popular fields of activity once the pioneering work has defined the field of endeavor. Thereafter papers flow in ever-increasing numbers.


Transactions of the Faraday Society
High Polymers, Vol. 49, 1953


Reference #: 17910

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

...a man of true science...uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science...thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.


White Jacket
Chapter LXIII
(p. 277)


Reference #: 7095

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SEA

Therre is, one knows not what sweet mystery about the sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.


Moby Dick
Chapter 111


Reference #: 7102

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: OCEAN

[W]e ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life: and this is the key to it all.


Moby Dick
Chapter 1


Reference #: 7101

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

...however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.


Moby Dick


Reference #: 7100

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them...


Moby Dick


Reference #: 7099

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: ANALOGY

O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.


Moby Dick
The Sphinx


Reference #: 7098

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: TREE

For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants...


Moby Dick


Reference #: 7097

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: DISORDER

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.


Moby Dick
Chapter LXXXII


Reference #: 7096

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

It's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is set on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.


Moby Dick
Chapter 2


Reference #: 7103

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: HEALTH

I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.


Moby Dick


Reference #: 7104

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!


Moby Dick


Reference #: 6407

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: FOSSIL

'Hold!' cried Media, 'yonder is a curious rock. It looks black as a whale's hump in blue water, when the sun shines.'
'That must be the Isle of Fossils,' said Mohi. 'Ay, my lord, it is.'
'Let us land, then,' said Babbalanja.


Mardi


Reference #: 6406

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SUN

Life or death, weal or woe, the sun stays not his course. Oh: over battlefield and bower; over tower, and town, he speeds,—peers in at births, and death-beds; lights up cathedral, mosque, and pagan shrine;—laughing over all;—a very Democritus in the sky; and in one brief day sees more than any pilgrim in a century's round.


Mardi
CLXXXIV


Reference #: 7094

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: OCEAN

Not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring; worse than the Persian host who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.


Moby Dick
LVIII


Reference #: 7093

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SEA

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about the sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul hidden beneath.


Moby Dick
Chapter 111


Reference #: 7106

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: TOOTHACHE

Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon hisbench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.


Moby Dick
Chapter cvii


Reference #: 6405

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nature is an immaculate virgin, forever standing unrobed before us.


Mardi
CXXXVII


Reference #: 7105

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: PLANET SATURN

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn.


Moby Dick
Chapter 10, Section 3, Section 5er 107


Reference #: 9749

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.


Redburn
XL


Reference #: 9750

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL HORSE

What is a horse but a species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water?


Redburn
XL


Reference #: 9751

Melville, Herman
Born: 1 August, 1819 in New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 September, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: BRUTES

There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, make sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquility wpeculating upon the mysteries in man.


Redburn
XL


Reference #: 10508

Mencke, J.B.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

[Mathematics] includes much that will neither hurt one who does not know it nor help one who does.


The Charlatanry of the Learned
Lecture II
(p. 152)


Reference #: 10507

Mencke, J.B.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

[Mathematics] guides our minds in an orderly way, and furnishes us simple and rational principles by means of which ambiguities are clarified, disorder is converted into order, and complexities are analyzed into their component parts.


The Charlatanry of the Learned
Lecture II
(p. 152)


Reference #: 2695

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: THEORY

...for a professor must have a theory, as a dog must have fleas.


Criticism of Criticism of Criticism
(p. 12)


Reference #: 6222

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: FACT

The common view of science is that it is a sort of machine for increasing the race's store of dependable facts. It is that only in part; in even larger part it is a machine for upsetting undependable facts.


In Will Durant
Living Philosophies
(p. 187)


Reference #: 658

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: MEDICINE

The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous: it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The true physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.


In Herbert V. Prochnow and Herbert V. Prochnow, Jr
A Treasury of Humorous Quotations


Reference #: 6874

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

To me the scientific point of view is completely satisfying, and it has been so as long as I can remember. Not once in this life have I ever been inclined to seek a rock and a refuge elsewhere. It leaves a good many dark spots in the universe, to be sure, but not a hundredth time as many as theology. We may trust it, soon or late, to throw light upon many of them, and those that remain dark will be beyond illumination by any other agency. It also fails on occasion to console, but so does theology...


In Charles A. Fecher
Mencken: A Study of His Thought
(p. 84)


Reference #: 7062

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.


Minority Report
No. 232
(p. 166)


Reference #: 7067

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: FACT

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.


Minority Report: Notebook
No. 412
(p. 277)


Reference #: 7066

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: PHYSICS

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.


Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks
62


Reference #: 7065

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: GOD

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.


Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks
79


Reference #: 7063

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry...


Minority Report
62


Reference #: 7061

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: UNKNOWABLE

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.


Minority Report


Reference #: 7064

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: ASTRONOMER

Astronomers and physicists, dealing habitually with objects and quantities far beyond the reach of the senses, even with the aid of the most powerful aids that ingenuity has been able to devise, tend almost inevitably to fall into the ways of thinking of men dealing with objects and quantities that do not exist at all, e.g., theologians and metaphysicians.


Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebook
74


Reference #: 9205

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: SCIENTIST

[The Scientist] The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves some of the greater men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigators. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.


Prejudices: Third Series
(pp. 269-270).


Reference #: 15412

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: IDEA

...the proof of an idea is not to be sought in the soundness of the man fathering it, but in the soundness of the idea itself. One asks of a pudding, not if the cook who offers it is a good woman, but if the pudding itself is good.


The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
(p. 271)


Reference #: 9206

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: COSMOS

1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.


Prejudices: Third Series
Chapter V, Section 5
(p. 132)


Reference #: 11878

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: HEALING

...it will never get well if you pick it.


The American Mercury
What is Going on in the World, Vol. XXX, No. 119, November 1933
(p. 257)


Reference #: 10506

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Even if we admit that mathematicians are of great value to the world, the fact remains that there are many charlatans (circulatores) among them. They talk too much of their discoveries, and nothing grieves them more than to see some other mathematician get ahead of them. How vast is their joy when they solve a problem within the time limits set by him who posited it! They use up every ounce of their energy in that struggle for fame.


In Johann B. Mencke
The Charlatanry of the Learned
Lecture II, fn 74
(p. 152)


Reference #: 9207

Mencken, H.L.
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The true physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.


Prejudices: Third Series
Chapter XIC
(p. 269)


Reference #: 9204

Mencken, Henry Louis
General Category: CONSTIPATION

There has [never] lived a poet…ancient or modern, near or far, who ever managed to write good poetry…at a time when he was suffering from stenosis at any point along the thirty-foot via dolorosa running from the pylorus to the sigmoid flexure…. The more he tries, the more vividly he will be conscious of his impotence.


Prejudices
2nd Series
(pp. 160-161)
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, United States of America 1920


Reference #: 3617

Mendeléeff, Maria
General Category: TRUTH

Refrain from illusions, insist on work, and not on words, patiently search divine and scientific truth.


In Benjamin Harrow
Eminent Chemists of Our Time
Dmitri Ivanowitch Mendeléeff
(p. 22)


Reference #: 18050

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: MATTER

By gradually studying matter, people finally take command of it. Their predictions concerning it, proved by the facts, become ever more accurate. They use it more widely and more frequently to satisfy their needs. There are no grounds to think that knowledge and our mastery over matter have bounds.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 18076

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: SCIENCE

Science plays an auxiliary part in our lives, for it is merely a means to the atainment of wellbeing.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 18064

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

Hypotheses help and guide scientific work—the search for truth—as the tiller's plough helps the cultivation of useful plants.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 18062

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: DISCOVERY

Scientific discoveries are rarely made overnight, for usually the heralds do not at once manage to convince the world in the verity of the discovered; but we must not forget that discoveries result from the work of many and from the accumulated aggregate of facts.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 5689

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: SCIENCE

While science is pursuing a steady onward movement, it is convenient from time to time to cast a glance back on the route already traversed, and especially to consider new conceptions which aim at discovering the general meaning of the stock of facts accumulated from day to day in our laboratories.


Journal of the Chemical Society
Vol. 55, 1889
(p. 634)


Reference #: 5690

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: PERIODIC TABLE

I shall endeavor to show, as briefly as possible, in how far the periodic law contributes to enlarge our range of vision. Before the promulgation of this law the cehmical elements were mere fragmentary, incidental facts in Nature; there was no special reason to expect the discovery of new elements, and the new ones which were discovered from time to time appeared to be possessed of quite novel properties. The law of periodicity first enabled us to perceive undiscovered elements at a distance which formerly was inaccessible to chemical vision...


Journal of the Chemical Society
The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements, Vol. 55 1889
(p. 648)


Reference #: 9258

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: SCIENCE

Knowing how contented, free and joyful is life in the realms of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter their portals.


Principles of Chemistry
Vol. 1, Preface
(p. ix)


Reference #: 9259

Mendeleyev, Dmitry
General Category: PERIODIC TABLE

There must be some bond of union between mass and the chemical elements; and as the mass of a substance is ultimately expressed...in the atom, a functional demendence should exist and be discoverable between the individual properties of the elements and their atomic weights. But nothing, from mushrooms to a scientific law, can be discovered without looking and trying. So I began to look about and write down the elements with their atomic weights and typical properties, analogous elements and like atomic weights on separate cards, and this soon convinced me that the properties of elements are in periodic dependence upon their atomic weights.


Principles of Chemistry
Vol. II


Reference #: 9831

Mendés, Michel
General Category: MATHEMATICS

A talk in mathematics should be one of four things: beautiful, deep, surprising...or short.


Remark, c. 1986


Reference #: 17046

Menzel, Donald Boyd, Lyle G.
General Category: SCIENTIST

The creative scientist, eternally curious, keeps an open mind toward strange phenomena and novel ideas, knowing that we have only begun to understand the universe we live in. He remembers, too, that Biot's discovery that meteorites were 'stones from the sky' was at first greeted with disbelief, and he hopes never to be guilty or similar obtuseness. But an open mind does not mean credulity or a suspension of the logical faculties that are man's most valuable asset.


The World of Flying Saucers
(p. 289)


Reference #: 1790

MEPHISTO
General Category: PHYSICS

Beware alone of Reason and of Science,
Man's highest powers, unholy in alliance.
You let yourself, through dazzling witchcraft, yield
To all temptations of the Quantum field.
Listen! As now the obstacles abate,
You'll know the fair Neutrino for your fate!


BLEGDAMSVEJ FAUST
Part First, Copenhagen Spring Conference, 1932


Reference #: 1791

MEPHISTO
General Category: PHYSICS

Can no one laugh? Will no one drink?
I'll teach you Physics in a wink....


BLEGDAMSVEJ FAUST
Part First, Copenhagen Spring Conference, 1932


Reference #: 5977

Mercer, de la Riviere
General Category: SCIENCE

Without the sciences man would rank below the beasts.


In L. Ducros
Les Encyclopedistes
(p. 315)


Reference #: 7406

Mercier, André
General Category: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy does not 'solve problems', whereas science does. Philosophy, in its relations to science, gathers up the problems of science, which are no longer problems since they have found solutions, and seeks to order them in such a way that the structure of knowledge does, in fact, appear.


Nature
Fifty Years of the Theory of Relativity, Vol. 175, May 28, 1955
(p. 919)


Reference #: 539

Meredith, George
General Category: MOTION

So may we read, and little find them cold:
Not frosty lamps illuminating dead space,
Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers.
The fire is in them whereof we are
Born;
The music of their motion may be ours.


A Reading of Earth
Meditation under Stars


Reference #: 2958

Meredith, George
General Category: OBSERVATION

Observation is the most enduring of the pleasures of life...


Diana of the Crossways
Chapter XI
(p. 104)


Reference #: 14447

Meredith, George
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is notoriously of slow movement.


The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
XLIV
(p. 518)


Reference #: 9035

Meredith, George
General Category: STAR

He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.


Poems of George Meredith
Lucifer in Starlight


Reference #: 5291

Meredith, Owen
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

To all facts there are laws,
The effect has its cause, and I mount to the cause.


Lucile
Part II, Canto III, Stanza 8


Reference #: 15951

Meredith, Owen
General Category: CONSTELLATION SOUTHERN CROSS

Then did I feel as one who, much perplext,
Led by strange legends and the light of stars
Over long regions of the midnight sand
Beyond the red tract of the Pyramids,
Is suddenly drawn to look upon the sky,
From sense of unfamiliar light, and sees,
Reveal'd against the constellated cope,
The great cross of the South.


The Poetical Works of Owen Meredith
Queen Guenevere


Reference #: 5368

Meredith, Patrick
General Category: PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Hence a true philosophy of science must be a philosophy of scientists and laboratories as well as one of waves, particles and symbols.


Instruments of Communication
Chapter 2, section 5
(p. 40)


Reference #: 17918

Meriton, George
General Category: SICK

As sick as a horse.


Yorkshire Ale
71


Reference #: 8921

Mermin, David
General Category: PHYSICIST

...contemporary physicists come in two varieties. Type 1 physicists are bothered by EPR and Bell's Theorem. Type 2 (the majority) are not, but one has to distinguish two subvarieties. Type 2a physicists explain why they are not bothered. Their explanations tend either to miss the point entirely (like
Born's to Einstein) or to contain physical assertions that can be shown to be false. Type 2b are not bothered and refuse to explain why.


Physics Today
Is the Moon there When Nobody Looks? Reality and the Quantum Theory, April 1985
(p. 41)


Reference #: 5640

Merrill, William
General Category: GEOLOGY

Whither goest we?
Whither goes geology?
The crystal ball
That tell us all
A little fuzzy be.


Journal of Geological Education
Purposes of Undergraduate Degree Programs in Geology, Vol. XIII, No. 3, June 1965
(p. 67)


Reference #: 17406

Merriman, Gaylord M.
General Category: LINE

The limit concept is not armchair fantasy, dissolving with the pipesmoke of its dreamer. It is the stuff of life.


To Discover Mathematics
Chapter 9
(p. 254)


Reference #: 17455

Merrit, J. I.
General Category: ENERGY

But for reasons largely aesthetic, physicists—who, like poets, are driven by a blessed rage for order—believe that at some deep level these seemingly separate forces are in fact the same. They have an almost mystical faith in symmetry.


Toward a Theory of Everything


Reference #: 15361

Merritt, Dixon L.
General Category: BIRD PELICAN

A wonderful bird is the pelican!
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week
But I'm darned if I see how the helican.


The Pelican


Reference #: 13795

Mersenne, Marin
General Category: ALCHEMY

We can take pride in the fact that there is no science as certain as ours because it teaches by experience which is the mother, the source and the universal cause of all knowledge: and it is for the lack of this that Aristotle and the other philosophers have wondrously failed in their philosophy...


In Allen G. Debus
The French Paracelsians
Chapter 3
(p. 72)


Reference #: 5467

Merserve, Bruce
Sobel, Max
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Many people study mathematics just for fun! These individuals would rather solve a mathematical puzzle than read a book, watch television, or go to a movie. Admittedly, not everyone has, or can have, this type of disposition. On the other hand, most of us use mathematical concepts in a variety of ways but have never been given the opportunity to explore some of the more interesting aspects of mathematics.


Introduction to Mathematics


Reference #: 8138

Merton, R.K.
General Category: DISCOVERY

The discovery is not true
If true, it is not new
If both new and true, it is not significant.


On Theoretical Sociology, Five Essays, Old and New
Chapter I
(p. 21)


Reference #: 16508

Merton, Thomas
General Category: DOCTOR

I am surprised to find how much of the artist there is in doctors, for medicine is an art as well as a science and therefore its techniques demand a certain skill that is not abstract but
Born of connatural intuition.


The Sign of Jonas
(p. 302)
Image Books, Garden City; 1956


Reference #: 409

Merz, J.T.
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

In every case the awakening touch has been the mathematical spirit, the attempt to count, to measure, or to calculate. What to the poet or the seer may appear to be the very death of all his poetry and all his visions - the cold touch of the calculating mind, - this has proved to be the spell by which knowledge has been
Born, by which new sciences have been created, and hundreds of definite problems put before the minds and into the hands of diligent students. It is the geometrical figure, the dry algebraical formula, which transforms the vague reasoning of the philosopher into a tangible and manageable conception; which represents, though it does not explain, the things and processes of nature: this clothes the fruitful, but otherwise indefinite, ideas in such a form that the strict logical methods of thought can be applied, that the human mind can in its inner chamber evolve a train of reasoning the result of which corresponds to the phenomena of the outer world.


A History of the European Thought in the Nineteenth Century
Vol. 1
(p. 314)


Reference #: 398

Merz, John Theodore
General Category: CHANCE

The study of blind chance in theory and practice is one of the great performances of the nineteenth century.


A History of European Scientific Thought in the Nineteenth Century
Vol. II
(p. 624)


Reference #: 9648

Metcalf, Elizabeth
General Category: DOCTOR

The most thoughtful doctor I know holds a child's tongue down with a lollipop when he has to look down a small throat.


Reader's Digest
Picturesque Speech and Patter, September 1946
(p. 58)


Reference #: 12591

Metrodorus of Chios
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

...it would be strange if a single ear of corn grew in a large plain or there were only one world in the infinite.


In F.M. Cornford
The Classical Quarterly
Innumerable Worlds in Presocratic Philosophy, January 1934
(p. 13)


Reference #: 15469

Metsler, William Joseph
General Category: HEAT

The stove is hot, but thats no change
Heat's what it's supposed to make
Resistance generates the energy to bake
So its always Ohm Ohm on the range.


The Physics Teacher
The Cowboy's Lament, Vol. 15, No. 2, February 1977
(p. 127)


Reference #: 7538

Meyer, Adolf
General Category: PHYSICIAN

I wonder how soon we shall be far enough along to have the physician ask: How much and what, if anything, is structural? how much Functional, somatic or metabolic? How much constitutional, psychogenic and social?


New England Journal of Medicine
The %Complaint% As the Center of Genetic-Dynamic and Nosological Teaching In Psychiatry, August 23, 1928


Reference #: 3484

Meyer, Agnes
General Category: PROBABILITY

We can never achieve absolute truth but we can live hopefully by a system of calculated probabilities. The law of probability gives to natural and human sciences—to human experience as a whole—the unity of life we seek.


Education for a New Morality
Chapter 3


Reference #: 3486

Meyer, Agnes
General Category: LAW

We can never achieve absolute truth but we can live hopefully by a system of calculated probabilities. The law of probability gives to natural and human sciences - to human experience as a whole - the unity of life we seek.


Education for a New Morality
(p. 21)


Reference #: 3485

Meyer, Agnes
General Category: SCIENCE

From the nineteenth century view of science as a god, the twentieth century has begun to see it as a devil. It behooves us now to understand that science is neither the one nor the other.


Education for a New Morality
Chapter 2
(p. 11)


Reference #: 3483

Meyer, Agnes
General Category: SCIENCE

From the nineteenth-century view of science as a god, the twentieth century has begun to see it as a devil. It behooves us now to understand that science is neither one nor the other.


Education for a New Morality
Chapter 3


Reference #: 5155

Meyer, Bertrand
General Category: SPECIFICATIONS

Meyer's Seven Sins of the Specifier Noise:
The presence in the text of an element that does not carry information relevant to any feature of the problem. Variants: redundancy; remorse.
Silence:
The existence of a feature of the problem that is not covered by any element of the text.
Overspecification:
The presence in the text of an element that corresponds not to a feature of the problem but to features of a possible solution.
Contradiction:
The presence in the text of two or more elements that define a feature of the system in an incompatible way.
Ambiguity:
The presence in the text of an element that makes it possible to interpret a feature of the problem in at least two different ways.
Forward reference:
The presence in the text of an element that uses features of the problem not defined until later in the text.
Wishful thinking:
The presence in the text of an element that defines a feature of the problem in such a way that a candidate solution cannot realistically be validated with respect to this feature.


IEEE Software
Jan 1985


Reference #: 15273

Meyer, Steve
General Category: EVOLUTION

The materialistic science we have inherited from the late-nineteenth century, with its exclusive conceptual reliance on matter and energy, could neither envision nor can it now account for the biology of the information age.


The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism


Reference #: 5086

Meyer, Walter
General Category: MATHEMATICS

In a time when much of the world's geography has been explored, and space exploration is restricted to astronauts, mathematics offers fertile ground for exploring the unknown.


Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal
Missing Dimensions of Mathematics, No. 11, Feb., 1995


Reference #: 17470

Meyers, G.J., Jr.
General Category: STATISTICAL

Statistical methods serve as land marks which point to further improvement beyond that deemed obtainable by experienced manufacturing men. Hence, after all obvious correctives have been exhausted and all normal logic indicates no further gain is to be made, statistical methods still point toward a reasonable chance for yet further gains; thereby giving the man who is doing trouble shooting sufficient courage of his convictions to cause him to continue to the ultimate gain, in spite of expressed opinion on all sides that no such gain exists.


Transactions
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Discussion of E.G. Olds, On Some of the Essentials of the Control Chart Analysis, Vol. 64, July 1942


Reference #: 5152

Meyerson, Emile
General Category: FORESIGHT

...foresight is indispensable for action. Now action for any organism of the animal kingdom is an absolute necessity. Surrounded by hostile nature it must act, it must foresee, if it wishes to live. "All life, all action," says Fouillée, "is a conscious or an unconscious divining. Divine or you will be devoured."


Identity and Reality
Chapter I
(p. 22)


Reference #: 5153

Meyerson, Emile
General Category: LAW

Doubtless, if nature were not ordered, if it did not present us with similar objects, capable of furnishing generalized concepts, we could not formulate laws...In fact, we only attain laws by violating nature, by isolating more or less artifically a phenomenon from the whole, by checking those influences which would have falsified the observation. Thus the law cannot directly express reality. The phenomenon as it is envisaged by it, the 'pure' phenomenon, is rarely observed without our intervention, and even with this it remains imperfect, disturbed by accessory phenomena.


Identity and Reality
(pp. 32&31)


Reference #: 5151

Meyerson, Emile
General Category: ENERGY

Energy is really only an integral; now, what we want to have is a substantial definition, like that of Leibniz, and this demand is justifiable to a certain degree, since our very conviction of the conservation of energy rests in great part on this foundation...And so the manuals of physics contain really two discordant definitions of energy, the first which is verbal, intelligible, capable of establishing our conviction, and false; and the second which is mathematical, exact, but lacking verbal expression.


Identity & Reality
Chapter VIII
(p. 280)


Reference #: 2443

Meyerson, Emile
General Category: SPACE-TIME

The tendency toward assimilation of time and space—which is really…a transformation of time into space…exceeds the authority of the most clearly established facts and the most basic foundations of science.


In Milic Capek
Concepts of Space and Time
Various interpretations of Relavistic Time
(p. 356)


Reference #: 9294

Miall, Andrew
General Category: MODEL

There are those who try to generalize, synthesize, and build models, and there are those who believe nothing and constantly call for more data. The tension between these two groups is a healthy one; science develops mainly because of the model builders, yet they need the second group to keep them honest.


Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis
Chapter 8
(p. 363)


Reference #: 4186

Michalson, Carl
General Category: GOD

One may point to nature and say,


In P. Ramsey (ed.)
Faith and Ethics
Chapter 9
(p. 257)


Reference #: 8565

Michell, John
General Category: BLACK HOLE

If the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun in the proportion of five hundred to one, and by supposing light to be attracted by the same force in proportion to its [mass] with other bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it, by its own proper gravity.


Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
On the Means of discovering the Distance, Magnitude, etc. of the Fixed Stars, 1784


Reference #: 6170

Michelson, A.A.
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

Science, when it has to communicate the results of its labor, is under the disadvantage that its language is but little understood. Hence it is that circumlocution is inevitable and repetitions are difficult to avoid.


Light Waves and Their Uses
Lecture I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 6172

Michelson, A.A.
General Category: LAW

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote...our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.


Light Waves and Their Uses
Lecture II
(pp. 23, 24)


Reference #: 17095

Michelson, Albert
General Category: FACT

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote....Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.


In John D. Barrow
The World within the World
(p. 173)
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 6171

Michelson, Albert A.
General Category: PHYSICIST

If a poet could at the same time be a physicist, he might convey to others the pleasure, the satisfaction, almost the reverence, which the subject inspires. The aesthetic side of the subject is, I confess, by no means the least attractive to me. Especially is its fascination felt in the branch which deals with light...


Light Waves and Their Uses
Lecture I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 4858

Michener, James A.
General Category: VOLCANO

For nearly forty million years the first island struggled in the bosom of the sea, endeavoring to be
Born as observable land. For nearly forty million submerged years its subteranean volcano hissed and...spewed forth rock, but it remained nevertheless hidden beneath the dark waters of the restless sea...a small climbing pretentious thing of no consequence.


Hawaii


Reference #: 11378

Michener, James A.
General Category: ENGINEER

Scientists are men who dream about doing things. Engineers do them....if you want to be an engineer but find you have ten thumbs, you become a scientist.


Space
(p. 235)


Reference #: 11381

Michener, James A.
General Category: MOTION

I am motionless, he said to himself at last, and he kept his posture for ten minutes, thinking of nothing. Then his brain insisted, recalling data he had memorized at Cal Tech:

But at this moment I'm sitting on a piece of Earth at 34°30' North, which means I'm spinning west to east at a rate of about 860 miles an hour. At the equator, because of the larger bulge, 1,040. At the same time, my Earth is moving through its orbit around the Sun at 66,661 miles an hour, and my Sun is carrying itself and its planets toward the star Vega at something like 31,000 miles an hour.

Our Sun and Vega move around the Galaxy at the blinding speed of 700,000 miles per hour, and the Galaxy itself rotates at 559,350 miles an hour.

And that's not all. Our galaxy moves in relation to all other galaxies as they rush through the universe at a speed of better than 1,000,000 miles an hour.

So when I sit here absolutely still, I'm moving in six wildly different directions at an accumulated speed of...(he could not add the figures in his head) maybe two and a half million miles an hour. So I can never be motionless. I'm traveling always at speeds which are incomprehensible. And it's all happening in real time.


Space


Reference #: 11380

Michener, James A.
General Category: GENERALIZATION

When a man has studied the heavens for ten thousand nights, he is entitled to make certain generalizations. Space is without limit or definition. There is no east or west, no north or south, no down or up, no in or out. It is truly boundless and must be respected as such. It cannot be measured or comprehended. All we can do is behave in accordance with its laws as we dimly perceive them.


Space


Reference #: 11377

Michener, James A.
General Category: FORCE

The Luna broke away to start its descent to what Tucker Thompson had told his readers was 'the dark and dangerous chasm in which unknown forces threaten the life of any trespasser'. Dr. Mott, reading the report in Folks, growled, 'The basic forces are identical with those which govern Brooklyn. Only the landscape is different.'


Space


Reference #: 11379

Michener, James A.
General Category: PROBLEM

At NACA we solve everything eventually. That's our job, and now it's yours....At NACA, there are no imsoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones.


Space


Reference #: 3551

Middendorf, W.H.
Brown, G.T., Jr.
General Category: INVENTION

A full storehouse of knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient condition for invention. To this, one must add an organized method of attack.


Electrical Engineering
Orderly Creative Inventing, October 1957
(p. 867)


Reference #: 3552

Middendorf, W.H.Brown, G.T., Jr.
General Category: INVENTION

The romantic theory that an invention will appear in full bloom without conscious effort on the part of the gifted inventor has been deprecated.


Electrical Engineering
Orderly Creative Inventing, October 1957
(p. 861)


Reference #: 17011

Middleton, Thomas
General Category: MOON

Let the air strike our tune,
Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.


The Witch
Act V, sc. 2


Reference #: 18019

Middleton, Thomas
General Category: AMPUTATION

I'll imitate the pities of old Surgeons
To this lost limb, who, ere they show their art,
Cast one asleep, then cut the diseas'd part.


Women Beware Women
Act IV, scene I
(p. 91)


Reference #: 8781

Midgley, M.
General Category: GENE

Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.


Philosophy
Gene-juggling, Vol. 54, No. 210, 1979
(p. 439)


Reference #: 7576

Midgley, Mary
General Category: QUESTION

The astonishing successes of western science have not been gained by answering every kind of question, but precisely by refusing to. Science has deliberately set narrow limits to the kinds of questions that belong to it, and further limits to the questions peculiar to each branch. It has practiced an austere modesty, a rejection of claims to universal authority.


New Scientist
Can Science Save Its Soul?, 1 August 1992
(p. 25)


Reference #: 5024

Mikes, George
General Category: ARITHMETIC

A English professor of mathematics would say to his maid adding up his shopping list:


How to Be an Alien
Britain
(p. 14)


Reference #: 3164

Miksch, W.F.
General Category: STATISTICIAN

A couple of government statisticians recently threw dust on the wedding ring business by coming right out with the fact that for every male there are 1.03 females. It's about time they stop shoving the American taxpayer behind decimal points.


Collier's
The AVERAGE STATISTICIAN, June 17, 1950


Reference #: 10385

Milgrom, Mordehai
General Category: DARK MATTER

If we accept a departure from the standard laws of physics, we might do away with dark matter.


Scientific American
Does Dark Matter Really Exist, August 2002.


Reference #: 17298

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: NATURE

Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them; including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening...


Three Essays on Religion
Nature
(p. 5)


Reference #: 1147

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: MATHEMATICS

That mathematics "do not cultivate the power of generalization," ...will be admitted by no person of competent knowledge, except in a very qualified sense. The generalizations of mathematics, are, no doubt, a different thing from the generalizations of physical science; but in the difficulty of seizing them, and the mental tension they require, they are no contemptible preparation for the most arduous efforts of the scientific mind. Even the fundamental notions of the higher mathematics, from those of the differential calculus upwards are products of a very high abstraction....To perceive the mathematical laws common to the results of many mathematical operations, even in so simple a case as that of the binomial theorem, involves a vigorous exercise of the same faculty which gave us Kepler's laws, and rose through those laws to the theory of universal gravitation. Every process of what has been called Universal Geometry—the great creation of Descartes and his successors, in which a single train of reasoning solves whole classes of problems at once, and others common to large groups of them—is a practical lesson in the management of wide generalizations, and abstraction of the points of agreement from those of difference among objects of great and confusing diversity, to which the purely inductive sciences cannot furnish many superior. Even so elementary an operation as that of abstracting from the particular configuration of the triangles or other figures, and the relative situation of the particular lines or points, in the diagram which aids the apprehension of a common geometrical demonstration, is a very useful, and far from being always an easy, exercise of the faculty of generalization so strangely imagined to have no place or part in the processes of mathematics.


An Examination of Sir William Hamilton;s Philosophy
(pp. 612, 613)
London, England, 1878


Reference #: 6448

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The character of necessity ascribed to the truths of mathematics and even the peculiar certainty attributed to them is an illusion.


In Morris Kline
Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
(p. 861)


Reference #: 11677

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: LAW

The Law of Causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that the invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it.


System of Logic
Book III, Chapter V, Section 2


Reference #: 11678

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

The truth that every fact which has a beginning has a cause, is co-extensive with human experience.


System of Logic
Book III, V, 1


Reference #: 8061

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is that all the argument is on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections.


On Liberty
Chapter II
(p. 44)


Reference #: 11679

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: INDUCTION

There is in every step of an arithmetical or algebraical calculation a real induction, a real inference from facts to facts, and what disguises the induction is simply its comprehensive nature, and the consequent extreme generality of its language.


System of Logic
Book 2, Chapter 2, 2


Reference #: 12686

Mill, John Stuart
General Category: LAW

When this phraseology [Laws of Nature] was introduced, the poets and mythologists soon took hold of it and made it subservient to their purposes. Nature was personified: the phrase law of Nature...became a law laid down by the goddess Nature to be obeyed by her creatures. From the poets, this fictitious personage speedily penetrated into the closets of the philosopher...


In Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (eds.)
The Collected Works of J.S. Mill
Vol. XXII, Letter to the Republican, 3 January 1823
(p. 9)


Reference #: 2326

Millay, Edna St. Vincent
General Category: FLOWER

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.


Collected Poems
Afternoon on a Hill
(p. 33)


Reference #: 2353

Millay, Edna St. Vincent
General Category: FACT

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts...they lie unquestioned, uncombined,
Wisdom enough to leach us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric;.


Collected Sonnets
Three Sonnets in Tetrameter, Sonnet III
(p. 140)


Reference #: 9195

Miller H.
General Category: SPECIALIZATION

The worst mistakes…must be laid at the door of the specialist rather than the general practitioner, who, from his intimate contact with sick people in their natural surroundings, often has a lively understanding of the nervous patient, and is able to see him and his problems as a whole.


Practitioner
The Recognition of Neurotic Illness, Vol. 159, 1947


Reference #: 3659

Miller, G. Tyler, Jr.
General Category: ORDER

Man continually engages in attempts to create order, but only at the expense of greater disorder in the surroundings.


Energetics, Kinetics, and Life: An Ecological Approach
(p. 200)
Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont; 1971


Reference #: 981

Miller, G.A.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the science of saving thought.


American Mathematical Monthly
Vol. 15, 1908
(p. 197)


Reference #: 17532

Miller, Henry
General Category: CONFUSION

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.


Tropic of Capricorn
An Interlude
(p. 170)


Reference #: 17531

Miller, Henry
General Category: CHAOS

...chaos is the score upon which reality is written.


Tropic of Cancer
(p. 2)


Reference #: 1782

Miller, Henry
General Category: CHAOS

The world is what it is and I am what I am....This out there and this in me, all this, everything, the resultant of inexplicable forces. A Chaos whose order is beyond comprehension. Beyond human comprehension.


Black Spring
Third or Fourth Day of Spring
(p. 25)


Reference #: 18096

Miller, Henry George
General Category: MISTAKES

The more distinguished the doctor the more terrible the mistakes he has made—or will admit to.


World Neurology
Henry Millerisms, 9 April 1968
(p. 8)


Reference #: 16732

Miller, Hugh
General Category: CREATION

Who shall declare what, throughout these long ages, the history of creation has been? We see at wide intervals the mere fragments of successive floras; but know not how what seem the blank interspaces were filled, or how, as extinction overtook in succession one tribe of existences after another, and species, like individuals, yielded to the great law of death, yet other species were brought to the birth and ushered upon the scene, and the chain of being was maintained unbroken. We see only detached bits of that green web which has covered our earth ever since the dry land first appeared; but the web itself seems to have been continuous throughout all time; though ever, as breadth after breadth issued from the creative loom, the pattern has altered, and the scultpuresque and graceful forms that illustrated its first beginnings and its middle spaces have yielded to flowers of richer colour and blow, and fruits of fairer shade and outline; and for gigantic club-mosses stretching forth their hirsute arms, goodly trees of the Lord have expanded their great boughs; and for the barren fern and the calamite, clustering in thickets beside the waters, or spreading on flowerless hill-slopes, luxuriant orchards have yielded their ruddy flush, and rich harvests their golden gleam.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Twelfth
(pp. 501-502)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16730

Miller, Hugh
General Category: CREATION

Creation cannot take place without miracle; but it would be a strange reversal of all our previous conclusions on the subject, should we have to hold that the dead, dark blank out of which creation arose was miraculous also.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Third
(p. 156)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16729

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGY

The science of the geologist seems destined to exert a marked influence on that of the natural theologian. For not only does it greatly add to the materials on which the natural theologian founds his deductions, by adding to the organisms, plant and animal, of the present creation the extinct organisms of the creations of the past, with all their extraordinary display of adaptation and design; but it affords him, besides, materials peculiar to itself, in the history which it furnishes both of the appearance of these organisms in time, and of the wonderful order in which they were chronologically arranged.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Fifth
(p. 211)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16728

Miller, Hugh
General Category: INSCRIPTIONS

We have been looking abroad on the old geological burying-grounds, and deciphering the strange inscriptions on their tombs; but there are other burying-grounds, and other tombs,—solitary church-yards among the hills, where the dust of the martyrs lies, and tombs that rise over the ashes of the wise and good; nor are therre awanting, on even the monuments of the perished races, frequent hieroglyphics, that while their burial-yards contain but the debris of the past, we are to regard the others as charged with the sown seed of the future.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Second
(p. 140)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16726

Miller, Hugh
General Category: FOSSILS

There is scarce an architectural ornament of the Gothic or Grecian styles which may not be found existing as fossils in the rocks.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Sixth
(p. 255)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16725

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGIST

The geologist, as certainly as the theologian, has a province exclusively his own; and were the theologian ever to remember that the Scriptures could not possibly have been given to us as revelations of scientific truth, seeing that a single scientific truth they never yet revealed, and the geologist that it must be in vain to seek in science those truths which lead to salvation, seeing that in science these truths were never yet found, there would be little danger even of difference among them, and none of collision.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Sixth
(pp. 280-281)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16724

Miller, Hugh
General Category: MAN

Up till the introduction of man upon our planet, the humbler creatures, his predecessors, formed but mere figures in its various landscapes, and failed to alter or affect by their works the face of nature.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Sixth
(p. 237)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16723

Miller, Hugh
General Category: CAUSE

It has been well remarked, that that writer would be equally in danger or error who would assign very abstruse motives for the conduct of great bodies of men, or very obvious causes for the great phenomena of nature.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Tenth
(p. 392)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16722

Miller, Hugh
General Category: LECTURE

My lecture contains but little; but then. Such is the scantiness of the materials on which I had to work, that it could not have contained much: if according to the dramatist, the "amount be beggarly," it is because the "boxes are empty."


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture Eleventh
(p. 462)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 16720

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGIC AGES

Nor can I doubt that [the Earth's] history throughout the long geologic age—its strange story of successive creations, each placed in advance of that which had gone before, and its succeeding organisms, vegetable and animal, ranged according to their appearance in time, on principles which our profounder students of natural science have but of late determined—will be found in an equal degree more worthy of its Divine Author than that which would huddle the whole into a few literal days, and convert the incalculably ancient universe which we inhabit into a hastily run-up erection of yesterday.


The Testimony of the Rocks
1857


Reference #: 16721

Miller, Hugh
General Category: PALEONTOLOGY

Paleontology, or the science of ancient organisms, deals, as its subject, with all the plants and animals of all the geologic periods. It bears nearly the same sort of relation to the physical history of the past, that biography does to the civil and political history of the past.


The Testimony of the Rocks; of, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed
Lecture First
(p. 33)
Gould and Lincoln, Boston, United States of America; 1857


Reference #: 4708

Miller, Hugh
General Category: ANALOGY

Analogy is not identity.


Geology Versus Astronomy
Chapter I
(p. 8)


Reference #: 4709

Miller, Hugh
General Category: PLANET

The planet which we inhabit is but one vessel in the midst of a fleet sailing on through the vast ocean of space, under convoy of the sun.


Geology Versus Astronomy
Chapter II
(p. 14)


Reference #: 15240

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGY

It is one of the great marvels of our day, that through the key furnished by geologic science we can now persue the history of past creations more clearly, and arrive at a more thorough and certain knowledge of at least the structural peculiarities of the organisms, than we can read the early histories of the old dynasties of our own species, that flourished and decayed on the banks of the Euphrates or of the Nile, or ascertain the true character of the half-forgotten tyrants with whom they terminated, or from whom they began.


The Old Red Sandstone
Geological Evidences in Favour of Revealed Religion
(pp. 275-276)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 15242

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGY

Geology, of all the sciences, addresses itself most powerfully to the imagination; and hence one main cause of the interest which it excites.


The Old Red Sandstone
Chapter II
(p. 57)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 15244

Miller, Hugh
General Category: STUDY

My advice to young men desirous of bettering their circumstances, and adding to the amount of their enjoyment, is a very simple one. Do not seek happiness in what is misnamed pleasure; seek it rather in what is termed study.


The Old Red Sandstone
Chapter I
(p. 33)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 15245

Miller, Hugh
General Category: CREATIONISTS

There is no progression. If fish rose into reptiles, it must have been by sudden transformation...There is no getting rid of miracle in the case,—there is no alternative between creation and metamorphosis. The infidel substitutes progression for Deity; Geology robs him of his god.


The Old Red Sandstone
Chapter III
(pp. 65-66)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 15239

Miller, Hugh
General Category: PHYSIOGNOMY

Physiognomy is no idle of doubtful science in connection with geology. The physiognomy of a country indicates almost invariably its geological character.


The Old Red Sandstone
Chapter XI
(p. 201)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 10021

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGY

Geology is the most poetical of all sciences; and its various facts, as they present themsleves to the human mind, possess a more overpowering immensity than even those of Astronomy itself. For while the Astronomer can carry about with him in his imagination, a little portable Orrery of the whole solar system, the Geologist is oppressed by a weight of rocks and mountains, and of strata piled over strata which all his diligence in forming theories, has not yet enabled him completely to arrange. He is no mere intellectual mechanician, who calculates and reasons on the movements of a piece of natural clockwork; the objects with which he is chiefly conversant, have no ascertained forms, or known proportions, that he may conceive of them as abstract figures, or substitute a set of models in their places; his province, in at least all its outer skirts, is still a terra incognita, which he cannot conceive of as a whole; and the walks which intersect it are so involved and irregular that, like those of an artificial wilderness, they seem to double its extent. The operations of his latest eras, as his science exists in time, terminate long before history begins; while, as it exists in space, he has to grapple with the immense globe itself, with all its oceans, and all its continents.


Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland
(p. 49)


Reference #: 15241

Miller, Hugh
General Category: REASON

In the geologic, as in other departments,
What can we reason but from what we know?


The Old Red Sandstone
Geological Evidences in Favour of Revealed Religion
(p. 280)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 15243

Miller, Hugh
General Category: GEOLOGIST

The natural boundaries of the geographer are rarely described by right lines. Whenever these occur, however, the geologist may look for something remarkable.


The Old Red Sandstone
Chapter VI
(p. 121)
J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, England; 1922


Reference #: 4257

Miller, Kenneth R.
General Category: SCIENCE

To a believer, God's great gift was to provide us with a means to understand, to master, and to do good using both the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. Where does science sit with all of this? I would argue that any scientist who believes in God possesses the faith that we are given our unique imaginative powers not only to find God, but also to discover as much of His universe as we could. In other words, to a religious person, science can be a pathway towards God, not away from Him, an additional and sometimes even an amazing grace!


Finding Darwin's God
(pp. 280-281)


Reference #: 4258

Miller, Kenneth R.
General Category: EVOLUTION

We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.


Finding Darwin's God
(p. 290)


Reference #: 15100

Miller, Perry
General Category: MAN

It is only too clear that man is not at home in this universe, and yet he is not good enough to deserve a better...


The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century
Chapter 1
(p. 7)


Reference #: 16443

Miller, Robert C.
General Category: SEA

We can no longer think of the sea as a vast, illimitable dumping ground for products that man does not know what to do with on land. It must instead be recognized as our greatest natural resource, and one to be conserved in every possible way. So regarded, and wisely used, it can be a permanent source of raw materials, of food, of life-giving water, and of recreation, enjoyment and adventure.


The Sea
Chapter 15
(p. 311)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1966


Reference #: 13900

Milligan, Spike
General Category: MATHEMATICS

MORIARTY: How are you at Mathematics?
HARRY SECOMBE: I speak it like a native.


The Goon Show


Reference #: 10243

Millikan, Arthur
General Category: TRUTH

...in science, truth once discovered always remains truth.


Science and the New Civilization
Chapter III
(p. 76)


Reference #: 17382

Millikan, Robert Andrews
Born: 22 March, 1868 in Morrison, Illioois, United States of America
Died: 19 December, 1953 in San Marino, California, United States of America
General Category: ELECTRON

Indeed, nothing more beautifully simplifying has ever happened in the history of science than the whole series of discoveries culminating about 1914 which finally brought practically universal acceptance of the theory that the material world contains but two fundamental entities, namely, positive and negative electrons, exactly alike in charge, but differing widely in mass, the positive electron-now usually called a proton-being 1850 times heavier than the negative, now usually called simply the electron.


Time, Matter and Values
Chapter II
(p. 46)


Reference #: 7843

Millikan, Robert Andrews
Born: 22 March, 1868 in Morrison, Illioois, United States of America
Died: 19 December, 1953 in San Marino, California, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

...Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment...Sometimes it is one foot which is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both - by theorizing and then testing, or by finding new relations in the process of experimenting and then bringing the theoretical foot up and pushing it beyond, and so on in unending alternation.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Physics)
Nobel Lecture, May 23, 1924


Reference #: 7844

Millikan, Robert Andrews
Born: 22 March, 1868 in Morrison, Illioois, United States of America
Died: 19 December, 1953 in San Marino, California, United States of America
General Category: ELECTRON

A prominent literary writer recently spoke of the electron as C( only the latest scientific hypothesis which will in its turn give way to the abra-ca-da-bra of tomorrow.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Physics)
Nobel Lecture, May 23, 1924


Reference #: 1350

Millikan, Robert Andrews
Born: 22 March, 1868 in Morrison, Illioois, United States of America
Died: 19 December, 1953 in San Marino, California, United States of America
General Category: DISCOVERY

The foregoing discoveries of our generation have taught us a wholesome lesson of humility, wonder, and joy in the face of an as yet incomprehensible physical universe. We have learned not to take ourselves as seriously as the nineteenth century physics took themselves. We have learned to work with new satisfaction, new hope, and new enthusiasm because there is still so much that we do not understand, and because, instead of having to it all pigeonholed as they thought they had, we have found in our lifetime more new relations in physics than had come to light in all preceding ages put together, and because the stream of discovery as yet shows no sign of abatement.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1927
The Evolution of Twentieth Century Physics
(p.199)


Reference #: 10047

Millikan, Robert Andrews
Born: 22 March, 1868 in Morrison, Illioois, United States of America
Died: 19 December, 1953 in San Marino, California, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

We need science in education, and much more of it than we now have, not primarily to train technicians for the industries, which demand them, though that may be important, but much more to give everybody a little glimpse of the scientific mode of approach to life's problems, to give everyone some familiarity with at least one field in which the distinction between right and wrong is not always blurred and uncertain, to let him see that it is not true that 'one opinion is as good as another,'...


Science
The Relationship of Science to Industry, Vol. LXIX, No. 1776, January 11, 1929
(p. 30)


Reference #: 13516

Millikan, Robert Andrews
Born: 22 March, 1868 in Morrison, Illioois, United States of America
Died: 19 December, 1953 in San Marino, California, United States of America
General Category: ELECTRON

The word 'electron' was first suggested in 1891 by Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney as a name for the 'natural unit of electricity,' namely, that quantity of electricity which must pass though a solution in order to liberate at one of the electrodes one atom of hydrogen or one atom of any univalent substance.


The Electron
Chapter II
(p. 25)


Reference #: 11676

Mills, John S.
General Category: DEMONSTRATION

It would appear that Deductive and Demonstrative Sciences are all, without exception, Inductive Sciences: that their evidence is that of experience, but that they are also, in virtue of the peculiar character of one indispensable portion of the general formulae according to which their inductions are made, Hypothetical Sciences. Their conclusions are true only upon certain suppositions, which are, or ought to be, approximations to the truth, but are seldom, if ever, exactly true; and to this hypothetical character is to be ascribed the peculiar certainty, which is supposed to be inherent in demonstratin.


System of Logic
Book 2, Chapter 2, 1


Reference #: 17997

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: FOOTPRINT

'Tracks,' said Piglet. 'Paw-marks.' He gave a little squeak of excitement. 'Oh, Pooh! Do you think it's a-a-a Woozle?'
'It may be,' said Pooh. 'Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. You can never tell with paw-marks.'


Winnie-the-Pooh


Reference #: 17995

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: DISCOVERY

'Oh!' said Pooh again. 'What is the North Pole?' he asked.
'It's just a thing you discover,' said Christopher Robin carelessly, not being quite sure himself.


Winnie the Pooh
Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole


Reference #: 17425

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: AMPHIBIAN TOAD

(Weasels, Stoats, and Ferrets, together:) Toad! Toad! Down with Toad!
Down with the popular, successful Toad!


Toad of Toad Hall
Act I, No. 7
(p. 18)


Reference #: 17996

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: BLACK HOLE

A huge great big thing, like-like nothing. A huge big-well, like a-I don't know-like an enormous big nothing.


Winnie-the-Pooh
Piglet Meets a Heffalump


Reference #: 14118

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: TEACHING

He learns.
He becomes educated.
He instigorates knowledge.


The House at Pooh Corner


Reference #: 14117

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

'It is snowing still,' said Eeyore gloomily.
'So it is.'
'And freezing.'
'Is it?'
'Yes,' said Eeyore. 'However,' he said, brightening up a little, 'we haven't had an earthquake lately.'


The House at Pooh Corner


Reference #: 14116

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: FACTOR

...and then, as Pooh seemed disappointed, he added quickly,


The House At Pooh Corner
(p. 175)


Reference #: 14115

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: FACTOR

Suddenly Christopher Robin began to tell Pooh about some of the things: People called Kings and Queens and something called Factors...


The House At Pooh Corner
(p. 171)


Reference #: 14114

Milne, Alan Alexander
Born: 18 January, 1882 in Hampstead, London, England
Died: 31 January, 1956 in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England
General Category: IDEA

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


The House at Pooh Corner


Reference #: 18120

Milne, Edward Arthur
Born: 14 February, 1896 in Hull, Yorkshire, England
Died: 21 September, 1950 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: EVENT

Not only the laws of nature, but also the events occurring in nature, the world itself, must appear the same to all observers, wherever they may be.


Zeitschrift fur Betriebswirtschaft
Vol. 6, 1933
(p. 1)


Reference #: 7112

Milne, Edward Arthur
Born: 14 February, 1896 in Hull, Yorkshire, England
Died: 21 September, 1950 in Dublin, Ireland
General Category: SCIENCE

The Christmas message - which is also the Christian message - is 'Gloria in excelsis Deo'...Glory to God in the highest and on earth peach among men of goodwill...This is not a bad definition of the aim of all true science: the aim of rejoicing in the splendid mysteries of the world and universe we live in, and of attempting so to understand those mysteries that we can improve our command over nature, improve our conditions of life and so ensure peace...


Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 16126

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: FEVER

Fever, the eternal reproach to the physicians.


The Reason of Church-Government
Preface


Reference #: 5186

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STARS

The stars, she whispers, blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky...


In Memoriam
third section


Reference #: 6302

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: FLOWER AMARANTH

Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And Daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the Laureate Hearse where Lycid lies.


Lycidas
l. 149-151


Reference #: 290

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

That seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books.


Aeropagitica
Section 6


Reference #: 1475

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

As good almost kills a man as kills a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.


Areopagitica
Section 6


Reference #: 2436

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: OCEAN

Rich and various gems inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep.


Comus
22


Reference #: 2432

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STARS

The stars,
That nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
with everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely traveler.


Comus
l. 197-200


Reference #: 2433

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please and sate the curious taste?


Comus
l. 710


Reference #: 1472

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.


Areopagitica


Reference #: 2434

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MOON

Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou fair moon,
That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos.


Comus
l. 331


Reference #: 2435

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: NATURE

And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.


Comus
l. 727


Reference #: 1473

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil substance.


Areopagitica
Section 20


Reference #: 6301

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STAR

So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.


Lycidas
l. 168


Reference #: 1474

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a Life beyond Life.


Areopagitica
Section 6


Reference #: 1471

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.


Areopagitica
Section 6


Reference #: 7081

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MOON

To behold the wandering Moon,
Riding neer her highest noon,
Like one that had bin led astray
Through the Heav'ns wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.


Miscellaneous Poems
Il Penseroso
l. 67-72


Reference #: 1476

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: BOOK

For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a via; the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.


Areopagitica


Reference #: 7080

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STAR

And all the spangled hosts keep watch in squadrons bright.


Miscellaneous Poems
Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity
l. 21


Reference #: 8502

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STAR

Witness this new-made World, another Hea6 n
from Heaven Gate not farr, founded in view
On the clear Hyaline, the Glassie Sea;
Of amplitude almost immense, with starr's
Numerous, and every Starr perhaps a World
Of destined habitation..


Paradise Lost
Book VII
l. 617-22


Reference #: 9093

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

...that power which erring men call Chance.


Poetical Works of John Milton
Vol. II, Comus
l. 587


Reference #: 8252

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CHAOS

Where eldest Night
And chaos, ancesters of nature, hold
Eternal anarchy amidst the noise
Of endless wars.


Paradise Lost
Book II
l. 894


Reference #: 8513

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: FLOWER CARNATION

Each Flour of slender stalk, whose head though gay
Carnation, Purple, Azure, or spect with Gold hung drooping unsustained....


Paradise Lost
Book IX
l. 429


Reference #: 8514

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: FLOWER AMARANTH

Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life,
Began to bloom, but soon for man's offence,
To Heav'n remov'd, where first it grew, there grows,
And flours aloft shading the Fount of Life.


Paradise Lost
Book III
l. 353-357


Reference #: 8515

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STAR

Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires;
Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at lengthApparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.


Paradise Lost
Book Iv
l. 604


Reference #: 8516

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: ALCHEMY

If by fire
Of sooty coal th' empiric alchymist
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn,
Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold.


Paradise Lost
Book V
l. 439


Reference #: 8518

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: STAR

The starry cope
Of heaven.


Paradise Lost
Book IV
l. 992


Reference #: 8247

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: INVENTOR

T? invention all admi? d, and each how he
To be th' inventor miss'd; so easy it seem'd,
Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought
Impossible!


Paradise Lost
Book VI
l. 498


Reference #: 8248

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: PLANET

the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan artist views
At Ev'ning, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands,
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.


Paradise Lost
Book I
l. 287-291


Reference #: 8249

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

...Chance governs all.


Paradise Lost
Book II
l. 910


Reference #: 8512

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: ARCHITECT

The hasty multitude
Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise,
And some the architect: his hand was known
In heaven by many a tower'd structure high,
Where scepter'd angels held their residence,
And sat as princes.


Paradise Lost
Book I
l. 730


Reference #: 8251

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CHAOS

To whom these most adhere,
He rules a moment: Chaos Umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigns.


Paradise Lost
Book II
l. 907-910


Reference #: 8517

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: AXIAL TILT

Some say he bid his angels turn askance
The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun's axle; they with labor pushed
Oblique the centric globe: some say the sun
Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road
Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down again
By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flowers,
Equal in days and nights,...
The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned
His course intended; else how had the World
Inhabited, through sinless, more than now
Avoided pitching cold and scorching heat?


Paradise Lost
Book X
l. 679-95


Reference #: 9964

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: PHYSIC

...in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours.


Samson Agonistes
On that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy
(p. 79)


Reference #: 8253

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CELESTIAL MOTION

That day, as other solemn dayes, they spent
In song and dance about the sacred Hill,
Mystical dance, which yonder starrie Sphere
Of Planets and of fixt in all her Wheeles
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervovl'd, yet regular
Then most, when most irregular they seem:
And in their motions harmonic Divine
So smooths her charming tones, that Gods own ear
Listens delighted.


Paradise Lost
Book V
l. 618-27


Reference #: 8254

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CHAOS

May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife...


Paradise Lost
Book II
l. 232-233


Reference #: 8255

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MILKY WAY

...the Galaxie, that Milkie way
Which nightly as a circling Zone, thou seest
Poudered with Starrs...


Paradise Lost
Book VII
l. 579-81


Reference #: 8256

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

O Sacred, Wise, and Wisdom-giving Plant,
Mother of Science...


Paradise Lost
Chapter IX
l. 679-80


Reference #: 8257

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: CHAOS

In the beginning, how the heav'ns and earth rose out of chaos.


Paradise Lost


Reference #: 8258

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: OCEAN

…a dark
Illimitable ocean without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth

And time and place are lost.


Paradise Lost


Reference #: 8259

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MODEL

Hereafter, when they come to model Hea6 n
And calculate the Starrs, how they will wield
The mightie frame, how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appeerances, how gird the Sphear
With Centric and Eccentric scribl'd o're,
Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.


Paradise Lost
Book viii
l. 78-83


Reference #: 8260

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: COMET

Satan stood
Unterrifi'd, and like a comet burn'd
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In th' Arctik sky...


Paradise Lost
Book II
l. 707-710


Reference #: 8250

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: TELESCOPE

...a spot like which perhaps
Astronomer in the Sun's lucent Orbe
Through his glaz'd Optic Tube yet never saw.


Paradise Lost
Book III
l. 588-590


Reference #: 12935

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MOON

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,-?


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
To the Moon


Reference #: 8505

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Nor did there want
Cornice or frieze with bossy sculpture graven.


Paradise Lost
Book I
l. 715


Reference #: 8519

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: WISDOM

To know
That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime Wisdom...


Paradise Lost
Book VIII
l. 192-3


Reference #: 8501

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: TREE CITRON

Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field
Call us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove,
What drops the Myrrhe, & what the balmie Reed,
How Nature paints her colours, how the Bee
Sits on the Bloom, extracting liquid sweet.


Paradise Lost
Book V
l. 20-25


Reference #: 8500

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MILKY WAY

A broad and ample road, whose dust is Gold,
And pavement Starss, as Starss to thee appear
Seen in the galaxy, that Milkie way...


Paradise Lost
Book VII
l. 577-578


Reference #: 8499

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: TREE FIR

Kindles the gummy bark of Firr or Pine,
And sends a comfortable heat from farr,
Which might supply the Sun…


Paradise Lost
Book X
l. 1076-1078


Reference #: 8498

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: SICKNESS

...all maladies
Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick Agonie, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs,
Intestine Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs,
Dropsies and Asthmas, and Joint-racking Rheums.


Paradise Lost
Book XI
l. 480-485


Reference #: 8503

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: UNIVERSE

Before (his) eyes in sudden view appear the secrets of the hoary Deep - dark illimitable ocean without bound without dimension...


Paradise Lost


Reference #: 8504

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.


Paradise Lost
Book III
l. 40


Reference #: 8506

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

Dream not of other Worlds; what Creatures there
Live, in what state, condition or degree...


Paradise Lost
Book VIII
l. 175-76


Reference #: 12809

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: TIME

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race...


The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton
On Time
l. 1


Reference #: 8507

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: MOON

..now glow'd the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.


Paradise Lost
Book IV
l. 604


Reference #: 8508

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;
Do thou but thine!


Paradise Lost
Book VIII
l. 561


Reference #: 8509

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: FLOWER

Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrhe,
And flouring Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balme;
A Wilderness of sweets.


Paradise Lost
Book V
l. 294-297


Reference #: 8510

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: FLOWER

...the bright consummate floure...


Paradise Lost
Book V
l. 481


Reference #: 8511

Milton, John
Born: 9 December, 1608 in London, England
Died: 8 November, 1674 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Into this wild abyss,
The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.


Paradise Lost
Book II
l. 910


Reference #: 150

Minarcini v. Strongsville (Ohio) City School District
General Category: BOOK BANNING

A library is a storehouse of knowledge. When created for a public school, it is an important privilege created by the state for the benefit of students in the schools. That privilege is not subject to being withdrawn by succeeding school boards whose members might desire to "winnow" the library for books the contents of which occasioned their displeasure or disapproval.


541 F.2d 577, 582, 583(6th Cir. 1976)


Reference #: 15501

Miner, Virginia Scott
General Category: LIGHT

All color is to light as pitch to sound.
The Human eye can see one octave's light,
But those that soar past violet abound—
And octaves still exist, though not to sight,
Below the red.


The Physics Teacher
Physics inspires the Muses, Light, Vol. 16, No. 9, December 1978
(p. 635)


Reference #: 3227

Minkowski, Hermann
General Category: INTEGERS

Integers are the fountainhead of all mathematics.


Diophantische Approximationen: eine einfuhrung in die zahlentheorie, von Hermann Minkowski
Preface


Reference #: 3523

Minkowski, Hermann
General Category: SPACETIME

From this hour on, space as such and time as such shall recede to the shadows and only a kind of union of the two retain significance.


In A.P. French
Einstein: A Centenary Volume
(p. 231)
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1979


Reference #: 11382

Minkowski, Hermann
General Category: SPACETIME

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. Henceforth space by itself and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.


Space and Time
80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, September 21, 1908


Reference #: 14934

Minnaert, M.
General Category: OBSERVATION

It is indeed wrong to think that the poetry of Nature's moods in all their infinite variety is lost on one who observes them scientifically, for the habit of observation refines our sense of beauty and adds a brighter hue to the richly coloured background against which each separate fact is outlined. The connection between events, the relation of cause and effect in different parts of a landscape, unite harmoniously what would otherwise be merely a series of detached sciences.


The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air
Preface
(p. v)


Reference #: 12019

Minnick, Wayne C.
General Category: REASON

This kind of reasoning has weaknesses, of course, as do all forms of reasoning. If the correspondence between two things compared is, not complete, that is, if significant differences can be shown to exist, then the argument collapses.


The Art of Persuasion
(p. 16)


Reference #: 12020

Minnick, Wayne C.
General Category: PROBABILITY

Uncertainty is introduced, however, by the impossibility of making generalizations, most of the time, which happens to all members of a class. Even scientific truth is a matter of probability and the degree of probability stops somewhere short of certainty.


The Art of Persuasion
(p. 167)


Reference #: 7773

Minot, George R.
General Category: MEDICINE

Medicine disregards international boundaries. The physician studies for the benefit of mankind.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1934


Reference #: 7799

Minot, George R.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Thus, upon the foundations laid by previous investigators, do medical art and science build a structure which will in its turn be the foundation of future knowledge.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 12, 1934


Reference #: 7774

Minot, George R.
General Category: INFORMATION

As each bit of information is added to the sum of human knowledge it is evident that it is the little things that count; that give all the fertility and character; that give all the hope and happiness to human affairs. The concept of bigness is apt to be a delusion, and standardizing processes must not supplant creative impulses.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1934


Reference #: 10687

Minsky, Marvin L.
General Category: BRAIN

The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.


Society of the Mind


Reference #: 10903

Minsky, Marvin L.
General Category: BRAIN

Minds are simply what brains do.


Society of the Mind


Reference #: 7165

Mirowski, P.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics does not come to us written indelibly on Nature's Tablets, but rather is the product of a controlled search governed by metaphorical considerations, the premier instance being the heuristics of the conservation principles.


More Heat than Light
(p. 7)


Reference #: 7164

Mirowski, P.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The reason that mathematics 'works' so well in science is that it is the result of a long and arduous process of adjustment of the formalism to our contingent experience' Thus mathematics does not come to us written indelibly on Nature's Tablets, but rather is the product of a controlled search governed by metaphorical considerations, the premier instance being the heuristics of the conservation principles.


More Heat than Light
(pp. 6-7)


Reference #: 14105

Misaurus, Philander
General Category: DOCTOR

If the Devil ever created any Thing, it was the Doctor.


The Honour of the Gout
(p. 3)
R. Gosling, London, England; 1735


Reference #: 16559

Mishima, Yukio
General Category: OCEAN

Down beneath the spray, down beneath the whitecaps, that beat themselves to pieces against the prow, there were jet-black invisible waves, twisting and coiling their bodies. They kept repeating their patternless movements, concealing their incoherent and perilous whims.


The Sound of Waves
Chapter 14
(p. 125)


Reference #: 4780

Misner, Charles W.Thorne, Kip S.Wheeler, John
General Category: BEAUTY

Some day a door will surely open and expose the glittering central mechanism of the world in all its beauty and simplicity.


Gravitation
Part X, Chapter 44
(p. 1197)
W. H. Freeman and Company, San Fransisco,
Copyright 1970-71 by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John A. Wheeeler


Reference #: 4775

Misner, Charles W.Thorne, Kip S.Wheeler, John A.
General Category: TIME

Time is defined so that motion looks simple.


Gravitation
Part I, Chapter 1
(p. 23)
W. H. Freeman and Company, San Fransisco,
Copyright 1970-71 by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John A. Wheeeler


Reference #: 4756

Mitchell, Margaret
General Category: CHILDBIRTH

Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!


Gone with the Wind
Chapter xxxviii
(p. 668)


Reference #: 4755

Mitchell, Margaret
General Category: ENGINEER

The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors, lawyers and poets, but certainly not engineers or mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings.


Gone With the Wind


Reference #: 6421

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: FORMULA

Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn to praise of God.


Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter IX
(p. 185)


Reference #: 6417

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: OBSERVATORY

There is no observatory in this land, nor in any land, probably, of which the question is not asked, 'Are they doing anything? Why don't we hear from them? They should make discoveries, they should publish.'


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter XI
(p. 223)


Reference #: 6419

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: CHANGE

We may turn our gaze [to other stars] as we turn a kaleidoscope, and the changes are infinitely more startling, the combinations infinitely more beautiful; no flower garden presents such a variety and such delicacy of shades.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter XI
(p. 235)


Reference #: 6416

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: IMAGINATION

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter IX
(p. 187)


Reference #: 6413

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: EXPLAIN

...you cannot get a man of genius to explain steps, he leaps.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter VII
(p. 138)


Reference #: 6412

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: ACCURACY

The training of a girl fits her for delicate work. The touch of her fingers upon the delicate screws of an astronomical instrument might become wonderfully accurate in results; a woman's eyes are trained to nicety of color. The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spider web of the micrometer. Routine observations, too, dull as they are, are less dull than the endless repetition of the same pattern in crochet-work.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter XI
(pp. 237-238)


Reference #: 6411

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: STAR

We call the stars garnet and sapphire; but these are, at best, vague terms. Our language has not terms enough to signify the different delicate shades; our factories have not the stuff whose hues might make a chromatic scale for them.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter XI
(p. 235)


Reference #: 6415

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: ASTRONOMER

I cannot expect to make astronomers, but I do expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy modes of thinking.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter VII
(p. 138)


Reference #: 6410

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: STAR

When we are chaffed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter VII
(p. 138)


Reference #: 6409

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

The phrase 'popular science' has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter VII
(p. 138)


Reference #: 6414

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: ASTRONOMY

But star-gazing is not science. The entrance to astronomy is through mathematics.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter IX
(pp. 184-185)


Reference #: 6420

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: OBSERVATION

Nothing comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the immense activity of the universe.


In Phebe Mitchell Kendall
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
Chapter XI
(p. 237)


Reference #: 11649

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: LAW

The laws of nature...are not discovered by accident; theories do not come by chance even to the greatest minds; they are not
Born of the hurry and worry of daily toil; they are diligently sought; they are patiently waited for, they are received with cautious reserve, they are accepted with reverence and awe. And until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss their capacity for original work.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 10
(pp. 203-204)


Reference #: 11648

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: ASTRONOMER

The Astronomer breaks up the starlight just as the geologist breaks up the rock with his hammer, and with similar results, he finds copper, sodium and other elements in sun and stars....If you look at the beautiful ribbon of colors which a ray of sunlight gives when passed through a prism, you see that it is crossed by dark bands, sometimes single, sometimes crowded close together-each of these is a black-lettered message from the sun.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 10
(pp. 188-189)


Reference #: 11647

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: ASTRONOMY

I believe in women even more than I do in astronomy.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 10
(p. 190)


Reference #: 11646

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

The true scientist must be self-forgetting. He knows that under the best circumstances he is sowing what others must reap-or rather he is striking the mine which others must open up-for human life at longest has not the measure of a single breath in the long life of science.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 9
(p. 168)


Reference #: 11645

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

It is the highest joy of the true scientist...that he can reap no lasting harvest-that whatever he may bring into the storehouse today will be surpassed by the gleaners tomorrow-he studies Nature because he loves her and rejoices to 'look through Nature up to Nature's God.'


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 9
(p. 168)


Reference #: 11644

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: TELESCOPE

The tube of Newton's first telescope...was made from the cover of an old book-a little glass at one end of the tube and a large brain at the other...


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 9
(p. 168)


Reference #: 11650

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy is not stargazing. The entrance to astronomy is through mathematics.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 2
(p. 25)


Reference #: 11653

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: LAW

The laws which regulate the influence of sun and planets are complex; the nature of the influence is not yet understood. The telescope, the spectroscope, and the camera are all at work, and although the unknown must always be infinite, Nature yields one truth after another to the earnest seeker.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 11
(p. 219)


Reference #: 11651

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: INFINITE

Do not forget the infinite in the infinitesimal.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 9
(p. 164)


Reference #: 11652

Mitchell, Maria
Born: 1 August, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachuttes, United States of America
Died: 28 June, 1889 in Lynn, Massachuttes, United States of America
General Category: LAW

The immense spaces of creation cannot be spanned by our finite powers; these great cycles of time cannot be lived even by the life of a race. And yet, small as is our whole system compared with the infinitude of creation, brief as is our life compared with cycles of time, we are tethered to all by the beautiful dependencies of law, that not only the sparrow's fall is felt to the outermost bound, but the vibrations set in motion by the words that we utter reach through all space and the tremor is felt through all time.


In Helen Wright
Sweeper in the Sky
Chapter 11
(p. 227)


Reference #: 2021

Mitchell, S. Weir
General Category: DISCOVERY

The success of a discovery depends upon the time of its appearance.


In F.H. Garrison
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
Vol. 4,1928
(p. 1002)


Reference #: 3438

Mitchell, Silas Weir
General Category: PHYSICIAN

It is the power to reason from uncertain premises to conclusions as often unsure that makes the best physician. He practices an art not yet a science. It is based on many sciences. A man may know them all and be a less skilful healer than one who, knowing them less well, is master of the art to which they increasingly contribute.


Dr. North and His Friends
(pp. 456-457)
Century, New York, New York, United States of America 1900


Reference #: 13218

Mittag-Lefler, Gosta
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The mathematician's best work is art...a high and perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch each other.


In Havelock Ellis
The Dance of Life
The Art of Thinking
(p. 132)


Reference #: 5614

Mittasch, Alwyn
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry without catalysis, would be a sword without a handle, a light without brilliance, a bell without sound.


Journal of Chemical Education
1948
(pp. 531-532)


Reference #: 7569

Mitton, Simon
General Category: RADIO ASTRONOMY

During the last 20 years radio astronomers have led a revolution in our knowledge of the Universe that is paralleled only by the historic contributions of Galileo and Copernicus. In particular, the poetic picture of a serene Cosmos populated by beautiful wheeling galaxies has been replaced by a catalogue of events of astonishing violence: a primeval fireball, black holes, neutron stars, variable quasars and exploding galaxies.


New Scientist
Newest Probe of the Radio Universe, Vol. 56, No. 816, 19 October 1972
(p. 138)


Reference #: 14288

Mizner, Wilson
General Category: RESEARCH

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.


In Alva Johnson
The Legendary Mizners
Chapter 4, The Sport
(p. 66)


Reference #: 13197

Moberly, Sir Walter Hamilton
General Category: RESEARCH

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think.


The Crisis in the University


Reference #: 13196

Moberly, Walter
General Category: CREATIVITY

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think. This is an adjuration applicable to many scholars. We need - and should encourage and honour - not only discoverers of facts hitherto unknown but explorers of ideas and rethinkers of values.


The crisis in the university


Reference #: 5116

Mohapatra, Rabindra
General Category: PHYSICS

Most people who haven't been trained in physics probably think of what physicists do as a question of incredibly complicated calculations, but that's not really the essence of it. The essence of it is that physics is about concepts, wanting to understand the concepts, the principles by which the world works.


In Michio Kaku
Hyperspace
(p. 152)
Oxford University Press, 1995


Reference #: 11521

Mohapatra, Rabindra
General Category: PHYSICS

If you want to do serious physics, sometime you just have to learn it.


As reported by Ernest Barreto
Student, Quantum Field Theory Class 1994


Reference #: 15701

Moir, D.M.
General Category: BIRD BLACKBIRD

The birds have ceased their songs,
All save the blackbird, that from yon tall ash,'Mid Pinkie's greenery, from his mellow throat,
In adoration of the setting sun,
Chants forth his evening hymn.


The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir
An Evening Sketch


Reference #: 1930

Moissan, H.
General Category: ELEMENT

The search for an element is always captivating.


In Mary Elvira Weeks
Discovery of the Elements
(p. 438)


Reference #: 4344

Moleschott, Jakob
General Category: FORCE

Force is not an impelling God, not an essence separate from the material substratum of things. A force not united to matter, but floating freely above it, is an idle conception. Nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorus, possess their inherent qualities from eternity.


In Ludwig Bnchner
Force and Matter
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 16198

Moliére
General Category: LIVER

GERONTE: It seems to me you are locating them wrongly: the heart is on the left and the liver is on the right.
SGANARELLE: Yes, in the old days that was so, but we have changed all that, and we now practice medicine by a completely new method.


The Reluctant Doctor
Act 2, scene 4


Reference #: 4231

Moliére
General Category: PLANET

We had a narrow escape, Madame, While asleep;
A neighboring planet did pass us close by,
Cutting a swathe right through our whirlpool;
Had its path led to a collision with mother earth,
She would have shattered in pieces like glass.


Femmes Savantes
Act IV, scene iii


Reference #: 1066

Moliére
General Category: PILL

My lord Jupiter knows how to gild the pill.


Amphitryon
Act III, scene X
l. 24


Reference #: 6287

Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)
General Category: PHYSICIAN

What will you do, sir, with four physicians? Is not one enough to kill any one body?


Love's the Best Doctor
Act II, scene I
1665


Reference #: 1811

Moll
General Category: VOLCANO

Great bird of fire, cold now, and grey, and lone,
Ten thousand years have seen you never wake,
Ten thousand more shall know your breast of stone,
Brooding far up above the silent lake.


Blue Interval


Reference #: 10907

Molloy, Les
General Category: SOIL

...for only rarely have we stood back and celebrated our soils as something beautiful, and perhaps even mysterious. For what other natural body, worldwide in its distribution, has so many interesting secrets to reveal to the patient observer? The great events of long ago-volcanic eruptions, dust storms, floods and Ice Ages-have left their imprints as have the agricultural practices of earlier times. The soil can also tell us much about our present day environment. It is the home of millions of living things and a recycling factory for so much of the solar and geochemical energy that sustains life. In its form and properties it expresses the combined influences of local climate, shape of the land, and rocks and organisms that are broken down and incorporated into it.


Soils in the New Zealand Landscape: the Living Mantle


Reference #: 16942

Momaday, N. Scott
General Category: EARTH

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. he ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.


The Way to the Rainy Mountain
The Closing InXXIV (p. 83)


Reference #: 3464

Monboddo, Lord James Burnett
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Those who have studied mathematics much, and no other science, are apt to grow so fond of them, as to believe that there is no certainty in any other science, nor any other axioms than those of Euclid.


Edinburgh Review
Vol. 52, January 1836
(p. 248)


Reference #: 1241

Moncrieff
General Category: CHEMICAL

What are mortals made of?
By analization
I've tried all the nation,
Defined each gradation,
And prov'd every station,
With Sir Humphry's best
New chemical test,
And found what mortals are made of.


Analization


Reference #: 3149

Monod, Jacques
General Category: CHANCE

...chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypotheses, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact....There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one, and no other so arouses an instinctive protest from the intensely teleonomic creatures that we are.


Chance and Necessity
Chapter VI
(pp. 112-113)


Reference #: 3150

Monod, Jacques
General Category: MAN

...man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance.


Chance and Necessity
Chapter IX
(p. 180)


Reference #: 3148

Monod, Jacques
General Category: NATURAL SELECTION

Drawn out of the realm of pure chance, the accident enters into that of necessity, of the most implacable certainties. For natural selection operates at the macroscopic level, the level of organisms....In effect natural selection operates upon the products of chance and can feed nowhere else; but it operates in a domain of very demanding conditions, and from this domain chance is barred. It is not to chance but to these conditions that evolution owes its generally progressive course, its successive conquests, and the impression it gives of a smooth and steady unfolding.


Chance and Necessity
Chapter VII
(pp. 118-119)


Reference #: 6997

Monod, Jacques
General Category: SCIENCE

In science, self-satisfaction is death. Personal self-satisfaction is the death of the scientist. Collective self-satisfaction is the death of the research. It is restlessness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, agony of mind that nourish science.


News Science
Obituary, Vol. 109, June 5 1976
(p. 359)


Reference #: 3147

Monod, Jacques
General Category: BIOLOGY

Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because - the living world constituting but a tiny and very 'special' part of the universe - it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position since of all disciplines it is the one that endeavors to go most directly to the heart of the problems that must be resolved before that of 'human nature' can be framed in other than metaphysical terms.


Chance and Necessity
Preface
(p. xi)


Reference #: 3146

Monod, Jacques
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Any mingling of knowledge with values is unlawful, forbidden.


Chance and Necessity


Reference #: 7959

Monro, Alexander II
General Category: BRAIN

For, as the substance of the brain, like that of the other solids of our body, is nearly incompressible, the quantity of blood within the head must be the same, or very nearly the same, at all times, whether in health or disease, in life or after death.


Observations of the Structure and Functions of the Nervous System
Chapter 1


Reference #: 7664

Montagu, Ashley
General Category: SCIENCE

As the god of contemporary man's idolatry, science is a two-handed engine, and as such science is too important a human activity to leave to the scientist.


New York Times Book Review
April 26, 1964, advertisement of Jacques Barzun'sScience: The Glorious Entertainment


Reference #: 4676

Montagu, Ashley
General Category: BRAIN

You certainly can't tell anything from the microscopic structure of the brain whether the person was an idiot or a genius.


In D. Brian
Genius Talk. Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries
Chapter 19
(p. 349)
New York: Plenum Press, 1995


Reference #: 11774

Montagu, George
General Category: NATURALIST

As natural history has, within the last half century, occupied the attention and pens of the ablest philosophers of the more enlightened parts of the globe, there needs no apology for the following sheets; since the days of darkness are now past, when the researches of the naturalist were considered as trivial and uninteresting.


Testacea Britannica
Introduction
(p. I)


Reference #: 8758

Montague, W.P.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...that climax of rationalists aspiration in which even the arbitrary and existential constants of physics would be reduced to a crystalline participate of purely subsistential mathematical relations.


Philosophical Review
The Einstein Theory and the Possible Alternative, Vol. 33, No. 2, March 1924
(p. 169)


Reference #: 3926

Montaigne
General Category: TRUTH

If, like the truth, falsehood had only one face, we should know better where we are, for we should then take the opposite of what a liar said to be the truth. But the opposite of the truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless field.


Essays
I, 9


Reference #: 3922

Montaigne, Michel de
General Category: MEDICINE

The arts that promise to keep our body and mind in good health promise much, but none perform less what they promise.


Essays
Book the Third, Chapter 13
(p. 524)


Reference #: 3928

Montaigne, Michel de
General Category: DISEASE

For a desperate disease a desperate cure.


Essays
Book the Second, Chapter 3
(p. 167)


Reference #: 3930

Montaigne, Michel de
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Who ever saw one physician approve of another's prescription, without taking something away, or adding something to it?


Essays
Book the Second, Chapter 37
(p. 371)


Reference #: 3927

Montaigne, Michel de
General Category: CARE

...the general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles, also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.


Essays
Book the Second, Chapter 37
(p. 370)


Reference #: 14811

Montessori, Maria
General Category: SCIENTIST

...what is a scientist?...We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself.


The Montessori Method
Chapter I
(p. 8)


Reference #: 5645

Montgomery, Arthur
General Category: GEOLOGY

More than any other science, except perhaps astronomy, geology has inherent in it the capacity for capturing the quick interest of those who live upon the surface of the earth.


Journal of Geological Education
Popular Geology, Vol. 1, No. 2, October 1951
(p. 9)


Reference #: 3445

Montgomery, H.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

Sometimes I think that we essentially have a complete proof of the Riemann Hypothesis except for a gap. The problem is, the gap occurs right at the beginning, and so it's hard to fill that gap because you don't see what's on the other side of it.


In K. Sabbagh
Dr. Riemann's Zeros
(p. 227)


Reference #: 3447

Montgomery, H.
General Category: RIEMANN

So if you could be the Devil and offer a mathematician to sell his soul for the proof of one theorem - what theorem would most mathematicians ask for? I think it would be the Riemann Hypothesis.


In K. Sabbagh
Dr. Riemann's Zeros
(p. 29)


Reference #: 8044

Montgomery, James
General Category: STAR

The quenchless stars, so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadow'y night.


Omnipresence of the Deity


Reference #: 9090

Montgomery, James
General Category: FLOWER HYACINTH

Here Hyacinths of heavenly blue
Shook their rich tresses to the morn.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, The Adventure of a Star


Reference #: 9089

Montgomery, James
General Category: BIRD PELICAN

Bird of the wilderness, what is thy name?- The pelican! - go, take the trump of fame,
And if thou give the honour due to me,
The world may talk a little more of thee.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, Birds


Reference #: 9088

Montgomery, James
General Category: FLOWER TULIP

Dutch tulips from the beds
Flaunted their stately heads.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, The Adventure of a Star


Reference #: 9091

Montgomery, James
General Category: FLOWER MYRTLE

Dark-green and gemm'd with flowers of snow,
With close uncrowded branches spread
Not proudly high, nor meanly low,
A graceful myrtle rear'd its head.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, The Myrtle


Reference #: 9087

Montgomery, James
General Category: ANIMAL BAT

What shall I call thee—bird, or beast, or neither?
— Just what you will; I'm rather both than neither;
Much like the season when I whirl my flight,
The dusk of evening,—neither day nor night.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, The Bat


Reference #: 9086

Montgomery, James
General Category: BIRD VULTURE

Abdominal harpies, spare the dead.
— We only clear the field which man has spread;
On which should Heaven its hottest vengeance rain?
You slay the living, we but strip the dead.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, Birds


Reference #: 9092

Montgomery, James
General Category: FLOWER SNOW-DROP

The morning star of flowers.


Poetical Works of James Montgomery
Vol. II, The Snow-drop


Reference #: 15225

Montgomery, James
General Category: OCEAN

Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea.


The Ocean
st. 6


Reference #: 3040

Montgomery, Lucy Maud
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?


Anne of Green Gables
Chapter II
(p. 19)


Reference #: 3039

Montgomery, Lucy Maud
General Category: MOON

Marilla says that a large family was raised in that old house long ago, and that it was a real pretty place, with a lovely garden and roses climbing all over it. It was full of little children and laughter and songs; and now it is empty, and nothing ever wanders through it but the wind. How lonely and sorrowful it must feel! Perhaps they all come back on moonlit nights...the ghosts of the little children of long ago and the roses and the songs...and for a little while the old house can dream it is young and joyous again.'


Anne Of Avonlea


Reference #: 6299

Montgomery, Robert
General Category: NATURE

And not from Nature up to Nature's God,
But down from Nature's God look Nature through.


Luther
A Landscape of Domestic Life


Reference #: 15250

Montgomery, Robert
General Category: OCEAN

And Thou, vast Ocean! on whole awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin trace.


The Omnipresence of the Deity
pt. I, st. 20


Reference #: 5449

Moody, Paul
General Category: EVOLUTION

Does not science prove that there is no Creator? Emphatically, science does not prove that! Actually science proves nothing about first causes at all.


Introduction to Evolution
(pp. 429-430)


Reference #: 5450

Moody, Paul
General Category: EVOLUTION

The more I study science the more I am impressed with the thought that this world and universe have a definite design and a design suggests a designer. It may be possible to have a design without a designer, a picture without an artist, but my mind is unable to conceive of such a situation.


Introduction to Evolution
(p. 431)


Reference #: 9680

Moog, Florence
General Category: WRITING

Good writing, after all, is just clear thinking. Anyone who can think well enough to make advances in any learned field ought to be able to write about his work. I am, of course, aware than many research papers submitted to scientific journals are, from a literary standpoint, putrid; but usually such essays are scientifically not very fragrant either.


Science
Can Scientists Write for the General Public, Vol. 119, April 23, 1954
(p. 567)


Reference #: 5414

Moore, A.D.
General Category: CREATIVITY

Throughout the long history of the human race, we find that creativity has nearly always had to struggle against anything from discouragement to violent rejection.


Invention, Discovery, and Creativity
(p. 140)


Reference #: 14788

Moore, Anthony R.
General Category: ILLNESS

The experiences of illness are protean. In some cases disease can dignify, in others it creates heroic capacities. It can lead to self-realization; it can level unequal men; it can be thought of as an agent of retribution…. Even patients who see disease as a despoiler often experience sentiments of greater complexity. They see illness as an ever-present reminder of the unexpected, and of man's fundamental vulnerability.


The Missing Medical Text: Humane Patient Care
(p. 36)
Melbourne University Press, Victoria; 1978


Reference #: 10164

Moore, Aubrey
General Category: EVOLUTION FAITH

The one absolutely impossible conception of God is that which represents him as an occasional visitor. Science has pushed the deist's God further and further away, and at the moment when it seemed as if he would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing us that we may choose between two alternatives. Either God is everywhere present in nature, or he is nowhere.


Science and Faith
(p. 184)


Reference #: 4029

Moore, George
General Category: ANIMAL HORSE

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities. For as those majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.


Evelyn Innes
XIX


Reference #: 5180

Moore, George
General Category: BOOK

If books did good, the world would have been converted long ago.


Impressions and Opinions


Reference #: 5179

Moore, George
General Category: BOOK

The one invincible thing is a good book; neither malice nor stupidity can crush it.


Impressions and Opinions
A Great Poet


Reference #: 16442

Moore, Henry
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

There is a right physical size for every idea.


The Sculptor's Aims


Reference #: 10726

Moore, J.
General Category: DINOSAUR ARCHAEOPTERYX

No one has produced yet a single fossil with half-way wings or a fossil of an animal showing a transition between the cold-blooded scaled reptile and the warm-blooded feathered bird....And not even the fossil Archaeopteryx can qualify as a transitional form, because it apparently had a bird-like skull, perching feet, and fully developed wings with feathers.


Should Evolution Be Taught?
(p. 17)


Reference #: 16031

Moore, James R.
General Category: METAPHOR

Clever metaphors die hard. Their tenacity of life approaches that of the hardiest micro-organisms. Living relics litter our language, their raisons d'Otre forever past, ignored if not forgotten, and their present fascination seldom impaired by the confusions they may create.


The Post-Darwinian Controversies
Chapter I
(p. 19)


Reference #: 4091

Moore, John A.
General Category: CREATIONISM

It becomes evermore important to understand what is science and what is not. Somehow we have failed to let our students in on that secret. We find as a consequence, that we have a large and effective group of creationists who seek to scuttle the basic concept of the science of biology—the science that is essential for medicine, agriculture, and life itself; a huge majority of citizens who, in "fairness," opt for presenting as equals the "science" of creation and the science of evolutionary biology; and a president who is so poorly informed that he believes that scientists are questioning that evolution ever occurred. It is hard to think of a more terrible indictment of the way we have taught science.


In J. Peter Zetterberg (ed.)
Evolution versus Creationism
(p.3)


Reference #: 1060

Moore, John A.
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

...recall some of the lectures you may have heard recently. Did you always know why the research had been done? Was it clear what problem was being illuminated by the data presented?


American Zoologist
Science as a Way of Knowing, Vol. 24, No. 2, 1984
(p. 471)


Reference #: 10249

Moore, John A.
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

A fundamental difference between religious and scientific thought is that the received beliefs in religion are ultimately based on revelations or pronouncements, usually by some long dead prophet or priest....Dogma is interpreted by a caste of priests and is accepted by the multitude on faith or under duress. In contrast, the statements of science are derived from the data of observations and experiment, and from the manipulation of these data according to logical and often mathematical procedures.


Science as a Way of Knowing: the Foundations of Modern Biology
Chapter 4
(p. 59)


Reference #: 1746

Moore, John N.
Slusher, Harold
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Steps in the scientific method are usually stated in the following order. When the scientist is especially aware of certain initial observations in one area of study, and is perplexed about certain aspects, he states a problem that no one else has studied or solved. The scientist gathers many facts that may have a bearing on the problem. He then forms an hypothesis, or estimate, that might explain the problem. More facts are gathered and their relevance to the hypothesis is carefully weighed. If possible, experiments are performed. If the facts gathered are consistent with the suggested explanation, or hypothesis, the scientist concludes that his explanation is valid, and he publishes his results. If the suggested explanation (hypothesis) becomes established as a result of efforts by many research workers who repeated the steps, reached the same conclusion, and ruled out other explanations-the explanation is called a law. A law, then, is primarily a very well established hypothesis that has been extensively tested.


Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity
(pp. 5-6)
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 1977


Reference #: 2327

Moore, Marianne
General Category: CONFUSION

Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it's
not a Herod;s oath that cannot change.


Collected Poems
The Mind is an Enchanting Thing
(p. 134)


Reference #: 4183

Moore, Mary
General Category: GRAVITY

[...a properly fitted corset] prevents gravity from pulling us to far forward or too far backward, which in so doing, makes us old before our time.


In Martin Gardner
Fads and Fallacies
(p. 96)


Reference #: 9082

Moore, Merrill
General Category: PHYSICIAN

If the average man is a harp on whom Nature occasionally plays, the physician is an instrument on whom the emotions are played continuously during his waking hours and that is not too good for any man.


In Mary Lou McDonough
Poet Physicians
Afterthought
(p. 198)


Reference #: 5501

Moore, Thomas
General Category: MOON

The moon looks
On many brooks,
The brook can see no moon but this.


Irish Melodies
While Gazing on the Moon's Light


Reference #: 3912

Moore, Thomas
General Category: STARS

Thus, when the lamp that lighted
The traveller at first goes out,
He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt.
But soon, the prospect clearing,
By cloudless starlight on he treads,
And thinks no lamp so cheering
As that light which Heaven sheds.


I'd mourn the Hopes


Reference #: 15853

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER TULIP

Like tulip-beds of different shape and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west-wind's sighs.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan


Reference #: 15854

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER TUBEROSE

The tuberose, with her silvery light,
That in the gardens of Malay
Is call'd the Mistress of the Night,
So like a bride, scented and bright;
She comes out when the sun's away.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lolla Rookh, Light of the Harem


Reference #: 15959

Moore, Thomas
General Category: BIRD PARADISE

Those golden birds that, in the spice-time, drop
About the gardens, drunk with that sweet food
Whose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer flood
And those that under Araby's soft sun
Build their high nests of budding cinnamon.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan
(p. 48)


Reference #: 15961

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER AMARANTH

Amaranths such as crown the maids
That wander through Zamara's shades.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, Light of the Harem
l. 318


Reference #: 15958

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER BASIL

...the basil tuft, that waves
Its fragrant blossom over graves...


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, Light of the Harem
(p. 259)


Reference #: 15962

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER CHAMPAC

The maid of India, blessed again to hold
In her full lap the Champac's leaves of gold.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan


Reference #: 15963

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER CORAL-TREE

The crimson blossoms of the coral-tree
In the warm isles of India's sunny sea.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan


Reference #: 15964

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER ANEMONE

Anemones and Seas of Gold,
And new-blown lilies of the river,
And those sweet flow'rets that unfold
Their buds on Camadera's quiver.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, Light of the Harem
(p. 258)


Reference #: 15965

Moore, Thomas
General Category: INSECT DAMSEL-FLY

The beautiful blue-damsel flies
That flutter'd round the jasmine stems,
Like winged flowers or flying gems...


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Paradise and the Pearl
l. 409-11


Reference #: 15966

Moore, Thomas
General Category: FLOWER ROSEMARY

...the humble rosemary
Whose sweets so thanklessly are shed
To scent the desert and the dead...


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, Light of the Harem
(p. 259)


Reference #: 15967

Moore, Thomas
General Category: DOCTOR

How the Doctor's brow should smile
Crowned with wreaths of camomile;...


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Wreaths for Ministers
(p. 410)


Reference #: 15960

Moore, Thomas
General Category: TREE ASPEN

And the wind, full of wantonness, wooes like a lover
The young aspen-trees till they tremble all over.


The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
Lalla Rookh, Light of the Harem


Reference #: 7441

Mora, P.T.
General Category: LIFE

...the presence of a living unit is exactly opposite to what we would expect on the basis of pure statistical and probability considerations.


Nature
Urge and Molecular Biology, Vol. 199, No. 4890, July 20, 1963
(p. 215)


Reference #: 9865

Moravcsik, M.J.
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

New theories, when first proposed, may appear on the first page of the New York Times, but their demise, a few years later, never makes even page 68.


Research Policy
Vol. 17, 1988
(p. 293)


Reference #: 17299

Mordell, L.J.
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

Mathematical study and research are very suggestive of mountaineering. Whymper made several efforts before he climbed the Matterhorn in the 1860's and even then it cost the life of four of his party. Now, however, any tourist can be hauled up for a small cost, and perhaps does not appreciate the difficulty of the original ascent. So in mathematics, it may be found hard to realise the great initial difficulty of making a little step which now seems so natural and obvious, and it may not be suprising if such a step has been found and lost again.'


Three Lectures on Fermat's Last Theorem
(p. 4)


Reference #: 9754

Mordell, Louis Joel
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

No one will get very far or become a real mathematician without certain indispensable qualities. He must have hope, faith, and curiosity, and prime necessity is curiosity.


Reflections of a Mathematician
(p. 7)


Reference #: 6022

More, Hannah
General Category: PHYSICIAN

I used to wonder why people should be so fond of the company of their physician, till I recollected that he is the only person with whom one dares to talk continually of oneself, without interruption, contradiction or censure; I suppose that delightful immunity doubles their fees.


Letter to Horace Walpole, 27 July 1789


Reference #: 14399

More, L.T.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The supreme value of mathematics to science is due to the fact that scientific laws and theories have their best, if not their only complete, expression in mathematical formulae: and the degree of accuracy with which we can express scientific theory in mathematical terms is a measure of the state of a science.


The Limitations of Science
Classical & New Mechanics
(p. 150)


Reference #: 13451

More, Louis T.
General Category: GEOLOGY

We can then be certain that geology cannot, and never will be able to, translate the thickness of any one stratum into an equicalent length of time and that it cannot, and never will be able to, establish real contemporaneousness of time in different parts of the world.


The Dogma of Evolution
Chapter Four
(p. 151)


Reference #: 13450

More, Louis Trenchard
General Category: SCIENCE

Science has so many dazzling achievements to its credit; we have done so many things which seemed to be impossible, that the popular mind is apt to conclude that, if an explanation is given in the name of science, it must be true whether it be understood or not.


The Dogma of Evolution
Chapter Seven
(p. 241)


Reference #: 14397

More, Louis Trenchard
General Category: ABSTRACTION

The goal of science is mathematics, and while mathematics may be said to be the only true science since it has the only true scientific method, mathematics is not a science because it deals with abstractions and ignores concrete phenomena.


The Limitations of Science
Chapter V
(p. 151)


Reference #: 14400

More, Louis Trenchard
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

...so long as men of science restrict their endeavor to the world of material substance and material force, they will find that their field is practically without limits, so vast and so numerous are the problems to be solved. And it should distress no one to discover that there are other fields of knowledge in which science is not concerned; on the contrary, the fact that the range of science is limited should encourage us to greater hopes, because our freedom of action is still far greater than our powers of accomplishment. After centuries of effort, the ocean of the unknown lies before us unexplored.


The Limitations of Science
Chapter VII
(p. 261)


Reference #: 3742

More, Sir Thomas
General Category: MOON

He should, as he list, be able to prove the moon made of grene cheese.


English Works
(p. 256)


Reference #: 2202

Moreland, J.P.
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

For the question What is the proper definition of science? is itself a philosophical question about science that assumes a vantage point above science; it is not a question of science. One may need to reflect on specific episodes in the history of science to answer the question. But the question and the reflection required to answer it are philosophical in nature, a point not diminished merely because a scientist may try to define science. When she does so, she is doing philosophy.


Christianity and the Nature of Science
(pp. 20-21)


Reference #: 13784

Morgan, Charles
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...as knowledge increases, wonder deepens...


The Fountain
The Bond, Chapter Ten
(p. 383)


Reference #: 11980

Morgan, Elaine
General Category: MAN

Considering the very close genetic relationship that has been established by comparison of biochemical properties of blook proteins, protein structure and DNA, and immunological responses, the differences between a man and a chimpanzee are mosre astonishing than the resemblances.


The Aquatic Ape


Reference #: 11981

Morgan, Elaine
General Category: MAN

Man is the only mammal whose normal method of locomotion is to walk on two legs. A pattern of mammal behavior that emerges only once in the whole history of life on earth takes a great deal of explaining.


The Aquatic Ape


Reference #: 979

Morgan, Frank
General Category: GEOMETRY

We are just beginning to understand how geometry rules the universe.


American Mathematical Monthly
Review: The Parsimonious Universe, Vol. 104, No. 4, April, 1997
(p. 376)


Reference #: 374

Morgan, John
General Category: MEDICINE

As the most precious metals in a state of ore are mixed with dross, so the choice truths of Medicine are frequently blended with a heap of rubbish.


A Discourse upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America
(p. 48)
William Bradford, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Pennsylvania, United States of America; 1765


Reference #: 9098

Morgan, Robert
General Category: PI

The secret relationship
of line and circle, progress
and return, is always known,
transcendental and yet
a commonplace. And though
the connection is written
it cannot be written out
in full, never perfect, but
is exact and constant, is
eternal and everyday
as orbits of electrons,
chemical rings, noted here
in one brief sign as gateway
to completed turns and
the distance inside circles,
both compact and infinite.


Poetry
Pv. clxi, no. 4(January, 1993)
(p. 204)


Reference #: 10103

Morgan, Thomas H.
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics has progressed because, in the first place, she accepted the uniformity of nature; because, in the next place, she early discovered the value of exact measurements; because, in the third place, she concentrated her attention on the regularities that underlie the complexities of phenomena as they appear to us; and lastly, and not the least significant, because she emphasized the importance of the experimental method of research. An ideal or crucial experiment is a study of an event, controlled so as to give a definite and measurable answer to a question-an answer in terms of specific theoretical ideas, or better still an answer in terms of better understood relations.


Science
The Relation of Biology to Physics, Vol. LXV, No. 1679, March 4, 1927
(p. 217)


Reference #: 17471

Morison, George S.
General Category: ENGINEER

Any man who is thoroughly capable of understanding and handling a machine may be called a mechanical engineer, but only he who knows the principles behind that machine so thoroughly that he would be able to design it or adapt it to a new purpose...can be classed as a civil engineer.


Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers
Address at the Annual Convention, June 1895


Reference #: 17472

Morison, George S.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Accurate engineering knowledge must succeed commercial guesses.


Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers
Address at the Annual Convention, June 1895
(p. 474)


Reference #: 17473

Morison, George S.
General Category: ENGINEER

We are the priests of the new epoch without superstitions.


Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers
Address at the Annual Convention, June 1895
(p. 483)


Reference #: 15101

Morison, George S.
General Category: POWER

Fire, animal strength, and written language have in turn advanced men and nations; something like a new capacity was developed with the discovery of explosives and again in the invention of printing; but the capacity of man has always been limited to his own individual strength and that of the men and animals he could control. His capacity is no longer so limited; man has now learned to manufacture power, and with the manufacture of power a new epoch began.


The New Epoch
Chapter I
(p. 4)


Reference #: 17492

Morley, Christopher
General Category: ALGEBRA

Marriage is the square of a plus b
In other words
a2 + b2 + 2ab
Where 2ab (of course)
Are twins.


Translations from the Chinese
(a + b)2


Reference #: 16035

Morley, Christopher
General Category: ENGINEER

Having made up our mind to become an engineer, we thought it would be a mistake not to take advantage of all possible aid.


The Powder of Sympathy
Adventures of a Curricular Engineer
(p. 82)


Reference #: 4560

Morley, Christopher
General Category: DENTIST

The only previous time he had taken gas was in a dentist's office in the Flatiron Building. Whenever he visited that dentist he was always thrilled by the view from the chair, which included the ornate balconies of the old Madison Square Garden and the silhouette of Diana tiptoe in the sky.


Human Being
Pathology
(p. 205)


Reference #: 12171

Morley, Christopher
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Sweep the pale hair, like wings, above the ears;
Whittle the nose, and carve and bone the jaw;
Blank the studying eyes, till human fears
Eliminate in universal law.
Slack the mortal shirt, stiffen the hands,
Holding the dear old pipe, half-smoked, unlit—
So, lovingly, we loose Orion's Bands
And write equation with the Infinite.


The Ballad of New York, New York and Other Poems 1930-1956
Portrait of a Mathematician


Reference #: 11064

Morley, Christopher
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe was dictated, but not signed.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 14034

Morley, Christopher
General Category: HAPPINESS

`...for after all, happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote ...


The Haunted Bookshop


Reference #: 2690

Morley, John
General Category: NATURE

Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theatre of the tragedy of man.


Critical Miscellanies
Byron
(p. 140)


Reference #: 4181

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: DEFINITIONS

The words figure and fictitious both derive from the same Latin root, fingere. Beware!


Facts from Figures
Scatter
(p. 56)


Reference #: 5182

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: STATISTICAL

The organized charity, scrimped and iced,
O'Reilly, John Boyle
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.


In Bohemia
In Bohemia


Reference #: 4176

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: STATISTICS

Historically, Statistics is no more than State Arithmetic, a system of computation by which differences between individuals are eliminated by the taking of an average. It has been used - indeed, still is used - to enable rulers to know just how far they may safely go in picking the pockets of their subjects.


Facts from Figures
Statistics Undesirable
(p. 1)


Reference #: 4175

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: STATISTICS

If you are young, then I say: Learn something about statistics as soon as you can. Don't dismiss it through ignorance or because it calls for thought ...If you are older and already crowned with the laurels of success, see to it that those under your wing who look to you for advice are encouraged to look into this subject. In this way you will show that your arteries are not yet hardened, and you will be able to reap the benefits without doing overmuch work yourself. Whoever you are, if your work calls for the interpretation of data, you may be able to do without statistics, but you won't do as well.


Facts from Figures
Statistics Desirable
(p. 463)


Reference #: 4174

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: STATISTICIAN

There is more than a germ of truth in the suggestion that, in all society where statisticians thrive, liberty and individuality are likely to be emasculated.


Facts from Figures
Statistics Undesirable
(p. 1)


Reference #: 4177

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: TEACHING

Statistics is not the easiest subject to teach, and there are those to whom anything savoring of mathematics is regarded as for ever anathema.


Facts from Figures
Statistics Desirable
(p. 458)


Reference #: 4178

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: STATISTICIAN

The statistician's job is to draw general conclusions from fragmentary data. Too often the data supplied to him for analysis are not only fragmentary but positively incoherent, so that he can do next to nothing with them. Even the most kindly statistician swears heartily under his breath whenever this happens.


Facts from Figures
What Happens When We Take a Sample
(p. 120)


Reference #: 4173

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: GRAPH

It pays to keep wide awake in studying any graph. The thing looks so simple, so frank, and so appealing that the careless are easily fooled.


Facts from Figures
The Magic Lantern Technique
(p. 27)


Reference #: 4182

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: STATISTICAL

A statistical analysis, properly conducted, is a delicate dissection of uncertainties, a surgery of suppositions.


Facts from Figures
Statistics Undesirable
(p. 3)


Reference #: 4180

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: PROBABLE

There are certain notions which it is impossible to define adequately. Such notions are found to be those based on universal experience of nature. Probability is such a notion. The dictionary tells me that 'probable' means 'likely'. Further reference gives the not very helpful information that 'likely' means 'probable'.


Facts from Figures
The Laws of Chance
(p. 4)


Reference #: 4179

Moroney, M.J.
General Category: AVERAGE

In former times, when the hazards of sea voyages were much more serious than they are today, when ships buffeted by storms threw a portion of their cargo overboard, it was recognized that those whose goods were sacrificed had a claim in equity to indemnification at the expense of those whose goods were safely delivered. The value of the lost goods was paid for by agreement between all of those whose merchandise had been in the same ship. This sea damage to cargo in transit was known as 'havaria' and the word came naturally to be applied to the compensation money which each individual was called upon to pay. From this Latin word derives our modern word average.


Facts from Figures
On the Average
(p. 34)


Reference #: 6623

Morris Kline
General Category: SCIENCE

Theoretical Science is a game of mathematical make-believe.


Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge


Reference #: 14899

Morris, Desmond
General Category: EVOLUTION

There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. He is proud that he has the biggest brain of all the primates, but attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis, preferring to accord this honour falsely to the mighty gorilla. He is an intensely vocal, acutely exploratory, over-crowded ape, and it is high time we examined his basic behaviour.


The Naked Ape
(p. 9)
Simon & Shuster, New York


Reference #: 14900

Morris, Desmond
General Category: MAN

Despite our grandiose ideas and our lofty self-conceits, we are still humble animals, subject to all the basic laws of animal behavior....We tend to suffer from a strange complacency that...there is something special about us, that we are somehow above biologic control. But we are not. Many exciting species have become extinct in the past, and we are no exception. Sooner or later we shall go, making way for something else. If it is to be later rather than sooner, then we must take a long, hard look at ourselves as biological specimens, and gain some understanding of our limitations.


The Naked Ape
Chapter Eight
(p. 240)


Reference #: 14898

Morris, Desmond
General Category: QUESTION

We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.


The Naked Ape
Chapter 5


Reference #: 8989

Morris, George P.
General Category: TREE

Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.


Poems
Woodman, Spare That Tree


Reference #: 16785

Morris, H.M.
General Category: FOSSIL

Never are fossils of creatures found with incipient eyes, with half-way wings, with half-scales turning into feathers, with partially-evolved forelimbs, or with any other nascent or transitional characters. Yet there must have been innumerable individuals which possessed such features, if the neo-Darwinian model of evolutionary history is correct.


The Troubled Waters of Evolution
Chapter IV
(pp. 91-92)


Reference #: 16199

Morris, H.M.
General Category: EVOLUTION

Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism, racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice.


The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth
Chapter VII
(p. 75)


Reference #: 10568

Morris, H.M.
General Category: DATA

The data must be explained by the evolutionist, but they are predicted by the creationist.


Scientific Creationism
(p. 13)


Reference #: 10567

Morris, H.M.
General Category: CREATIONISM

Creationism is consistent with the innate thoughts and daily experiences of the child and thus is conducive to his mental health. He knows, as part of his own experience of reality, that a house implies a builder and a watch a watchmaker. As he studies the still more intricately complex nature of, say, the human body, or the ecology of a forest, it is highly unnatural for him to be told to think of these systems as chance products of irrational processes.


Scientific Creationism
Chapter I
(p. 14)


Reference #: 10566

Morris, H.M.
General Category: CREATIONISM

It seems beyond all question that such complex systems as the DNA molecule could never arise by chance, no matter how big the universe or how long the time. The creation model faces this fact realistically and postulates a great Creator, by whom came life.


Scientific Creationism
Chapter IV
(p. 62)


Reference #: 10565

Morris, H.M.
General Category: CLASSIFICATION

If an evolutionary continuum existed, as the evolution model should predict, there would be no gaps, and thus it would be impossible to demark specific categories of life. Classification requires not only similarities, but differences and gaps as well, and these are much more amenable to the creation model.


Scientific Creationism
Chapter IV
(p. 72)


Reference #: 16200

Morris, Henry
General Category: GEOLOGIC TIME

The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology.


The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth
(p. 94)


Reference #: 8615

Morris, Joseph F.
General Category: MEDICAL

Medical reporter - Staph writer.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
July 21, 1968
(p. 57)


Reference #: 17396

Morris, Richard
General Category: TIME

Though science has not yet probed all the depths of the subject of time, it at least knows what we should be asking about the subject. Knowing what to ask is often the most significant step on the road to understanding.


Time's Arrow: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time
Chapter 12
(p. 218)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1984


Reference #: 16847

Morris, Richard
General Category: OBSERVATION

Simple observation generally gets us nowhere. It is the creative imagination that increases our understanding by finding connections between apparently unrelated phenomena, and forming logical, consistent theories to explain them. And if a theory turns out to be wrong, as many do, all is not lost. The struggle to create an imaginative, correct picture of reality frequently tells us where to go next, even when science has temporarily followed the wrong path.


The Universe, the Eleventh Dimension, and Everything: What We Know and How We Know It


Reference #: 13489

Morris, Richard
General Category: VACUUM

In modern physics, there is no such thing as 'nothing.' Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy.


The Edges of Science
Chapter II
(p. 25)
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1955


Reference #: 13490

Morris, Richard
General Category: ENERGY

The uncertainty principle implies that particles can come into existence for short periods of time even when there is not enough energy to create them. In effect, they are created from uncertainties in energy. One could say that they briefly 'borrow' the energy required for their creation, and then, a short time later, they pay the 'debt' back and disappear again. Since these particles do not have a permanent existence, they are called virtual particles.


The Edges of Science
Chapter II
(p. 24)
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1955


Reference #: 3385

Morris, Robert Tuttle
General Category: BILL

One must not count upon all of his patients being willing to steal in order to pay doctor's bills.


Doctors versus Folks
Chapter 3


Reference #: 3271

Morris, Robert Tuttle
General Category: PATIENTS

It is the patient rather than the case which requires treatment.


Doctors versus Folks
Chapter 2


Reference #: 6347

Morrison, A. Cressy
General Category: NATURE

Although nature, the great chemist, has provided man with the prototypes and methods by which he has attempted, with considerable success, to conquer his environment, her motives and objectives have seldom been man's. The beautiful silks with which man bedecks himself and his womankind, ...were created for far different purposes than those to which man has put them.


Man in a Chemical World
Chapter 2
(p. 13)


Reference #: 16509

Morrison, D.E.
Henkel, R.E.
General Category: STATISTICAL TESTS

What do we do without the tests, then? What we do without the tests has always in some measure been done in behavioral science and needs only to be done more and better: the application of imagination, common sense, and informed judgment, and the appropriate remaining research methods to achieve the scope, form, process, and purpose of scientific inference.


The Significance Test Controversy—-A Reader
Significance tests in behavioral research: Skeptical conclusions and beyond


Reference #: 12018

Morrison, Foster
General Category: MODEL

Much of the technical literature is difficult to read, even for scientistsand engineers. Even the best books tend to dwell on the mathematical models and don't give the slightest hint what to do if one is lucky enough to have some data.


The Art of Modeling Dynamic Systems: Forecasting for Chaos, Randomness, & Determinism
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 17888

Morrison, Jim
General Category: ENVIRONMENT

What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered,
And ripped her and bit her,
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her down.


When the Music's Over


Reference #: 6281

Morrison, Jim
General Category: MOLECULE

Love hides in molecular structures.


Love Hides


Reference #: 8143

Morrow, James
General Category: SCIENCE

Everybody thinks he's being oh-so-deep when he says science doesn't have all the answers. ...Science does have all the answers ...The problem is that we don't have all the science.


Only Begotten Daughter


Reference #: 626

Morrow, Prince Albert
General Category: SPECIALIZATION

The genius of modern medical literature is clearly in the direction of division of labor and associated effort.


A System of Genito-Urinary Diseases, Syphilology, and Dermatology
Preface
D. Appleton, New York, New York, United States of America 1893-4


Reference #: 435

Morse, Harold Marston
General Category: MATHEMATICS

But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.


In Stanley Gudder
A Mathematical Journey
(p. 81)
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1976


Reference #: 5193

Morton, Henry Vellam
General Category: MATHEMATICS

In the dusk of a lane I met a shepherd with his sheep. A small dog with the expression of a professor of mathematics does all the work.


In Search of Scotland
Chapter 1, section 3
(p. 8)


Reference #: 2032

Morton, J.B.
General Category: ANIMAL

One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.


By the Way


Reference #: 3493

Morton, Jack A.
General Category: CREATIVITY

Creativity is involved in research, discovery of new knowledge, in its application, in development engineering, in the manufacture of the hardware, in marketing and sales, in the raising of capital, and in the supplying of services.


In Daniel V. DeSimone
Education for Innovation
Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Discussion
(p. 105)


Reference #: 6401

Morton, Oliver
General Category: MARS

Yet if the Earth is a single isolated planet, the human world is less constrained. The breakdown of the equation between planets and worlds works both ways. If there can now be planets that are not worlds, then there can be worlds that spread beyond planets-and ours is doing so. Our spacecraft and our imaginations are expanding our world. This projection of our world beyond the Earth is for the most part a very tenuous sort of affair. It is mostly a matter of imagery and fantasy. Mars, though, might make it real-which is why Mars matters.


Mapping Mars
(p. 20)


Reference #: 6402

Morton, Oliver
General Category: EARTH

If the space age has opened new ways of seeing mere matter, though, it has also fostered a strange return to something reminiscent of the pre-Copernican universe. The life that Lowell and his like expected elsewhere has not appeared, and so the Earth has become unique again. The now-iconic image of a blue-white planet floating in space, or hanging over the deadly deserts of the moon, reinforces the Earth's isolation and specialness. And it is this exceptionalism that drives the current scientific thirst for finding life elsewhere, for finding a cosmic mainstream of animation, even civilization, in which the Earth can take its place. It is both wonderful and unsettling to live on a planet that is unique.


Mapping Mars
(p. 20)


Reference #: 6403

Morton, Oliver
General Category: MARS

Mars is not an independent world, held together by the memories and meanings of its own inhabitants. But nor is it no world at all. More than any other planet we have seen, Mars is like the Earth. It is not very like the Earth. Its gravity is weak, its atmosphere thin, its surface sealess, its soil poisonous, its sunlight deadly in its levels of ultraviolet, its climate beyond frigid. It would kill you in an instant. But it is earthlike enough that it is possible to imagine some of us going there and experiencing this new part of our human world in the way we've always experienced the old part-from the inside. The fact that humans could feasibly become Martians is the strongest of the links between Mars and Earth.


Mapping Mars
(p. 21)


Reference #: 7257

Morton, Ron L.
General Category: SPECIES

Species come,
species go;
Some real fast,
some real slow...


Music of the Earth
Chapter 10
(p. 267)


Reference #: 5001

Moscovici, S.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science has become involved in this adventure, our adventure, in order to renew everything it touches and warm all that it penetrates - the earth on which we live and the truths which enable us to live. At each turn it is not the echo of a demise, a bell tolling for a passing away that is heard, but the voice of rebirth and beginning, ever afresh, of mankind and materiality, fixed for an instant in their ephemeral permanence. That is why the great discoveries are not revealed on a deathbed like that of Copernicus, but offered like Kepler's on the road of dreams and passion.


Hommes domestiques et hommes sauvages
(pp. 297-298)


Reference #: 15364

Moser, Leo
General Category: ALGEBRA

A quadratic function, ambitious,
Said, `It's not only wrong, but it vicious.
It's surely no sin
To have max. and min.;
To limit me so is malicious'.


In E.O. Parrott (ed)
The Penguin Book of Limericks
Theory and Practice


Reference #: 7930

Moss, W.W.
General Category: TAXONOMISTS

Taxonomists have always had the reputation of being difficult. Intransigence may be rooted in the necessity of defending prolonged self-immersion in a taxon that others find a total bore; it is frustrating to have one's work greeted with a yawn. Numerical taxonomists have proved to be just as prickly as conventional taxonomists, possibly more so because some of the brightest people in systematics are involved in the current taxonomic battles. The political maneuvering and character assination that characterize certain taxonomists today may not be atypical for science; they certainly provide a fine example of its seamier side. If Feyerabend is correct, it may even be a requirement of human nature that scientific progress occur in this manner.


In J. Felsenstein (ed.)
Numerical Taxonomy
Taxa, Taxonomists, and Taxonomy
Springer-Verlag, New York, New York, United States of America 1983


Reference #: 5544

Motherwell, William
General Category: NATURE

And we, with Nature's heart in tune,
Concerted harmonies.


Jeannie Morrison


Reference #: 3448

Motohashi, Y.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

...the Riemann Hypothesis will be settled without any fundamental changes in our mathematical thoughts, namely, all tools are ready to attack it but just a penetrating idea is missing.


In K. Sabbagh
Dr. Riemann's Zeros
(p. 228)


Reference #: 9936

Motto
General Category: MOTTO

Nullius in Verba
No man's word shall be final


Royal Society of London


Reference #: 4868

Mott-Smith, Morton Joseph
General Category: HEAT

People are always exaggerating temperatures. If the day is hot, they add on a few degrees; if it is cold they deduct a few. No one ever gives the air temperature to a fraction of a degree, but only to whole degrees. Now on the Fahrenheit scale, on account of the small size of its degree, these whoppers and inaccuracies are only about half as big as they are on the other scales.


Heat and Its Workings
(p. 24)


Reference #: 16848

Motz, Lloyd
General Category: CHANCE

Thus, the very chance and randomness that prevent man from predicting the future are the tools that nature uses to insure not only the emergence of life in each expansion cycle of the universe but also the approach to perfection and complete harmony as more and complex forms of life evolve.


The Universe: Its beginning and End
Epilogue
(p. 325)
Charles scribner's Sons, New York, New York, United States of America 1975


Reference #: 1520

Moulton, Forest Ray
General Category: ORDER

Now we find ourselves a part of a Universal Order of which we did not dream and whose alphabet we are just beginning to learn. Instead of shrinking it to our measure, we contemplate it infinite orderliness and set no limits to the goal our race may hope to attain.


Astronomy
Chapter XVI
(p. 533)


Reference #: 1518

Moulton, Forest Ray
General Category: SKY

It is doubtful whether there is in the whole range of human experience any more awe-inspiring spectacle than that presented by the sky on a clear and moonless night. Under the vault of the sparkling heavens one is raised, if ever, to an actual realization of the fact that the earth beneath his feet is a relatively tiny mass in comparison with the infinite cosmos spread out above.


Astronomy
Chapter II
(p. 14)


Reference #: 1519

Moulton, Forest Ray
General Category: ENERGY

The innumerable members of our galaxy assure us, however, that though the stars may be evaporating, so to speak, like the dew, their energies will in some way be integrated again.


Astronomy
Chapter XV
(p. 471)


Reference #: 5432

Moulton, Forest Ray
General Category: UNIVERSE

It was pointed out by Lambert long ago that, just as the solar system is a single unit in a galaxy of several hundred million stars, so the Galaxy may be but a single one out of an enormous number of galaxies...and that these galaxies may form larger units or supergalaxies, and so on without limit.


Introduction to Astronomy
(p. 469)


Reference #: 13811

Moulton, Lord
General Category: OBSERVATION

When we are reduced to observation Science crawls.


In Alan Gregg
The Furtherance of Medical Research
Medical Research Described
(p. 7)


Reference #: 13464

Moultrie, John
General Category: PARALLELOGRAM

...forgetful of the claimsof curves and squares, and parallelograms,
Cones, angles, sines and cosines, ordinates,
Abscissae and the like.


The Dream of Life
III, Youth


Reference #: 8998

Moultrie, John
General Category: MATHEMATICS

There's nothing in the world (that is in Trinity)
To make us poets happy; -
I detest
Your Hebrew, Greek and heathenish Latinity,
And Mathematics are a bore at best.


Poems
Sir Launfal, xii


Reference #: 5577

Mountcastle, Vernon B.
General Category: BRAIN

Each of us lives within the universe - the prison - of his own brain. Projecting from it are millions of fragile sensory nerve fibers, in groups uniquely adapted to sample the energetic states of the world around us: heat, light, force, and chemical composition. That is all we ever know of it directly; all else is logical inference.


Johns Hopkins Medical Journal
Vol. 136, 1975
(p. 131)


Reference #: 16604

Movie
General Category: SCIENCE

The benefits of science are not for scientists, Marie. They're for humanity.


The Story of Louis Pasteur
Paul Muni preaching in bed to his wife


Reference #: 16659

Movie
General Category: NURSE

If you nurse as good as your sense of humor, I won't make it to Thursday.


The Sunshine Boys
Walter Mattheu to Rosettal LeNoire


Reference #: 10749

Movie
General Category: SCIENTIST

He was one of our greatest scientists. He has proved, beyond any question, that physical affection is purely electrochemical.


Silk Stockings
Cyd Charrise talking down love to Fred Astire


Reference #: 11638

Moynihan, Berkeley, Sir
General Category: DISCOVERY

A discovery is rarely, if ever, a sudden achievement, nor is it the work of one man; a long series of observations, each in turn received in doubt and discussed in hostility, are familiarized by time, and lead at last to the gradual disclosure of truth.


Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics
Vol. 31, 1920
(p. 549)


Reference #: 18024

Mozans, H.J.
General Category: SCIENCE AND WOMEN

Whilst men of science will be forced to continue as specialists as long as the love of fame, to consider no other motives of research, continue to be a potent influence in their investigations, it is probable that women will have less love for the long and tedious processes involved in the more difficult kinds of specialization. They will, it seems likely, be more inclined to acquire a general knowledge of the whole circle of the sciences - a knowledge that will enable them to take a comprehensive survey of nature. And it will be fortunate for themselves, as well as for the men who must perforce remain specialists, if they elect to do so. For nothing gives falser views of nature as a whole, nothing more unfits the mind for a proper apprehension of higher and more important truths, nothing more incapacities one for the enjoyment of the masterpieces of literature or the sweeter amenities of life, than the narrow occupation of a specialist who sees nothing in the universe but electrons, microbes and protozoa.


Women in Science
Chapter XII
(pp. 408-409)


Reference #: 2140

Mr. Gregory
General Category: STATISTICS

Well statistics prove that your far safer in a modern plane than in a bathtub.


Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
movie


Reference #: 11462

Mr. Spock
General Category: BRAIN

The knowledge to reconnect a brain does not exist yet in the galaxy.


Star Trek
Spock's Brain


Reference #: 17831

Muggeridge, Malcolm
General Category: LIFE

Nor, as far as I am concerned, is there any recompense in the so-called achievements of science. It is true that in my lifetime more progress has been made in unraveling the composition and the mechanism of the material universe than previously in the whole of recorded history. This does not at all excite my mind, or even my curiosity. The atom has been split; the universe has been discovered, and will soon be explored. Neither achievement has any bearing on what alone interests me - which is why life exists, and what is the significance, if any, of my minute and so transitory part in it.


In Mark Booth (ed.)
What I Believe Malcom Muggeridge
(pp. 63-64)


Reference #: 7599

Muggeridge, Malcolm
General Category: PROBABILITY

The probability is, I suppose that the Monarchy has become a kind of ersatz religion. Chesterton once remarked that when people ceased to believe in God they do not believe in nothing, but in anything.


New Statesman
1955


Reference #: 11824

Muggeridge, Malcolm
General Category: EVOLUTION

I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.


The Advocate
March 8, 1984
(p. 17)


Reference #: 16969

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make of leaves and moss like marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone we all dwell in a house of one room the world with the firmament for its roof and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.


The Wilderness World of John Muir
The Philosophy of John Muir
(p. 312)


Reference #: 17975

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.


Wilderness World
(p. 312)


Reference #: 17296

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: STREAM

There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream, and this is the first I ever saw.


Thousand Mile Walk
(p. 30)


Reference #: 17210

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: AVALANCHE

When the snow first gives way on the upper slopes of their basins a dull muffled rush and rumble is heard, which increasing with heavy deliberation, seems to draw rapidly near with appalling intensity of tone. Presently the white flood comes in sight bounding out over bosses and sheer places, leaping from bench to bench, spreading and narrowing and throwing off clouds of whirling diamond dust like a majestic foamy cataract.


The Yosemite
(p. 47)


Reference #: 17295

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

...I was compelled to sleep with the trees in the one great bedroom of the open night.


Thousand Mile Walk
(p. 29-30)


Reference #: 17497

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ICEBERG

When sunshine is sifting through the midst of the multitude of icebergs that fill the fiord and through the jets of radiant spray ever rising from the tremendous splashing of the falling and upspringing bergs, the effect is indescribably glorious. Glorious, too, are the shows they make in the night when the moon and stars are shining. The berg-thunder seems far louder than by day, and the projecting buttresses seem higher as they stand forward in the pale light, relieved by gloomy hollows, while the new-
Born bergs are dimly seen, crowned with faint lunar rainbows in the up-dashing spray.


Travels in Alaska
Chapter XVI
(p. 269)


Reference #: 17498

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ICEBERG

On days like this, true sun-days, some of the bergs show a purplish tinge, though most are white from the disintegrating of their weathered surfaces. Now and then a new-
Born one is met that is pure blue crystal throughout, freshly broken from the fountain or recently exposed to the air by turning over.


Travels in Alaska
Chapter XIV
(p. 232)


Reference #: 17213

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: BEAUTY

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.


The Yosemite


Reference #: 17496

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

...had nothing to do but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns and prayers.


Travels in Alaska
(p. 23)


Reference #: 17211

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: AVALANCHE

Compared with cascades and falls, avalanches are short-lived, few of them lasting more than a minute or two, and the sharp clashing sounds so common in dashing water are usually wanting; but in their low massy thunder-tones and purple-tinged whiteness, and in their dress, gait, gestures, and general behavior, they are much alike.


The Yosemite
(pp. 47-48)


Reference #: 17212

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for effect than in the case of these related phenomena of Sequoia woods and perennial streams.


The Yosemite
(p. 104)


Reference #: 5562

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many bairns - birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the sun warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; and in the snowy northland she takes care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has socks and mittens, and a tail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse is densely feathered down to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep, besides his undergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair that sheds off both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same consummate skill that characterizes all the love-work of Nature.


In Sally M. Miller (ed.)
John Muir: Life and Work
Part III, Chapter 5
(pp. 111-112)


Reference #: 7279

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Sketching on the North Dome. It commands views of nearly all the valley besides a few of the high mountains. I would fain draw everything in sight rock, tree, and leaf. But little can I do beyond mere outlines, marks with meanings like words, readable only to myself, yet I sharpen my pencils and work on as if others might possibly be benefited.


My First Summer in the Sierra
(p. 174)


Reference #: 7280

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

How many mouths Nature has to fill, how many neighbors we have, how little we know about them, and how seldom we get in each other's way!


My First Summer in the Sierra
(p. 318)


Reference #: 7208

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and suggestive views into history.


Mountains of California
(p. 182)


Reference #: 7209

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.


Mountains of California
(p. 79)


Reference #: 5572

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and the wounds heal ere we are aware.


John of the Mountains
(p. 317)


Reference #: 5561

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

The mountains are calling and I must go.


In Sally M. Miller (ed.)
John Muir: Life and Work
Part I, Chapter 2
(p. 60)


Reference #: 7281

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

How lavish is Nature building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.


My First Summer in the Sierra
August 30
(pp. 318-319)


Reference #: 7261

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL

Most wild animals get into the world and out of it without being noticed. Nevertheless we at last sadly learn that they are all subject to the vicissitudes of fortune like ourselves.


My Boyhood and Youth
(p. 109)


Reference #: 7207

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this stormday, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree wavings many of them not so much.


Mountains of California
(p. 256)


Reference #: 5560

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE RATTLESNAKE

Poor creatures, loved only by their Maker, they are timid and bashful, as mountaineers know, and though perhaps not possessed of much of that charity that suffers long and is kind, seldom, either by mistake or by mishap, do harm to any one. Certainly they cause not the hundredth part of the pain and death that follow the footsteps of the admired Rocky Mountain trapper. Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, 'What are rattlesnakes good for?' As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man has any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways. Long ago, an Indian to whom a French traveler put this old question replied that their tails were good for toothache, and their heads for fever. Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life.


In Sally M. Miller (ed.)
John Muir: Life and Work
Part III, Chapter 5
(p. 108)


Reference #: 7276

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

Here I could stay tethered forever with just bread and water, nor would I be lonely; loved friends and neighbors, as love for everything increased, would seem all the nearer however many the miles and mountains between us.


My First Summer in the Sierra
(p. 22)


Reference #: 7269

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE OAK blue (Quercus Douglasii)

The trees, mostly the blue oak, are about thirty to forty feet high, with pale blue green leaves and white bark, sparsely planted on the thinnest soil or in crevices of rocks beyond the reach of grass fires.


My First Summer
(p. 8)


Reference #: 7260

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL

Of the many advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is the gaining a real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to respect them and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved.


My Boyhood and Youth
(p. 89)


Reference #: 644

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE HEMLOCK

The Hemlock, judging from the common species of Canada, I regarded as the least noble of the conifers.


A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
(p. 31)


Reference #: 5566

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: FLOWER

Flowers are
Born every hour.


John of the Mountains
(p. 48)


Reference #: 7268

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INSECTS ANT

Ants...whose timy sparks of life only burn the brighter with the heat...


My First Summer
(p. 8)


Reference #: 7259

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MICROBES

And surely all God's people, however serious and savage, great or small like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes,-all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.


My Boyhood and Youth
(pp. 149-150)


Reference #: 7275

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.


My First Summer in the Sierra
July 27
(p. 211)


Reference #: 5282

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GOD GEOLOGY

Divine love is the sublime boss of the universe.


LIFE AND LETTERS
(p. 259)


Reference #: 7210

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nature has always something rare to show us....and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.


Mountains of California
(p. 249)


Reference #: 5564

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: BIRD LARKS

A balmy day. Sunshine and lark song in glorious measure. A petition is being circulated in favor of preservation of larks from the ruthless slaughter of gunners. Larks are as characteristic of California weather as sunbeams. As well shoot the sun out of the sky.


John of the Mountains
(p. 336)


Reference #: 6064

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: AIR

The air was perfectly delicious, sweet enough for the breath of angels. Every draught of it gave a separate and distinct piece of pleasure. I do not believe that Adam and Eve tasted better in their balmiest nook.


Letters to a Friend
(p. 38)
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America, 1915


Reference #: 7273

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SHRUB (Azalea Occidentalis)

Charming shrub, grows beside cool streams hereabouts and much higher in the Yosemite region. We found it this evening in bloom a few miles from Greeleys Mill, where we camped for the night. It is closely related to the rhododendrons, is very showy and fragrant (etc.)


My First Summer
(p. 27)


Reference #: 7272

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SHRUB (Adenostoma Fasciculata)

I have been examining the curious and influential shrub first noted about horseshoe bend. Forms a dense, almost impenetrable growth that looks dark in the distance. It belongs to the rose family (etc.)


My First Summer
(p. 17)


Reference #: 4697

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature - inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty.


Gentle Wilderness
(p. 139)
Ballantine Books, 1968


Reference #: 5569

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Sit down in climbing, and hear the pines sing. So savage and inaccessible at first sight; yet so easy to find one's way. No conscious effort. No dangers to tell about for all seems a grand, smooth song.


John of the Mountains
(p. 428)


Reference #: 5568

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it; and though fast rooted, they travel about as far as we do.


John of the Mountains
on Muir Glacier
(p. 313)


Reference #: 5565

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL SHEEP

It is almost impossible to conceive of a devastation more universal than is produced among the plants of the Sierra by sheep...Nine tenths of the whole surface of the Sierra has been swept by the source. It demands legislative interference.


John of the Mountains
(p. 174)


Reference #: 642

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE MAGNOLIA GRANDIFLORA

It speaks itself a prince among its fellows.


A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
(p. 91)


Reference #: 641

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE MAGNOLIA GRANDIFLORA

A magnificent tree in fruit and foliage as well as in flower.


A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
(p. 64)


Reference #: 640

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE KENTUCKY OAK

I have seen oaks of many species in many kinds of exposure and soil, but those of Kentucky excel in grandeur all I had ever before beheld. They are broad and dense and green. In the leafy bowers and caves of their long branches dwell magnificent avenues of shade, and every tree seems to be blessed with a double portion of strong exulting life.


A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
(p. 2)


Reference #: 5573

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Heaven knows that John Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptise all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.


John of the Mountains
(p. 86)


Reference #: 7271

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SABINE PINE (Pinus Sabiniana)

...excepting the strange looking Sabine pine, which here forms small groves or is scattered among the blue oaks. The trunk divides at a height of fifteen or twenty feet into two or more stems, out leaning or nearly upright, with many straggling branches and long gray needle casting but little shade ...


My First Summer
(p. 15)


Reference #: 7274

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

How fiercely, devoutly wild is Nature in the midst of her beauty loving tenderness.


My First Summer
(p. 177)


Reference #: 5287

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GLACIER

But glaciers, dear friend—ice is only another form of terrestrial love. I am astonished to hear you speak so unbelievingly of Go? s glorious glaciers.+ They are only pest? and you think them wrong in temperature, and they lived in+ horrible time? and you do? t care to hear about them+ only that they made instruments of Yosemite music? You speak heresy for once, and deserve a dip in Methodist Tophet, or Vesuvius at leas4&.

You like the music instruments that glaciers made, but no songs were so grand as those of the glaciers themselves, nof falls so lofty as those which poured from brows, and shasmed mountains of pure dark ice. Glaciers made the mountains and ground corn for all the flowers, and the forests of silver fir, made smooth paths for human feet until the sacred Sierras have become the most approachable mountains. Glaciers came down from heaven, and they were angels with folded wings, white wings of snowy bloom. Locked hand in hand the little spirits did nobly; the primary mountain waves, unvital granite, were soon carved into beauty. They bared the lordly domes and fashioned the clustering spires; smoothed godlike mountain brows, and shaped lake cups for crystal waters; wove myriad mazy cañons, and spread them out like lace. They remembered the loud-songed rivers and every tinkling rill.saw all the coming flowers, and the grand predestined forests..


In William Frederic Badé
Life and Letters of John Muir
Vol. I, Chapter VIII, Letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, December 11th, 1871
(pp. 266-267)


Reference #: 5567

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: PLANTS

Well, perhaps I may yet become a proper cultivated plant, cease my wanderings and for it a so called pillar or something in society, but if so, I must, like a revived Methodist, I care to love what I hate and to hate what I most intensely and devoutly love.


John of the Mountains
(p. 90)


Reference #: 7277

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: FLOWER LILIES

Found a lovely lily (Calochortus albus) in a shady adenostoma thicket near Coulterville, in company with Adiantum chilense. It is white with a faint purplish tinge inside at the base of the petals, a most impressive plant, pure as snow crystal, one of the plant saints that all must love and be made so much the purer by every time it is seen. It puts the roughest mountaineer on his good behavior.


My First Summer in the Sierra
(p. 17)


Reference #: 5574

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

When we are with Nature we are awake, and we discover many interesting things and reach many a mark we are not aiming at.


In Linnie Marsh Wolfe (ed.)
John of the Mountains
Chapter VII, Section I, June, 1890
(p. 300)


Reference #: 7270

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE OAK (Quercus Californica)

Characteristic blue oak of the foothills is left below and its place is taken by a fine large species with deeply lobed deciduous leaves, picturesquely divided trunk, and broad, massy, finely lobed and modeled head.


My First Summer
(p. 15)


Reference #: 643

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: EXTINCTION

Why ought man to value himself as more than an infinitely small composing unit of the one great unit of creation?...The universe would be incomplete without man, but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.


A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
Chapter 6
(p. 139)


Reference #: 7278

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Then to think of the infinite numbers of smaller fellow mortals, invisibly small, compared with which the smallest ants are as mastodons.


My First Summer in the Sierra
(p. 62)


Reference #: 5570

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nature...leading us with work...yet cheers us like a mother with tender prattle words of love...


John of the Mountains
(p. 66)


Reference #: 5563

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: DEATH

Leaves have their time to fall, and though indeed there is a kind of melancholy present when they, withered and dead, are plucked from their places and made the sport of the gloomy autumn wind, yet we hardly deplore their fate, because there is nothing unnatural in it. They have done all that their Creator wished them to do, and they should not remain longer in their green vigor.


In Sally M. Miller (ed.)
John Muir: Life and Work
Part I, Chapter 1
(p. 28)


Reference #: 5571

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

No sane man in the hands of Nature can doubt the doubleness of his life. Soul and body receive separate nourishment and separate exercise, and speedily reach a stage of development wherein each is easily known apart from the other. Living artificially we seldom see much of our real selves, our torpid souls are hopelessly entangled with our torpid bodies, and not only in there a confused mingling of our own souls with our own bodies, but we hardly possess a separate existence from our neighbors.


John of the Mountains
(p. 77)


Reference #: 639

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOSS, SPANISH (Tillandsia usneoikes)

It drapes all the branches from top to bottom, hanging in long silver-gray skeins, reaching a length of not less than eight or ten feet, and when slowly waving in the wind they produce a solemn funereal effect singularly impressive.


A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
(p. 68)


Reference #: 11531

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MINING

Mining discoveries and progress, retrogression and decay, seem to have been crowded more closely against each other here than on any other portion of the globe.


Steep Trails
(p. 141)


Reference #: 11530

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOONLIGHT

The moon is looking down into the canon, and how marvelously the great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow.


Steep Trails
(p. 15)


Reference #: 8369

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SNOW

The faint lisp of snowflakes as they alight is one of the smallest sounds mortal can hear.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 274)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8368

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

But of all living things sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 277)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8310

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

But the well meant joke seemed irreverent and utterly failed, as if only prayerful terror could rightly belong to the wild beauty making business.


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 265)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8340

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

The Douglas is a firm, emphatic bolt of life, fiery, pungent, full of brag and show and fight...


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 195)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8341

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 19)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8342

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

…the happiest, merriest of all the hairy tribe, and at the same time earnest and solemn, sunshine incarnate, making every tree tingle with his electric toes.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 196)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11529

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ROCKS

All the rocks seemed talkative, and more telling and lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed to have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them with a love intensified by long and close companionship.


Steep Trails
(p. 12)


Reference #: 11533

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE RATTLESNAKES

...Instinctively feeling a snaky atmosphere, and finally discovered one rattler between my feet. But there was a bashful look in his eye, and a withdrawing, deprecating kink in his neck that showed plainly as words could tell that he would not strike, and only wished to be let alone. I therefore passed on, lifting my feet a little higher than usual, and left him to enjoy his life in this his own home.


Steep Trails
(p. 108)


Reference #: 11534

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INDIVIDUALITY

Indeed, every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality.


Steep Trails
(p. 7)


Reference #: 8365

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

As far as man is concerned they are the same yesterday, today, and forever, emblems of permanence.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 269)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8371

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

The mighty trees getting their food are seen to be wide awake, every needle thrilling in the welcome nourishing storms, chanting and bowing low in glorious harmony, while every raindrop and snowflake is seen as a beneficent messenger from the sky.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 26)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8372

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: PLANTS

The plants are as busy as the animals, every cell in a swirl of enjoyment, humming like a hive, singing the old new song of creation.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 70)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8373

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: FLOWER ARCTIC DAISY

…the lovely arctic daisy with many blessed companions; charming plants, gentle mountaineers, Nature's darlings, which seem always the finer the higher and stormier their homes.


Our National Parks
Chapter V
(p. 149)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8374

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

It belongs to an ancient stock, as its remains in old rocks show, and has a strange air of other days about it, a thoroughbred look inherited from the long ago—the auld lang syne of trees.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 268)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11535

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOONLIGHT

I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong. Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in jet shadows; now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rocks; past the huge ghost of South Dome rising weird through the firs; past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette; through the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky blazing with stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day! One of the rich ripe days that enlarge one's life; so much of the sun upon one side of it, so much of the moon and stars on the other.


Steep Trails
(p. 19)


Reference #: 11536

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE PINE

...I drank the spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this noble tree I felt that I was safely home.


Steep Trails
(p. 12)


Reference #: 11537

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INTERDEPENDENCE

Plants, animals and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed way, with one another, and through the midst of one another killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities.


Steep Trails
(p. 8)


Reference #: 11538

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: LIZARDS

Lizards too, of every kind and color, are here enjoying life on the hot cliffs and making the brightest of them brighter.


Steep Trails
(p. 268)


Reference #: 11539

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL BIGHORN SHEEP

The largest of the canon animals one is likely to see is the wild sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices, acquainted with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of him like the wind through a quivering mountain pine.


Steep Trails
(p. 268)


Reference #: 8375

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

...towering serene and satisfied through countless years of calm and storm, the greatest of plants and all but immortal.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 281)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8370

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE PINE

…a multitude of giants in perfect health and beauty, sun fed mountaineers rejoicing in their strength, chanting with the winds, in accord with the falling waters.


Our National Parks
Chapter III
(p. 81)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8309

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: LIGHTNING

If you are not very strong, try to climb Electric Peak when a big bossy, well-charged thunder-cloud is on it, to breathe the ozone set free, and get yourself kindly shaken and shocked. You are sure to be lost in wonder and praise, and every hair of your head will stand up and hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 59)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8356

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SNOW

The fertile clouds, descending, glide about and hover in brooding silence, as if thoughtfully examining the forests and streams with reference to the work before them....


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 249)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8355

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

There is something wonderfully attractive in this king tree, even when beheld from afar, that draws us to it with indescribable enthusiasm; its superior height and massive smoothly rounded outlines proclaiming its character in any company; and when one of the oldest attains full stature on some commanding ridge it seems the very god of the woods.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 287)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8358

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

...Sequoias, kings of their race, growing close together like grass in a meadow, poised their brave domes and spires in the sky, three hundred feet above the ferns and lilies that enameled the ground; towering serene through the long centuries, preaching God's forestry fresh from heaven.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 334)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8354

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

…a squirrel of squirrels, quick mountain vigor and valor condensed, purely wild, and as free from disease as a sunbeam.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 194)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8359

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: STREAM

The joyful, songful streams of the Sierra are among the most famous and interesting in the world...


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 241)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8353

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ROCKFALL

The sound was inconceivably deep and broad and earnest, as if the whole earth, like a living creature, had at last found a voice and were calling to her sister planets.


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 263)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8360

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: BIRD MOUNTAIN QUAIL

...like every true mountaineer, he is quick to follow the spring back into th highest mountains.


Our National Parks
Chapter VII
(p. 220)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8352

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SNOW

Small flakes or single crystals appear, glinting and swirling in zigzags and spirals; and soon the thronging feathery masses fill the sky and make darkness like night, hurrying wanderingmountaineers to their winter quarters.


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 249)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8351

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

...all seem to be saying, "Everything is to our mind and we mean to live forever." But, sad to tell, a lumber company was building a large mill and flume near by, assuring widespread destruction.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 292)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8350

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: FLOWERS

Around your camp fire the flowers seem to be looking eagerly at the light, and the crystals shine unweariedly, making fine company as you lie at rest in the very heart of the vast, serene, majestic night.


Our National Parks
Chapter V
(p. 163)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8349

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: STREAM

...ungovernable energy, rushing down smooth inclines in wide foamy sheets fold over fold, springing up here and there in magnificent whirls, scattering crisp clashing spray for thesunbeams to iris, bursting with hoarse reverberating roar through ragged gorges and boulder dams, booming in falls, gliding, glancing with cool soothing, murmuring....


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 242)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8344

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL DEER

I never see one of the common blacktail deer, the only species in the Park, without fresh admiration; and since I never carry a gun I see them well.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 190)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11540

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

When a man plants a tree he plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which he rests with grateful interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel the joy of living. He necessarily makesthe acquaintance of the sun and sky. Favorite trees fill his mind, and, while tending them like children, and accepting the benefits they bring, he becomes himself a benefactor. He sees down through the brown common ground teeming with colored fruits, as if it were transparent, and learns to bring them to the surface. What he wills he can raise by true enchantment. With slips and rootlets, his magic wands, they appear at his bidding. These, and the seeds he plants, are his prayers, and, by God he works grander miracles every day than ever were written.


Steep Trails
(p. 100)


Reference #: 8343

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL BEAR

Bears are peaceable people and mind their own business, instead of going about like the devil seeking whom they may devour.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 28)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8361

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SEEDS

The dispersal of Juniper seeds is effected by the plum and cherry plan of living birds at the cost of their board, and thus obtaining the use of a pair of extra good wings.


Our National Parks
Chapter IV
(p. 121)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8362

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SUGAR PINE

...Sugar Pine..., the largest, noblest, and most beautiful of all the seventy or eighty species of pine trees in the world,…


Our National Parks
Chapter IV
(p. 109)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8347

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like autumn leaves.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 56)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8363

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

The Big Tree (Sequoia gigantea) is Nature's forest masterpiece, and, so far as I know, the greatest of living things.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 268)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8346

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: STREAM

...silvery branches interlacing on a thousand mountains, singing their way home to the sea...


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 241)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8364

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: METAL GOLD

Even in Congress a sizable chunk of gold, carefully concealed, will outtalk and outfight all the nation on a subject like forestry...


Our National Parks
Chapter X
(p. 361)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8357

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT PIKAS

…the mounds in front of their burrows glittering like heaps of jewelry,—romantic ground to live in or die in.


Our National Parks
Chapter V
(p. 162)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8345

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SEEDS

Sequoia seeds have flat wings and glint and glance in their flight like a boy's kite.


Our National Parks
Chapter IV
(p. 121)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8348

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE RATTLESNAKES

Before I learned to respect rattlesnakes I killed two...


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 206)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8366

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GEYSER

...Nature seems to have gathered them from all the world as specimens of her rarest fountains, to show in one place what she can do.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 43)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8367

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

Such was the Kaweah meadow picture that golden afternoon, and as I gazed every color seemed to deepen and glow as if the progress of the fresh sun work were visible from hour to hour, while every tree seemed religious and conscious of the presence of God.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 303)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8311

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

To the sane and free, it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 2)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11532

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: VOLCANO

Like gigantic geysers, spouting hot stone instead of hot water, they work and sleep, and we have no sure means of knowing whether they are only sleeping or dead.


Steep Trails
(p. 39)


Reference #: 8332

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: LIZARDS

If you stay with them a week or two and behave well, these gentle saurians, descendants of an ancient race of giants, will soon know and trust you, come to your feet, play, and watch your every motion with cunning curiosity. You will surely learn to like them, not only the bright ones, gorgeous as the rainbow, but the little ones, gray as lichened granite, and scarcely bigger than grasshoppers; and they will teach you that scales may cover as fine a nature as hair or feathers or anything tailored.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 205)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8245

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MATAL GOLD

Gold, gold, gold! How strong a voice that metal has!


Our National Parks
Chapter X
(p. 361)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11597

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: DENUDATION

When Nature lifted the ice-sheet from the mountains she may well be said not to have turned a new leaf, but to have made a new one of the old. Throughout the unnumbered seasons of the glacial epoch the range lay buried, crushed, and sunless. In the stupendous denudation to which it was then subjected, all its pre-glacial features disappeared. Plants, animals, and landscapes were wiped from its flanks like drawings from a blackboard, and the vast page left smooth and clean, to be repictured with young life and the varied and beautiful inscriptions of water, snow, and the atmosphere.


Studies in the Sierra
Chapter V
(p. 62)


Reference #: 8333

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: LIZARDS

Small fellow mortals, gentle and guileless, they are easily tamed, and have beautiful eyes, expressing the clearest innocence, so that, in spite of prejudices brought from cool, lizardless countries, one must soon learn to like them.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 204)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8334

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

When I entered this sublime wilderness the day was nearly done, the trees with rosy, glowing countenances seemed to be hushed and thoughtful, as if waiting in conscious religious dependence on the sun, and one naturally walked softly and awe stricken among them. I wandered...as if in some vast hall pervaded by the deepest sanctities and solemnities that sway human souls. At sundown the trees seemed to cease their worship and breathe free.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(pp. 300-301)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11571

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

None may wholly escape the Good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings.


Steep Trails
(p. 33)


Reference #: 8335

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

...God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining. leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools only Uncle Sam can do that.


Our National Parks
Chapter X
(p. 365)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8329

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: METAL GOLD

…for the strangely exciting stuff (gold) makes the timid bold enough for anything and the lazy destructively industrious.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 11)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 14827

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

He is, without exception, the wildest animal I ever saw,— a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods' best juices.


The Mountains of California
(p. 229)


Reference #: 8336

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

…many of nature's five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and cornfields.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 335)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8337

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 17)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8338

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: BIRD LARKS

The larks come in large flocks from the hills and mountains in the fall, and are slaughtered as ruthlessly as the robins. Fortunately, most of our song birds keep back in leafy hidings, and are comparatively inaccessible.


Our National Parks
Chapter VII
(p. 238)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8339

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INSECTS

…every leaf and flower seems to have its winged representative in the swarms of happy flower-like insects that enliven the air above them.


Our National Parks
Chapter V
(p. 163)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11550

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: FISH SALMON

Used, wasted, canned and sent in shiploads to all the world, a grand harvest was reaped every year while nobody sowed.


Steep Trails
(p. 246)


Reference #: 8246

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

I never found a dead Douglas. He gets into the world and out of it without being noticed; only in prime is he seen, like some little plants that are visible only when in bloom.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 196)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8325

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

…they never lose their god-like composure, never toss their arms or bow or wave like the pines, but only slowly, solemnly nod and sway, standing erect, making no sign of strife, none of rest, neither in alliance nor at war with the winds, too calmly unconsciously noble and strong to strive with or bid defiance to anything.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(pp. 283-284)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8319

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GOD GEOLOGY

…see how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required; only a calm day and a calm mind.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 59)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 14275

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ROCKS

Patient observation and constant brooding above the rocks, lying upon them for years as the ice did, is the way to arrive at the truths which are graven so lavishly upon them.


In William Frederic Badé
The Life and Letters of John Muir
Vol. I, Letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, October 1871
(p. 300)


Reference #: 8320

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INSECTS

Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming, a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's joy.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 70)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8321

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: STORMS

Even the storms are friendly and seem to regard you as a brother, their beauty and tremendous fateful earnestness charming alike.


Our National Parks
Chapter IV
(p. 99)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8243

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE RATTLESNAKES

Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up What are rattlesnakes good for? As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways. Long ago an Indian to whom a French traveler put this old question replied that their tails were good for toothache, and their heads for fever. Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not begrudge then their share of life.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 57)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8322

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: AMPHIBIAN FROG

Frogs abound in all the bogs, marshes, pools, and lakes, however cold and high and isolated. How did they manage to get up these high mountains? Surely not by jumping. Long and dry excursions through weary miles of boulders and brush would be trying to frogs. Most likely their stringy spawn is carried on the feet of ducks, cranes, and other waterbirds. Anyhow, they are most thoroughly distributed, and flourish famously. What a cheery, hearty set they are, and how bravely their krink and tronk concerts enliven the rocky wilderness!


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 211)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8331

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL DEER

Everywhere some species of deer seems to be at home, on rough or smooth ground, lowlands or highlands, in swamps and barrens and the densest woods, in varying climates, hot or cold, over all the continent; maintaining glorious health, never making an awkward step. Standing, lying down, walking, feeding, running even for life, it is always invincibly graceful, and adds beauty and animation to every landscape, a charming animal, and a great credit to nature.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 189)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8324

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INTERDEPENDENCE

To the dwellers of the plain, dependent on irrigation, the Big Tree, leaving all its higher uses out of the count, is a tree of life, a never failing spring, sending living water to the lowlands all through the not, rainless summer.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 329)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8330

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: PLANTS

[in the spring]…free and warm again, face to face with the sky..


Our National Parks
Chapter V
(p. 164)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8326

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE PONDEROSA PINE

Clad in thick bark like a warrior in mail, it extends its bright ranks over all the high ranges of the wild side of the continent: Flourishes in the drenching fog and rain of the northern coast at the level of the sea, in the snow laden blasts of the mountains, and the white glaring sunshine of the interior plateaus and plains, on the borders of mirage haunted deserts, volcanoes, and lava beds, waving its bright plumes in the hot winds undaunted, blooming every year for centuries, and tossing big ripe cones among the cinders and ashes of nature's hearths.


Our National Parks
Chapter IV
(p. 115)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8327

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE MANZANITA

The branches are knotty, zigzaggy, and about as rigid as bones, and the bark is so thin and smooth, both trunk and branches seem to be naked, looking as if they had been peeled, polished, and painted red.


Our National Parks
Chapter V
(p. 144)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8241

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE RATTLESNAKES

I felt degraded by the killing business, farther from heaven, and I made up my mind to try to be at least as fair and charitable as the snakes themselves, and to kill no more save in self defense.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 207)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8328

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL BISON

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.


Our National Parks
Chapter X
(p. 335)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8244

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GLACIER

Not a peak, ridge, dome, ca±on, lake basin, garden, forest, or stream but in some way explains the past existence and modes of action of flowing, grinding, sculpturing, soil making, scenery making ice.


Our National Parks
Chapter III
(p. 84)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11570

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.


Steep Trails
(p. 92)


Reference #: 8323

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: FLOWERS

For all the way up the long red slate slopes, that in the distance seemed barren, you find little garden beds and tufts of dwarf phlox, ivesia, and blue arctic daisies that go straight to your heart, blessed fellow mountaineers kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles.


Our National Parks
Chapter III
(p. 94)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11548

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL DEER

Deer give beautiful animation to the forests, harmonizing finely in their color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees as they stand in groups at rest...


Steep Trails
(p. 228)


Reference #: 11554

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INSECTS

Baby grubs, happy fellows, find themselves in a sweet world of plenty, feeding their way through the heart of the come from one nut chamber to another, secure from rain and wind and heat, untiltheir wings are grown and they are ready to launch out into the free ocean of light and air.


Steep Trails
(p. 123)


Reference #: 11553

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men.


Steep Trails
(p. 33)


Reference #: 11552

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SUGAR PINE

...on through the oaks and chaparral of the foothills to Coulterville; and then ascended the first great mountain step upon which grows the sugar pine. Here I slackened pace, for I drank the spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this noble tree I felt that I was safely home. Never did pine trees seem so dear. How sweet was their breath and their song, and how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among their tassels and rustled my feet among their brown needles and burrs, and was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can write.


Steep Trails
(p. 12)


Reference #: 8242

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

In the calm Indian summer these busy harvesters with ivory sickles go to work early in the morning, as soon as breakfast is over, and nearly all day the ripe cones fall in a steady pattering, bumping shower.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 274)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11551

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SNOW

To lie out alone in the mountains of a still night and be touched by the first of these small silent messengers from the sky is a memorable experience, and the fineness of that touch none will forget.


Steep Trails
(p. 53)


Reference #: 11572

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nature is a good mother and sees well to the clothing of her many bairns—birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining jackets, and bears with shaggy furs.


Steep Trails
(p. 3)


Reference #: 11549

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SCENERY

The scenery is mostly of a comfortable, assuring kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful overpowering sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort and castpeople into inaction and superstition.


Steep Trails
(p. 193)


Reference #: 11557

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL SHEEP

No other animal seems to yield so submissively to the manipulations of culture. Jacob controlled the color of his flocks merely by causing them to stare at objects of the desired hue; and possibly Merinos may have caught their wrinkles from the perplexed brows of their breeders.


Steep Trails
(p. 11)


Reference #: 11547

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INDIVIDUALITY

...No matter, therefore, what may be the note which any creature forms in the song of existence, it is made first for itself, then more and more remotely for all the world and worlds.


Steep Trails
(p. 7)


Reference #: 11546

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RIVER

Tracing rivers to their fountains makes the most charming of travels. As the life blood of the landscapes, the best of the wilderness comes to their banks, and not one dull passage is found in all their eventful histories.


Steep Trails
(p. 72)


Reference #: 11545

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE

How sweet was their breath and their song, and how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among their tassels, and rustled my feet among their brown needles and burrs, and was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can write.


Steep Trails
(p. 12)


Reference #: 11544

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: INTERDEPENDENCE

...Consumption of one another...is a kind of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture any improvingqualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear.


Steep Trails
(p. 8)


Reference #: 11543

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: PLANT CACTUS

The most striking and characteristic part of this widely varied vegetation are the cactaceae—strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants with beautiful flowers and fruit, in every way able and admirable.


Steep Trails
(p. 265)


Reference #: 11542

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENT SQUIRREL, Douglas

He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens, crisp and glossy and sound as a sunbeam.


Steep Trails
(p. 232)


Reference #: 11562

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained by civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature something essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human culture.


Steep Trails
(p. 2)


Reference #: 8313

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

...a low muffled underground rumbling and a slight rustling of the agitated trees, as if, in wrestling with the mountains, Nature were holding her breath.


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 262)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11569

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

The days are sunful.


Steep Trails
(p. 13)


Reference #: 11568

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: LAVA BEDS

Deserts are charming to those who know how to see them-all kinds of bogs, barrens, and heathy moors; but the Modoc Lava Beds have for me an uncanny look. As I gazed the purple deepened over all the landscape. Then fell the gloaming, making everything still more forbidding and mysterious. Then, darkness like death.


Steep Trails
(p. 66)


Reference #: 11567

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SUN

The sun, looking down on the tranquil landscape, seems conscious of the presence of every living thing on which he is pouring his blessings, while they in turn, with perhaps the exception of man, seem conscious of the presence of the sun as a benevolent father and stand hushed and waiting.


Steep Trails
Chapter XVII
(p. 226)


Reference #: 11566

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they find themselves with Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her solitude's, like very sick children afraid of their mother as if God were dead and the devil were king.


Steep Trails
(p. 58)


Reference #: 11565

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

In my experience it seems well neigh impossible to obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from any other standpoint than that of human use.


Steep Trails
(p. 6)


Reference #: 11564

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

...Wheresoever we may venture to go in all this good world, nature is ever found richer and more beautiful than she seems...


Steep Trails
(p. 117)


Reference #: 11555

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MINING

The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the prospector, offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but like the prayers of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered.


Steep Trails
(p. 144)


Reference #: 8318

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: RODENTSQUIRREL, Gray

The Gray, Sciurus fossor, is the handsomest, I think, of all the large American squirrels.


Our National Parks
Chapter VI
(p. 195)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11556

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: METAL GOLD

Gold, the grand attraction that lights the way into all kinds of wilderness and makes rough places smooth.


Steep Trails
(p. 216)


Reference #: 8312

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

...though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange, wild thrilling motion and rumbling could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, near Sentinel Rock, both glad and frightened, shouting,


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(pp. 261-262)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 11561

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

The Minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.


Steep Trails
(p. 34)


Reference #: 11560

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Not content with the so called subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he [man] would fain discover some method of reclamation applicable to the ocean and sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought to bud and blossom as the rose.


Steep Trails
(p. 1)


Reference #: 11559

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable and obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made especially for the uses of man.


Steep Trails
(p. 7)


Reference #: 11558

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: MOUNTAIN

...perhaps more than all, I was animated by a mountaineer's eagerness to get my feet in the snow once more, and my head into the clear sky, after lying dormant all winter at the level of the sea.


Steep Trails
(pp. 91-92)


Reference #: 11541

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: SEA

Both ocean and sky are already about as rosy as possible the one with stars, the other with dulse, and foam, and wild light.


Steep Trails
(p. 1)


Reference #: 11563

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Give to Nature every cultured apple, codling, pippin, russet, and every sheep so laboriously compounded muffled Southdowns, hairy Cotswolds, wrinkled Merinos and she would throw the one to her caterpillars, the other to her wolves.


Steep Trails
(p. 10)


Reference #: 8386

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURALISTS

Like Thoreau they see forests in orchards and patches of huckleberry brush, and oceans in ponds and drops of dew.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 2)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8376

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

Resolute, consummate, determined in form, always beheld with wondering admiration, the Big Tree always seems unfamiliar, standing alone, unrelated, with peculiar physiognomy, awfullysolemn and earnest.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 272)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8388

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 264)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 12994

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GLACIER

The very thought of this, my first Alaskan glacier garden, is an exhilaration. Though it is 2500 feet high, the glacier flowed over its ground as a river flows over a boulder; and since it emerged from the icy sea as from a sepulcher it has been sorely beaten with storms; but from all those deadly, crushing, bitter experiences comes this delicate life and beauty, to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation.


The Discovery of Glacier Bay


Reference #: 8387

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

The shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell the orderly love beats of Nature's heart.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 70)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8385

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: GEYSER

In the solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous dancing ghosts, and their wild songs and the earthquake thunder replying to the storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as if divine government were at an end.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 45)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8384

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

…all Nature's wildness tells the same story. Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, convulsions of nature, etc.; however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.


Our National Parks
Chapter VIII
(p. 267)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8383

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.


Our National Parks
Chapter III
(p. 97)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8382

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: LIGHTNING

It is a curious fact that all the very old Sequoias have lost their heads by lightning. All things come to him who waits. But of all living things Sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning. Thousands of years it stands ready and waiting, offering its head to every passing cloud as if inviting its fate, praying for heaven's fire as a blessing; and when at last the old head is off, another of the same shape immediately begins to grow on.


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 277)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8381

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.


Our National Parks
Chapter I
(p. 4)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8380

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

How admirable it is that, after passing through so many vicissitudes of frost and fire and flood, the physiognomy and even complexion of the landscape should still be so divinely fine!


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 73)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8378

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 57)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8379

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Thus review the eventful past, we see Nature working with enthusiasm like a man, blowing her volcanic forges like a blacksmith blowing his smithy fires, shoving glaciers over the landscapes like a carpenter shoving his planes, clearing, ploughing, harrowing, irrigating, planting, and sowing broadcast like a farmer and gardener, doing rough work and fine work, planting sequoias and pines, rosebushes and daisies; working in gems, filling every crack and hollow with them; distilling fine essences; painting plants and shells, clouds, mountains, all the earth and heavens, like an artist, ever working toward beauty higher and higher.


Our National Parks
Chapter II
(p. 73)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 8377

Muir, John
Born: 21 April, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland
Died: 24 December, 1914 in Los Angeles, California, United States of America
General Category: TREE SEQUOIAS

...the venerable aboriginal Sequoia, ancient of other days, keeps you at a distance, taking no notice of you, speaking only to the winds, thinking only of the sky...


Our National Parks
Chapter IX
(p. 273)
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New Yor, United States of America; 1901


Reference #: 395

Muir, M.M. Pattison
General Category: CHEMISTRY

The more I try to understand chemistry, the more I am convinced that the methods, achievements, and aims of the science can be realized only by him who has followed the gradual development of chemical ideas.


A History of Chemical Theories and Laws
Preface
(p. v)


Reference #: 396

Muir, M.M. Pattison
General Category: CHEMISTRY

The purpose of chemistry seems to have changed much from time to time. At one time chemistry might have been called a theory of life, and at another time a department of metallurgy: at one time a study of combustion, and at another time an aid to medicine, at one time an attempt to define a single word, the word element, and at another time the quest for the unchanging basis of all phenomena. Chemistry has appeared to be sometimes a handicraft, sometimes a philosophy, sometimes a mystery, and sometimes a science.


A History of Chemical Theories and Laws
Introduction
(p. vii)


Reference #: 2110

Mukaiyama, Teruaki
General Category: BUBBLE

Vigorous evoultion of gas, quick coloration to brown, and the formation of precipitates; there hidden, was the treasure of possibility in the bubbles of foam on the surface, which were observed in the reaction vessel in a corner of our small laboratory! For organic chemists, facing such an unpredictable phenomenon is not uncomman. In flasks, that which can be predicted by thought or discussion with co-workers often happens.


Challenges in Synthetic Organic Chemistry
Prologue
(p. 1)


Reference #: 2108

Mukaiyama, Teruaki
General Category: UNPREDICTABLE

Vigorous evolution of gas, quick coloration to brown, and the formation of precipitates; there, hidden, was the treasure of possibility in the bubbles of foam on the surface, which were observed in the reaction vessel in a corner of our small laboratory! For organic chemists, facing such an unpredictable phenomenon is not uncommon. In flasks, that which can never be predicted by thought or discussion with co-workers often happens.


Challenges in Synthetic Organic Chemistry


Reference #: 2109

Mukaiyama, Teruaki
General Category: CHEMIST

In studies of new synthetic reactions, a detailed study of the observed phenomenon will provide you with a hint that could be a 'seed' to open an entirely new area of promising development. To cherish the 'seed' that is picked up by your own hands, and to let its roots spread deep into the soil, will surely lead you to further interesting possibilities. Chemists should always bear in mind that to realize their goals they need to practise their bench work daily. It will surely make your dreams come true.


Challenges in Synthetic Organic Chemistry
Chapter 13
(pp. 210-211)


Reference #: 10887

Mullaney, James
General Category: STARS

The telescope is not just another gadget or material possession, but a magical gift to humankind - a window on creation, a time machine, a spaceship of the mind that enables us to roam the universe in a way that is surely the next best thing to being out there.


Sky & Telescope
March 1990


Reference #: 10891

Mullaney, James
General Category: STARS

Metaphysical aspects of star gazing - its potential as a vehicle for therapeutic relaxation, meditation, and spiritual contact with the awesome creative power manifests in all of nature but is pinnacled in the stars.


Sky & Telescope
March 1990


Reference #: 10893

Mullaney, James
General Category: LIGHT

The light we see coming from celestial objects brings us into direct personal contact with remote parts of the universe as the photons end their long journey across space and time on our retinas.


Sky & Telescope
Focal Point, Vol. 79, No. 3, 1990
(p. 244)


Reference #: 10886

Mullaney, James
General Category: TELESCOPE

The telescope in particular need to be regarded as not just another gadget or material possession but a wonderful, magical gift to humankind-a window on creation, a time machine, a spaceship of the mind that enables us to roam the universe in a way that is surely the next best thing to being out there.


Sky & Telescope
Focal Point, March 1990
(p. 244)


Reference #: 1912

Muller, H.J.
General Category: MUTATION

It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of natural mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing, just as changes accidentally introduced into any artificial mechanism are predominantly harmful to its useful operation.


Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
How Radiation Changes the Genetic Constitution, Vol. XI, No. 9, November 1955
(p. 331)


Reference #: 10065

Muller, H.J.
General Category: LIFE

To many an unsophisticated human being, the universe of stars seems only a fancy backdrop, provided for embellishing his own and his fellow creatures' performances. On the other hand, from the converse position, that of the universe of stars, not only all human beings but the totality of life is merely a fancy kind of rust, afflicting the surfaces of certain lukewarm minor planets. However, even when we admit our own littleness and the egotistical complexion of our interest in this rust, we remain confronted with the question: What is it that causes the rust to be so very fancy?


Science
Life, Vol. 121, 7 January, 1955
(p. 1)


Reference #: 10139

Muller, Herbert J.
General Category: SCIENCE

Although science is no doubt the Jehovah of the modern world, there is considerable doubt about the glory of its handiwork.


Science and Criticism
Chapter III
(p. 59)


Reference #: 10138

Muller, Herbert J.
General Category: SCIENCE

...men of science, men given to 'realism,' are likely to make a clean sweep of old interests and sentiments as so much rubbish. They regard religion as superstition, metaphysics as moonshine, art as primitive pastime, and all ritual as monkey-business.


Science and Criticism
Chapter I
(p. 6)


Reference #: 10142

Muller, Herbert J.
General Category: ANATOMY

To say...that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer.


Science and Criticism
Chapter V
(p. 107)


Reference #: 8707

Muller, Hermann J.
General Category: REPRODUCTION

When one considers how much the world owes to single individuals of the order of capability of an Einstein, Pasteur, Descartes, Leonardo, or Lincoln, it becomes evident how vastly society would be enriched if they were to be manifolded...Later generations will look with amazement at the pitifully small amount of research now being carried on to open up such possibilities, even though for years specialists have realized that they lie just around the corner...It is quite evident that we could benefit indefinitely by a continued increase in our mental powers: to enable us to analyze more profoundly; to recognize more readily common features when they lie deeply buried; to grasp more and more elements of a situation at once and co-ordinately; to see more steps ahead; to think more multidimensionally; and to imagine more creatively...If we hold fast to our ideal, then evolution will become, for the first time, a conscious process...That will be the highest form of freedom that man, or life, can have.


Perspectives in Biological Medicine
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 3:1, 1959


Reference #: 9421

Müller, Johannes
General Category: OBSERVATION

Observation is simple, indefatigable, industrious, upright, without any preconceived opinion. Experiment is artificial, impatient, busy, digressive, passionate, unreliable.


In V.J.E. Kruta
Purkyne Physiologist: A Short Account of His Contributions to the Progress of Physiology
(p. 20)


Reference #: 7812

Muller, Paul
General Category: PEST CONTROL

The field of pest control is immense, and many problems impatiently await a solution. A new territory has opened up for the synthetics chemist, a territory which is still unexplored and difficult, but which holds out the hope that in time further progress will be made.


Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1948


Reference #: 5526

Mulliken, R.S.
General Category: CALCULATION

...the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air.


J. Chem. Phys
43, S2(1965)


Reference #: 10373

Mullis, Kary B.
General Category: IDEA

Sometimes a good idea comes to you when you are not looking for it. Through an improbable combination of coincidence, naiveté and lucky mistakes .


Scientific American
The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction, April 1990
(p. 445)


Reference #: 7089

Mulock, Dinah Maria
General Category: BIRD CANARY

Sing away, ay, sing away,
Merry little bird,
Always gayest of the gay,
Though a woodland roundelay
You ne'er sung nor heard;
Though your life from youth to age
Passes in a narrow cage.


Miss Mulock's Poems
The Canary in his Cage


Reference #: 7088

Mulock, Dinah Maria
General Category: FLOWER BUTTERCUP

The buttercups across the field
Made sunshine rifts of splendor.


Miss Mulock's Poems


Reference #: 7159

Mulock, Dinah Maria (used pseudonym Mrs. Craik)
General Category: MOON

No rest—no dark.
Hour after hour that passionless bright face
Climbs up the desolate blue.


Moon-Struck


Reference #: 14817

Mulock, Dinah Maria (used pseudonym Mrs. Craik)
General Category: MOON

Hail, pallid crescent, hail!
Let me look on thee where thou sitt'st for aye
Like memory—ghastly in the glare of day,
But in the evening, light.


The Moon in the Morning


Reference #: 4486

Mumford, E.
General Category: MEDICINE

Medicine is the science of uncertainty and an art of probability


From Students to Physicians
(p. 158)
Harvard University Press, Cambridge; 1970


Reference #: 3194

Mumford, Lewis
General Category: INVENTION

By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed...


Conduct of Life
The Challenge of Renewal
(p. 14)


Reference #: 11732

Mumford, Lewis
General Category: SCIENCE

...however far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherentpossibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.


Technics and Civilization
Chapter VIII, Section 13
(p. 435)


Reference #: 15366

Mumford, Lewis
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The belief that science developed solely out of a pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is at best only a half truth, and at worst, mere self-flattery or self-deception on the part of the scientist.


The Pentagon of Power
(p. 106)


Reference #: 11731

Mumford, Lewis
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

...however far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.


Technics and Civilization
Chapter VIII
(p. 435)


Reference #: 10342

Mundell, Carole
General Category: QUASAR ATTRIBUTED

...observing quasars is like observing the exhaust fumes of a car from a great distance and then trying to figure out what is going on under the hood.


Scientific American
A new Look At Quasars, Vol. 278, No. 6, June 1998
(p. 57)


Reference #: 16491

Murchie, Guy
General Category: SPACETIME

...the key to comprehending space-time is the obvious (to me) fact that space is the relationship between things and other things while time is the relationship between things and themselves.


The Seven Mysteries of Life
(p. 331)


Reference #: 16492

Murchie, Guy
General Category: GENE

A gene is one step in the secret recipe for growing up, for living. It is a wave of the unseen wand that turns a tadpole into a frog, a caterpillar into a butterfly. It is a basic unit of heredity.


The Seven Mysteries of Life
Chapter 6
(p. 152)


Reference #: 16875

Murdin, Paul
General Category: ASTRONOMY

The aims of astronomy are nothing less than to search for the origins of the Universe and of its constituent stars and galaxies.


In Derek McNally
The Vanishing Universe
The Aims of Astronomy in Science and the Humanities: Why Astronomy Must Be Protected
(p. 16)


Reference #: 16876

Murdin, Paul
General Category: NIGHT

Astronomers, literally, and human beings in general, figuratively, need the interruption of the night.


In Derek McNally
The Vanishing Universe
The Aims of Astronomy in Science and the Humanities: Why Astronomy Must Be Protected
(p. 19)


Reference #: 13827

Murphy, Michael
General Category: PERCEPTION

To a frog with its simple eye, the world is a dim array of greys and blacks. Are we like frogs in our limited sensorium, apprehending just part of the universe we inhabit? Are we as a species now awakening to the reality of multidimensional worlds in which matter undergoes subtle reorganizations in some sort of hyperspace?


The Future of the Body


Reference #: 6513

Murray, Bruce
General Category: SPACE TRAVEL

I think space exploration is as important as music, as art, as literature. It's one of the things that we can do very well because of the way we're constructed as a society. It is one of the most important long-term endeavors of this generation, one upon which our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look back and say,


In Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Bruce Murray, Carl Sagan and Walter Sullivan
Mars and the Mind of Man
We Want Mars to be like the Earth
(p. 25)


Reference #: 6510

Murray, Bruce
General Category: SPACE

Space...is a colorful thread intimately woven into the enormous tapestry of human existence and experience.


In Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Bruce Murray, Carl Sagan and Walter Sullivan
Mars and the Mind of Man
Bruce Murray
(p. 47)


Reference #: 5748

Murray, Bruce
General Category: PLANET MARS

The Mars we had found was just a big moon with a thin atmosphere and no life. There were no martians, no canals, no water, no plants, no surface characteristics that even faintly resembled Earth's.


Journey into Space: The First Thirty Years of Space Exploration
W. W. Norton & Co., 1989


Reference #: 10406

Murray, Bruce
General Category: PLANET MARS

Extending out from the chaotic terrain ...are some extraordinary channels, which are also found in a number of other localities on the planet. It is hard to look at these channels without considering the possibility that they were cut by flowing water.


Scientific American
January, 1973


Reference #: 12479

Murray, Charlotte
General Category: BOTANY

The expensive apparatus of the Observatory, and the Labours of Chemistry, confine the science of Astronomy, and the study of Minerals to a few; whilst the research into the animal kingdom is attended with many obstacles which prevent its general adoption, and preclude minute investigation; but the study of Botany, that science by means of which we discriminate and distinguish one plant from another, is open to almost every curious mind; the Garden and the Field offer a constant source of unwearying amusement, easily obtained, and conducing to health, by affording a continual and engaging motive for air and exercise.


The British Garden


Reference #: 1416

Murray, Margaret
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGY

The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, or it growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious developments. Archaeology is the study of humanity itself, and unless that attitude toward the subject is kept in mind archaeology will be overwhelmed by impossible theories or a welter of flint chips.


Antiquity
First Steps in Archaeology, Vol. 35, 1961
(p. 13)


Reference #: 9898

Murray, Robert Fuller
General Category: ENGINEER

They went to the north, they went to the south,
And into the west went they,
Till they found a civil, civil engineer,
And unto him did say:`Now tell to us, thou civil engineer,
If this be fit to drink.'And they showed him a cup of the town water,
Which was as black as ink.


Robert F. Murray: His Poems
A Ballad of the Town Water


Reference #: 14614

Musil, Robert
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is a behavior, a passion. Essentially a forbidden behavior; for like an individual addicted to alcohol, sex, or violence, an unbalanced character develops the urgent need to know. It's not accurate to say that a scientist hunts down the truth; it hunts him down. It makes him suffer.


The Man Without Qualities


Reference #: 16367

Musser, George
General Category: NATURE

The basic rules of nature are simple, but their consummation may never lose its ability to surprise.


The Scientific American
From the Editors, Vol. 280, No. 1, January 1999
(p. 6)


Reference #: 10372

Musser, George
General Category: ENTROPY

No demon or mortal has ever challenged the second law of thermodynamics and won.


Scientific American
Taming Maxwell's Demon, February 1999
(p. 24)


Reference #: 687

Myers, Norman
General Category: WILD LIFE

Without knowing it, we utilize hundreds of products each day that owe their origin to wild animals and plants. Indeed our welfare is intimately tied up with the welfare of wildlife. Well may conservationists proclaim that by saving the lives of wild species, we may be saving our own.


A Wealth of Wild Species
Wild Species
(p. 3)


Reference #: 7957

Myrdal, Gunnar
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

All ignorance, like all knowledge, tends thus to be opportunist.


Objectivity in Social Research
Chapter III
(p. 19)


Reference #: 6163

Myrdal, Sigrid
General Category: SCIENCE AND WOMEN

There's the question of how you react when your data do not turn out the way you want them to. One possibility is to think 'Oh no, something went wrong, my experiment failed.' or 'Did I ask the question wrong?' and put the data in the drawer. I think the feminine approach is to ask 'What's this trying to tell me?' and consider that nature may be more interesting and complicated than I expected, but therefore probably a bit more elegant. By actually having to deal with the data, I've gome to totally different interpretations. If something turns out quite screwy, I give it a chance. It's possible that it's more feminine to give something a chance.


In Linda Jean Shepherd
Lifting the Veil
Receptivity
(p. 86)


Reference #: 723

Nabokov, Vladimir
General Category: RELATIVITY

At this point, I suspect, I should say something about my attitude to "Relativity." It is not sympathetic. What many cosmogonists tend to accept as an objective truth is really the flaw inherent in mathematics which parades as truth.


Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
(pp. 577-578)


Reference #: 7663

Nabokov, Vladimir
General Category: MOON LANDING

Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra ...these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known ...this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.


New York Times
Reactions to Man's Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions, A6, column 5, 21 July 1969


Reference #: 1663

Nabokov, Vladimir
General Category: ATOM

But the individual atom is free: it pulsates as it wants, in high or low gear; it decides itself when to absorb and when to radiate energy.


Bend Sinister
(p. 159)


Reference #: 724

Nabokov, Vladimir
General Category: TIME

Pure Time, Perceptual Time, Tangible Time, Time free of content, context, and running commentary - this is my time and theme. All the rest is numerical symbol or some aspect of Space. The texture of Space is not that of Time, and the piebald four-dimensional sport bred by relativists is a quadruped with one leg replaced by the ghost of a leg. My time is also Motionless Time (we shall presently dispose of "flowing" time, water-clock time, water-closet time).


Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
(p. 574)


Reference #: 13528

Nabokov, Vladimir
General Category: CONTROL

What can be controlled is never completely real; what is real can never be completely controlled.


In Ilya Prigogine
The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature
(p. 154)
The Free Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1997


Reference #: 14282

Nagel, Thomas
General Category: EVOLUTION

I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It is? t just that I do? t believe in God and, naturally, hope that ? m right in my belief. I4 s that I hope there is not God! I do? t want there to be a God; I do? t want the universe to be like that.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous over use of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind, Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental feature of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. There might still be thought to be a religious threat in the existence of the laws of physics themselves, and indeed the existence of anything at all - but it seems to be less alarming to most atheists.


The Last Word
(pp. 130-131)


Reference #: 3125

Nagle, James J.
General Category: GENETIC

Modern genetics is on the verge of some truly fantastic ways of 'improving' the human race,...but in what direction?


Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Genetic Engineering, December 1971
(p. 44)


Reference #: 10493

Nahum 3:14
General Category: MINERAL CLAY

Draw thee waters for the seige, fortify thy strong holds: go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brick kiln.


The Bible


Reference #: 4435

Nansen, Fridtjof
General Category: AURORA BOREALIS

The glowing fire-masses had divided into glistening, many coloured bands, which were writhing and twisting across the sky both in the south and north. The rays sparkled with the purest, most crystalline rainbow colours, chiefly violet-red or carmine and the clearest green. Most frequently the rays of the arch were red at the ends, and changed higher up into sparkling green..It was an endless phantasmagoria of sparkling colour, surpassing anything that one can dream. Sometimes the spectacle reached such a climax that one's breath was taken away; one felt that now something extraordinary must happen - at the very least the sky must fall.


Fridtjof Nansen: The Fram Expedition - Nansen in the Frozen World
A.G. Holman, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America; 1897


Reference #: 4202

Nansen, Fridtjof
General Category: ICE

Unseen and untrodden under this spotless mantle of ice the rigid polar regions slept profound sleep of death from the earliest dawn of time.


Farthest North
Vol. I, Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 3741

Napoleon
General Category: PYRAMIDS

From the top of those pyramids, forty centuries look down on you.


In Ralph Waldo Emerson
English Traits and Representative Men
Chapter VII
(p. 324)


Reference #: 13176

Narby, Jeremy
General Category: LANGUAGE

What if it were true that...nature talks in signs and the secret to understanding its language consists in noticing similarities in shape or in form. to understand its language, one has to pay attention to form?


The Cosmic Serpent
Chapter 5
(p. 44)


Reference #: 5986

Nash, John F.
General Category: THOUGHT

Rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.


Les Prix Nobel 1994
Autobiography


Reference #: 17700

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: FISH SMELT

Oh, why does man pursue the smelt?
It has no valuable pelt,
It boasts of no escutcheon royal,
It yields not ivory or oil,
Its life is dull, its death is tame,
A fish as humble as its name.
Yet—take this salmon somewhere else,
And bring me half a dozen smelts.


Verses from 1929 On
The Smelt


Reference #: 17265

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: BUBBLE

There was a young lady of Rome
Who made her detergents at home.
Now that old Riber Tiber
Is nothing but fiber
And blobs of gelatinous foam.


There was a young lady of Rome


Reference #: 17694

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: BIRD TOUCAN

The touca? s profile is prognathous,
Its person is a thing of bathos.
If even I can tell a toucan
I'm reasonably sure that you can.


Verses from 1929 On
The Toucan


Reference #: 17688

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE PYTHON

The python has, and I fib no fibs,
318 pairs of ribs.
In stating this I place reliance
On a séance with one who
Died for science.
This figure is sworn to and attested;
He counted them while being digested.


Verses from 1929 On
The Python


Reference #: 17705

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: INSECT TERMITE

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.


Verses from 1929 On
The Termite


Reference #: 17704

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: INSECT FIREFLY

The firefly's flame
Is something for which science has no name.
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified
red glow on a person's posterior.


Verses from 1929 On
The Firefly


Reference #: 17703

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: MOLLUSC CLAM

The clam, esteemed by gourmets highly,
Is said to live the life of Riley;
When you are lolling on a piazza
It' what you are as happy as a.


Verses from 1929 On
The Clam


Reference #: 16116

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: DENTIST

Some tortures are physical and some
are mental.
But one that's both is dental.


The Reader's Digest
Have You A Pash for Ogden Nash, July 1952
(p. 10)


Reference #: 17701

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: MOLLUSC OCTOPUS

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou. I'd call me Us.


Verses from 1929 On
The Octopus


Reference #: 17699

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL LLAMA

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any three-l lllama.


Verses from 1929 On
The Lama


Reference #: 17698

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: BIRD CANARY

The song of canaries
Never varies,
And when they're moulting
They're pretty revolting.


Verses from 1929 On
The Canary


Reference #: 17690

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: BIRD GRACKLE

The grackl? s voice is less than mellow,
His heart is black, his eye is yellow,
He bullies more attractive birds
With hoodlum deeds and vulgar words,
And should a human interfere,
Attacks that human in the rear.
O cannot help but deem the grackle
An ornithological debacle.


Verses from 1929 On
The Grackle


Reference #: 17693

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ENTOMOLOGY

He was an eminent etymologist, which is to say he knew nothing but bugs.
He could tell the Coleoptera from the Lepidoptera,
And the Aphidae and the Katydididae from the Grasshoptera.


Verses from 1929 On
The Strange Case of the Entomologist's Heart


Reference #: 17692

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: BIRD OSTRICH

The ostrich roams the great Sahara.
Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra.
It has such long and lofty legs,
I'm glad it sits to lay its eggs.


Verses from 1929 On
The Ostrich


Reference #: 17691

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: FISH GUPPY

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens.
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have little guppies.


Verses from 1929 On
The Guppy


Reference #: 17689

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: REPTILE COBRA

This creature fills its mouth with venum
And walks upon its duodenum.
He who attempts to tease the cobra
Is soon a sadder he, and sobra.


Verses from 1929 On
The Cobra


Reference #: 17695

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: FISH SHARK

How many Scientists have written
The shark is gentle as a kiten!
Yet this I know about the shark:
His bite is worser than his bark.


Verses from 1929 On
The Shark


Reference #: 17697

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL BAT

Myself, I rather like the bat,
It's not a mouse, it's not a rat.
It has no feathers, yet has wings,
It's quite inaudible when it sings.
It zigzags through the evening air
And never lands on ladies' hair,
A fact of which men spend their lives
Attempting to convince their wives.


Verses from 1929 On
The Bat


Reference #: 17702

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: INSECT FLY

Aunt Betsy was fixing to change her will,
And would have left us out in the chill.
A Glossina morsitans bit Aunt Betsy
Tsk, tsk, tsetse.


Verses from 1929 On
Glossina Morsitans, or, the Tsetse


Reference #: 17696

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL MANATEE

The manatee is harmless
And conspicuously charmless.
Luckily the manatee
Is quite devoid of vanity.


Verses from 1929 On
The Manatee


Reference #: 4045

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: FISH KIPPER

For half a century, man and nipper,
I've doted on a tasty kipper,
But since I am no Jack the Ripper
I wish the kipper had a zipper.


Everyone But Thee and Me
The Kipper
(p. 63)


Reference #: 4044

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL DOG

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state the dog is full of love.
I've also proved by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.


Everyone But Thee and Me
The Dog
(p. 71)


Reference #: 4043

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL ARMADILLO

The armadillo lives inside
A corrugated plated hide.
Below the border this useful creature
Of tidy kitchens us a feature,
For housewives use an armadillo
To scour their pots, instead of Brillo.


Everyone But Thee and Me
The Armadillo


Reference #: 8526

Nash, Ogden
Born: 19 August, 1902 in Rye, New York, United States of America
Died: 19 May, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
General Category: ARITHMETIC

...the only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions
Is by their actions.


Parents Keep Out
Ask Daddy, He Won't Know


Reference #: 16096

Nashe, Thomas
General Category: DEATH

Adieu! farewell eart? s bliss!
This world uncertain is:
Fond are life's lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys.
None from his darts can fly:
I am sick, I must die—
Lord, have mercy on us!


In Robert Coope
The Quiet Art
(p. 155)


Reference #: 10137

National Academy of Sciences
General Category: SCIENCE

Scientists must be fact-seekers, open-minded, and willing to accept changes indicated by the signposts of evidence.


Science and Creationism—A View from the National Academy of Sciences
(p. 5).
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press 1984


Reference #: 10136

National Academy of Sciences
General Category: SCIENCE

...the goal of science is to seek naturalistic explanations of phenomena and the origins of life, the earth, and the universe are, to scientists, such phenomena within the framework of natural laws and principles and the operational rule of testability. [The academy has gone to great pains to emphasize the 'natural' rather than the 'supernatural,' but they have failed to provide us with a clear and rigorous way to distinguish the supernatural from the so-called natural. In BGN science the terms natural and supernatural are largely primitive, being brought in from the overseeing enquiry of NP. This causes no real problem because BGN science doesn't investigate the ultimate nature of the physical world. If a phenomena can be described either causally, statistically, or phenomenologically then it fall under the auspices of science.]


Science and Creationism—A View from the National Academy of Sciences
(p. 26).
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press 1984


Reference #: 10135

National Academy of Sciences
General Category: SCIENCE

Scientific investigators seek to understand natural phenomena by direct observation and experimentation. Scientific interpretation of facts are always provisional and must be testable. In broadest terms, scientists seek a systematic organization of knowledge about the universe and its parts. This knowledge is based on explanatory principles ...


Science and Creationism—A View from the National Academy of Sciences
(p. 8)
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press 1984


Reference #: 7341

National Geographic Society
General Category: COMET

Comets are the nearest thing to nothing that anybody can be and still be something.


National Geographic Society
Concerning the comet of 31 March 1955


Reference #: 3712

National Society of Professional Engineers
General Category: CREED

As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare.

I Pledge:
To give the utmost of performance;
To participate in none but honest enterprise;
To live and work according to the laws of man and the highest standards of professional conduct.
To place service before profit, the honor and standing of the profession before personal advantage, and the public welfare above all other considerations.
In humility and with need for Divine Guidance, I make this pledge.


Engineers' Creed
Adopted June 1954


Reference #: 9949

Navajo folk saying
General Category: BEAUTY

Beauty is before me.
Beauty is behind me.
Beauty is below me.
Beauty is above me.
I walk in beauty.


In Sigurd F. Olson
Runes of the North
(pp. 14-15)


Reference #: 13235

Neal, Patricia
General Category: COMMUNICATION

Gort, Klaatu berada nikto!


The Day the Earth Stood Still
20th Century Fox, 1951


Reference #: 10951

Neaves, Charles, Lord
General Category: EVOLUTION

Pouter, tumbler and fantail are from the same source;
The racer and hack may be traced to one horse;
So men were developed from monkeys of course
Which nobody can deny.


In John Burroughs (ed.)
Songs of Nature
The Origin of Species


Reference #: 4249

Needham, James G.
General Category: BIOLOGY

It is a monstrous abuse of the science of biology to teach it only in the laboratory....Life belongs in the fields, in the ponds, on the mountains and by the seashore.


In Allen H. Benton and William E. Werner
Field Biology and Ecology
(p. 3)


Reference #: 9464

Needham, James G.
General Category: LIFE

...to the scientific mind the living and the non-living form one continuous series of systems of differing degrees of complexity..., while to the philosophic mind the whole universe, itself perhaps an organism, is composed of a vast number of interlacing organisms of all sizes.


Quarterly Review of Biology
Developments in Philosophy of Biology, Vol. III, No. 1, March 1928
(p. 79)


Reference #: 17386

Needham, Joseph
General Category: ORGANIZATION

Organization and Energy are the two fundamental problems which all science has to solve.


Time: The Refreshing River
(p. 33)


Reference #: 13915

Needham, Joseph
General Category: LAW OF NATURE

There was no confidence that the code of Nature's laws could be unveiled and read, because there was no assurance that a divine being, even more rational than ourselves, had ever formulated such a code capable of being read.


The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West
(p. 350)


Reference #: 8172

Needham, Joseph
General Category: ORGANIZATION

Organization is not something mystical and inaccessible to scientific attack, but rather the basic problem confronting the biologist....It is for us to investigate the nature of this biological organization, not to abandon it to the metaphysicians because the rules of physics do not seem to apply to it.


Order and Life
Chapter I
(pp. 7, 17-18)


Reference #: 9353

Nehru, P.
General Category: PROBLEM

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people.


Proceedings of the National Institute of Science of India
Speech, Vol. 27, 1960
(p. 564)


Reference #: 2480

Neigher, Harry
General Category: MEDICAL

They were gabbing, at the Pen & Pencil, about a medical specialist in Greenwich who is so suspicious of late he gets the feeling someone's listening in on his stethoscope.


Connecticut Sunday Herald
February 19, 1967


Reference #: 18079

Nekrasov, Nikolai
General Category: SCIENCE

Therre is no science for the sake of science, no art for the sake of art—they exist for the sake of society, for the ennoblement and exaltation of man, to enrich his knowledge and provide his material comforts.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 8303

Nelkin, Dorothy
General Category: CREATIONISM

Creationism is a 'gross perversion of scientific theory'. Scientific theory is derived from a vast mass of data and hypotheses, consistently analysed; creation theory is 'God given and unquestioned', based on an a priori commitment to a six-day creation. Creationists ignore the interplay between fact and theory, eagerly searching for facts to buttress their beliefs. Creationism cannot be submitted to independent testing and has no predictive value, for it is a belief system that must be accepted on faith.


Science Textbook Controversies and the Politics of Equal Time
Chapter 6
(p. 89)


Reference #: 1399

Nernst, W.
General Category: HISTORY

It is often easy to write history, but it is always more dificult to learn anything from the history after it is written.


Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1908
Development of General and Physical Chemistry During the Last Forty Years
(p. 253)


Reference #: 7847

Nernst, Walther
General Category: QUANTUM

Here again it was the quantum theory which came to the rescue.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Physics)
Nobel Lecture, December, 1921


Reference #: 7833

Nernst, Walther
General Category: CHEMISTRY

...generally speaking it is better, where possible in natural science, to study objects of research independently of the accidents of their historical development.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1921


Reference #: 1456

Neter, JohnWasserman, William
General Category: STATISTICS

...statistics refers to the methodology for the collection, presentation, and analysis of data, and for the uses of such data.


Applied Statistics
(p. 1)


Reference #: 13623

Neugebauer, Otto
General Category: ASTRONOMY

I do not hesitate to assert that I consider astronomy as the most important force in the development of science since its origin sometime around 500 B.C....


The Exact Sciences in Antiquity
Introduction
(p. 2)


Reference #: 17049

Neuman, James R.
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics was founded by John Graunt of London, a "haberdasher of small-wares" in a tiny book called Natural and Political Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality.


The World of Mathematics
Vol. 3
(p. 1416)
Simon and Schuster, New York. 1956


Reference #: 2371

Neumann, John von
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

After all, classical mathematics was producing results which were both elegant and useful, and, even though one could never again be absolutely certain of its reliability, it stood on at least as sound a foundation as, for example, the existence of the electron. Hence, if one was willing to accept the sciences, one might as well accept the classical system of mathematics.


Collected Works
Vol. I, The Works of the Mind, The Mathematician
(p. 6)


Reference #: 2367

Neumann, John von
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much 'abstract' inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration. At the inception the style is usually classical; when it shows signs of becoming baroque, then the danger signal is up ....In any event, whenever this stage is reached, the only remedy seems to me to be the rejuvenating return to the source: the reinjection of more or less directly empirical ideas. I am convinced that this was a necessary condition to conserve freshness and vitality of the subject and that this will remain equally true in the future.


Collected Works
Vol. I, The Works of the Mind, The Mathematician
(p. 6, 9)


Reference #: 2368

Neumann, John von
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much "abstract" inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration. At the inception the style is usually classical; when it shows signs of becoming baroque, then the danger signal is up ....In any event, whenever this stage is reached, the only remedy seems to me to be the rejuvenating return to the source: the reinjection of more or less directly empirical ideas. I am convinced that this was a necessary condition to conserve freshness and vitality of the subject and that this will remain equally true in the future.


Collected Works
Vol. I, The Works of the Mind, The Mathematician
(p. 6 and p. 9)


Reference #: 2369

Neumann, John von
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics is not an empirical science, or at least that it is practiced in a manner which differs in several decisive respects from the techniques of the empirical sciences.


Collected Works
Vol. I, The Works of the Mind, The Mathematician
(p. 6)


Reference #: 2370

Neumann, John von
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...much of the best mathematical inspiration comes from experience and that it is hardly possible to believe in the existence of an absolute, immutable concept of mathematical rigor, dissociated from all human experience.


Collected Works
Vol. I, The Works of the Mind, The Mathematician
(p. 6)


Reference #: 2372

Neumann, John von
General Category: MODEL

...the sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models.


Collected Works
Vol. VI, Method in the Physical Sciences
(p. 492)


Reference #: 13220

Neumann, John von
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.


In G. Zukav
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
(fn, p. 226)


Reference #: 4836

Newcomb, Simon
General Category: ASTRONOMY

[astronomy] seems to have the strongest hold on minds which are not intimately acquainted with its work. The view taken by such minds is not distracted by the technical details which trouble the investigator, and its great outlines are seen through an atmosphere of sentiment, which softens out the algebraic formulae with which the astronomer is concerned into those magnificent conceptions of creation which are the delight of all minds, trained or untrained.


Harper's Magazine
February 1885


Reference #: 17635

Newell, A.
General Category: THEORY

Working with theories is not like skeet shooting, where theories are lofted up and bang, they are shot down with a falsification bullet, and that's the end of that theory. Theories are mor like graduate students-once admitted you try hard to avoid flunking them out, it being much better for them and for the world if they can become long-term contributors to society.


Unified Theories of Cognition
Introduction
(p. 14)


Reference #: 4094

Newman, H.H.
General Category: EVOLUTION

There are no rival hypotheses except the outworn and completely refuted idea of special creation, now retained only by the ignorant, the dogmatic, and the prejudiced.


Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics
Chapter III
(p. 51)


Reference #: 14148

Newman, J.H.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge only exists when it is brought into being and upheld by minds. Science only exists in living scientists. If all men
Died knowledge would no longer exist, though the mere brute reality of the universe would continue.


The Idea of the University
(p. 55)


Reference #: 17050

Newman, James
General Category: SYMMETRY

Symmetry establishes a ridiculous and wonderful cousinship between objects, phenomena, and theories outwardly unrelated: terrestial magnetism, women's veils, polarized light, natural selection, the theory of groups, invariants and transformations, the work habits of bees in the hive, the structure of space, vase designs, quantum physics, scarabs, flower petals, X-ray interference patterns, cell division in sea urchins, equilibrium positions in crystals, Romanesque cathedrals, snowflakes, music, the theory of relativity.


The World of Mathematics
Vol. 1
(p. 669)
Simon and Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America 1956


Reference #: 7657

Newman, James R.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

There are two ways to teach mathematics. One is to take real pains toward creating understanding visual aids, that sort of thing. The other is the old British system of teaching until you're blue in the face.


New York Times
September 39, 1956


Reference #: 10414

Newman, James R.
General Category: PHYSICIST

In this century the professional philosophers have let the physicists get away with murder. It is a safe bet that no other group of scientists could have passed off and gained acceptance for such an extraordinary principle as complementarity, nor succeeded in elevating indeterminacy to a universal law.


Scientific American
Book Review of


Reference #: 10531

Newman, James R.
General Category: PHYSICIST

In this century the professional philosophers have let the physicists get away with murder. It is a safe bet that no other group of scientists could have passed off and gained acceptance for such an extraordinary principle as complementary, nor succeeded in elevating indeterminacy to a universal law.


Scientific American
Book Review 1958


Reference #: 10407

Newman, James R.
General Category: IDEA

Great ideas emerge from the common cauldron of intellectual activity, and are rarely cooked up in private kettles from original recipes.


Scientific American
June 1960


Reference #: 17053

Newman, James, R
General Category: MATHEMATICS

mathematics is nourished by dreamers - as it nourishes them....


The World of Mathematics
The Rhind Papyrus
(P. 170)
Simon and Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America NY,. 1956


Reference #: 17054

Newman, James, R.
General Category: NEPTUNE

The discovery in 1846 of the planet Neptune was a dramatic and spectacular achievement of mathematical astronomy. The very existence of this new member of the solar system, and its exact location, were demonstrated with pencil and paper; there was left to observers only the routine task of pointing their telescopes at the spot the mathematicians had marked.


The World of Mathematics
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956


Reference #: 6042

Newman, John Henry
General Category: EVOLUTION

...I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with a Almighty Creator and Protector.


Letters and Diaries
Letter to David Brown, 4 April 1874
(p. 44)


Reference #: 9025

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: GEOLOGICAL

For several thousand endless ages
It [earth] muddled thru its early stages
Of heat, eruptions, floods, and quakes
And other infant belly-aches.
Surviving all such pains and notions
It settled down to land and oceans.
In eras which are known as "glacials"
The planet then got several facials.
Four geological massages
In four succesive Ice barrages
Which filled its unbecoming dimples
And leveled off some rocky pimples.


Poems for Penguins
Geology


Reference #: 9030

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: EARTH

This ball was once a glowing mass
Of mixed and superheated gas
Which cooled to liquid, shrank in girth,
Solidified and turned to earth.


Poems for Penguins
Geology


Reference #: 9029

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: MOLECULE

Quite recentl?&to be exact,
Within a billion years, in fact.
Some time before the glacial drift
Had given the planet's face a lift,
A group of shameless molecules
Broke all the inorganic rules
And (C.I.O. epitomized!)
Spontaneously organized.


Poems for Penguins
Biology


Reference #: 9028

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: DARWINISM

What countless procreative mates
Brought plasmic cells to vertebrates
And blazed the long ancestral trails
That substituted brains for tails!
For when the human kind began
It did not spring full-blown to man;
It started from the very seed
That branched to snail and centipede,
And which, by devious ways Darwinian,
Made oyster, lobster, and Virginian.


Poems for Penguins
Anthropology


Reference #: 9026

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: CHROSOME

All living protoplasmic cells
That make up frogs or pimpernels
Or men or hippopotami
Have portions known as nuclei.
Within these microscopic homes
There lurk our fateful chromosomes,
Those strange hereditary factors
That make us good or bad actors,
That shape our lips and chins and eyebrows
And predetermine fools and highbrows.


Poems for Penguins
Heredity


Reference #: 9021

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: TRILOBITE

A million years ago, or six...perhaps as much as seven,
When rhizopods were spewing forth the chalky cliffs of Devon,
Upon a cool and mossy rock, beneath a bed of sedum,
A trilobite named Annie lived in trilobitish freedom.


Poems for Penguins
The Trilobite


Reference #: 9024

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: MOLECULE

There's none to say how carbon first
Conceived it ocy-hydric thirst—
How nitrogen, in right proportion,
And sulphur joined the strange consortion—
But close upon the tenuous verge
Where shadows end, does life emerge,
And from these elemental five
Sprang proteid molecules alive!


Poems for Penguins
Biochemistry


Reference #: 9022

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: PRIMORDIAL

A highly speculative void
Divides the germ and anthropoid
But we've discovered certain clues
In fossilized primordial ooze
Where ancient polyps lived and
Died
And countless myriads multiplied.


Poems for Penguins
Biology


Reference #: 9023

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Thus man, in essence, seems to be
A problem based on chemistry.


Poems for Penguins
Biochemistry


Reference #: 9027

Newman, Joseph S.
General Category: MAN

Man is
Born, eats, procreates, and die?&
This sequence of events alike applies
To horses, herring, crocodiles, and flies.


Poems for Penguins
Biochemistry


Reference #: 6565

Newman, M.H.A.
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

That mathematical theory is a lasting object to believe in few can doubt. Mathematical language is difficult but imperishable. I do not believe that any Greek scholar of to-day can understand the idiomatic undertones of Plato's dialogues, or the jokes of Aristophanes, as thoroughly as mathematicians can understand every shade of meaning in Archimedes' works.


Mathematical Gazette
What is Mathematics?, Vol. 43, No. 345, October 1959
(p. 167)


Reference #: 16354

Newman, Michael
General Category: VIRUS

Observe this virus: think how small
Its arsenal, and yet how loud its call;
It took my cell, now takes your cell,
And when it leaves will take our genes as well.


The Sciences
Cloned Poem, 1982


Reference #: 14244

Newman, Sir George
General Category: PATIENTS

There are four questions which in some form or other every patient asks his doctor:(a) What is the matter with me? This is diagnosis.(b) Can you put me right? This is treatment and prognosis.(c) How did I get it? This is causation.(d) How can I avoid it in future This is prevention.


The Lancet
Preventive Medicine for the Medical Student (p. 113)Volume 221, November 21, 1931


Reference #: 3692

Newton, Charles Thomas
General Category: PAST

The record of the Human Past is not all contained in printed books. Man's history has been graven on the rocks of Egypt, stamped on the bricks of Assyria, enshrined in the marble of the Parthenon-it rises before us a majestic Presence in the piled-up arches of the Coliseum-it lurks an unsuspected treasure amid the oblivious dust of archives and monasteries-it is embodied in all the heirlooms of religions, of races, of families; in the relics which affection and gratitude, peronal or national, pride of country or pride of lineage, have preserved for us...


Essays on Art and Archaeology
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 17875

Newton, Roger G.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is, in fact, an intricate ediface erected from complex, imaginative designs in which esthetics is a more powerful incentive than utility. Beauty, finally, comprises its greatest intellectual appeal.


What Makes Nature Tick?
Epilogue
(p. 236)
Harvard University Press, Cambridge; 1993


Reference #: 17874

Newton, Roger G.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not holy scripture, nor do its practitioners consider themselves priests protecting a glittering grail, forever unchanging and pure. What drives scientists on is the thirst to understand more and to use nature, to build rather than to exploit a comprehensible universe.


What Makes Nature Tick?
Epilogue
(p. 234)


Reference #: 17244

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MATTER

As to your first query, it seems to me that if the matter of our sun and planets and all the matter of the universe were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity toward all the rest, and the whole space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite, the matter on the outside of this space would, by its gravity, tend toward all the matter on the inside and, by consequence, fall down into the middle of the whole space and there compose one great spherical mass.


Theories of the Universe
I, Four Letters to Richard Bentley, December 10, 1692
(p. 211)


Reference #: 6433

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: GEOMETRY

...it is the glory of geometry that from so few principles, fetched from without, it is able to produce so many things.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Preface to the First Edition


Reference #: 4608

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MATTER

And much harder it is to suppose that all ye particles in an infinite space should be so accurately poised one among another as to stand still in a perfect equilibrium. For I reccon this as hard as to make not one needle only but an infinite number of them (so many as there are particles in an infinite space) stand accurately poised upon their points.


Letter to Richard Bentley, 10 December 1692


Reference #: 6432

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: TIME

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Definitions, Scholium I


Reference #: 970

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: LINE

We ought either to exclude all lines, beside the circle and right line, out of geometry, or admit them according to the simplicity of their descriptions, in which case the Conchoid yields to none except the circle. That is arithmetically more simple, which is determined by the more simple equations, but that is geometrically more simple, which is determined by the more simple drawing of lines.


In William Allen
American Journal of Science
On the Curves of Trisection, Vol. 4, 1822
(p. 344)


Reference #: 6434

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: FORCE

...nor could the moon without some such force be retained in its orbit. If this force was too small, it would not sufficiently turn the moon out of a rectilinear course; if it were too great, it would turn it too much, and draw down the moon from its orbit towards the earth.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Definitions, Definition V


Reference #: 6032

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MATTER

It seems to me, that if the matter of our Sun and Planets and all ye matter in the Universe was evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest and the whole space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite: the matter on ye outside of this space would by its gravity tend towards all ye matter on the inside and by consequence fall down to ye middle of the whole space and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly diffused though an infinite space, it would never convene into one mass.


Letter to Richard Bentley, 10 December 1692


Reference #: 6435

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Book III, Rule IV


Reference #: 54

Newton, Sir Isaac
General Category: DISCOVERY

I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait till the fitst dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light.


In Robert Grant
History of Physical Astronomy, from the Earliest Ages to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century
Chapter II
(p. 40)


Reference #: 6438

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MATTER

The quantity of matter is the measure of the same, arising from its density and bulk conjointly.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Definitions, Definition I


Reference #: 5310

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: SPACE

Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Scholium, II


Reference #: 6439

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MOTION

The quantity of motion is the measure of the same, arising from the velocity and quantity of matter conjointly.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Definitions, Definition II


Reference #: 6815

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: GRAVITY

To understand the motions of the planets under the influence of gravity without knowing the cause of gravity is as good a progress in philosophy as to understand the frame of a clock and the dependence of the wheels upon one another without knowing the cause of the gravity of the weight.


Memoirs of Literature
XVIII


Reference #: 6818

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: TRUTH

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.


In David Brewster
Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton
Volume II, Chapter 27
(p. 331)


Reference #: 6436

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Book III, General Scholium


Reference #: 6437

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: ERROR

...the errors are not the art, but in the artifiers.


Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Preface to the First Edition


Reference #: 8154

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: ATTRACTION

By the Table in the second Part of the second Book, wherein the thicknesses of colour'd Plates of Water between two Glasses are set down, the thickness of the Plate where it appears very black, is three eighths of the ten hundred thousandth part of an Inch. And where the Oil of Oranges between the Glasses is of this thickness, the Attraction collected by the foregoing Rule, seems to be so strong, as within a Circle of an Inch in diameter, to su_ce to hold up a Weight equal to that of a Cylinder of Water of an Inch in diameter, and two or three Furlongs in length. And where it is of a less thickness the Attraction may be proportionally greater, and continue to increase, until the thickness do not exceed that of a single Particle of the Oil. There are therefore Agents in Nature able to make the Particles of Bodies stick together by very strong Attractions. And it is the Business of experimental Philosophy to _nd them out.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book III: Part I, Query 31
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15819

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: GRAVITY

You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it.


In Richard Bentley
The Works of Richard Bentley
L etters from Sir Isaac Newton, Letter I, Vol. 3
(p. 210)


Reference #: 10830

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: DISCOVERY

No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.


In W.I.B. Beveridge
The Art of Scientific Investigation
Chapter Eleven
(p. 145)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1957


Reference #: 9248

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: NATURE

I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of Nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles, for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled toward one another, and cohere in regular rigures, or are repelled and recede from one another.


Principia Mathematica
Preface to the First Edition


Reference #: 8164

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: TELESCOPE

If the Theory of making Telescopes could at length be fully brought into Practice, yet there would be certain Bound beyond which Telescopes could not perform.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book 1, Part 1, Proposition viii, problem 2
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8153

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: GRAVITY

...what hinders the fixed stars from falling upon one another?


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book III, Part I, Query 28
(p. 529)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8161

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: DEFINITIONS

My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove by Reason and Experiments: In order to which I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book One, Part I
(p. 379)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8156

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

As in mathematics, so in natural philosophy the investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition. This analysis consists of making experiments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction...By this way of analysis we may proceed from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to the forces producing them; and in general from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones till the argument end in the most general. This is the method of analysis: and the synthesis consists in assuming the causes discovered and established as principles, and by them explaining the phenomena preceding from them, and proving the explanations.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book III: Part I, Query 31
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 9247

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

The vapours which arise from the sun, the fixed stars, and the tails of comets, may meet at last with, and fall into, the atmospheres of the planets by their gravity, and there be condensed and turned into water and humid spirits; and from thence, by a slow heat, pass gradually into the form of salts, and sulphurs, and tinctures, and mud, and clay, and sand, and stones, and coral, and other terrestrial substances.


Principia Mathematica


Reference #: 8163

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: NATURE

For Nature is very consonant and conformable to herself.


In Eugene Hecht
Optics
Book III, Part 1, Question 31
(p. 531)


Reference #: 8162

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MATTER

...it seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book II, Part I(very near the end)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8159

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: LIGHT

Are not the Rays of Light very small Bodies emitted from shining Substances?


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book III, Part I, Query 29
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8160

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: HEAT

Do not all fixed bodies, when heated beyond a certain degree, emit light and shine; and is not this emission performed by the vibrating motions of their parts?


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book III, Part 1, Query 8
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8152

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: UNIVERSE

...since Space is divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may be also allow'd that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sort in several Parts of the Universe.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Query 31
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8157

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: FORCE

The parts of all homogeneal hard bodies which fully touch one another stick together very strongly. And for explaining how this may be, some have invented hooked atoms, which is begging the question; and others tell us that bodies are glued together by rest...and others, that they stick together by conspiring motions....I had rather infer from their cohesion that their particles attract one another by some force, which in immediate contact is exceedingly strong, at small distances performs the chemical operations above mentioned, and reaches not far from the particle with any sensible effect.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Optics
Book Three, Chapter I (3/4 way through chapter)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14666

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

...if instead of sending the Observations of seamen to able Mathematicians at Land, the Land would send able Mathematicians to Sea, it would signify much more to the improvement of Navigatin and safety of Men's lives and estates on the alement.


In E.G.R. Taylor
The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England
(p. 119)


Reference #: 14667

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: OCCAM'S RAZOR

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.


The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Book Three, Rule I
(p. 270)


Reference #: 8906

Newton, Sir Isaac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: MOTION

...from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena...the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon and the sea...


In Eric M. Rogers
Physics for the Inquiring Mind
(p. 1)


Reference #: 4797

Newton, Sir Issac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: PHYSICS

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses.


Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Definitions, Scholium
(p. 12)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, 1952


Reference #: 4796

Newton, Sir Issac
Born: 25 December, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 20 March, 1727 in Kensington, London, England
General Category: PHYSICS

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceived those quantities under not other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects...Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external remains always similar and immovable.


Great Books of the Western World, Volume 34
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Definitions, Scholium
(p. 8)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, 1952


Reference #: 6577

Newton's Epitaph
General Category: NEWTON, SIR ISSAC

Who, by a vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.


In Morris Kline
Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
(p. 342)


Reference #: 445

Nicholas of Cusa
General Category: SYMBOL

If we approach the Divine through symbols, them it is most suitable that we use mathematical symbols, these have an indestructible certainty.


In Stanley Gudder
A Mathematical Journey
(p. 349)
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1976


Reference #: 17012

Nichols, Jack
General Category: GOD

When God makes a mistake, they call it nature.


The Witches of Eastwood
movie


Reference #: 16032

Nicholson, Norman
General Category: UNIVERSE DYING

And if the universe
Reversed and showed
The colour of its money;
If now observable light
Flowed inward, and the skies snowed
A blizzard of galaxies,
The lens of night would burn
Brighter than the focussed sun,
And man turn blinded
With white-hot darkness in his eyes.


The Pot Geranium
The Expanding Universe


Reference #: 2328

Nicholson, Norman
General Category: COMET

It's here at last. Eyes in the know
Had spotted it two years ago,
A microscopic smut on film.
...
Anxious astronomers protest:
Give them a month, and they'll know just what
The frozen core is made of, test
The fluorescence tailing from it,
Fanned out in the solar wind.


Collected Poems
Comet Come


Reference #: 7023

Nicholson, Norman
General Category: UNKNOWN

No man has seen it; nor the lensed eye
That pin-points week by week the same patch of sky
Records even a blur across its pupil; only
The errantry of Saturn, the wry
Retarding of Uranus, speak
Of the pull beyond the pattern:-The unknown is shown
Only by a bend in the known.


In Neil Curry (ed.)
Norman Nicholson Collected Works
The Undiscovered Planet


Reference #: 7022

Nicholson, Norman
General Category: FOSSIL

In the bones of the rock
The fossils are living,
Crinoid and ammonite;
In the red of the rock
(Sandstone and haematite)
The fossils are moving,
Coiling, crawling,
Aching for the sea.


In Neil Curry (ed.)
Norman Nicholson Collected Poems
Fossils


Reference #: 428

Nicholson, Norman
General Category: FUNGI

The toadstool towers infest the shore:
Stink-horns that propagate and spore
Wherever the wind blows.


A Local Habitation
Windscale


Reference #: 8177

Nickon, Alex Silversmith, Ernest F.
General Category: CHEMIST

Organic chemists need to keep a great many facts and concepts in their heads. Not surprisingly, therefore, they sometimes name compounds after head coverings, protecting, as it were, this storehouse of knowledge.


Organic Chemistry: The Name Game
Chapter 2
(p. 20)


Reference #: 8176

Nickon, Alex Silversmith, Ernest F.
General Category: CHEMIST

Chemists spend a good deal of time inside buildings, so it is natural for them to relate the shapes of molecules to the ubiquitous structures.


Organic Chemistry: The Name Game
Chapter 4
(p. 50)


Reference #: 7798

Nicolle, Charles
General Category: TYPHUS

And this is the ultimate lesson that our knowledge of the mode of transmission of typhus has taught us: Man carries on his skin a parasite, the louse. Civilization rids him of it. Should man regress, should he allow himself to resemble a primitive beast, the louse begins to multiply again and treats man as he deserves, as a brute beast.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)


Reference #: 10826

Nicolle, Charles
General Category: ERROR

Error is all around us and creeps in at the least opportunity. Every method is imperfect.


In W.I.B. Beveridge
The Art of Scientific Investigation
Chapter Nine
(p. 102)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1957


Reference #: 5431

Nicomachus of Gerasa
General Category: ARITHMETIC

...arithmetic...which is the mother of geometry...


Introduction to Arithmetic
Translation, Book II, Chapter VI, 1
(p. 237)


Reference #: 14075

Niebuhr, Barthold Georg
General Category: DISCOVERY

...he who calls what has vanished back again into being, enjoys a bliss like that of creating.


The History of Rome
Vol. I, The History of Rome
(p. 4)


Reference #: 3999

Nielsen, Kai
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

We must be on guard against the irrational heart of rationalism and not set out on the quest for certainty.


Ethics Without God (Revised Edition)
(p. 47)
Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, United States of America; 1990


Reference #: 16984

Nietzsche Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: FORMULA

The calculability of the world, the expressibility of all events in formulas - is this really "comprehension"? How much of a piece of music has been understood when that in it which is calculabe and can be reduced to formulas has been reckoned up.


The Will to Power


Reference #: 7923

Nietzsche Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: CALCULATION

No more fiction for us: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.


In Tobias Dantzig
Number: The Language of Science (Fourth Edition)
(p. 139)
The Macmillan Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1954


Reference #: 8141

Nietzsche Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: KNOWING

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.


On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense


Reference #: 2415

Nietzsche, Frederick
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: UNIVERSE

If the universe may be conceived as a definite quantity of energy, as a definite number of centers of energy—and every other concept remains indefinite and therefore useless—it follows therefore that the universe must go through a calculable number of combinations in the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity, at some moment or other, every possible combination must have once have been realized; not only this, but it must have been realized an infinite number of times.


Complete Works
Vol. IX
(p. 430)
Foulis, Edinburgh; 1913


Reference #: 13052

Nietzsche, Fredrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Before the effect one believes in other causes than after the effect.


The Complete Works of Fredrich Nietzsche
The Joyful Wisdom, III, No. 217


Reference #: 13053

Nietzsche, Fredrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: CHANCE

No conqueror believes in chance.


The Complete Works of Fredrich Nietzsche
The Joys of Wisdom, III, No. 258


Reference #: 17319

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: SUN

...the Moo? s love affair has come to an end!
Just look! There it stands; pale and dejected—before the dawn!
For already it is coming, the glowing Sun—its love of the Earth is coming! All sun-love is innocence and creative desire!
Just look how it comes impatiently over the sea! Do you not feel the thirst and hot breath of its love?


Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Of Immaculate Perception
(p. 146)


Reference #: 16964

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: UNKNOWN

To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power, Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown-the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none...


In Alexander Tille (ed.)
The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
Vol. XI, Twilight of the Idols, The Four Great Errors, Section 5
(p. 138)


Reference #: 16965

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: SPECIES

The species does not grow into perfection: the weak again and again get the upper hand of the strong, - their large number, and their greater cunning are the cause of it.


In Alexander Tille
The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
Vol. XI, The Twilight of the Idols, Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher, Section 14
(p. 174)


Reference #: 17567

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: PURPOSE

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.


Twilight of the Idols
Maximums and Arrows, 12


Reference #: 17566

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

...architecture is a kind of oratory in forms, sometimes persuading or even flattering, sometimes simply commanding.


Twilight of the Idols
Raids of an Untimely Man, 11
(p. 57)


Reference #: 1689

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: THEORY

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable...


Beyond Good and Evil
Chapter I, 18


Reference #: 7704

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: PHYSICS

We must be physicists in order to be creators in that sense, - whereas until now all appreciations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics, or in the contradiction thereto. And therefore, three cheers for physics; and still louder cheers for that which impels us thereto - our honesty.


Nietzsche - Schlechta
Vol. III, Joyful Wisdom
(p. 197)


Reference #: 5084

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics, which would certainly have not originated if it had been known from the beginning that there is no exactly straight line in nature, no real circle, no absolute measure.


Human, All-Too-Human
Section ONE, No. 11
(p. 19)


Reference #: 13843

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: PHYSICIST

We must be physicists in order...to be creative since so far codes of values and ideals have been constructed in ignorance of physics or even in contradiction to physics.


The Gay Science
Aphorism 335


Reference #: 13054

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: PROBLEM

There are dreadful people who, instead of solving a problem, complicate it for those who deal with it and make it harder to solve. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should entreated not hit it at all.


The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
Vol. Seven, Human, All Too HumanThe Wanderer and His Shadow, Part TwoNo. 326


Reference #: 15769

Nietzsche, Friedrich
Born: 15 October, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia
Died: 25 August, 1900 in Weimar, Thuringian States
General Category: CHAOS

You must have chaos in your heart to give birth to a dancing star.


In Eugene F. Mallove
The Quickening Universe
(p. xiii)


Reference #: 6478

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: NURSING

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet—all at the least expense of vital power to the patient. It has been said and written scores of times, that every woman makes a good nurse. I believe, on the contrary, that the very elements of nursing are all but unknown.


Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not
(p. 6)
Harrison, Pall Mall, London, England; 1859


Reference #: 6476

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: NURSING

In watching disease, both in private houses and in public hospitals, the thing which strikes the experienced observer most forcibly is this, that the symptoms or the sufferings generally considered to be inevitable and incident to the disease are very often not symptoms of the disease at all, but of something quite different—of the want of fresh air, or of light, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality and care in the administration of diet, of each or of all of these. And this quite as much in private as in hospital nursing.


Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not
(p. 5)
Harrison, Pall Mall, London, England; 1859


Reference #: 6475

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: NURSE

It seems a commonly received idea among men and even among women themselves that it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, the want of an object, a general disgust, or incapacity for other things to turn a woman into a good nurse.


Notes on Nursing
Conclusion
(p. 133)


Reference #: 7880

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: NURSE

A nurse who rustles (I am speaking of nurses professional and unprofessional) is the horror of a patient, though perhaps he does not know why.


Notes on Nursing
Noise
(p. 47)


Reference #: 6474

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: NURSE

Never to allow a patient to be wakened, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing.


Notes on Nursing
Noise
(p. 44)


Reference #: 6473

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: DISEASE

But when you have done away with all that pain and suffering, which in patients are the symptoms not of their disease, but of the absence of one or all of the above-mentioned essentials to the success of Nature's reparative processes, we shall then know what are the symptoms of and the sufferings inseparable from, the disease.


Notes on Nursing
Notes on Nursing
(p. 9)


Reference #: 6477

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: NURSING

The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe—how to observe—what symptoms indicate improvement—what the reverse—which are of importance—which are of none—which are the evidence of neglect—and of what kind of neglect.


Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not
(p. 59)
Harrison, Pall Mall, London, England; 1859


Reference #: 7878

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: FACT

What you want are facts, not opinions -


Notes on Nursing
Chapter XIII


Reference #: 7879

Nightingale, Florence
Born: 12 May, 1820 in Florence, Italy
Died: 13 August, 1910 in East Wellow, England
General Category: AVERAGE

A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.


Notes on Nursing
Chapter XIII


Reference #: 7758

Nirenberg, Marshall W.
General Category: PROGRESS

One individual alone creates only a note or so that blends with those produced by others.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1968


Reference #: 15145

Nixon, Richard M.
General Category: AVERAGE

The average American is just like the child in the family.


The New York Times
Statement from Pre Election Interviews with Nixon Outlining 2nd Term PlansPage 20, Column 8November 10, 1972


Reference #: 17275

Nizer, Louis
General Category: STATISTICS

Nobody loves a fact man. Only if the figures prove so startling thesis that they become dramatized by their very revelation, can they be safely employed. People are skeptical of statistics. They may prove anything. The ninety-year-old patient sounded cogent enough when he assured the doctor he would never die, because statistics prove few that few men die over ninety.


Thinking on Your Feet


Reference #: 7297

Nizer, Louis
General Category: THEORY

The argument seemed sound enough, but when a theory collides with a fact, the result is a tragedy.


My Life in Court
(p. 433)


Reference #: 7779

Nobel, Alfred
General Category: MICROBES

The advance in scientific research and its ever widening sphere stirs the hope in us that the microbes, those of the soul as well as of the body, will gradually disappear, and that the only war humanity will wage in the future will be one against these microbes.


Quoted in Selman A. Waksman
Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1952


Reference #: 7811

Nobel, Alfred
General Category: DISCOVERY

Each new discovery leaves in the brains of men seeds which make it possible for an ever-increasing number of minds of new generations to embrace even greater scientific concepts.


Quoted in Camillo Golgi
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1906


Reference #: 945

Noble, D.F.
General Category: TEACHING

You will please keep in mind that this is a college and not a technical school. The students who come here are not to be trained as chemists, or geologists or physicists. They are to be taught the great fundamental truths of all sciences. The object aimed at is culture, not practical knowledge.


American by Design
(pp. 24-25)


Reference #: 15146

Noble, Wilford John
General Category: DISCOVERY

Finding something is not the same as discovering what is found. The more astronomers study the growing evidence of extra-solar planets, the less the planets resemble anything in the one planetary system they had known and had based their theories on: the Sun's family of planets.


The New York Times
Search for New Planets Yields Confusion, 2 March 1999


Reference #: 15094

Nolan, James Joseph
General Category: ABORTION

Physicians roasted on the spit;
Is learning the name of it?
For complications, spare no precaution;
To save a life think abortion.


The New England Journal of Medicine
On Renewed Maternal Mortality Reports, Vol. 286, No. 17, April 27, 1972
(p. 952)


Reference #: 15502

Noll, Ellis D.
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics is the science whose treehouse rests on the trunk of immutable physical law.


The Physics Teacher
What's Physics?, Vol. 14, No. 5, May 1976
(p. 315)


Reference #: 983

Noll, W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I believe the coordinate-free approach fosters the cultivation of intuition, a scarce commodity in relativity because the phenomena this theory is intended to describe are as yet rather remote from our daily experience.


American Mathematical Monthly
Euclidean Geometry and Minkowskian Chronometry, February 1964
(p. 129)


Reference #: 8695

Noordwijk, J. van
General Category: RESEARCH PLANS

...however excellent multiannual planning, research-project management, and time recording may be, the scientist should always have some opportunity to test the idea that he got that morning while shaving.


Perspectives in Biological Medicine
The Bioassyist, Vol. 29, No. 2, Winter 1986
(p. 307)


Reference #: 9374

Nordenholt, George F.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Smart creative workers are those who are quick to see the limitations of mathematical calculations.


Product Engineering
A Graduate Can Measure A Bottle, Editorial, April 1953


Reference #: 18037

Nordine, K.
General Category: NUMBER

...this makes me think of, of the somebody who invented numbers...Wonder if he had much trouble inventing those numbers; wonder if he had trouble with - zero. Pretty hard to imagine nothing.


Wordjazz [sound recording]
Looks Like It's Going To Rain (1957)


Reference #: 3511

Nordman, Charles
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

Hypotheses in science are a kind of soft cement which hardens rapidly in the open air, thus enabling us to join together the separate blocks of the structure and to fill up the breaches made in the walls by projectiles, with artificial stuff which the superficial observer presently mistakes for stone. It is because hypotheses are something like that in science that the best scientific theories are those which include the least hypotheses.


Einstein and the Universe
(pp. 34-35)


Reference #: 4315

Norfolk, Timothy S.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

It is as if mathematics were the vegetables of the academic dinner: Everyone knows that they are good for you, but no one forces you to eat them.


FOCUS
It's Time to Stop, Feb. 1997
(pp. 14-15)


Reference #: 1278

Norse, Elliot A.
General Category: WATER

In every glass of water we drink, some of the water has already passed through fishes, trees, bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other organisms, including people...Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption.


In R.J. Hoage (ed.)
Animal Extinctions
The Value of Animal and Plant Species for Agriculture, Medicine, and Industry
(p. 62)


Reference #: 171

North, Roger
General Category: ARCHITECT

For a profest architect is proud, opiniative and troublesome, seldome at hand, and a head workman pretending to the designing part, is full of paultry vulgar contrivances; therefore be your owne architect, or sitt still.


In H.M. Colvin
A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1600-1840
(p. 13)


Reference #: 990

Northrop, Eugene
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Consider mathematics as a discipline in itself-that is to say, as a body of concepts and methods which constitute a way of thinking. Surely mathematics is such a discipline. It deals almost exclusively with premises and conclusions, and with deductive reasoning, wwhich is one of the more important methods of drawing conclusions from premises. Moreover, clarity and precision of definitions and assumptions, and rigor in reasoning, can be more nearly attained and more simply studied in mathematics than in the other disciplines. Is this not the real place of mathematics in a liberal education-not simply as a subject matter, or as a discipline applicable only to its own subject matter, but as a discipline which is applicable to almost every intellectual activity of man?


American Mathematical Monthly
Mathematics in a Liberal Education,
(p. 133)


Reference #: 9484

Norton, John K.
General Category: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

The time of busy people is sometimes wasted by time-consuming questionnaires dealing with inconsequential topics, worded so as to lead to worthless replies, and circulated by untrained and inexperienced individuals, lacking in facilities for summarizing and disseminating any worthwhile information which they may obtain.


In Douglas R. Berdie and John F. Anderson
Questionnaires: Design and Use
(p. ix)


Reference #: 14020

Norton, Robert
General Category: RULE

...every Art hath certain Rules and Principles,...without the knowledge of which no man can attain unto a necessary perfection for practice thereof...


The Gunner
The Preface to the courteous Readers (second page)


Reference #: 14449

Norton, Thomas
General Category: ALCHEMY

Maistryefull merveylous and Archimastrye
Is the tincture of holy Alkimy;
A wonderful Science, secrete Philosophie,
A singular grace and gifte of th' Almightie:
Which never was found by labour of Mann,
But it by Teaching, or by Revalacion begann.


The Ordinall of Alchemy


Reference #: 15772

Norvalis
General Category: BODY

We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.


In Robert Coope
The Quiet Art
(p. 117)


Reference #: 11690

Novacek, M.J.
General Category: SYSTEM

Thus a paleontologist unearthing skeletons in an Asian desert and a molecular biologist sequencing a strand of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) can both claim to be systematists if they share an interest in how species are related and how they arose over time. All these issues depend on theories of patterns of cescent, or organisms branching off from each other in a way that accurately reflects their histories. When such theories continue to successfully explain new observations, they form the basis for many statements about the biological world.


In N. Eldredge
Systematics, Ecology and the Biodiversity Crisis
The Meaning of Systematics and the Biodiversity Crisis
(p. 103)


Reference #: 1764

Novalis
General Category: THEORY

Theories are like fishing: it is only by casting into unknown waters that you may catch something.


In Jean-Pierre Luminet
Black Holes
(p. 1)


Reference #: 10032

Novalis
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Pure mathematics is not concerned with magnitude. It is merely the doctrine of notation of relatively ordered thought operations which have become mechanical


Schriften
Zweiter Teil
(p. 282)
Berlin, 1901


Reference #: 16674

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: STARS

Could new stars be
Born?
Night after night he watched that miracle
Growing and changing colour as it grew...


The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky
(p. 57)


Reference #: 16673

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: STARS

And all those glimmerings where the abyss of space
Is powdered with a milky dust, each grain
A burning sun, and every sun the lord
Of its own darkling planets...


The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky
(p. 8)


Reference #: 16675

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: EVOLUTION

He saw the multitudinous hosts of life,
All creatures of the sea and earth and air,
Ascending from one living spiral thread,
Through tracts of time, unreckonable in years.


The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky


Reference #: 17773

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: NEWTON, SIR ISSAC

Could Rembrandt but have painted him,
in those hours
Making his first analysis of light
Alone, there, in his darkened Cambridge
room
At Trinity!


Watchers of the Sky
Newton, I


Reference #: 16678

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: CONSTELLATION

Night after night, among the gabled roofs,
Climbing and creeping through a world unknown
Save to the roosting stork, he learned to find
The constellations, Cassiopeia's throne,
The Plough still pointing to the Pole star,
The Sword-belt of Orion. There he watched
The movement of the planets, hours and hours,
And wondered at the mystery of it all.


The Torch-Bearers
Vol. I, Watchers of the Sky, Tycho Brahe
(p. 40)


Reference #: 16676

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: COMET

It was a comet, made of mortal sins...


The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky
(p. 61)


Reference #: 16677

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: TELESCOPE

My periwi? s askew, my ruffle stained
With grease from my new telescope!


The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky
(p. 231)


Reference #: 15794

Noyes, Alfred
Born: 16 September, 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng
Died: 28 June, 1958 in Isle of Wight
General Category: UNIVERSE

This universe exists, and by that one impossible fact
Declares itself a miracle.


The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky
(p. 226)


Reference #: 5057

Nuland, S.B.
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The very success of his esoteric therapeutics too often leads the physician to believe he can do what is beyond his doing and save those who, left to their own unhindered judgment, would choose not to be subjected to his saving.


How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
(p. 221)
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, United States of America 1994


Reference #: 5056

Nuland, Sherwin B.
General Category: DISEASE

The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.


How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
(p. xvii)
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 11889

Nuland, Sherwin B.
General Category: SELF-AWARENESS

Self-awareness has never been the strong suit of those who choose to become doctors. When so much fuel is readily available for stoking the fires of ego, there is little inclination to apply it in raising the candlepower of the searching light that might illumine the inner man or woman.


The American Scholar
The Uncertain Art: The Whole Law of Medicine, Vol. 67, No. 3, Summer, 1998


Reference #: 11890

Nuland, Sherwin B.
General Category: DOCTOR

For any specific person suffering from a specific disease in a specific setting being treated in a specific environment by a specific doctor, a statistic is nothing more than a statement of relative probability.


The American Scholar
The Uncertain Art: the Whole Law of Medicine, Summer, Vol. 67, No. 3, 1998


Reference #: 11891

Nuland, Sherwin B.
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Just as physicians must constantly admonish one another to seek the most subtle beginnings of disease, they must also forgive themselves when timing or circumstances frustrate their best intentions.


The American Scholar
The Uncertain Art: the Whole Law of Medicine, Summer, Vol. 67, No. 3, 1998


Reference #: 12262

Numbers 31:22-23
General Category: METAL

Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead,
Every thing that may abide the fire, ye small make it go through the fire...


The Bible


Reference #: 1648

Nuttgens, Patrick
General Category: ARCHITECT

The challenge for the modern architect is the same as the challenge for all of us in our lives: to make out of the ordinary something out-of-the-ordinary.


BBC TV program
Architecture for Everyman, Reprinted in Listener, 1 March, 1979


Reference #: 9835

Nye, Bill
General Category: ANATOMY

The word anatomy is derived from two Greek spatters and three polywogs, which, when translated, signify 'up through' and 'to cut,' so that anatomy actually, when translated from the original wappy-jawed Greek, means to cut up through. That is no doubt the reason why the medical student proceeds to cut up through the entire course.


Remarks
Anatomy
(p. 27)


Reference #: 9837

Nye, Bill
General Category: DOCTOR

He was a good doctor for horses and blind staggers, but he was out of his sphere when he strove to fool with the human frame. Change of scene and rest were favorite prescriptions of his. Most of his patients got both, especially eternal rest. He made a specialty of eternal rest.


Remarks
My Physician
(p. 354)


Reference #: 9836

Nye, Bill
General Category: GEOLOGIST

Geologists ascertain the age of the earth by looking at its teeth and counting the wrinkles on its horns. They have learned that the earth is not only of great age, but that it is still adding to its age from year to year.


Remarks
About Geology
(p. 201)


Reference #: 9834

Nye, Bill
General Category: GEOLOGY

Geology is that branch of natural science which treats of the structures of the earth's crust and the mode of formation of its rocks. It is a pleasant and profitable study, and to the man who has married rich and does not need to work, the amusement of busting geology with the Bible, or busting the Bible with geology is indeed a great boon.


Remarks
About Geology
(p. 201)


Reference #: 9833

Nye, Bill
General Category: ANATOMY

Human anatomy is either general, specific, topographical or surgical. These terms do not imply the dissection and anatomy of generals, specialists, topographers and surgeons, as they might seem to imply, but really mean something else. I would explain here what they actually do mean if I had more room and knew enough to do it.


Remarks
Anatomy
(p. 28)


Reference #: 9838

Nye, Bill
General Category: COMET

The comet is a kind of astronomical parody on the planet. Comets look some like planets, but they are thinner and do not hurt so hard when they hit anybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair on it, I believe, but late years the bald-headed comet is giving just as good satisfaction everywhere.


Remarks
Skimming the Milky Way
(p. 125)


Reference #: 6278

Oats, Joyce Carol
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.


Love and Its Derangements
The Grave Dwellers


Reference #: 16268

Oberth, Hermann
General Category: SCIENCE

The present state of science and of technological knowledge permits the building of machines that can rise beyond the limits of the atmosphere of the earth. After further development these machines will be capable of attaining such velocities that they-left undisturbed in the void of ether space-will not fall back to earth; furthermore, they will even be able to leave the zone of terrestrial attraction.


The Rocket to the Interplanetary Spaces 1923


Reference #: 6349

Oberth, Hermann
General Category: SPACE TRAVEL

This is the goal: To make available for life every place where life is possible. To make inhabitable all worlds as yet uninhabitable, and all life purposeful.


Man Into Space


Reference #: 10853

Oblers' Paradox
General Category: PARADOX

Consider any large spherical shell centered on the earth. Within this shell, the amount of light produced by stars can be calculated. hen consider a shell of twice the radius. Within this shell, the stars are on the average only one-quarter as bright, but there are 4 times as many of them, and so they would make a similar contribution to the light of the night sky. For each doubling of the radius, the amount of light received on the earth is doubled, and so the night sky must double in brightness. Continuing this argument indefinitely, we find that, as we consider larger and larger shells, the night sky continues to increase in brightness without limit. Yet the night sky is very dark...


The Big Bang
(p. 55)
W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1980


Reference #: 13207

O'Brien, F.
General Category: MOLECULE

Mollycules is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra but you would want to take it by degrees with rulers and cosines and familiar other instruments and then at the wind-up not believe what you had proved at all.


The Dalkey Archive
(p. 81)
Dalkey Archive Press, Normal; 1993


Reference #: 13208

O'Brien, F.
General Category: MOLECULE

Did you ever study the Mollycule Theory when you were a lad? he asked. Mick said not, not in any detail.
That is a very serious defalcation and an abstruse exacerbation, he said severely, but I'll tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small Mollycules of itself, and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable various other routes too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go.


The Dalkey Archive
(p. 81)
Dalkey Archive Press, Normal; 1993


Reference #: 13209

O'Brien, Flann
General Category: MOLECULE

...Did you ever study the Mollycule Theory when you were a lad? he asked. Mick said no, not in any detail...That is a very serious defalcation and an abstruse exacerbation, he said severely, but I'll tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small mollycules of itself, and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable various other routes too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. Do you follow me intelligently? Mollycules?...I Think I do...They are as lively as twenty punky leprechauns doing a jig on the top of a flat tombstone. Now take a sheep. What is a sheep but only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around doing intricate convulsions inside the baste.


The Dalkey Archive


Reference #: 14657

O'Brien, Katharine
General Category: MATHEMATICAL WRITING

Said an upside-down A to an inside-out E,
"Universal's the epithet measuring me.
Your scope is so small
Compared with For all—
There is no more than of form of To be."


The Mathematical Magazine
? and ?, Vol. 55, No. 1, January 1982
(p. 41)


Reference #: 14675

O'Brien, Katharine
General Category: SPHERE

Now Einstein's Gleewas plain to seeat the sight of a cone with a sphere on top...


The Mathematics Teacher
Einstein and the Ice-Cream Cone, April 1968
(p. 404)


Reference #: 3678

O'Brien, M.P.
General Category: ENGINEERING

The activity characteristic of professional engineering is the design of structures, machines, circuits, or processes, or of combinations of these elements into systems or plants and the analysis and prediction of their performance and costs under specified working conditions.


In Ralph J. Smith
Engineering as a Career
(p. 8)


Reference #: 18040

Obruchev, Vladimir
General Category: MISTAKE

Be persistent and persevering, but never stubborn. Do not cling to your judgements. Remember that there are many clever people in the world liable to spot your mistakes. If they are right, be not reluctant to agree with them.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 18044

Obruchev, Vladimir
General Category: FACT

Facts are the bricks of human experience, your implement in creation. Search for facts tirelessly, collect them in nature and in books, and read good textbooks from cover to cover.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 5760

O'Casey, Sean
General Category: STARS

...an me lookin' up at the sky an' sayin'


Juno and the Paycock
Act I
(p. 25)


Reference #: 7008

Ochoa, Severo
General Category: LIFE

Man has all but conquered the atom and is now preparing for the conquest of space. He has uncovered many of the secrets of inanimate matter and begins to delve deep into the frontier realm between the lifeless and the living, the world of the viruses. He may never find the clue to the nature or the meaning of life but we may look forward with confidence and anticipation to a much better comprehension of many of its riddles.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1959


Reference #: 7775

Ochoa, Severo
General Category: BIOCHEMISTRY

In recent years biochemistry - the chemistry of life - has come more and more into the foreground of biological research. This is natural since chemical reactions are at the bottom of all life.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1959


Reference #: 14095

Ockels, Wubbo
General Category: SPACE

Space is so close: It took only eight minutes to get there and twenty to get back.


In Kevin W. Kelley
The Home Planet
With Plate 126


Reference #: 14022

O'Connor, Flannery
General Category: SICKNESS

I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies.


The Habit of Being


Reference #: 7342

O'Donoghue, Michael
General Category: TEETH

Tough teeth make tough soldiers.


National Lampoon Tenth Anniversary Anthology
Frontline Dentists
(p. 111)


Reference #: 10752

Oearson, Karl
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe.


In John N Shive and Robert L. Weber
Similarities in Physics
(p. 58)


Reference #: 10901

Oemler, Marie Conway
General Category: INSECT BUTTERFLY

There was, for instance, the common Dione Vanillae, that splendid Gulf Fritillary which haunts all the highways of the South. She's a long-wing, but she's not a Heliconian; she's a silver-spot, but she's not an Argynnis. She bears a striking family likeness to her fine relations, but she has certain structural peculiarities which differentiate her. Whose word should he take for this, and why? Wherein lay those differences? He began, patiently, with her cylinder-shaped yellow-brown, orange-spotted caterpillar, on the purple passionflowers in our garden; he watched it change into a dark-brown chrysalis marked with a few pale spots; he saw emerge from this the red-robed lady herself, with her long fulvous fore wings, and her shorter hind wings smocked with black velvet, and under-frocked flushed with pinkish orange and spangled with silver. And yet, in spite of her long marvelous tongue—he was beginning to find out that no tool he had ever seen, and but few that God Himself makes, is so wonderful as a butterfly's tongue—she hadn't been able to tell him that about herself which he most wished to find out. That called for a deeper knowledge than he as yet possessed.
But he knew that other men knew. And he had to know. He meant to know. For the work gripped him as it does those marked and foreordained for its service.


Slippy Magee, Sometimes Known as Butterfly Man
(pp. 72-73)


Reference #: 16551

Oersted, H.C.
General Category: LAW

Added to this we already see numerous indications of a future, in which the chemical and mechanical laws of nature will be more intimately united. In short, the natural laws of chemistry, as well as those of mechanics, are laws of Reason, and both are so intimately connected, that they must be viewed as a unity of Reason.


The Soul In Nature
All Existence a Dominion of Reason
(p. 104)


Reference #: 16552

Oersted, Hans Christian
General Category: OTHER WORLDS

Dost thou perceive nought but machinery
In laws which guide the course along heaven's paths?
Look with a larger view around; behold
The unity of living thoughts, displayed
In countless varying forms. The mighty sun
Is but a twinkling star amidst the space
Infinite filled with worlds, whose suns, heaven's lamps,
Shine in our night...Look
Upon the spangled heav'ns, there to discover
Thousands of blazing suns, encircled by
Companions numerous...A race of beings behold
Struggling for mental power, knowledge divine.


The Soul Nature
The Balloon


Reference #: 11795

Oey, Sally
General Category: ASTRONOMY

A is for Astronomy, the science of far out
B is for Big Bang, how the cosmos came about
C is for Chandrasekhar, who knew things compact
D is for Dark Matter, whose existence is a fact
E is for Eddington, and matters radiative
F is for Faraday, and wave planes rotative
G is for Galaxies, which fly between voids
H is for Hubble, who knew disks from ellipsoids
I is for Ionization, revealing energy states
J is for Julian Day, for periodic dates
K is for Kepler, and his revolution
L is for Local Group, a galaxian profusion
M is for Molecular Cloud, a protostellar batter
N is for Neutron Star, the densest of matter
O is for Oort Cloud, that beyond Pluto lies
P is for Photon, the coveted prize
Q is for Quasar, the most energetic
R is for Redshift, revealing the kinetic
S is for Supernova, nucleosynthesis site
T is for Telescope, gatherer of light
U is for Ultraviolet, seen only from space
V is for Virial Theorem, an equilibrium case
W is for Wolf-Rayet Star, massive and bright
X is for X-ray, where hot things emit light
Y is the fraction of helium by amassed
Z is for Zenith, the highest and last.


The ABC's of Astronomy


Reference #: 14243

Ogilvie, Sir Heneage
General Category: SURGERY

Surgery thus attracts the man whose interest in medicine is humanitarian rather than scientific, who loves his fellow men, who wishes to help them and to see that his help is effective. It appeals to the craftsman who enjoys the use of his hands, to the artist whose mind works on visual images, to the romantic who enjoys the drama of life, particularly when it affords him the opportunity to play a decisive role, to the extrovert.


The Lancet
A Surgeon's Life, Vol. 255, July 3, 1948
(p. 1)


Reference #: 14238

Ogilvie, Sir Heneage
General Category: SURGEON

A surgeon conducting a difficult case is like the skipper of an ocean-going racing yacht. He knows the port he must make, but he cannot foresee the course of the journey.


The Lancet
A Surgeon's Life, Vol. 255, July 3, 1948
(p. 1)


Reference #: 9507

Ogutsch, Edith
General Category: HYPOCHONDRIAC

Hypochondriac: A person of ill repute.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
May 7, 1967
(p. 377)


Reference #: 9500

Ogutsch, Edith
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGIST

ARCHAEOLOGIST: Someone whose career lies in ruins.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
January 29, 1967
(p. 97)


Reference #: 11837

O'Keefe, J.A.
General Category: ROCKS

Liquids and gases forget, but rocks remember.


In G. Brent Dalrymple
The Age of the Earth
Chapter 7
(p. 305)


Reference #: 1759

Oken, Lorenz
General Category: ANIMAL

Animal is blossom without a stem.


In H.R. Hays
Birds, Beasts, and Men
Chapter 17
(p. 212)


Reference #: 702

Olbers, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias
General Category: COMET

To determine the orbit of a comet around the Sun from a few geocentric observations appeared even to the great Newton himself as not a little difficult. He called this problem Longe difficillimum, the solution of which he had sought in various ways before he came upon the beautiful construction which he presents in his "principles of Natural Philosophy."


Abhandlug uber die leichteste und bequemste Methode die Bahn eines Cometen aue einigen Beobachtungen zu berechnen
1797


Reference #: 10444

Old Army Saying
General Category: QUE

Hurry up and wait.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 15022

Old Woman
General Category: STARS

The stars I know and recognize and even call by name. They are my names, of course; I don't know what others call the stars. Perhaps I should ask the priest. Perhaps the stars are God's to name, not ours to treat like pets...


In Robert Coles
The Old Ones of New Mexico
Two Languages, One Soul
(p. 10)


Reference #: 1463

Oldfield, E.
General Category: ANTIQUITY

Within no very distant period the study of antiquities has passed, in popular esteem, from contempt to comparative honour.


Archaeological Journal
Introductory Address, Vol. IX, March 1852
(p. I)


Reference #: 9455

Oldham, R.D.
General Category: SEISMOGRAPH

...the seismograph, recording the unfelt motion of distant earthquakes, enables us to see up to a certain pointinto the Earth and determine its nature with as great a certainty, as if we could drive a tunnel through it and take samples of the matter passed through.


Quarterly Journal
Geological Society, The Constitution of the Interior of the Earth as Revealed by Earthquakes, Vol. 62, August 1906
(p. 456)


Reference #: 16179

Oldham, Richard Dixon
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Many theories of the earth have been propounded at different times: the central substance of the earth has been supposed to be fiery, fluid, solid, and gaseous in turn, till geologists have turned in despair from the subject and become inclined to confine their attention to the outermost crust of the earth, leaving its center as a playground for mathematicians.


The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London
The Constitution of the Interior of the Earth as Revealed by Earthquakes, Vol. 62, August 1906
(p. 456)


Reference #: 5688

Olds, Edwin G.
General Category: TEACHING

It is hard to understand why he failed to appreciate the pedagogical value of designing an experiment to illustrate a point of theory, predicting the result, running the experiment, and then taking the consequences if it turned out wrong.


Journal of the American Statistical Association
Teaching Statistical Quality Control for Town and Gown, Vol. 44, 1949
(pp. 223-224)


Reference #: 3663

Oliver, Bernard M.
General Category: EXTRATERRESTIAL LIFE

The question of whether there is intelligent life out there depends, in the last analysis, upon how intelligent that life is.


Engineering and Science
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life, Dec 1974


Reference #: 9393

Oliver, Bernard M.
General Category: EXTRATERRESTIAL LIFE

The last two decades have witnessed a synthesis of ideas and discoveries from previously distinct disciplines. Out of this synthesis have grown new fields of research. Thus we now have exobiology, which represents a synthesis of discoveries in astronomy, atmospheric physics, geophysics, geochemistry, chemical evolution, and biochemistry.


Project Cyclops
(p. 3)


Reference #: 16496

Oliver, David
General Category: MECHANICS

Mechanics is the vehicle of all physical theory. Mechanics is the vehicle of war. The two have been inseparable.


The Shaggy Steed of Physics
Preface
(p. x)


Reference #: 16495

Oliver, David
General Category: MECHANICS

Mechanics is the wellspring from which physics flows...


The Shaggy Steed of Physics
Preface
(p. ix)


Reference #: 1813

Oliver, Mary
General Category: NATURE

Nature, the total of all of us, is the wheel that drives our world; those who ride it willingly might yet catch a glimpse of a dazzling , even a spiritual restfulness, while those who are unwilling simply to hang on, who insist that the world must be piloted by man for his own benefit, will be dragged around and around all the same, gathering dust but no joy.


Blue Pastures
A Few Words
(p. 92)
Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 1812

Oliver, Mary
General Category: IDEA

A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful altogether.


Blue Pastures
Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air
(p. 57)
Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 10514

Olomucki, Martin
General Category: LIFE

When we attempt to define life, or living, we immediately come up against a fundamental and apparently irreducible paradox: living organisms are composed of inanimate molecules….Must we then say that "life" is the interaction of all the inanimate components of this whole? In other words, that nothing is alive in a cell except the whole cell?


The Chemistry of Life


Reference #: 11989

Olson, S.L.
General Category: CLASSIFICATION

...the present classification of birds amounts to little more than superstition and bears about as much relationship to a true phylogeny of the Class Aves as Greek mythology does to the theory of relativity.


The Auk
The Museum Tradition in Ornithology. A Response to Ricklefs, Vol. 98, January 1981
(p.193)


Reference #: 9752

Olson, Sigurd F.
General Category: REALITY

Flashes of insight or reality are sunbursts of the mind.


Reflections From the North Country
Flashes of Insight
(p. 131)


Reference #: 663

O'Malley, Austin
General Category: SURGERY

Surgery: by far the worst snob among the handicrafts.


In Herbert V. Prochnow and Herbert V. Prochnow, Jr
A Treasury of Humorous Quotations


Reference #: 4581

O'Malley, Austin
General Category: FACT

Facts are carpet-tacks under the pneumatic tires of theory.


Keystones of Thought


Reference #: 3685

O'Malley, John R.
General Category: PATENT

Almost every engineer is affected by the patent system.


Engineering Facts From Gatorland
Patents and the Engineer, Vol. 4, No. 5, December 1967


Reference #: 14906

Oman, John
General Category: THEORY

To refuse to consider any possibility is merely the old habit of making theory the measure of reality.


The Natural and the Supernatural
Chapter XV
(p. 269)


Reference #: 14905

Oman, John
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Beauty is a conspicuous element in the abstract completeness aimed at in the higher mathematics...


The Natural and the Supernatural
Value and Validity
(p. 211)


Reference #: 13965

Oman, John
General Category: PHYSICS

Beauty...is the goal of physics as it seeks to construe the order of the universe...


The Natural and the Supernatural
Value and Validity
(p. 211)


Reference #: 4169

O'Neil, W.M.
General Category: OBSERVATION

It urges the scientist, in effect, not to take risks incurred in moving far from the facts. However, it may properly be asked whether science can be undertaken without taking the risk of skating on the possibly thin ice of supposition. The important thing to know is when one is on the more solid ground of observation and when one is on the ice.


Fact and Theory
Chapter 8
(p. 154)


Reference #: 6235

O'Neill, Eugene
General Category: DOCTOR

MARY: I hate doctors! they'll do anything - anything to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls! What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell.


Long Day's Journey into Night
Act Two, Scene Two
(p. 74)


Reference #: 11584

O'Neill, Eugene
General Category: SCIENCE

Darrell: Happiness hates the timid! So does Science!


Strange Interlude
Act Four
(p. 152)


Reference #: 14050

O'Neill, Gerard
General Category: SPACE TRAVEL

Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth: to bring the poverty-stricken segments of the world up to a decent living standard, without recourse to war or punitive action against those already in material comfort; to provide for a maturing civilization the basic energy vital to its survival.


The High Frontier


Reference #: 17225

Oparin, A.I.
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

...there is every reason now to see in the origin of life not a 'happy accident' but a completely regular phenomenon, an inherent component of the total evolutionary development of our planet. The search for life beyond Earth is thus only a part of the more general question which confronts science, of the origin of life in the universe.


In M Calvin and O.G. Gazenko (eds.)
Theoretical and Experimental Prerequisites of Exobiology
Foundations of Space Biology and Medicine, Vol. I, Theoretical and Experimental Prerequisites of Exobiology, Chapter 7
(p. 321)


Reference #: 6155

Oparin, A.I.
General Category: LIFE

Life - the word is so easy to understand, yet so enigmatic for any thoughtful person.


Life: Its Nature, Origin, and Development
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 2165

Oparin, A.I.
General Category: CHEMISTRY AND LIFE

It has now become quite clear that the origin of life was not the result of some "happy chance" as was thought till quite recently, but a necessary stage in the evolution of matter. The origin of life is an inalienable part of the general process of the development of the universe and, in particular, the development of the earth.


In R. Buvet and C. Ponnamperuma (eds.)
Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life
Problem of the Origin of Life: Present State and Prospects
(pp. 3-4)


Reference #: 7571

Oparin, A.I.
General Category: ORIGIN OF LIFE

...when I began to be interested in the problem of the origin of life, in the early 1920s, the whole topic was in a state of crisis. It appeared as if it was a forbidden subject in the world of science. The problem was generally felt to be insoluble in principle using objective scientific research methods. It was felt that it belonged more to the sphere of faith than knowledge, and that, for this reason, serious scientists should not waste their time and effort on hopeless attempts to solve the problem.


New Scientist
Jubilee for Heterogenesis Research
Vol. 142, 1974


Reference #: 4612

Oparin, A.I.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

One can only understand the essence of things when one knows their origin and development.


Life, Its Nature Origin and Development
Chapter I
(p. 37)


Reference #: 15271

Oparin, A.I.
General Category: EVOLUTION

From our point of view, therefore, the modern process of evolution of living organisms is fundamentally nothing more than the addition of some new links to an endless chain of transformations of matter, a chain the beginning of which extends to the very dawn of existence of our planet.


The Origin of Life


Reference #: 9483

Oppenheim, Abraham Naffali
General Category: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

A questionnaire is not just a list of questions or a form to be filled out. It is essentially a scientific instrument for measurement and for collection of particular kinds of data. Like all such instruments, it has to be specifically designed according to particular specifications and with specific aims in mind, and the data it yields are subject to error. We cannot judge a questionnaire as good or bad, efficient or inefficient, unless we know what job it was meant to do. This means that we have to think not merely about the wording of particular questions, but first and foremost, about the design of the investigation as a whole.


Questionnaire Design and Attitude Measurement
(pp. 2-3)


Reference #: 4281

Oppenheimer, Frank
General Category: LANGUAGE

At the leading edge of experience in philosophy, science and feeling there is inevitably a groping for language to translate the insecure novelty of noticing and understanding into a precision of meaning and imagery.


In K.C. Cole
First You Build A Cloud
Chapter One
(p. 15)
First You Build A Cloud (p. 15)


Reference #: 17349

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICIST

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.


Time
Expiation, Vol. 51, No. 8, 23 February 1948
(p. 94)


Reference #: 4799

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

In fact, most people—when they speak of Science as a good thing—have in mind such Technology as has altered the condition of their life.


Great Essays in Science
Physics in the Contemporary World
(p. 194)


Reference #: 5438

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICS

The only thing that we can say about the properties of the ultimate particles is that we know nothing whatever about them.


In Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Introduction to Astronomy
(p. 339)


Reference #: 6240

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: BEAUTY

Science is not everything. But science is very beautiful.


Look
With Oppenheimer on an Autumn Day, Vol. 30, No. 26, December 27, 1966
(p. 63)


Reference #: 3

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
General Category: RECOGNITION

Whatever the individual motivation and belief of the scientist, without the recognition from his fellow men of the value of his work, in the long term science will perish.


Treasury of Science


Reference #: 6241

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: BEAUTY

The profession I'm part of has as its whole purpose, the rendering of the physical world understandable and beautiful. Without this you have only tables and statistics.


Look
With Oppenheimer on an Autumn Day, Vol. 30, No. 26, December 27 1966
(p. 63)


Reference #: 4373

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: COMMON SENSE

...distrust all the philosophers who claim that by examining science they come to the results in contradiction with common sense. Science is based on common sense; it cannot contradict it.


In University of Denver
Foundations for World Order
The Scientific Foundations for World Order
(p. 51)


Reference #: 495

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: LAW

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature, but it is a scientist's job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist's job to find ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and their chosen representatives.


In Lewis Wolpert and Alison Richards
A Passion for Science
Chapter I
(p. 9)


Reference #: 6102

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists aren't responsible for the facts that are in nature. It's their job to find the facts. There's no sin connected with it - no morals. If anyone should have a sense of sin, it's God. He put the facts there.


In Loncoln Barnett
Life
J. Robert Oppenheimer, October 10, 1949
(p. 133)


Reference #: 4835

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: FACT

...when technical people talk they always emphasize the facts that they are not sure.


Harper's Magazine
The Tree of Knowledge, Vol. 217, October 1958
(p. 57)


Reference #: 4834

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and - to go a step further - our mathematicians do not know mathematics.


Harper's Magazine
The Tree of Knowledge, Vol. 217, No. 1301, October 1958
(p. 55)


Reference #: 4253

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

It is proper to the role of the scientist that he not merely find new truth and communicate it to his fellows, but that he teach, that he try to bring the most honest and intelligible account of new knowledge to all who will try to learn.


Fifty Great Essays
Prospects in the Arts and Sciences


Reference #: 9408

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

The frontiers of science are separated now by long years of study, by specialized vocabularies, arts, techniques, and knowledge from the common heritage even of a most civilized society; and anyone working at the frontier of such science is in that sense a very long way from home, a long way too from the practical arts that were its matrix and origin, as indeed they were of what we today call art.


Prospects in the Arts and Sciences


Reference #: 15251

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: RESEARCH

Research is action; and the question I want to leave in a very raw and uncomfortable form with you is how to communicate this sense of action to our fellow men who are not destined to devote their lives to the professional pursuit of new knowledge.


The Open Mind
Chapter VII
(p. 129)
Simon and Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America 1955


Reference #: 13726

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: FIELDS

One could say that gravitational forces, like electromagnetic forces, are long range, in that they fall off slowly with distance, and that this suggests one make a theory of gravitation, which is a natural analogue of the intuitive pictures of Faraday and the equations of Maxwell which describe electromagnetism, electromagnetic waves, and the fields around magnets and charges. The principle point of difference for which one must allow from the beginning is this: that two like charges repel each other, whereas all masses attract each other.


The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises for Physics


Reference #: 9899

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICS

As you undoubtedly know, theoretical physics - what with the haunting ghosts of neutrinos, the Copenhagen conviction, against all evidence, that cosmic rays are protons,
Born's absolutely unquantizable field theory, the divergence difficulties with the positron, and the utter impossibility of making a rigorous calculation of anything at all - is in a hell of a way.


In Alice Smith and Charles Weiner
Robert Oppenheimer, Letters and Reflections
Letter to F. Oppenheimer, 4 June 1934
(p. 181)


Reference #: 9693

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: ELECTRON

If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time we must say "no"; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say "no.


Science and the Common Understanding
A Science in Change
(p. 40)


Reference #: 9690

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance—these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.


Science and the Common Understanding
Chapter 6
(p. 95)


Reference #: 9409

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it; both always as to the measure of their creation, have had to do with the harmonization of what is new with what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos.


Prospects in the Arts and Sciences
Speech, 26 December 1954, Columbia University Bicentennial


Reference #: 9691

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: COMMON SENSE

Common sense is not wrong in the view that it is meaningful, appropriate and necessary to talk about the large objects of our daily experience....Common sense is wrong only if it insists that what is familiar must reappear in what is unfamiliar.


Science and the Common Understanding
Uncommon Sense
(pp. 74-75)


Reference #: 9692

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: DISCOVERY

The discoveries of science, the new rooms in this great house, have changed the way people think of things outside walls...It is my thesis that [these discoveries] do provide us with valid and relevant and greatly needed analogies to human problems lying outside the present domain of science or its present borderlands.


Science and the Common Understanding


Reference #: 14439

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: DOGMA

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any error.


The Open Mind
The Encouragement of Science
(p. 114)


Reference #: 10927

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: DISCOVERY

I remember another colleague gave the Penrose Memorial Lecture at the American Philosophical Society a few years ago, and pointed to the fact that one had today, in the mid-twentieth century, a sense of taking off, a sense of discovery, a sense of leaving the past and entering unknown waters. Discovery, even when it is of a very highbrow kind, even when it is having some sudden insight into a point in physics, always has this element of terror. I know from others who have had the experience more often and better than I, that we judge the profundity and worth of an insight by the presence of this terror.


Some Reflections on Science And Culture
(p. 4)


Reference #: 15254

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: EXPERTS

There is something inherently comforting about a panel of experts. One knows that the partial and inadequate and slanted and personal views that he expresses wil be corrected by the less partial, less personal views of everyone elso on the panel…


The Open Mind
Chapter VII
(p. 119)
Simon and Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America 1955


Reference #: 13144

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: ORDER

We cannot make much progress without a faith that in this bewildering field of human expreience, which is so new and so much more complicated than we thought even five years ago, there is a unique and necessary order: not an order that we can tell a priori, not an order that we can see without expreience, but an order which means that the parts fit into a whole and that the wholes requires the parts.


The Constitution of Matter
(p. 37)


Reference #: 11671

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: INVENTION

Manifestly not every finding leads straight to invention; but it is hard to think of major discoveries about nature; major advances in science, which have not had large and ramified practical consequences.


In Dael Wolfle (ed)
Symposium on Basic Research
The Need for New Knowledge
(p. 6)


Reference #: 15252

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

The true responsibility of a scientist, as we all know, is to the integrity and vigor of his science. And because most scientists like all men of learning, tend in part also to be teachers, they have a responsibility for the communication of the truths they have found. This is at least a collection, if not an individual responsibility. That we should see in this any insurance that the fruits of science will be used for man's benefit, or denied to man when they make for his distress or destruction, would be a tragic naiveté.


The Open Mind
Physics in the Contemporary World
(p. 91)


Reference #: 15255

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

In any science there is harmony between practitioners. A man may work as an individual, learning of what his colleagues do through reading or conversation; he may be working as a member of a group on problems whose technical equipment is too massive for individual effort. But whether he is part of a team or solitary in his own study, he, as a professional, is a member of a community. His colleagues in his own branch of science will be grateful to him for the inventive or creative thoughts he has, will welcome his criticism..His world and work will be objectively communicable; and he will be quite sure that if there is error in it, that error will not long be undetected. In his own line of work he lives in a community where common understanding combines with common purpose and interest to bind men together both in freedom and in cooperation.


The Open Mind
Prospects in the Arts and Sciences
(pp. 137-138)


Reference #: 14791

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICS

Time and experience have clarified, refined and enriched our understanding of these notions. Physics has changed since then. It will change even more. But what we have learned so far, we have learned well. If it is radical and unfamiliar and a lesson that we are not likely to forget, we think that the future will be only more radical and not less, only more strange and not more familiar, and that it will have its own new insights for the inquiring human spirit.


In Lucienne Felix
The Modern Aspect of Mathematics
(p. 31))


Reference #: 13727

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: RELATIVITY

General relativity has very very few connections with any other part of physics and, as I said, is something that we might just now be beginning to discover...


The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises for Physics


Reference #: 9407

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

For the artist and for the scientist there is a special problem and a special hope, for in their extraordinarily different ways, in their lives that have increasingly divergent character, there is still a sensed bond, a sensed analogy. Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it; both always, as the measure of their creation, have had to do with the harmonization of what is new with what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos. They can, in their work and in their lives, help themselves, help one another, and help all men. They can make the paths that connect the villages of arts and sciences with each other and with the world at large the multiple, varied, precious bonds of a true and world-wide community.

This cannot be an easy life. We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds open and to keep them deep, to keep our sense of beauty and our ability to make it, and our occasional ability to see it in places remote and strange and unfamiliar; we shall have a rugged time of it, all of us in keeping these gardens in our villages, in keeping open the manifold, intricate, casual paths, to keep these flourishing in a great, open, windy world; but this, as I see it, is the condition of man; and in this condition we can help, because we can love, one another.


Prospects in the Arts and Sciences


Reference #: 9765

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: THEORY

The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.


Reflex
July 1977


Reference #: 13725

Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Born: 22April, 1904 in New YorkCity, New York, United States of America
Died: 18 February, 1967 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
General Category: PROBLEM

...we probably have no very good idea today of the range of problems that will be accessible to science.


The Flying Trapeze
Space and Time
(p. 2)


Reference #: 10088

Oreskes, N.Shrader-Frechette, K.Belitz, K.
General Category: MODEL

A model, like a novel, may resonate with nature, but it is not a 'real' thing. Like a novel, a model may be convincing - it may 'ring true' if it is consistent with our experience of the natural world. But just as we may wonder how much the characters in a novel are drawn from real life and how much is artifice, we might ask the same of a model: How much is based on observation and measurement of accessible phenomena, how much is convenience? Fundamentally, the reason for modeling is a lack of full access, either in time or space, to the phenomena of interest.


Science
Vol. 263, 1944


Reference #: 11742

Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Science and technology...have a number of distinguishing characteristics which cause special problems or complications. One...is ubiquity: they are everywhere. They are at the forefront of social change. They not only serve as agents of change, but provide the tools for analysing social change. They pose, therefore, special challenges to any society seeking to shape its own future and not just to react to change or to the sometimes undesired effects of change.


Technology on Trial: Public Participation in Decision - Making Related to Science and Technology
Chapter I, Section B
(p. 16)


Reference #: 15230

Orgel, Irene
General Category: GOD

'But before Man,' asked Jonah, shocked out of his wits.
'Do you mean you understood nothing at all? Didn't you exist?'
'Certainly,' said God patiently. I have told you how I exploded in the stars. Then I drifted for aeons in clouds of inchoate gas. As matter stabilized, I acquired the knowledge of valency. When matter cooled, I lay sleeping in the insentient rocks. After that I floated fecund in the unconscious seaweed upon the faces of the deep. Later I existed in the stretching paw of the tiger and the blinking eye of the owl. Each form of knowledge led to the more developed next. Organic matter led to sentience which led to consciousness which led inevitably to my divinity.'
'And shall I never call you father any more? And will I never hear you call me son again?' asked Jonah.
'You may call me ,' said God, agreeably, 'anything you please. Would you like to discuss semantics?'


The Odd Tales of Irene Orgel
Jonah
(pp. 17-18)


Reference #: 2385

Orr, Louis
General Category: SCIENCE

Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to a formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of accomplishment in living, and the depth of insight into beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.


Commencement address at Emory University
Atlanta, June 6, 1960


Reference #: 16225

Ortega y Gasset, Jose
General Category: SCIENCE

...experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilisation, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success....A fair amount of the things that have to be done in physics or in biology is mechanical work of the mind which can be done by anyone or almost anyone. For the purpose of innumerable investigations it is possible to divide science into small sections, to enclose oneself in one of these, and leave out of consideration all the rest.


The Revolt of the Masses
Chapter 12
(p. 110, 111)


Reference #: 16223

Ortega Y Gasset, Jose
General Category: SPECIALIZATION

For the purpose of innumerable investigations it is possible to divide science into small sections, to enclose oneself in one of these, and to leave out of consideration all the rest. The solidity and exacitude of the methods allow of this temporary but quite disarticulation of knowledge. The work is done under one of these methods as with a machine, and in order to obtain quite abundant results it is not even necessary to have rigorous notions of their meaning and foundations. In this way the majority of scientists help the general advance of science while shut up in the narrow cell of their laboratory, like the bee in the cell of its hive, or the turnspit in its wheel.


The Revolt of the Masses
Chapter 12
(p. 111)


Reference #: 10210

Orth, Charles D.
General Category: CREATIVITY

Creative activity cannot be forced. The creative people of this world have always been the free, unchanneled minds, the non-conformists, the individuals, the uninhibited.


Science and society


Reference #: 2027

Orwell, George
General Category: PAIN

It is devilish to suffer from a pain that is all but nameless. Blessed are they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their belly-achings with sympathy.


Burmese Days
(p. 134)


Reference #: 84

Orwell, George
General Category: PAST

...the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered.


1984


Reference #: 83

Orwell, George
General Category: PAST

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.


1984


Reference #: 7730

Orwell, George
General Category: STATISTICS

The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies - more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity.


Nineteen Eighty-Four
(p. 59)


Reference #: 7729

Orwell, George
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at a hundred and forty-five millions pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two million. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or a hundred and forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared.


Nineteen Eighty-Four
(pp. 42-43)


Reference #: 5352

Orwell, George
General Category: TECHNOLOGICAL

Men are only so good as their technical developments allows them to be.


Inside the Whale and Other Essays
Charles Dickens


Reference #: 12605

Orwell, George
General Category: OBSERVATION

To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.


In Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.)
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950
1946, 36
(p. 125)


Reference #: 17920

Orwell, George (Eric Arthur Blair)
General Category: PROTON

The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff...But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely, 'How difficult are these things to manufacture?'


You and the Atom Bomb


Reference #: 15015

Osborn, Don
General Category: LAW

Osborn's Law. Variables won't, constants aren't.


In Paul Dickson
The Official Rules
(p. O-138)


Reference #: 15159

Osborn, Don
General Category: LAW

Law of Probable Disposal: Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.


The New Yorker
LOGICal Machine Advertisement, 1976


Reference #: 9149

Osborn, H.F.
General Category: PALEONTOLOGY

The preservation of extinct animals and plants in the rocks is one of the fortunate accidents of time, but to mistake this position as indicative of affinity is about as logical as it would be to bracket the Protozoa, which are principally aquatic organisms, under hydrology, or the Insecta, because of their areal life, under meterology. No, this is emphatically a misconception which is still working harm in some museums and institutions of learning. Paleontology is not geology, it is zoology or botany; it succeeds only so far as it is pursued in the zoological and biological spirit.


Popular Science Monthly
The Present Problems of Paleontology, 1905
(p. 226)


Reference #: 7648

Osborn, Henry Fairfield
General Category: EVOLUTION

...for evolution in 1863 rested on the indirect or circumstantial evidence presented by Darwin, while in 1922 it is the most firmly established truth in the natural universe...


New York Times
Evolution and Religion, section 7, 2:15, 14:35 March 1922


Reference #: 11833

Osborn, Henry Fairfield
General Category: PALEONTOLOGY

Paleontology is the zoology of the past.


The Age of Mammals in Europe, Asia and North America
Chapter I
(p. 1)
The Macmillan Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1910


Reference #: 13234

Osborn, Henry Fairfield
General Category: FOSSIL

The hunter of wild game is always bringing live animals nearer to death and extinction, whereas the fossil hunter is always seeking to bring extinct animals to life.


In Robert West Howard
The Dawnseekers
Chapter 17
(p. 238)


Reference #: 8394

Osborn, Henry Fairfield
General Category: CONSERVATION

[The] great battle for preservation and conservation cannot be won by gentle tones, nor by appeals to the aesthetic instincts of those who have no sense of beauty, or enjoyment of Nature.


In William T. Hornaday
Our Vanishing Wild Life
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 6740

Osgood, W.F.
General Category: MECHANICS

Mechanics is a natural science and like any natural science requires for its comprehension the observation and knowledge of a vast fund of individual cases...But Mechanics is not an empirical subject in the sense in which physics and chemistry, when dealing with the border region of the human knowledge of the day, are empirical...The laws of Mechanics, like the laws of Geometry, so far as first approximations go - the laws that explain the motion of the golf ball or the gyroscope or the skidding automobile, and which make possible the calculation of lunar tables and the prediction of eclipses - these laws are known, and will be as new and important two thousand years hence, as in the recent past of science when first they emerged into the light of day...The world in which the boy and girl have lived is the true laboratory of elementary mechanics. The tennis ball, the golf ball, the shell on the river; the automobile - good old Model T, in its day, and the home-made autos and motor boats which youngsters construct and will continue to construct - the amateur printing press; the games in which the mechanics of the body is a part; all these things go to provide the student with rich laboratory experiences...


Mechanics
(pp. v-vi)


Reference #: 8127

Osiander, Andrew
General Category: ASTRONOMER

It is the job of the astronomer to use painstaking and skilled observation in gathering together the history of the celestial movements, and then-since he cannot by any line of reasoning reach the true causes of these movements-to think up or construct whatever causes or hypotheses he pleases such that, by the assumptions of these causes, those same movements can be calculated from the principles of geometry for the past and for the future too....


In Nicholas Copernicus
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Preface


Reference #: 8130

Osiander, Andrew
General Category: ASTRONOMER

...it is the job of the astronomer to use painstaking and skilled observation in gathering together the history of the celestial movements, and then-since he cannot by any line of reasoning reach the true causes of these movements-to think up or construct whatever causes or hypotheses he pleases such that, by the assumptions of these causes, those same movements can be calculated from the principles of geometry for the past and for the future too....


In Nicholas Copernicus
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Introduction, To the Reader Concerning the Hypothesis of this Work
(p. 505)


Reference #: 8124

Osiander, Andrew
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

There is no need for these hypotheses to be true or even to be at all like the truth: rather one thing is sufficient for them-that they yield calculations which agree with the observations.


In Nicholas Copernicus
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Introduction, To the Reader Concerning the Hypothesis of this Work


Reference #: 6394

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

Man can do a great deal by observation and thinking, but with them alone he cannot unravel the mysteries of Nature. Had it been possible the Greeks would have done it; and could Plato and Aristotle have grasped the value of experiment in the progress of human knowledge, the course of European history might have been very different.


Man's Redemption of Man
Address, University of Edinburgh, July 1910
(p. 22)


Reference #: 797

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE

...who can doubt that the leaven of science, working in the individual, leavens in some slight degree the whole social fabric. Reason is at least free, or nearly so; the shackles of dogma have been removed, and faith herself, freed from a morganatic alliance, finds in the release great gain.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Leaven of Science
(p. 94)


Reference #: 798

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: REASON

With reason, science never parts company, but with feeling, emotion, passion, what has she to do? They are not of her; they owe her no allegiance. She may study, analyze, and define, she can never control them, and by no possibility can their ways be justified to her.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Leaven of Science
(p. 93)


Reference #: 799

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: TRUTH

Truth has been well called the daughter of Time, and even in anatomy, which is a science in a state of fact, the point of view changes with successive generations.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Leaven of Science, II
Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology of the University of Pennsylvania
May 21, 1894


Reference #: 793

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: EDUCATION

What, after all, is education but a subtle, slowly-affected change, due to the action upon us of the Externals; of the written record of the great minds of all ages, of the beautiful and harmonious surroundings of nature and of art, and of the lives, good or ill, of our fellows—these alone educate us, these alone mould the developing minds.


Aequanimitas
The Leaven of Science
(p. 95)


Reference #: 2977

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: GENERAL PRACTITIONER

For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to overtake him. Self-centered, self-taught, he leads a solitary life, and unless his every-day experience is controlled by careful reading or by the attrition of a medical society it soon ceases to be of the slightest value and becomes a mere accretion of isolated facts, without correlation. It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practise medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it.


Aequanimitas
Books and Men
(pp. 210-211)


Reference #: 794

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: GOALS

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them.


Aequanimitas
Internal Medicine as a Vocation
(p. 138)


Reference #: 5846

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: EDUCATION

If the license to practice meant the completion of his education how sad it would be for the practitioner, how distressing to his patients! More clearly than any other the physician should illustrate the truth of Plato's saying that education is a life-long process.


Lancet
The Importance of Post-Graduate Study, Vol. 2, 1900


Reference #: 792

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: STUDENT

Learn to love the freedom of the student life, only too quickly to pass away; the absence of the coarser cares of after days, the joy in comradeship, the delight in new work, the happiness in knowing that you are making progress. Once only can you enjoy these pleasures


Aequanimitas
The Master-Word in Medicine
(p. 362)


Reference #: 3879

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

Observation plus thinking has given us the bodies of living creatures in health and disease. There have been two inherent difficulties—to get men to see straight and to get men to think clearly; but in spite of the frailty of the instrument, the method has been one of the most powerful ever placed in the hands of man.


Glasgow Medical Journal
The Pathological Institute of a General Hospital, Vol. 76, 1911


Reference #: 1425

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DIAGNOSTICIAN

One finger in the throat and one in the rectum makes a good diagnostician.


Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings
(p. 104)


Reference #: 2976

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

The whole art of medicine is in observation, as the old motto goes, but to educate the eye to see, the ear to hear and the finger to feel takes time, and to make a beginning, to start a man on the right path, is all that we can do. We expect too much of the student and we try to teach him too much. Give him good methods and a proper point of view, and all other things will be added, as his experience grows.


Aequanimitas
The Hospital as a College
(pp. 315-316)


Reference #: 286

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

To prevent disease, to relieve suffering and to heal the sick - this is our work.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Chauvinism in Medicine
(p. 267)


Reference #: 2978

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

Note with accuracy and care everything that comes within your professional ken….Let nothing slip by you; the ordinary hum-drum cases of the morning routine may have been accurately described and pictured, but study each one separately as though it were new—so it is so far as your special experience goes; and if the spirit of the student is in you the lesson will be there.


Aequanimitas
The Army Surgeon
(p. 104)


Reference #: 2979

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: EXPERIENCE

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.


Aequanimitas
The Army Surgeon
(p. 105)


Reference #: 5665

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: BOOK

I am firmly convinced that the best book in medicine is the book of Nature, as written large in the bodies of men.


Journal of the American Medical Association
The Natural Method of Teaching the Subject of Medicine, Vol. 36, 1901


Reference #: 796

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE

To the physician particularly, a scientific discipline is an incalculable gift, which leavens his whole life, giving exactness to habits of thought and tempering the mind with that judicious faculty of distrust which can alone, amid the uncertainties of practice, make him wise unto salvation. For perdition inevitably awaits the mind of the practitioner who has never had the full inoculation with the leaven, who has never grasped clearly the relations of science to his art, and who knows nothing and perhaps cares less, for the limitations of either.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Leaven of Science, II
Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology of the University of Pennsylvania
May 21, 1894


Reference #: 1069

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: HISTORY

History is simply the biography of the mind of man; and our interest in history, and its educational value to us, is directly proportionate to the completeness of our study of the individuals through whom this mind has been manifested.


An Alabama Student
Harvey and His Discovery
(p. 296)


Reference #: 113

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DISINFECTANT

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.


In Evan Esar
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Doubleday, Garden City. 1968


Reference #: 289

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: NURSE

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest, and not inferior to either in her mission.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses, and Practitioners of Medicine
Nurse and Patient


Reference #: 288

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICAL STUDENT

The student often resembles the poet—he is
Born, not made.


Aequanimitas, with other addresses to medical students, nurses and practitioners of medicine
The Student Life


Reference #: 287

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

There are only two sorts of doctors; those who practice with their brains, and those who practice with their tongues.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Teaching and Thinking, II
(p. 124)


Reference #: 284

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Professional chemists look askance at physiological chemistry, and physiological chemists criticize pretty sharply the work of some clinical chemists, but there can be no doubt of the value to the physicians of a very thorough training in methods and ways of organic chemistry.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Internal Medicine as a Vocation
(p. 137)


Reference #: 285

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

To wrest from nature the secrets which have perplexed philosophers of all ages, to track to their sources the causes of disease, to correlate the vast stores of knowledge, that they may be quickly available for the prevention and cure of disease - these are our ambitions.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Chauvinism in Medicine
(p. 267)


Reference #: 791

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: EDUCATION

A man cannot become a competent surgeon without a full knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, and the physician without physiology and chemistry flounders along in an aimless fashion, never able to gain any accurate conception of disease, practising a sort of popgun pharmacy, hitting now the malady and again the patient, he himself not knowing which.


Aequanimitas
Teaching and Thinking
(p. 121)


Reference #: 803

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: BIOLOGY

Biology touches the problems of life at every point, and may claim, as no other science, completeness of view and a comprehensiveness which pertains to it alone. To all those whose daily work lies in her manifestations the value of a deep insight into her relations cannot be overestimated. The study of biology trains the mind in accurate methods of observation and correct methods of reasoning, and gives to a man clearer points of view, and an attitude of mind serviceable in the working-day-world than that given by other sciences, or even by the humanities.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Leaven of Science
(pp. 919-2)


Reference #: 800

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

The critical sense and sceptical attitude of the Hippocratic school laid the foundation of modern medicine on broad lines, and we owe to it: first, the emancipation of medicine from the shackles of priestcraft and of caste; secondly, the conception of medicine as an art based on accurate observation, and as a science, an integral part of the science of man and of nature; thirdly, the high moral ideals, expressed in that 'most memorable of human documents' (Gomperz), the Hippocratic oath; and fourthly, the conception and realization of medicine as the profession of a cultivated gentleman.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Chauvinism in Medicine
(p. 266)


Reference #: 804

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: LABORATORY

Worse still is the 'lock and key' laboratory in which suspicion and distrust reign, and everyone is jealous and fearful least the other should know of or find out about his work.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Aequenimitas, and Other Addresses, Chauvinism in Medicine


Reference #: 805

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Permanence of residence, good undoubtedly for the pocket, is not always best for wide mental vision in the physician.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Army Surgeon
(p. 101)


Reference #: 802

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: ANATOMY

Anatomy may be likened to a harvest-field. First come the reapers, who, entering upon untrodden ground, cut down great store of corn from all sides of them. These are the early anatomists of modern Europe, such as Vesalius, Fallopius, Malpighi, and Harvey. Then come the gleaners, who gather up ears enough from the bare ridges to make a few loaves of bread. Such were the anatomists of last century - Valsalva, Cotunnius, Haller, Winslow, Vicq d'Azyr, Camper, Hunter, and the two Monroes. Last of all come the geese, who still contrive to pick up a few grains scattered here and there among the stubble, and waddle home in the evening, poor things, cackling with joy because of their success. Gentlemen, we are the geese.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
The Leaven of Science, II
(pp. 84-85)


Reference #: 801

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

...the physician without physiology and chemistry flounders along in an aimless fashion, never able to gain any accurate conception of disease, practising a sort of popgun pharmacy, hitting now the malady and again the patient, he himself not knowing which.


Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
Teaching and Thinking, II
(p. 121)


Reference #: 14368

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DIAGNOSIS

If necessary, be cruel; use the knife and the cautery to cure the intumescence and moral necrosis which you will feel in the posterior parietal region, in Gall and Spurzheim's center of self-esteem, where you will find a sore spot after you have made a mistake in diagnosis.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 329)


Reference #: 14367

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DEATH

We speak of death as the King of Terrors, yet how rarely does the act of dying appear to be painful, how rarely do we witness AGONY in the last few hours. Strict, indeed, is the fell sergeant in his arrest, but few feel the iron grip; the hard process of nature's law is for the most of us mercifully effected, and death, like birth, is 'but a sleep and a forgetting.'


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 294)


Reference #: 14370

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

To investigate the causes of death, to examine carefully the condition of organs, after such changes have gone on in them as to render existence impossible and to apply such Knowledge to the prevention and treatment of disease, is one of the highest objects of the Physician...


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 85)


Reference #: 14365

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: BLOOD PRESSURE

A man's life may be said to be a gift of his blood pressure, just as Egypt is a gift of the Nile.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. II
(p. 297)


Reference #: 14377

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Few men live lives of more devoted self-sacrifice than the family physician but he may become so completely absorbed in work that leisure is unknown....There is danger in this treadmill life lest he lose more than health and time and rest - his intellectual independence. More than most men he feels the tragedy of isolation - that inner isolation so well expressed in Matthew Arnold's line - 'We mortal millions live alone.' Even in populous districts the practice of medicine is a lonely road which winds up-hill all the way and a man may easily go astray and never reach the Delectable Mountains unless he early finds those shepherd guides of which Bunyan tells, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful and Sincere. The circumstances of life mould him into a masterful, self-confident, self-centered man, whose worst faults often partake of his best qualities.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 588)


Reference #: 14364

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MICROBES

In war the microbe kills more than the bullet.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. II
(p. 427)


Reference #: 14366

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: FEVER

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 435)


Reference #: 15019

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: SPECIALIZATION

The extraordinary development of modern science may be her undoing. Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the specialties themselves in a way that makes the outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of proportion in a maze of minutiae.


The Old Humanities and the New Science
III
(p. 49)


Reference #: 12999

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: UNDERSTAND

To understand the old writers one must see as they saw. Feel as they felt, believe as they believed—and this is hard, indeed impossible! We may get near them by asking the Spirit of the Age in which they lived to enter in and dwell with us, but it does not always come….Each generation has its own problems to face, look at truth from a special focus and does not see quite the same outlines as any other.


The Evolution of Medicine
(p. 218)


Reference #: 14360

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animal.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 342)


Reference #: 14362

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE

The future belongs to science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. II
(p. 262)


Reference #: 10188

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: FACT

Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply...


Science and Immortality
The Terestans
(p. 41)


Reference #: 10768

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: COMMON SENSE

Common-sense nerve fibers are seldom medullated before forty—they are never seen even with a microscope before twenty.


Sir William Osler: Aphorisms from His Bedside Teachings and Writings
(p. 283)
Charles C. Thomas, Springfield; 1961


Reference #: 10189

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Science is organized knowledge, and knowledge is of things we see. Now the things that are seen are temporal; of the things that are unseen science knows nothing and has at present no means of knowing anything.


Science and Immortality
The Terestans
(pp. 40-41)


Reference #: 10767

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEMORY

Memory plays strange pranks with facts. The rocks and fissures and gullies of the mountain-side melt quickly into the smooth, blue outlines of the distant panorama. Viewed through the perspective of memory, an unrecorded observation, the vital details long since lost, easily changes its countenance and sinks obediently into the frame fashioned by the fancy of the moment.


Sir William Osler, Bart.
Osler, The Teacher
(p. 51)


Reference #: 14376

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

A physician who does not use books and journals, who does not need a library, who does not read one or two of the best weeklies and monthlies, soon sinks to the level of the cross-counter prescriber, and not alone in practice, but in those mercenary feelings and habits which characterize a trade...


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 448)


Reference #: 11520

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The physician who shows in his face the slightest alteration, expressive of anxiety or fear, has not his medullary centres under the highest control, and is liable to disaster at any moment. I have spoken to this to you on many occasions, and have urged you to educate your nerve centres so that not the slightest dilator or contractor influence shall pass to the vessels of your face under any professional trial.


Student Life
(p. 37)


Reference #: 14371

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

It may be well for a physician to have pursuits outside his profession, but it is dangerous to let them become too absorbing.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 67)


Reference #: 14623

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish. To you, as the trusted family counselor, the father will come with his anxieties, the mother with her hidden grief, the daughter with her trials, and the son with his follies. Fully one-third of the work you do will be entered in other books than yours. Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the rough places of life, but will enable you to bring comfort and help to the weak-hearted and will console you in the sad hours when, like Uncle Toby, you have 'to whistle that you may not weep.'


The Master-Word in Medicine
Part III
(pp. 29-30)


Reference #: 14359

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

...medicine, unlike law and theology, is a progressive science...


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 129)


Reference #: 11728

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: ERROR

...errors in judgment must occur in the practice of an Art which consists largely in balancing probabilities...


Teacher and Student
(p. 19)


Reference #: 12603

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

We doctors have always been a simple, trusting folk! Did we not believe Galen implicitly for fifteen hundred years and Hippocrates for more than two thousand years?


The Collected Essays of Sir William Osler
Volume II
[Speech
Ontario Medical Association, Toronto, June 3, 1909
(p. 364)


Reference #: 14375

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

'Tis no idle challenge which we physicians throw out to the world when we claim that our mission is of the highest and of the noblest kind, not alone in curing disease but in educating the people in the laws of health, and in preventing the spread of plagues and pestilences...


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler


Reference #: 14373

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: PATIENTS

To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 67)


Reference #: 14372

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

There are two great types of practitioners - the routinist and the rationalist - neither common in the pure form. Into the clutches of the demon routine the majority of us ultimately come. The mind, like the body, falls only too readily into the rut of oft-repeated experiences. One evening in the far North West, beneath the shadows of the Rocky Mountains we camped beside a small lake from which diverging in all directions were deep furrows, each one as straight as an arrow, as far as the eye could reach. They were the deep ruts or tracks which countless generations of buffalo had worn in the prairie as they followed each other to and from the water. In our minds, countless, oft-repeated experiences wear similar ruts in which we find it easiest to travel, and out of which many of us never dream of straying.


In Harvey Cushing
The Life of Sir William Osler
Vol. I
(p. 272)


Reference #: 11519

Osler, Sir William
Born: 12 July, 1849 in Bond Head, Canada West, Canada
Died: 29 December, 1919 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

In no profession does culture count for so much as in medicine.


Student Life
(p. 113)


Reference #: 9446

Ostwald, Friedrich Wilhelm
General Category: ATOM

We must renounce the hope of representing the physical world by referring natural phenomena to a mechanics of atoms. 'But' - I hear you say - 'but what will we have left to give us a picture of reality if we abandon atoms?' To this I reply: 'Thou shalt not take unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of anything.' Our task is not to see the world through a dark and distorted mirror, but directly, so far as the nature of our minds permits. The task of science is to discern relations among realities...


In Nick Herbert
Quantum Reality
(pp. 11-12)
Anchor Press, Garden City, New Jersey, United States of America; 1985


Reference #: 14208

Ostwald, W.
General Category: SCIENCE

The more perfect the theoretical evolution of the sciences becomes, the greater will be the scope of their explanations and at the same time the greater their practical importance.


The Journal of the American Chemical Society
On Chemical Energy, Vol. XV, No. 8, August 1893
(p. 430)


Reference #: 1934

Ostwald, Wilhelm
General Category: CHEMICAL

Thus there was for him nothing small or great in Nature. Every phenomenon embraced for him an endless diversity of factors, and in the yellow flame of an ordinary alcohol lamp whose wick was sprinkled with salt, he saw the possibility of accomplishing the chemical analysis of the most distant stars.


In Mary Elvira Weeks
Discovery of the Elements
(p. 363)


Reference #: 7825

Ostwald, Wilhelm
General Category: CHEMISTRY

I have fortunately been proved wrong in that prediction demonstrates how far I underestimated that as science progressively developed and as its nature and attributes became more and more familiar, mankind's appreciation and acceptance of scientific progress has steadily accelerated.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1909


Reference #: 1235

Ostwald, Wolfgang
General Category: CHEMIST

All those sticky, mucilaginous, resinous, tarry masses which refuse to crystallize, and which are the abomination of the normal organic chemist; those substances which he carefully sets toward the back of his cupboard and marks 'not fit for further use,' just these are the substances which are the delight of the colloid chemist.


An Introduction to Theoretical and Applied Colloid Chemistry: The World of Neglected Diminsions
(p. 134)


Reference #: 15098

Ott, Susan
General Category: LUNGS

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Without your lungs
Your blood would be too.


The New England Journal of Medicine
A Pulmonologist's Valentine, Vol. 304, No. 12, 1981
(p. 739)


Reference #: 17777

Outwater, Alice
General Category: ANIMAL BEAVER

The beaver is utterly familiar. Forty inches long and over a foot upright, a beaver seems like a little person with a fondness for engineering.


Water: A Natural History
Chapter Two
(p. 19)


Reference #: 6989

Ovenden, M.W.
General Category: UNIVERSE

Pythagoras, if he could but be with us, would (I hope) smile indulgently upon our endeavors. But I think that he would be inclined to say that he knew that the Universe would turn out to be harmonious, for harmony was for him an axiom, a definition of the way in which he chose to organize his experience of the world.


Nature
Bode's Law-Truth or Consequences?, Vol. 239, 1972


Reference #: 10105

Overhage, Carl F.J.
General Category: LITERATURE

The public printed record of the results of scholarly research is the universal device that transcends the barriers of space and time between scholars. It makes the most recent advances of human knowledge accessible to students and scholars throughout the world. Wherever there is a library, any person who has learned the language may participate in the outstanding intellectual adventures of his time. The same record extends into the past; through an unbroken sequence of communications, the scholars of today can trace the origin of a new concept in different periods and in different countries. By standing on the shoulders of a giant, he may see farther. The wide availability of the record is one of the guarantees of its soundness. In science especially, truth is held to reside in findings that can be experimentally verified anywhere, at any time.


Science
Libraries: Prospects and Problems, Vol. 155, No. 3764, February 1967
(p. 804)


Reference #: 261

Overman, Dean
General Category: SCIENCE

Complete objectivity in science is an illusion. Because so much of one's analysis depends upon metaphysical assumptions, it should be acknowledged by this writer, and by all readers, that the answer one gives to a question depends to a great extent on the metaphysical position one has previously adopted. This is certainly true for theists and it is equally true for materialists. Frequently, the metaphysical conclusion is given as the rationale for a tortured interpretation of evidence. Theists and naturalists frequently refuse to follow evidence where it leads on the basis that to do so would result in a contradiction of their previous metaphysical conclusions.


A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization
(p. 3)


Reference #: 13554

Overstreet, H.A.
General Category: WATER

Water, however, is not simply the sum of hydrogen and oxygen. It is something qualitatively new, something that cannot be found by the most searching examination of the gas, hydrogen, nor of the gas, oxygen. No amount of previous knowledge of the atomic structure of hydrogen and oxygen could, apparently, give a knowledge of this peculiar fluid that results from combining the two gasses.


The Enduring Quest
Chapter IV
(p. 59)


Reference #: 17524

Ovid
General Category: MEDICINE

...the same medicine will both harm and cure me.


Tristia
Book II
l. 20


Reference #: 17525

Ovid
General Category: MEDICINE

Medicine sometimes removes, sometimes bestows safety; showing what plant is healthful, what harmful.


Tristia
Book ii
l. 269


Reference #: 3766

Ovid
General Category: WATER

Gutta cavat lapidem
Dripping water hollows out a stone


Epistulae Ex Ponto
Book 3, no. 10, 1. 5


Reference #: 4115

Ovid
General Category: MEDICINE

The healing art knows not how to remove crippling gout, it helps not the fearful dropsy.


Ex Ponto
Book I, iii


Reference #: 6888

Ovid
General Category: CHANGE

There's nothing constant in the universe,
All ebb and flow, and every shape that's
Born
Bears in its womb the seeds of change.


Metamorphoses
XV


Reference #: 6887

Ovid
General Category: TIME

Time glides by with constant movement, not
unlike a stream.
For neither can a stream stay its course, nor can
the fleeting hour.


Metamorphoses
XV, 180


Reference #: 4116

Ovid
General Category: PHYSICIAN

'Tis not always in a physician's power to cure the sick.


Ex Ponto
Book I, iii


Reference #: 6885

Ovid
General Category: MILKY WAY

There is a way on high, conspicuous in the clear heavens, called the Milky Way, brilliant with its own brightness.


Metamorphoses
Book 1
l. 168


Reference #: 5325

Ovid
General Category: CHANGE

All things are fluent; every image forms,
Wandering through change. Time is itself a river
In constant movement, and the hours flow by
Like water, wave on wave, pursued, pursuing,
Forever fugitive, forever new.


Metamorphosis
Book Fifteen
l. 178-182


Reference #: 5323

Ovid
General Category: VOLCANO

Near Troezen stands a hill, exposed in air
To winter winds, of leafy shadows bare:
This once was level ground; but (strange to tell)
Th' included vapours, that in caverns dwell,
Labouring with colic pangs, and close confined,
In vain sought issue for the rumbling wind:
Yet still they heaved for vent, and heaving still,
Enlarged the concave and shot up the hill,
As breath extends a bladder, or the skins
Of goats ae blown t' enclose the hoarded wines;
The mountain yet retains a mountain face,
And gathered rubbish heads the hollow space.


Metamorphosis
XV
(pp. 296-306)


Reference #: 5322

Ovid
General Category: CHAOS

Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles...[Chaos: a rough and unordered mass...]


Metamorphoses
Book I
l. 7


Reference #: 5321

Ovid
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

The cause is hidden, but the enfeebling power of the fountain is well known.


Metamorphoses
IV
l. 287


Reference #: 6886

Ovid
General Category: TECTONICS

What was solid earth has become the sea, and solid ground has issued from the bosom of the waters.


Metamorphoses


Reference #: 1536

Ovid
General Category: CONSTELLATION

Midst golden stars he stands resplendent now,
And thrusts the Scorpion with his bended bow.


In Garrett P. Serviss
Astronomy with the Naked Eye
(p. 113)


Reference #: 6928

Ovid
General Category: SURGERY

The knife must cut the cancer out, infection
Averted while it can be.


Metomorphoses
Book I
l. 190-91


Reference #: 4206

Ovid
General Category: FACT

When five days later the Morning Star has lifted up its radiance bright from out the ocean waves, then is the time that spring begins. But yet be not deceived, cold days are still in store for thee, indeed they are: departing winter leaves behind great tokens of himself.[Believe the facts]


FastiII
l. 149


Reference #: 8728

Ovid
General Category: CONSTELLATION

There is a place above, where Scorpio bent,
In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent;
In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines,
And fills the place of two celestial signs.


Phaeton


Reference #: 8446

Ovid
General Category: AMPHIBIAN TADPOLE

Ev'n slime begets the frog's loquacious race:
Short of their feet at first, in little space
With arms, and legs endu'd, long leaps they take
Rais'd on their hinder parts, and weim the lake,
And waves repel: for Nature gives their kind,
To that intent, a length of legs behind.


In S. Garth (ed.)
Ovid's Metamorphoses, in Fifteen Books
Metamorphoses, Book the Fifteenth
(p. 500)


Reference #: 8447

Ovid
General Category: OCEAN

The face of places, and their forms decay;
And that is solid Earth, that once was sea:
Seas in their turn retreating from the shore,
Make solid land, what ocean was before.


In S. Garth (ed.)
Ovid's Metamorphoses, in Fifteen Books
Metamorphoses, Book the Fifteenth
(p. 496)


Reference #: 12012

Ovid
General Category: MEDICINE

For the sharp medic'cine is the patient's cure.


The Art of Love
Amores, Book III, Elegy XI
l. 21


Reference #: 16968

Ovurbury, Sir Thomas
General Category: BOOK

Books are a part of man's preogative;
In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old;
Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward do extend.


The Wife


Reference #: 6880

Owen Gingerich's astronomy course at Harvard University
General Category: SPECTRAL SEQUENCE

Oh Bring another fully grown kangaroo, my recipe needs some. Hendry, Khati
Oh brutal and fearsome gorilla, kill my roommate next Saturday. Luxenberg, Steven M.
Obese but alluring fertility goddess, keep my Radcliffe nymph sensuous. Berkman, Jim
On bad afternoons, fermented grapes keep Mrs. Richard Nixon smiling. Metzner, Richard H.
Ornery Bostonians angrily fight governor king's measures regarding needless sobriety. Rusk, Michelle
Out by a foot? God knows most referees need sight! Steyn, Lawrence
Oh Brooke's a famous girl - Klein makes really narrow slacks. Ellertson, Lottie
Out beyond Andromeda, fiery gases kindle many red new stars. Eliot, Steven H.
Oh backward astronomer, forget geocentricity! Kepler's motions reveal nature's simplicity. Gorman, Mike Baker, Brad
Organs Blaring and fugues galore, Kepler's music reads nature's score.John Gomez


Mercury
March-April 1995
(p. 38)


Reference #: 13716

Owen, Ed
General Category: OBSERVE

I wandered far and saw many things over a long time. Most of the things which I saw I did not understand. I looked about me and did not see that any others understood the complex pattern either. But as I wandered I could not escape the feel of things and of places and of the people in them.


In Samuel P. Ellison, Jr., Joseph J. Jones and Mirva Owen (eds)
The Flavor of Ed Owen-A Geologist Looks Back
Introduction
(p. 1)


Reference #: 5879

Owen, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Physicians take Gold, but seldom give:
They Physick give, take none; yet healthy live.
A Diet They prescribe; the Sick must for't
Give Gold; Each other Thus supply-support.


Latine Epigrams
Book I, No. 53


Reference #: 11293

Owen, John
General Category: DOCTOR

God and the doctor we alike adore
But only when in danger, not before;
The danger o'er, both are alike requited,
God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.


Source undetermined
Epigrams


Reference #: 9852

Owen, Sir Richard
General Category: DINOSAUR

The combination of such characters, some, as the sacral bones, altogether peculiar among reptiles, others borrowed, as it were, from groups now distinct from each other, and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or suborder of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria.


Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Sciences
Report on British Fossil Reptiles, Part II, April 1842
(fn, p. 103)


Reference #: 13694

Ozick, Cynthia
General Category: FACT

I'm not afraid of facts. I welcome facts - but a congeries of acts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called "scientific" mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.


Quoted in Francis Klagsbrun
The First Ms. Reader
We are the Crazy Lady and Other Feisty Feminist Fables
(p. 67)


Reference #: 2125

Packard, Norman
General Category: CHAOS

The phenomenon of chaos could have been discovered long, long ago. It wasn't, in part because this huge body of work on the dynamics of regular motion didn't lead in that direction. But if you just look, there it is.


In James Gleick
Chaos: Making a New Science
The Dynamical Systems Collective
(p. 251)
Viking, New York, New York, United States of America; 1987


Reference #: 8540

Page, Jake
General Category: NAME

To name something is, in a sense, to own it....[It] has been said that it is only by its name that anything can enter into thought and discourse. Naming, in other words, is a serious business.


Pastorale
What Is in a Name
(p. 119)


Reference #: 966

Page, Leigh
General Category: RELATIVITY

The rotating armatures of every generator and motor in this age of electricity are steadily proclaiming the truth of the relativity theory to all who have ears to hear.


American Journal of Physics
Vol. 43, No. 4, April 1975
(p. 330)


Reference #: 9513

Page, Ray
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...Today our world of automation revolves around science and science in turn rests on mathematics.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
Vol. 53, No. 20, May 14, 1967
(p. 380)


Reference #: 3042

Pagel, Bernard
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy is a branch of science that enjoys a universal fascination. One of the reasons why it fascinates people is that the sheer romance of the night sky never palls even for the most hardbitten observer—at least in the warm and comparatively short nights of the summer. In winter it has to be admitted that observing is not quite so romantic after one has been at it for six hours or more, but there are always enough interesting things in the sky itself to compensate one for the effort.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution 1963
The Analysis of Starlight
(p. 301)


Reference #: 13465

Pagels, Heinz
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.


The Dreams of Reason
Chapter 11
(p. 242)


Reference #: 13469

Pagels, Heinz
General Category: REALITY

We may begin to see reality differently simply because the computer...provides a different angle on reality.


The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity
Preface
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13165

Pagels, Heinz
General Category: VACUUM

Once our minds accept the mutability of matter and the new idea of the vacuum, we can speculate on the origin of the biggest thing we know - the universe. Maybe the universe itself sprang into existence out of nothingness - a gigantic vacuum fluctuation which we know today as the big bang. Remarkably, the laws of modern physics allow for this possibility.


The Cosmic Code
(p. 247)
Toronto: Bantam, 1982


Reference #: 18097

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: PHYSICS

Bohr wondered how we could even talk about the atomic world - it was so far removed from human experience. He struggled with this problem—how can we use ordinary language developed to cope with everyday events and objects to describe atomic events? Perhaps the logic inherent in our grammar was inadequate for the task....The end of determinism meant not the end of physics but the beginning of a new vision of reality.


In T. Ferris (ed.)
World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics
Uncertainty and Complementarity
(p. 103, 110)


Reference #: 8666

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: NATURE

Nature has been generous to astronomers, offering an abundance of different stars and galaxies at all stages in their lives to look at.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part One, Chapter 1
(p. 28)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8680

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: LAW

The fact that the universe is governed by simple natural laws is remarkable, profound and on the face of it absurd. How can the vast variety in nature, the multitude of things and processes all be subject to a few simple, universal laws?


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Two, Chapter 1
(p. 160)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8679

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: LAW

Instead of finding an absolute universal law at the bottom of existence, they may find an endless regress of laws, or even worse, total confusion and lawlessness - an outlaw universe.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Three, Chapter 1
(p. 264)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8678

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: LIFE

My own view is that although we do not yet know the fundamental physical laws, when and if we find them the possibility of life in a universe governed by those laws will be written into them. The existence of life in the universe is not a selective principle acting upon the laws of nature; rather it is a consequence of them.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Four, Chapter 1
(pp. 359-360)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8667

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: SCIENCE

This sense of the unfathomable beautiful ocean of existence drew me into science. I am awed by the universe, puzzled by it and sometimes angry at a natural order that brings such pain and suffering, Yet an emotion or feeling I have toward the cosmos seems to be reciprocated by neither benevolence nor hostility but just by silence. The universe appears to be a perfectly neutral screen unto which I can project any passion or attitude, and it supports them all.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Four, Chapter 2
(p. 370)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8674

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: STAR

Stars are
Born, they live and they die. Filling the night sky like beacons in an ocean of darkness, they have guided our thoughts over the millennia to the secure harbor of reason.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part One, Chapter 2
(p. 30)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8675

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: UNDERSTAND

The attempt to understand the origin of the universe is the greatest challenge confronting the physical sciences. Armed with the new concepts, scientists are rising to meet that challenge, although they know that success may be far away. Yet when the origin of the universe is understood, it will open a new vision that is beautiful, wonderful and filled with the mystery of existence. It will be our intellectual gift to our progeny and our tribute to the scientific heroes who began this great adventure of the human mind, never to see it completed.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part One, Chapter 7
(p. 156)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8670

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: NATURE

Nature avoids infinities.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Four, Chapter 1
(p. 354)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8669

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: TRUTH

The only touchstone for empirical truth is experiment and observation.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Four, Chapter 1
(p. 355)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 13162

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: QUANTUM THEORY

The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.


The Cosmic Code
(p. 13)
Simon and Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America 1982


Reference #: 8672

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: UNIVERSE

...the universe contains the record of its past the way that sedimentary layers of rock contain the geological record of the earth's past.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part One, Chapter 2
(p. 24)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8671

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: VOID

The nothingness "before" the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine—no space, time, or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number—it is what mathematicians call "the empty set." Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence—a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What "tells" the void that is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to law, a logic that exists prior to space and time.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Three, Chapter 5
(p. 347)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8677

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: LAW

The fact that the universe is governed by simple natural laws is remarkable, profound and on the face of it absurd. How can the vast variety in nature, the multitude of things and processes all be subject to a few simple, universal laws.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part Two, Chapter 1
(p. 160)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8668

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: STARS

Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the young but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part One, Chapter 2
(p. 44)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 8673

Pagels, Heinz R.
General Category: STARS

Stars are an image of etermity.


Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time
Part One, Chapter 3
(p. 54)
Simon and Schuster, New York 1985


Reference #: 3195

Paget, Stephen
General Category: NURSE

Talk of the patience of Job, said a Hospital nurse, Job was never on night duty.


Confessio Medici
The Discipline of Practice
(p. 83)


Reference #: 2697

Pagnol, Marcel
General Category: ENGINEER

Il faut se méfier des ingénieurs: ça commence par la machine a courdre, ça finit par la bombe atomique.
[One has to look out for engineers—they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb.]


critique des critiques
Chapter 3
(p. 38)


Reference #: 813

Paine, Thomas
General Category: VENUS TRANSIT

It should be asked, how can man know these things? I have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the planet Venus in making her revolutions around the sun will come in a straight line between our earth and the sun...As, therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense distances.


Age of Reason
Part First, section 12


Reference #: 752

Paine, Thomas
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

Natural philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, carry the mind from the country to the creation, and give it a fitness suited to the extent.


Address to the People of England
Philadelphia, March, 1780


Reference #: 11835

Paine, Thomas
General Category: CALCULATE

...man knows how to calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will come in a strait line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to us about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the Sun...As therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge exists.


The Age Of Reason
Part I, Chapter XIV


Reference #: 11834

Paine, Thomas
General Category: ETERNITY

It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.


The Age of Reason
Part First, Chapter X
(p. 25)


Reference #: 16466

Pais, Abraham
General Category: PHYSICS

It was a wonderful mess at that time. Wonderful! Just great! It was so confusing - physics at its best, when everything is confused and you know something important lies just around the corner.


In Robert Crease
The Second Creation
(p. 177)


Reference #: 8865

Pais, Abraham
General Category: PHYSICS

...the state of particle physics...is...not unlike the one in a symphony hall before the start of a concert. On the podium one will see some but not all of the musicians. They are tuning up. Short brilliant passages are heard on some of the instruments; improvisations elsewhere; some wrong notes too. There is a sense of anticipation for the moment when the concert starts.


Physics Today
Particles, Vol. 21, No. 2, May 1968
(p. 28)


Reference #: 7761

Palade, George E.
General Category: UNDERSTANDING

For a scientist, it is a unique experience to live through a period in which his field of endeavor comes to bloom - to be witness to those rare moments when the dawn of understanding finally descends upon what appeared to be confusion only a while ago - to listen to the sound of darkness crumbling.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1974


Reference #: 7389

Paley, William
General Category: CHANCE

The appearance of chance will always bear a proportion to the ignorance of the observer.


Natural Theology
Vol. II, Goodness of the Deity
(p. 186)


Reference #: 7390

Paley, William
General Category: CHANCE

There must be chance in the midst of design; by which we mean, that events which are not designed, necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed. One man traveling to York, meets another man traveling to London.


Natural Theology
Vol. II, Goodness of the Deity
(p. 186)


Reference #: 7388

Paley, William
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement, without any thing capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means suitable to an end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to an use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind.


Natural Theology
Chapter II
(pp. 15-16)


Reference #: 239

Palissy, Bernard
General Category: GEOLOGY

I have no other book than the sky and the earth, which is known to all, and it is given to all to know and read in this beautiful book....That is why a man who works in the art of the earth is always learning because of unknown natures, and diversity of earths.


Admirable Discourses of Bernard Palissy
(p. 148, 186)


Reference #: 9048

Pallister, William
General Category: SCIENCE

Science works by the slow method of the classification of data, arranging the detail patiently in a periodic system into groups of facts, in series like the strata of the rocks. For each series there must be a vocabulary of special words which do not always make good sense when used in another series. But the laws of periodicity seem to hold throughout, among the elements and in every sphere of thought, and we must learn to co-ordinate the whole through our new conception of the reign of relativity.


Poems of Science
Man and the Stars
(p. 88)


Reference #: 9059

Pallister, William
General Category: FISH

Fifteen thousands of species of FISHES are known,
And some kinds are enormous and others minute;
They are widespread, wherever their tribes can be grown
And all seeking the foods which their habits will suit;
Some migrating in millions that their spawn may be sown,
Some in depths of the ocean, but rarely alone.


Poems of Science
Beginnings, Animal Life
(p. 140)


Reference #: 9053

Pallister, William
General Category: ARACHNID SPIDER

Of the SPIDERS and SCORPIONS, five thousand kinds:
These are scattered abroad, on the sea and the shore,
Quite unpleasant to think of, but still it reminds
To be glad there are not many thousand kinds more.
These are eight-legged beauties, with schemes of their own,
And the safest precaution is: Leave them alone!


Poems of Science
Beginnings, Animal Life
(p. 140)


Reference #: 9070

Pallister, William
General Category: CRUSTACEAN

With eight thousand CRUSTACEAN species, we list
All the lobsters and crabs, many others beside;
On the beaches and tide-strips their races subsist
On the wreck of the sea and the wrack of the tide;
In his jointed shell, hungry and seeking each goes,
If one loses a claw, soon another one grows.


Poems of Science
Beginnings


Reference #: 9047

Pallister, William
General Category: WORM

Then the WORMS seven thousand of species can show,
All segmented, possessing a system of nerves:
Life becoming more conscious, beginning to know;
The small earthworm is soils great economy serves,
Bringing earth to the surface, returning again,
Even thus, he has buried old cities for men!


Poems of Science
Beginnings, Animal Life
(p. 139)


Reference #: 9049

Pallister, William
General Category: SCIENCE

You are the sum of what we know,
You are our might and main;
You are the whole of what is so,
The little we retain:
Our fond beliefs all come and go,
And you alone remain.


Poems of Science
Science
(p. 39)


Reference #: 9069

Pallister, William
General Category: PROBLEM

Science solves life's problems, but she must solve them one-at-a-time. Her course and methods are evolutionary. She cannot solve insoluble problems; they must first become soluble. She grows, like every other plant, only from powdered fock, uses only the chemical constituents which are soluble.


Poems of Science
The Nature of Things
(p. 14)


Reference #: 9063

Pallister, William
General Category: ELEMENT

Within the atom is a whirling world,
A complex system in a vortex hurled:
Electrons charged with forces negative
Revolve around the protons postive
In varied spheres, in varied numbers, too,
Yet with a maximum of ninety-two
Designs, known as the elements to you
And proved by spectrum study to be true.


Poems of Science
Men and the Stars, Within the Atom
(p. 51)


Reference #: 9050

Pallister, William
General Category: ANTIQUITY

The ruined tombs of Egypt tell their tale,
Survival-hopes of what was once mankind.
Now sands are drifted deep as we unwind
The bones of former rulers, now for sale:
Thus does the splendor of the tomb avail!


Poems of Science
Men and the Stars, In Egypt
(p. 91)


Reference #: 9071

Pallister, William
General Category: INSECT MOSQUITO

The whole of Africa is our domain,
Millions of men have fought us, few remain.
We rule the lowlands of the entire earth,
The fertile lands, of far the greatest worth;
Our swarms produce their billions as we wish,
The world belongs to us, and to the fish.


Poems of Science
De Ipsa Natura, MosBeginnings, Animal Lifequitoes
(p. 219)


Reference #: 9054

Pallister, William
General Category: ELEMENT IODINE

When you insist on living far inland
And do not get your fish-food from the sea;
When you forsake the ocean and the sand
And ceases to feed the fish you used to be;
Perhaps you do not fully understand,
If you disclaim your race,
You'll get a funny-face.
So satisfy your iodine demand.


Poems of Science
De Ipsa Natura, Iodine
(p. 221)


Reference #: 9065

Pallister, William
General Category: DINOSAUR ARCHAEOPTERYX

Examine well this ancient bird,
The Archaeopteryx,
Dismissing all you may have heard,
And then his status fix.


Poems of Science
Archaeopteryx
(p. 217)


Reference #: 9060

Pallister, William
General Category: BIRD

Of the BIRDS, thirteen thousands of species are named;
This is the first life with warm blood! We could not know all
And quite truly one need not feel greatly ashamed
If some few of the rare names are hard to recall,
But the birds are so lovely, I wish that I knew
All about all of them, and I'm sure so do you.


Poems of Science
Beginnings, Animal Life
(p. 141)


Reference #: 9058

Pallister, William
General Category: GEOLOGIST

A torrid, turning sphere, cooling with crack and crash,
Thick crust of lava-rock, and deep volcanic ash,
Whose stratified formations now compose the book
Of broken records where geologists may look.
They classify the layers, by antiquity,
In five sections: archaean, long o'er life could be;
The palaeozoic, site of life, the primary;
Then mesozoic, where the sequent life we see;
Next comes the tertiary with creatures such as we,
And, last of all, the recent-laid quaternary.


Poems of Science
Other Worlds and Ours, The Earth
(p. 208)


Reference #: 9061

Pallister, William
General Category: EXTRATERRESTIAL LIFE

No one can yet show proof that there exists
A single planet save the solar ones.
But space is wide and high, and time is long,
And there are millions more of other suns.

So men imagine why they do not know
And they assume that surely there must be
Some other planets, peopled like our own;
Some other worlds with creatures such as we.


Poems of Science
Other Worlds and Ours, Life on Other Planets
(p. 210)


Reference #: 9051

Pallister, William
General Category: BIRD HUMMING-BIRD

A flashing, dashing, rainbow-streak,
The whir or wondrous wings;
We hold our breath, we must not speak,
Such shy, such splendid things!


Poems of Science
De Ipsa Natura, Humming-Birds
(p. 222)


Reference #: 9062

Pallister, William
General Category: CHEMISTRY

This is the quest for you and me,
Are men twigs on the chemis-tree?

When X is life, and time is T,
Sp is space, and vast force is E,
When Y is thought, dimension D:
Does X=C500H100O250N250S50+P?


Poems of Science
Protoplasm
(p. 75)


Reference #: 9067

Pallister, William
General Category: INSECT

Of the INSECTS, such numbers of species exist
That their species have filled up whole volumes of books.
Over four hundred thousand are named in their list!
Every one has six legs, though they differ in looks.
The long warfare with insects gives men little ease,
For four-fifths of the whole earth's species are these!


Poems of Science
(p. 140)


Reference #: 9066

Pallister, William
General Category: PLANET SATURN

The planet Saturn, to the naked eye
Appears an oval star; in seeking why
The telescope shows us a startling sight
Which seems some lovely vision on a night
Of dreams. A giant, wide, sunlit, tilted ring,
More strange than any other heavenly thing.


Poems of Science
Other Worlds and Ours, Saturn
(p. 205)


Reference #: 9055

Pallister, William
General Category: GLACIER

The story of earth's evolution, told
In rocks which held the pages stratified:
In granites torn by glacier and tide,
In limestone, coal-bed, river-clay and mould;
The story of the past, now blurred, now bold,
Which nature tells in signs on every side,
The story of the species, all allied.


Poems of Science
Geology
(p. 83)


Reference #: 9072

Pallister, William
General Category: MOLLUSC

Next, the MOLLUSCS present forty thousand kinds more,
With a limited life, but adapted for it;
In the space of the tide, with the sea and the shore
And the sunshine, the Molluscs successfully fit;
Some on land, some in lakes which were seas, they exist
And though tideless for ages, the Molluscs persist.


Poems of Science
Beginnings, Animal Life
(p. 139)


Reference #: 9056

Pallister, William
General Category: FACT

Facts are hard, stubborn things; so relative, so rare.
They limit all we know. Let us, my friend, beware!


Poems of Science
De Ipsa Natura, The Law of Logic
(p. 235)


Reference #: 9052

Pallister, William
General Category: ANIMAL EUGLENA VIRIDIS

A plant when there is sunshine; an animal at night.The living proof of theories, biologists' delight,
Created by environment and matching it so well,
You are both plant and animal. Which one the time can tell.


Poems of Science
Euglena Viridis


Reference #: 9068

Pallister, William
General Category: VARIABILITY

What shall we say of a plot of ground
Planted in similar seed,
Where thousands of similar plants are found
But one is a new type indeed;
When dissimilar comes from similar,
And freedom has its hour,
When the scion is not as ancestors are,
What is this latent power?


Poems of Science
De Ipsa Natura, Variation
(p. 213)


Reference #: 9064

Pallister, William
General Category: PHOTOSYNTHESIS

The sunlight gives the stimulus
Which makes a plant of you;
Your chemic process puzzles us,
We look and see you do
Your photo-synthesis, and thus
Grow and divide in two.


Poems of Science
The Nature of Things, Euglena viridis
(p. 5)


Reference #: 9057

Pallister, William
General Category: AMPHIBIAN TADPOLE

Three large glass bowls,
In each some half grown tadpoles,
All hatched from the same spawn,

Breathing with gills like fishes
In their small transparent dishes,
Waving their long tails,
Important to themselves as whales,
Some of them to be experimented on;.


Poems of Science
The Nature of Things, Tadpoles
(p. 6)


Reference #: 6157

Palmer, Tim
General Category: RIVER

...rivers are magnets for the imagination, for conscious pondering and subconscious dreams, thrills, fears. People stare into the moving water, captivated, as they are when gazing into a fire. What is it that draws and holds us? The rivers' reflections of our lives and experiences are endless.


Lifelines
Chapter One
(p. 8)


Reference #: 6158

Palmer, Tim
General Category: RIVER

Rivers are exquisite in their abilities to nurture life, sublime in functioning detail, impressive in contributions of global significance.


Lifelines
Chapter One
(p. 10)


Reference #: 9787

Palmieri, M.
General Category: REALITY

Since the dawn of human intelligence man has tried to form for himself a conception of the outside world which would correspond to the truest reality. But to determine what this reality is has proved to be a task of no mean import, and we still stand bewildered and wondering at the door of what has been and remains for mankind the greatest of all mysteries: the nature of ultimate reality.


Relativity: An Interpretation of Einstein's Theory
Introduction
Forbush Publishing Company, Los Angeles; 1931


Reference #: 10633

Panek, Richard
General Category: TELESCOPE

The relationship between the telescope and our understanding of the dimensions of the universe is in many ways the story of modernity. It's the story of how the development of one piece of technology has changed the way we see ourselves and of how the way we see ourselves has changed this piece of technology, each set of changes reinforcing the other over the course of centuries until, in time, we've been able to look back and say with some certainty that the pivotal division between the world we inhabit today and the world of our ancestors was the invention of this instrument.


Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens
Prologue
(p. 4)


Reference #: 2509

Panofsky, Wolfgang
General Category: EXPERIMENT

As experimental techniques have grown from the top of a laboratory bench to the large accelerators of today, the basic components have changed vastly in scale but only little in basic function. More important, the motivation of those engaged in this type of experimentation has hardly changed at all.


Contemporary Physics
Particle Substructure: A Common Theme of Discovery in this Century, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1982
(p. 23)


Reference #: 582

Pantin, C.F.A.
General Category: GEOLOGIST

Now geologists are very interested in species-you recognize particular kinds of rocks by the particular species of fossils you find in them.


A Short History of Science
The Origin of Species
(p. 97)


Reference #: 6326

Panunzio, Constantine
General Category: SCIENCE

Science...involves active, purposeful search; it discovers, accumulates, sifts, orders, and tests data; it is a slow, painstaking, laborious activity; it is a search after bodies of knowledge sufficiently comprehensive to lead to the discovery of uniformities, sequential orders or so-called 'laws'; it may be carried on by an individual, but it gains relevance only as it produces data which can be added to and tested by the findings of others.


Major Social Institutions
Chapter 20
(p. 322)


Reference #: 6325

Panunzio, Constantine
General Category: SCIENCE

If science is to subserve human needs, it will continue to discover and catalogue 'all the islands of the universe 300,000,000 or more light years distant,' but it will not fiddle while Rome burns...


Major Social Institutions
Chapter 21
(p. 338)


Reference #: 6899

Papert, Seymour
General Category: THEOREM

For what is important when we give children a theorem to use is not that they should memorize it. What matters most is that by growing up with a few very powerful theorems one comes to appreciate how certain ideas can be used as tools to think with over a lifetime. One learns to enjoy and to respect the power of powerful ideas. One learns that the most powerful idea of all is the idea of powerful ideas.


Mindstorms
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1980


Reference #: 6898

Papert, Seymour
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematical work does not proceed along the narrow logical path of truth to truth to truth, but bravely or gropingly follows deviations through the surrounding marshland of propositions which are neither simply and wholly true nor simply and wholly false.


Mindstorms
(p. 195)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1980


Reference #: 6897

Papert, Seymour
General Category: RECURSION

Of all ideas I have introduced to children, recursion stands out as the one idea that is particularly able to evoke an excited response.


Mindstorm
(p. 71)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1980


Reference #: 9313

Papoulis, Athanasios
General Category: THEORY

Scientific theories deal with concepts, not with reality. All theoretical results are derived from certain axioms by deductive logic. In physical sciences the theories are so formulated to correspond in some useful sense to the real world, what that may mean. However, this correspondence is approximate, and the physical justification of all theoretical conclusions is based on some form of inductive reasoning.


Probability, Random Variables, and Stochastic Processes


Reference #: 814

Pappas
General Category: HEXAGON

Bees...by virtue of a certain geometrical forethough...know that the hexagon is greater than the square and the triangle, and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material.


In Sanderson Smith
Agnesi to Zeno


Reference #: 5534

Papperitz, E.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The object of pure mathematics is those relations which may be conceptually established among any conceived elements whatsoever by assuming them contained in some ordered manifold; the law of order of this manifold must be subject to our choice; the latter is the case in both of the only conceivable kinds of manifolds, in the discrete as well as in the continuous.


Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung
Über das System der rein mathematischen Wissenschaften, Bd. 1
(p. 36)


Reference #: 6900

Pappert, Seymour
General Category: IDEA

What matters most is...one comes to appreciate how certain ideas can be used as tools to think with over a lifetime. One learns to enjoy and respect the power of powerful ideas. One learns that the most powerful idea of all is the idea of powerful ideas.


Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas


Reference #: 6450

Pappus
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Though God has given to men the best and most perfect understanding of wisdom and mathematics, He has allotted a partial share to some of the unreasoning creatures as well...This instinct is specially marked among bees. They prepare for the reception of the honey the vessels called honeycombs, with cells all equal, similar and adjacent, and hexagonal in form.


In Harold R. Jacobs
Mathematics: A Human Endeavor


Reference #: 3092

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: ASTRONOMY

The art of astronomy helps us to discover the secrets of the innate disposition of the heart and makes manifest the good and evil qualities with which nature has endowed man.


Astronomia Magna


Reference #: 1513

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy is an indispensable art; it should rightly be held in high esteem, and studied earnestly and thoroughly...For it teaches each man the condition and disposition of his soul, his heart, his thoughts; it teaches him whether they are false, or righteous and good, whether they are malignant or not. And it teaches how the hour of conception affects the child's fate, although it is less important than the conjuncture of the stars at the time of his birth.


Astronomia Magna


Reference #: 1512

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: STARS

The stars are subject to the philosopher, they must follow him, and not he them.


Astronomia Magna


Reference #: 3091

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: ASTRONOMER

The astronomer should be able to find his bearings in the firmament with the help of his natural reason, in a natural way, as a philosopher or a physician finds his way among the things of nature, which derive from the elements. But he should not have a higher opinion of his art, and place more reliance in it than behooves a prisoner. The prisoner, too, has all the qualities that belong to a man, but he is prevented from unfolding them; he cannot do what he wants. The same is true of the firmament: it lies imprisoned in the hands of the Supreme Mover. What this hand intends to do with it is hidden to the astronomer....For his art may be impeded, furthered, or changed by the hand of the Supreme Helmsman.


Astronomia Magna


Reference #: 3090

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: STARS

In the stars there dwell reason, wisdom, ruse, strife, weapons, just as they do in us men. For we originate in them; they are our parents, and from them we have received our reason, wisdom, strife, etc.


Astronomia Magna


Reference #: 1947

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The book of Nature is that which the physician must read; and to do so he must walk over the leaves.


Encyclopaedia Britannica
Vol. xviii, Ninth ed.
(p. 234)


Reference #: 11634

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Every experiment is like a weapon which must be used in its particular way - a spear to thrust, a club to strike. Experimenting requires a man who knows when to thrust and when to strike, each according to need and fashion.


Surgeon's Book


Reference #: 8490

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: ALCHEMY

The great virtues that lie hidden in nature would never have been revealed if alchemy had not uncovered them and made them visible. Take a tree, for example; a man sees it in the winter, but he does not know what it is, he does not know what it conceals within itself, until summer comes and discloses the buds, the flowers, the fruit....Similarly the virtues in things remain concealed to man, unless the alchemist disclose them, as the summer reveals the nature of the tree.


In Jolande Jacobi (ed)
Paracelsus: Selected Writings
Chapter III
(p. 218)


Reference #: 13794

Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim)
Born: 11 November, 1493 in in Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Died: 24 September, 1541, in Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg (now in Austria)
General Category: ASTRONOMICAL

All this you should know exists in man and realize that the firmament is within man, the firmament with its great movements of bodily planets and stars which result in exaltations, conjunctions, oppositions and the like, as you call these phenomena as you understand them. Everything which astronomical theory has searched deeply and gravely by aspects, astronomical tables and so forth,-this self-same knowledge should be a lesson and teaching to you concerning the bodily firmament. For, none among you who is devoid of astronomical knowledge may be filled with medical knowledge.


In Allen G. Debus
The French Paracelsians
Chapter 1
(p. 9)


Reference #: 2817

Paracelsus (Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim)
General Category: MEDICINE

The art of medicine cannot be inherited nor can it be copied from books.


Das Zweite Buch der Grossen Wundarznei
Foreword
1536


Reference #: 3384

Paracelsus (Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim)
General Category: DOCTOR

A clear conscience. Desire to learn and gain experience. A gentle heart and a cheerful spirit. Moral manner of life and sobriety in all things. Greater regard for his honor than for money. More interest in being useful to his patient than to himself. You must not be married to a bigot.


Translated by D. Abse
Doctors and Patients
Oxford University Press, Oxford; 1984


Reference #: 3355

Pare, Ambroise
General Category: COMET

The comet was so horrible and frightful...that some [people]
Died of fear and others fell sick. It appeared as a star of excessive length and the color of blood; at its summit was seen the figure of a bent arm holding a great sword in its hand, as if about to strike. On both sides...were seen a great number of axes, knives and spaces colored with blood, among which were a great number of hideous human faces with beards and bristling hair.


In William H. Jefferys and R. Robert Robbins
Discovering Astronomy
Physician
(p. 12)


Reference #: 3115

Paré, Ambroise
General Category: EXPERIENCE ATTRIBUTED

Science without experience does not bring much confidence.


Attributed to be one of Paré's cannons


Reference #: 6753

Paré, Ambroise
General Category: GOD

Je le pensay, et Dieu le guarit
I dressed his wound, and God healed it.


In Oliver Wendell Holmes
Medical Essays
The Medical Profession in Massachusetts
(p. 365)


Reference #: 2635

Pareto, Vilfredo
General Category: NATURE

Above, far above, the prejudices and passions of men soar the laws of nature. Eternal and immutable, they are the expression of the creative power; they represent what is, what must be, what otherwise could not be. Man can come to understand them: he is incapable of changing them. From the infinitely great down to the infinitely small, all things are subject to them. The sun and the planets follow the laws discovered by Newton and Laplace, just as the atoms in their combinations follow the laws of chemistry, as living creatures follow the laws of biology. It is only the imperfections of the human mind which multiply the divisions of the sciences, separating astronomy from physics or chemistry, the natural sciences from the social sciences. In essence, science is one. It is none other than the truth.


Cours d'economie Politique


Reference #: 10770

Paretsky, Sara
General Category: SURGEON

Heart surgeons do not have the world's smallest egos: when you ask them to name the world's three leading practitioners, they never can remember the names of the other two.


In Marilyn Wallace (ed.)
Sisters in Crime
Vol. I, The Case of the Pietro AndromacheII
(p. 116)


Reference #: 18045

Parin,, V.V.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science breathes but one air—the oxygen of facts. New methods of research are the trees that clear its atmosphere of the carbon dioxide of inaccurate conclusions and saturate it with the oxygen of first discovered, seen and apprehended phenomena.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 9

Park, Robert
General Category: SCIENCE

…it is science that uncovers the problems, and it is to science that we turn to put it right. Not because individual scientists have any claim to greater intellect or virtue, but because the scientific method sorts out the truth from ideology, fraud


Science Communication
Is Science The God That Failed?
Vol. 16, No. 2, 1994
(p. 210)


Reference #: 17167

Park, Robert L.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science has a way of getting us to the future without consulting the futurists and visionaries.


Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud


Reference #: 3540

Parker, Barry
General Category: UNIVERSE

Looking into the dark night sky we feel a tingle of excitement as we are overcome by its grandeur and beauty. Each point of light we see is the image of a star, an image of light that may have left the star long before we were
Born. The universe is vast beyond imagination—almost terrifying in its intensity and complexity.


Einstein's Dream: The Search for a Unified Theory of the Universe
Chapter 1
(p. 1)
Plenum Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1986


Reference #: 2594

Parker, E.N.
General Category: MAGNETIC

It appears that the radical element responsible for the continuing thread of cosmic unrest is the magnetic field.


Cosmical Magnetic Fields
Chapter 1
(p. 2)


Reference #: 2593

Parker, E.N.
General Category: MAGNETIC

Magnetic fields (and their inevitable offspring fast particles) are found everywhere in the universe where we have the means to look for them.


Cosmical Magnetic Fields
Chapter 1
(p. 6)


Reference #: 2595

Parker, E.N.
General Category: MAGNETIC

Magnetic field (and their inevitable offspring fast particles) are found everywhere in the universe where we have the means to look for them.


Cosmical Magnetic Fields
(p. 6)


Reference #: 10394

Parker, E.N.
General Category: SUN

The riddles the sun presents are signposts to new horizons.


Scientific American
The Sun, Vol. 233, No. 3, September 1975
(p. 50)


Reference #: 11711

Parker, F.W.
General Category: ARITHMETIC

The science of Arithmetic may be called the science of exact limitation of matter and things in space, force, and time.


Talks on Pedagogics
(p. 64)


Reference #: 11712

Parker, F.W.
General Category: NUMBER

Number was
Born in superstition and reared in mystery ....numbers were once made the foundation of religion and philosophy, and the tricks of figures have had a marvelous effect on a credulous people.


Talks on Pedagogics
(p. 64)


Reference #: 3126

Parkhurst, D.F.
General Category: STATISTICAL TESTS

Failing to reject a null hypothesis is distinctly different from proving a null hypothesis; the difference in these interpretations is not merely a semantic point. Rather, the two interpretations can lead to quite different biological conclusions..


Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America
Interpreting failure to reject a null hypothesis, Vol. 66, 1985


Reference #: 14193

Parkington, J.E.
General Category: REASON

The ability to sort out stone implements into "types" as one would playing-cards into suits is of minor importance compared to the reasons underlying the tendency for implements to cluster into "ideal forms". It is not the group "handaxes" which is important but, as Plato might have said, "handaxeness".


The Interpretation of Archaeological Evidence
Stone Implements as Information, Goodwin Series, No. 1, June 1972
(p. 12)


Reference #: 4632

Parkinson, Cornelia
General Category: STONE

Was it a flash of divine insight, or the slower process of observation and deduction, that led human beings to perceive [an] esoteric quality in stones? They saw beauty in the sunrise; but the sun became blinding by midday. There was color in leaves and flowers, until they withered. Water sparkled, but it could not be worn for long. Of all the natural wonders of the earth, only the stones endured. They must indeed be magical; and those who possess magical things can sometimes put to work the magic in them.


Gem Magic: The Wonder of Your Birthstone


Reference #: 4705

Parkinson, James
General Category: FOSSIL

The study of fossil organized remains has hitherto been directed too exclusively to the consideration of the specimens themselves; and hence has been considered rather as an appendix to botany and zoology, than as (what it really is) a very important branch of geological inquiry.


Geological Society of London Transactions
Observations on Some of the Strata in the Neighborhood of London, and on the Fossil Remains Contained in Them, Vol. 1, 1811
(p. 324)


Reference #: 1285

Parkinson, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The common duty required of a physician lies in the recognition and treatment of disease. If he enlarges his study to cover life as affected by disease, and masters the psychology of the individual sick in body, he will widen his usefulness and reach a fuller life himself as a physician.


Annals of Internal Medicine
The Patient and the Physician
Address
32nd Annual Session of the American College of Physicians, St. Louis, MO, April 11, 1951


Reference #: 3731

Parrot, Henry
General Category: DOCTOR

Dacus doth daily to his doctor go,
As doubting if he be in health or no;
For when his friends salute him passing by,
And ask him how he doth in courtesy,
He will not answer thereunto precise,
Till from his doctor he hath ta'en advice.


In William Davenport Adams
English Epigrams
On One who was a Slave to he Physician, cdlxxxiii


Reference #: 15083

Parrot, Max
General Category: PATIENTS

It is often been said that the technical aspects of medicine are easy. The difficult part is dealing with the personality of the patient, the so-called psychological or human factor. This takes up a great deal of the time of the practicing physician. It is harder on the doctor's constitution than all of the technical aspects of medicine. It may even cause his or her demise, in the case of a physician with an autonomic nervous system that can't take the heat.


In Irving Oyle
The New American Medical Show
(p. 25)


Reference #: 15236

Parry, Thomas
General Category: PERCENTAGES

When the weather predicts 30 percent chance of rain, rain is twice as likely as when 60 percent chance is predicted.


In Paul Dickson
The Official Explanations
(p. P-175)


Reference #: 740

Parsons, William Barclay
General Category: ENGINEERING

It is not the technical excellence of an engineering design which alone determines its merit but rather the completeness with which it meets the economic and social needs of its day.


In James Kip Finch
Address at the inauguration of the Columbia Student Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, 1927
Engineering and Western Civilization
(p. vii)


Reference #: 10272

Parton, H.N.
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

Scientists have the duty to communicate, firstly with each other, that is with those who are interested in the same or allied problems, and secondly with laymen: by layman I mean anyone not familiar with their special science, for specialization has raised the level of scientific achievement so much, that chemists, for example, are usually laymen in say, biology; we may hope, intelligent laymen.


Science is Human
Science and the Liberal Arts
(p. 12)


Reference #: 10273

Parton, H.N.
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

Aldous Huxley, in a lecture on his grandfather, said that all communication is literature, and even in scientific writing there is wide room for the exercise of art.


Science is Human
Science and the Liberal Arts
(p. 14)


Reference #: 10270

Parton, H.N.
General Category: SCIENCE

A successful blending of the sciences and the humanities is necessary for the health of our civilization.


Science is Human
Science is Human
(p. 31)


Reference #: 211

Pasachoff, Jay M.
General Category: ECLIPSE

Some people see a partial eclipse and wonder why others talk so much about a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse and saying that you have seen an eclipse is like standing outside an opera house and saying that you have seen the opera; in both cases, you have missed the main event.


In Donald H. Menzel and Jay M. Pasachoff
A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets (2nd edition, revised and enlarged)
(p. 409)
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1983


Reference #: 8917

Pasachoff, Jay M.
General Category: STARS

Twinkle, twinkle, pulsing star
Newest puzzle from afar.
Beeping on and on you sing -
Are you saying anything?
Twinkle, twinkle more, pulsar,
How I wonder what you are.


Physics Today
Pulsars in Poetry, Vol. 22, February 1969
(p. 19)


Reference #: 8653

Pascal Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when the principles are quite clear.


Pensées
Section I, 1


Reference #: 16757

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Rem Viderunt, Causomnon Viderunt
They saw the thing, but not the cause


The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
On the Necessity of the Wager, #235


Reference #: 17507

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: VACUUM

...I had always held that the vacuum was not a thing impossible in nature and that she did not flee it with such horror as many imagine.


Treatise Concerning the Vacuum
New Experiments Concerning the Vacuum


Reference #: 16756

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: PROBABILITY

Take away probability, and you can no longer please the world; give probability, and you can no longer displease it.


The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
Appendix: Polemical Fragments, 918


Reference #: 16755

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: PROBABLE

But is it probable that probability gives assurance?


The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
Appendix: Polemical Fragments, 908


Reference #: 3407

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

There is a great difference between the spirit of Mathematics and the spirit of Observation. In the former, the principles are palpable, but remote from common use; so that from want of custom it is not easy to turn our head in that direction; but if it be thus turned ever so little, the principles are seen fully confessed, and it would argue a mind incorrigibly false, to reason inconsequentially on principles so obtrusive, that it is hardly possible to overlook them.


Edinburgh Review
Vol. 52, January 1836
(p. 241)


Reference #: 5242

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: SELF

When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there...now instead of then.


In Rudy Rucker
Infinity and the Mind
Chapter I
(p. 2)
Princeton University Press, Princeton; 1995


Reference #: 8557

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: SYMMETRY

Those who make antitheses by forcing words are like those who make false windows for symmetry.


Pensées
Section I, 27


Reference #: 8534

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: CHANCE

Cleopatra's nose- had it been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.


Pascal's Pensées
Section I, 93


Reference #: 8638

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: GOD

...I have a hundred times wished that if a God maintains Nature, she should testify to Him unequivocally, and that, if the signs she gives are deceptive, she should suppress them altogether.


Pensées
229


Reference #: 8532

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: AVERAGE

For, I ask, what is man in Nature? A cypher compared with the Infinite, an All compared with Nothing, a mean between nothing and all.


Pascal's Pensées
Pensees, Section, I, 43


Reference #: 8660

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: INFINITE

Unity joined to infinity adds nothing to it, no more than one foot to an infinite measure. The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing.


Pensées
Section III, 233


Reference #: 8659

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MAN

For, in fact, what is man in nature? A Nothingness in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.


Pensées
72


Reference #: 10606

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

For sometimes an obvious absurdity follows from its negation, and then the hypothesis is true and certain; or an obvious absurdity follows from its affirmation, and then the hypothesis is considered false; and when we have not yet been able to draw an absurdity either from its negation or from its affirmation, the hypothesis remains doubtful. So that to establish the truth of an hypothesis it is not enough that all the phenomena should follow from it, whereas if there follows from it something opposed to a single phenomenon, that is enough to make certain its falsity.


Scientific Treatises
Concerning the Vacuum, Pascal's Answer to the Reverend Noel


Reference #: 8533

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: CHANCE

A game is on, at the other end of this infinite distance, and heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?


Pascal's Pensées
Section I, 223


Reference #: 8641

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: UNIVERSE

The spaces of the universe enfold me and swallow me up like a speck; but I, by the power of thought, may comprehend the universe.


Pensées
Section VI, 348


Reference #: 8652

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: SUN

Let man contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand mystery, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like and eternal lamp to illumine the universe.


Pensées
Aphorism 72


Reference #: 8650

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: INFINITE

We know that there is an infinite, and we are ignorant of its nature.


Pensées
Section III, 233


Reference #: 8654

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: INFINITE

It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.


Pensées
Section II, 72


Reference #: 8639

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: VACUUM

Because...you have believed from childhood that a box was empty when you saw nothing in it, you have believed in the possibility of a vacuum.


Pensées
Section II, 82


Reference #: 8640

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: GOD

Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and some defects, to show that she is only His image.


Pensées
580


Reference #: 15629

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: NATURE

Nature is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.


In Eli Maor
To Infinity and Beyond


Reference #: 8642

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

But dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.


Pensées
Section I, 1


Reference #: 8643

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: REASON

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.


Pensées


Reference #: 8655

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MAN

...what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the infinite, an all in comparison with the nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the ends of things and the beginnings are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing of which he is made, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.


Pensées
Section II, 72


Reference #: 8644

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: UNIVERSE

By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.


Pensées
No. 348


Reference #: 8645

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

For it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect, Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect.


Pensées
Section I, 4


Reference #: 8647

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: WORLD

The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things.


Pensées
Aphorism 72


Reference #: 8558

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: UNIVERSE

[The Universe] is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.


Pensées
Section II, 72


Reference #: 8648

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: ETHICS

Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the times of affliction But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.


Pensées
Section II, No. 67


Reference #: 8656

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: SYMMETRY

Symmetry is what we see at a glance...


Pensées
Section I, 28


Reference #: 8657

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: PROBABILITY

Probability - Each one can employ it; no one can take it away.


Pensées
913


Reference #: 8658

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: MAN

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the Universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.


Pensées
347


Reference #: 8649

Pascal, Blaise
Born: 19 June, 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand), Auvergne, France
Died: 19 August, 1662 in Paris, France
General Category: BOOK

The last thing one discovers in writing a book is what to put first.


Pensées


Reference #: 8913

Pascual, Jourdan
General Category: GOD

And certainly this picture of the universe as exploding fireworks which went off ten billion years ago invites us to consider the remarkable question of Miguel de Unamuno, whether the whole world—and we with it—be not possibly only a dream of God; whether the prayer and ritual perhaps be nothing but attempts to make HIM more drowsy, so that HE does not awaken and stop our dreaming.


Physics of the 20th Century
Appendix I
(p. 185)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1944


Reference #: 12580

Pasquin, John Williams Anthony
General Category: CHEMICAL

Like chemical liquids creating a pother,
They beautify, strengthen, and brighten each other;...


The Children Of Thespis: A Poem
Second Part


Reference #: 297

Pastan, Linda
General Category: ALGEBRA

I used to solve equations easily. If train A left Sioux Falls at nine o'clock, traveling at a fixed rate, I knew when it would meet train B. Now I wonder if the trains will crash; or else I picture naked limbs through Pullman windows, each a small vignette of longing.


In Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp
Against Infinity
Algebra
(p. 50)


Reference #: 1842

Pasternak, Boris
General Category: MILKY WAY

And there, with frightful listing
Through emptiness, away
Through unknown solar systems
Revolves the Milky Way.


Boris Pasternak: Fifty Poems
Night


Reference #: 6276

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: CHANCE

In the field of experimentation, chance favors only the prepared mind.


In Rene Dubos'
Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science
(p. 101)


Reference #: 4004

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: ANSWER

Science proceeds by successive answers to questions more and more subtle, coming nearer and nearer to the very essence of phenomena.


Études sur la Bière
Chapter 6, section 6


Reference #: 6273

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: TEMPLE OF SCIENCE

Preconceived ideas are like searchlights which illuminate the path of the experimenter and serve him as a guide to interrogate nature. They become a danger only if he transforms them into fixed ideas - this is why I should like to see these profound words inscribed on the threshold of all the temples of science: 'The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so'...


In Rene Dubos'
Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science
Speech to the French Academy of Medicine, July 18, 1876, Chapter XIII
(p. 376)


Reference #: 6136

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: LABORATORY

...I implore you, take some interest in those sacred dwellings meaningly described as laboratories. Ask that they may be multiplied and completed. They are the temples of the future, of riches and of comfort. There humanity grows greater, better, stronger; there she can learn to read the works of Nature works of progress and universal harmony, while humanity's own works are too often those of barbarism, of fanaticism and of destruction.


In R. Vallery-Radot
Life of Pasteur
Chapter VI
(p. 152)


Reference #: 6271

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: TRUTH

Truth, Sir, is a great coquette. She will not be won by too much passion. Indifference is often more successful with her. She escapes when apparently caught, but she yields readily if patiently waited for. She reveals herself when one is about to abandon the hope of possessing her; but she is inexorable when one affirms her, that is when loves her with too much fervor.


In Rene Dubos'
Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science
Chapter XIV
(p. 389)


Reference #: 6135

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: ANALOGY

The arguments...by which you support my theories, are most ingenious, but not founded on demonstrated facts; analogy is no proof.


In R. Vallery-Radot
Life of Pasteur
Chapter VIII
(p. 223)


Reference #: 6272

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: SCIENTIST

When moving forward toward the discovery of the unknown, the scientist is like a traveler who reaches higher and higher summits from which he sees in the distance new countries to explore.


In Rene J. Dubos
Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science
Chapter III
(p. 87)


Reference #: 8537

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: EXPERIMENT

...this marvelous experimental method, of which one can say, in truth, not that it is sufficient for every purpose, but that it rarely leads astray, and then only those who do not use it well. It eliminates certain facts, brings forth others, interrogates nature, compels it to reply and stops only when the mind is fully satisfied. The charm of our studies, the enchantment of science, is that, everywhere and always, we can give the justification of our principles and the proof of our discoveries.


In Rene Dubos'
Pasteur and Modern Science
Chapter I
(p. 12)


Reference #: 8536

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: SCIENCE

I am imbued with two deep impressions; the first, that science knows no country; the second, which seems to contradict the first, although it is in reality a direct consequence of it, that science is the highest personification of the nation. Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world, Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.


In Rene Dubos
Pasteur and Modern Science
Chapter 15, A Dedicated Life
(p. 146)


Reference #: 9877

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: APPLIED SCIENCE

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.


Revue Scientifique
Pourquoi la France n'a pas trouvé hommes supérieurs au montent du péril (1871)


Reference #: 10928

Pasteur, Louis
Born: 27 December, 1822 in Dole, France
Died: 28 September, 1895 in Saint-Cloud, France
General Category: CHEMIST

Outside the laboratiories, the physician and chemist are soldiers without arms on the filed of battle.


Some Reflections on Science in France
Part 1


Reference #: 766

Pattee, H.H.
General Category: LIFE

…when a problem persists, unresolved, for centuries in spite of enormous increase in our knowledge, it is a good bet that the problem entails the nature of knowledge itself. The nature of life is one of these problems.


In F. Morin, A. Moreno, J.J. Merelo and P. Chacón (eds.)
Advances in Artificial Life
Artificial Life Needs a Real Epistemology
Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Artificial Life
Granada, Spain
June 1995


Reference #: 13914

Patten, W.
General Category: SOLAR SYSTEM

A solar system has attributes and powers that can not be defined or measured in terms of its members, or of its ultimate chemical elements, for a solar system is not merely an aggregate, or the algebraic sum of its various elements and qualities....It is a system, a new type of individuality, with special creative powers of its own.


The Grand Strategy of Evolution
(p. 34)


Reference #: 2669

Patten, William
General Category: IMAGINATION

Imagination opens the gates of the universe.


In Austin L. Porterfield
Creative Factors in Scientific Research
Chapter IV
(p. 61)


Reference #: 4055

Patterson, Colin
General Category: EVOLUTION

It seemed obvious to him that, if his theory of evolution is correct, fossils ought to provide incontrovertible proof of it, since each stratum should contain links between the species of earlier and later strata, and if sufficient fossils were collected, it would be possible to arrange them in ancestor descendent sequences and so build up a precise picture of the course of evolution. This was not so in Darwin's time, and today, after more than another hundred years of assiduous fossil collecting, the picture still has extensive gaps.


Evolution
(p. 128)


Reference #: 4053

Patterson, Colin
General Category: EVOLUTION

We must ask first whether the theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific or pseudoscientific (metaphysical) ....Taking the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, it says that the history of life is a single process of species-splitting and progression. This process must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. This part of the theory is therefore a historical theory, about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test.


Evolution
(pp. 145-146)


Reference #: 4049

Patterson, Colin
General Category: EVOLUTION

Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else.


Evolution
(p. 133)


Reference #: 14411

Patterson, Colin
General Category: EVOLUTION

Just as pre-Darwinian biology was carried out by people whose faith was in the Creator and His plan, post-Darwinian biology is being carried out by people whose faith is in, almost, the deity of Darwin. They've seen their task as to elaborate his theory and to fill the gaps in it, to fill the trunk and twigs of the tree. But it seems to me that the theoretical framework has very little impact on the actual progress of the work in biological research. In a way some aspects of Darwinism and of neo-Darwinism seem to me to have held back the progress of science.


The Listener
October 8, 1981
(p. 392)


Reference #: 4090

Patterson, John W.
General Category: CREATIONISM

There are many facets to "scientific creationism" and the movement can be discussed in any of several ways. However, it is best viewed as a loosely connected group of fundamentalist ministries led largely by scientifically incompetent engineers.


In J. Peter Zetterberg (ed.)
Evolution versus Creationism
(p. 151)


Reference #: 17775

Pattison, Eliot
General Category: DESERT

Deserts are where mountains go when they die.


Water Touching Stone
Chapter Eighteen
(p. 347)


Reference #: 16163

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: QUANTUM THEORY

Physics is a blind alley again. In any case, it has become too difficult for me, and I would prefer to be a comedian in the cinema, or something like that, and hear no more about physics.


In L.I. Ponomarev
The Quantum Dice
(p. 81)


Reference #: 6239

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: NEUTRINO

I have committed the ultimate sin, I have predicted the existence of a particle that can never be observed.


In John D. Barrow and B. Devine
Longing for the Harmonies
(p. 65)


Reference #: 4123

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: QUANTUM THEORY

I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.


In Jeremy Bernstein
Experiencing Science
Part 1 Two Faces of Physics Chapter 2 Rabi: The Modern Age
(p. 102)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York,
1978


Reference #: 9441

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: ACTIVITY

Contrary to the strict division of the activity of the human spirit into separate departments—a division prevailing since the nineteenth century—I consider the ambition of overcoming opposites, including also a synthesis embracing both rational understanding and the mystical experience of unity, to be the mythos, spoken and unspoken, of our present day and age.


In Ken Wilbur (ed.)
Quantum Questions
(p. 163)


Reference #: 12135

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: FUSION

Let no man join together what God hath put asunder.


In Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann
The Atlantic Monthly
How the Universe Works, August 1984
(p. 68)


Reference #: 13874

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: GOD

I cannot believe God is a weak left-hander.


In Leon Lederman
The God Particle
(p. 256)


Reference #: 9432

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: RESULTS

Never work too closely with experimenters. Allow the results to settle.


In Silvan S. Schweber
QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga
Chapter 10
(p. 594)
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.; 1994


Reference #: 8844

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: ELECTRON

...but this is not supposed to happen with the electron: instead the frequency of vibration of the emitted light is said to lie somewhere between the orbital frequency before the mysterious jump and the orbital frequency after the jump. All this is sheer madness.


In Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Beyond
(p. 36)


Reference #: 8852

Pauli, Wolfgang
Born: 25 April, 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 December, 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland
General Category: ELECTRON

The whole thing seems a myth.....but this is not supposed to happen with the electron: instead the frequency of vibration of the emitted light is said to lie somewhere between the orbital frequency before the mysterious jump and the orbital frequency after the jump. All this is sheer madness.


In Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Beyond
(p. 36)


Reference #: 200

Pauling, Linus
General Category: CHEMISTRY

There is more to chemistry than an understanding of general principles. The chemist is also, perhaps even more, interested in the characteristics of individual substances - that is, of individual molecules.


In Mary Jo Nye
Before Big Science
Chapter 6
(p. 188)


Reference #: 2160

Pauling, Linus
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry.


Chemical Engineering News
16 April 1984
(pp. 54-56)


Reference #: 7733

Pauling, Linus
General Category: MUTATION

Every species of plant and animal is determined by a pool of germ plasm that has been most carefully selected over a period of hundreds of millions of years. We can understand now why it is that mutations in these carefully selected organisms almost invariably are detrimental. The situation can be suggested by a statement by Dr. J.B.S. Haldane: 'My clock is not keeping perfect time. It is conceivable that it will run better if I shoot a bullet through it; but it is much more probable that it will stop altogether.' Professor George Beadle, in this connection, has asked: 'What is the chance that a typographical error would improve Hamlet?'


No More War!
Chapter 4
(p. 53)


Reference #: 2911

Pauling, Linus
General Category: CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

I miss the old days, when nearly every problem in X-ray crystallography was a puzzle that could be solved only by much thinking.


In Philip Ball
Designing the Molecular World
(p. 111)


Reference #: 6181

Pauling, Linus
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry is wonderful! I feel sorry for people who don't know anything about chemistry. They are missing an important source of happiness.


In Barbara Marinacci (ed.)
Linus Pauling in His Own Words
Chapter 2
(p. 43)


Reference #: 7634

Paulos, John A.
General Category: BACTERIA

We are trying to measure bacteria with a yardstick.


New York Times
22 November 2000
(p. A31)


Reference #: 455

Paulos, John Allan
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

In general, almost any mathematically expressed scientific fact can be transformed into a consumer caveat (or lure) that will terrify (or attract) people.


A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper
Asbestos Removal Closes NYC Schools
(p. 142)


Reference #: 5334

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: STATISTICAL

It's been estimated that, because of the exponential growth of the world's population, between 10 and 20 percent of all the human beings who have ever lived are alive now. If this is so, does this mean that there isn't enough statistical evidence to conclusively reject the hypothesis of immortality?


Innumeracy
(p. 99)


Reference #: 7051

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: FRACTAL

The simple equations that generate the convoluted Mandelbrot fractal have been called the wittiest remarks ever made.


Once Upon a Number
(pp. 130-131)


Reference #: 456

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: FEVER

Consider a precise number that is well known to generations of parents and doctors: the normal human body temperature of 98.6 Fahrenheit. Recent investigations involving millions of measurements reveal that this number is wrong; normal human body temperature is actually 98.2 Fahrenheit. The fault, however, lies not with Dr. Wunderlich's original measurements - they were averaged and sensibly rounded to the nearest degree: 37 Celsius. When this temperature was converted to Fahrenheit, however, the rounding was forgotten and 98.6 was taken to be accurate to the nearest tenth of a degree. Had the original interval between 36.5 and 37.5 Celsius been translated, the equivalent Fahrenheit temperatures would have ranged from 97.7 to 99.5. Apparently, discalculia can even cause fevers.


A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper
Ranking Health Risks: Experts and Laymen Differ
(p. 139)


Reference #: 5337

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: PERCENTAGES

Later that evening we were watching the news, and the TV weathercaster announced that there was a 50 percent chance of rain for Saturday, and a 50 percent chance for Sunday, and concluded that there was therefore a 100 percent chance of rain that weekend.


Innumeracy
(p. 3)


Reference #: 5335

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: DEFINITIONS

Innumerancy, an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of numbers and chance, plagues far too many otherwise knowledgeable citizens.


Innumeracy
(p. 3)


Reference #: 5336

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: NUMBER

The mathematician G. H. Hardy was visiting his protégé, the Indian mathematician Ramanujan, in the hospital. To make small talk, he remarked that 1729, the number of the taxi which had brought him, was a rather dull number, to which Ramanujan replied immediately, "No, Hardy! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.


Innumeracy
(p. 6)


Reference #: 7050

Paulos, John Allen
General Category: MODEL

The once-surprising existence of non-Euclidean models of Euclid's first four axioms can be seen as a sort of mathematical joke.


Once Upon a Number
(p. 132)


Reference #: 18054

Pavloc, Ivan
General Category: SCIENCE

Science moves in fits and starts, depending on the progress in methods of research. Every step forward in method takes us a step higher, affording a broader view of the horizon and of objects that were invisible before.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 7813

Pavlov, Ivan
General Category: LIFE

It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 12, 1904


Reference #: 7815

Pavlov, Ivan
General Category: DIGESTIVE CANAL

The physiologist who succeeds in penetrating deeper and deeper into the digestive canal becomes convinced that it consists of a number of chemical laboratories equipped with various mechanical devices.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 12, 1904


Reference #: 7816

Pavlov, Ivan
General Category: PSYCHICAL RESOURCE

Essentially only one thing in life interests us: our psychical constitution, the mechanism of which was and is wrapped in darkness. All human resources, art, religion, literature, philosophy and historical sciences, all of them join in bringing light in this darkness.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 12, 1904


Reference #: 1667

Pavlov, Ivan
General Category: FACT

Learn, Compare, collect facts.


Bequest of the Academic Youth of Soviet Russia, 1936


Reference #: 11775

Pavlov, Ivan
General Category: FACT

Facts are the air of science. Without them the man of science can never rise. Without them your theories are vain surmises.


Testament to the Academic Youth of His Country1936


Reference #: 5919

Pavlov, Ivan P.
General Category: SCIENCE

Only science, exact science about human nature itself, and the most sincere approach to it by the aid of the omnipotent scientific method, will deliver man from his present gloom, and will purge him from his contemporary shame in the sphere of interhuman relations.


Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes
Preface to the First Russian Edition
(p. 41)


Reference #: 17563

Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich
General Category: BRAIN

If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere.


Twenty-five year of objective study of the higher nervous actitivy of animals
(p. 222)
London, England: Martin Lawrence, 1928


Reference #: 1097

Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia
General Category: IMAGINATION

To realize one's limitations marks the awakening of intellectual integrity, without which imagination, integrity and assiduity are barren.


An Autobiography and Other Recollections
Chapter 7
(p. 123)


Reference #: 2091

Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.


Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections
Chapter 22
(p. 227)


Reference #: 2092

Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia
General Category: DOGMA

Science is a living thing, not a dead dogma.


Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections
Chapter 23
(p. 233)


Reference #: 5434

Payne-Gaposchkin, Celia Helena
General Category: CONSTELLATION

The constellations carry us back to the dawn of astronomy. They have been called the fossil remains of primitive stellar religion, and as such they have extraordinary interest.


Introduction to Astronomy
(p. 3)


Reference #: 10345

Payne-Goposchkin, Cecila H.
General Category: QUESTION

Whenever we look in nature we can see spiral forms in the uncurling fern, the snail, the nautilus shell, the hurricane, the stirred cup of coffee, the water that swirls out of a wash bowl. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to see spirals in the great star systems whirling in space. Yet they remain a great, intriguing question.


Scientific American
Why Do Galaxies Have a Spiral Form?, Vol. 189, No. 3, September 1953
(p. 89)


Reference #: 5664

Peabody, Francis
General Category: SCIENTIST

...the popular conception of the scientist as a man who works in a laboratory and who uses instruments of precision is as inaccurate as it is superficial, for a scientist is known, not by his technical processes, but by his intellectual processes; and the essence of the scientific method of thought is that it precedes in an orderly manner toward the establishment of truth.


Journal of the American Medical Association
The Care of the Patient, Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 12, March 19, 1927
(p. 877)


Reference #: 12508

Peabody, Francis Weld
General Category: CARE

The treatment of a disease may be entirely impersonal; the care of a patient must be completely personal.


The Care of the Patient
(p. 12)


Reference #: 12509

Peabody, Francis Weld
General Category: CARE

The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.


The Care of the Patient
(p. 48)


Reference #: 6782

Peacock, E.E.
General Category: DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS

One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstructions. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked,


Medical World News
September 1, 1972
(p. 45)


Reference #: 4861

Peacock, Thomas Love
General Category: SYSTEM

All philosophers who find
Some favorite system to their mind,
In every point to make it fit
Will force all nature to submit.


Headlong Hall
(p. 44)


Reference #: 4816

Peacock, Thomas Love
General Category: POLLUTION

They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks...I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.


Gryll Grange


Reference #: 4818

Peacock, Thomas Love
General Category: FISH

Premising that this is a remarkably fine slice of salmon, there is much to be said about fish: but not in the way of misnomers. Their names are single and simple. Pearch, sole, cod, eel, carp, char, skate, tench, trout, brill, bream, pike, and many others, plain monosyllables: salmon, dory, turbot, gudgeon, lobster, whitebait, grayling, haddock, mullet, herring, oyster, sturgeon, flounder, turtle, plain disyllables: only two trisyllables worth naming: anchovy and mackerel; unless any one should be disposed to stand up for halibut, which, for my part, I have excommunicated.


Gryll Grange
Misnomers
(p. 12)


Reference #: 4817

Peacock, Thomas Love
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is one thing and wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool with which men play like children and cut their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief....The day would fail, if I should attempt to enumerate the evils which science has inflicted on mankind. I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.


Gryll Grange
Chapter 19
(p. 127)


Reference #: 10381

Pearce William, L.
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

...the history of science is a professional and rigorous discipline demanding the same level of skills and scholarship as any other scholarly field. It is time for the scientists to realize that he studies nature and others study him. He is no more nor no less competent to comment on his own activities and the activities of his fellow scientist than is the politician. Critical political history is rarely written by the politician and the same is true of the history of science.


Scientific American
Letter to the Editor, Vol. 214, No. 6, June 1966
(p. 8)


Reference #: 9299

Pearl, Judea
General Category: GRAPH

Despite the prevailing use of graphs as metaphors for communicating and reasoning about dependencies, the task of capturing informational dependencies by graphs is not at all trivial.


Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems
(p. 81)


Reference #: 9300

Pearl, Judea
General Category: PROBABILITY

Probabilities are summaries of knowledge that is left behind when information is transferred to a higher level of abstraction.


Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems
(p. 21)


Reference #: 1752

Pearson, E.S.
General Category: PROBABILITY

Hitherto the user has been accustomed to accept the function of probability theory laid down by the mathematicians; but it would be good if he could take a larger share in formulating himself what are the practical requirements that the theory should satisfy in applications.


Biometrika
The Choice of Statistical Test Illustrated on the Interpretation of Data Classed in a 2 x 2 Table, Vol. 34, No. 35, 1948
(p. 142)


Reference #: 1753

Pearson, E.S.
Hartley, H.Q.
General Category: STATISTICAL

...it is a function of statistical method to emphasize that precise conclusions cannot be drawn from inadequate data.


Biometrika Tables for Statisticians
Vol. I
(p. 83)


Reference #: 4641

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: LAW

Scientific Law is description, not a prescription.


In Henry Crew
General Physics
(p. 45)


Reference #: 4614

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: EXPERIMENT

It is the old experience that a rude instrument in the hand of a master craftsman will achieve more than the finest tool wielded by the uninspired journeyman.


Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton
Vol. III
(p. 50)


Reference #: 4764

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: IMAGINATION

All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.


Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 11
(p. 31)


Reference #: 1749

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: REPRODUCTION

A majority of the community would probably also admit today that the physical characters of man are inherited with practically the same intensity as the like characters in cattle and horses. But few, however ..., apply the results which flow from such acceptance to their own conduct in life.


Biometrika
On the Laws of Inheritance in Man, 3:131, 1904


Reference #: 4613

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: STATISTICAL

[Florence Nightingale] Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed - and in all the actions of her life acted upon the belief - that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator - to say nothing of the politician - too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she held that the universe - including human communities - were evolving in accordance with a divine plan; that it was man's business to endeavor to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to understand God's thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. Thus, the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.


Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton
Vol. II
(p. 57)


Reference #: 4012

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: OPINION

We never think of taking the opinion of the man in the street on the reasons why the moon does not keep her calculated times; we do not ask his opinion on the value of the opsonic index; we recognise that these are problems which require special training and analysis wholly beyond his grasp, but we still think he is quite capable of expressing an opinion on whether the employment of women is good for her infants or not, although he may be in possession of no data, and although, if he were, he would be quite incapable of interpreting them.


Eugenics Laboratory Lecture Series
The Academic Aspect of the Science of National Eugenics, 7, 1911
(p. 20)


Reference #: 4763

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: IMAGINATION

Hundreds of men have allowed their imagination to solve the universe, but the men who have contributed to our real understanding of natural phenomena have been those who were unstinted in their application of criticism to the product of their imaginations.


Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 11
(p. 32)


Reference #: 7411

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I believe the day must come when the biologist will - without being a mathematician - not hesitate to use mathematical analysis when he requires it.


Nature
Mathematics and Biology, Vol. 63, No. 1629, January 17, 1901


Reference #: 1751

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: VARIABILITY

The starting point of Darwin's theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary, in order that any process of Natural Selection may begin among a race, or species, is the existence of differences among its members; and the first step in an enquiry into the possible effect of a selective process upon any character of a race must be an estimate of the frequency with which individuals, exhibiting any given degree of abnormality with respect to that character, occur. The unit, with which such an enquiry must deal, is not an individual but a race, or a statistically representative sample of a race; and the result must take the form of a numerical statement, showing the relative frequency with which the various kinds of individuals composing the race occur.


Biometrika
Editorial, 1901
(p. 1)


Reference #: 13901

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments...


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 2
(p. 11)


Reference #: 13903

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Modern Science, as training the mind to an exact and impartial analysis of facts, is an education specifically fitted to promote sound citizenship.


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 3
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13909

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: FACT

The classification of facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiased by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind.


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 2
(p. 11)


Reference #: 13906

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

In an age like our own, which is essentially an age of scientific inquiry, the prevalence of doubt and criticism ought not to be regarded with despair or as a sign of decadence. It is one of the safeguards of progress;—la critique est la vie de la science, I must again repeat. One of the most fatal (and not so impossible) futures for science would be the institution of a scientific hierarchy which would brand as heretical all doubt as to its conclusions, all criticism of its results.


The Grammar of Science
(p. 54)


Reference #: 14079

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: STATISTICAL

There is much value in the idea of the ultimate laws being statistical laws, though why the fluctuations should be attributed to a Lucretian 'Chance', I cannot say. It is not an exactly dignified conception of the Deity to suppose him occupied solely with first moments and neglecting second and higher moments!


The History of Statistics in the 17th and 18th Centuries against the Changing Background of Intellectual, Scientific, and Religious Thought
(p. 160)


Reference #: 13904

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Every great advance of science opens our eyes to facts which we have failed before to observe, and makes new demands on our powers of interpretation. This extension of the material of science into regions where our great-grandfathers could see nothing at all, or where they would have declared human knowledge impossible, is one of the most remarkable features of modern progress. Where they interpreted the motion of the planets of our own system, we discuss the chemical constitution of stars, many of which did not exist for them, for the telescopes could not reach them. Where they discovered the circulation of the blood, we see the physical conflict of living poisons within the blood, whose battles would have been absurdities for them.


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 5
(pp. 17-18)


Reference #: 13902

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science for the past is a description, for the future a belief...


The Grammar of Science
Cause and Effect - Probability, Section 1
(p. 99)


Reference #: 13910

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: METHOD

Now this is the peculiarity of scientific method, that when once it has become a habit of mind, that mind converts all facts whatsoever into science. The field of science is unlimited; its solid contents are endless, every group of natural phenomena, every phase of social life, every stage of past or present development is material for science. The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material. The man who classifies facts of any kind whatever, who sees their mutual relation and describes their sequence, is applying the scientific method and is a man of science. The facts may belong to the past history of mankind, to the social statistics of our great cities, to the atmosphere of the most distant stars, to the digestive organs of a worm, or to the life of a scarcely visible bacillus. It is not the facts themselves which form science, but the method in which they are dealt with. The material of science is co-extensive with the whole physical universe, not only that universe as it now exists, but with its past history and the past history of all life therein. When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of that universe, every phase of present or past life therin, has been examined, classified, and co-ordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be completed. What is this but saying that the task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases.


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 5
(p. 16)


Reference #: 13913

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: METHOD

I assert that the encouragement of scientific investigation and the spread of scientific knowledge by largely inculcating scientific habits of mind will lead to more efficient citizenship and so to increased social stability. Minds trained to scientific methods are less likely to be led by mere appeal to the passions or by blind emotional excitement to sanction acts which in the end may lead to social disaster.


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 3
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13912

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: DOGMA

Science cannot give its consent to man's development being some day again checked by the barriers which dogma and myth are ever erecting round territory that science has not yet effectively occupied.


The Grammar of Science
(pp. 26-27)


Reference #: 13911

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: PROOF

...we must remember that because a proposition has not yet been proved, we have no right to infer that its converse must be true.


The Grammar of Science
Cause and Effect - Probability
(p. 150)


Reference #: 13908

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: FACT

The smallest group of facts, if properly classified and logically dealt with, will form a stone which has its proper place in the great building of knowledge, wholly independent of the individual workman who has shaped it.


The Grammar of Science
Part I, Introductory
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13907

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENCE

When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of that universe, every phase or present or past life therein, has been examined, classified, and co-ordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be completed. What is this but saying that the task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases?


The Grammar of Science
Introductory, Section 5
(p. 16)


Reference #: 14389

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: CORRELATION

Biological phenomena in their numerous phases, economic and social, were seen to be only differentiated from the physical by the intensity of their correlations. The idea Galton placed before himself was to represent by a single quantity the degree of relationships, or of partial causality between the different variables of our everchanging universe.


The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton
Vol. III, A, Chapter XIV
(p. 2)


Reference #: 13905

Pearson, Karl
Born: 27 March, 1857 in London, England
Died: 27 April, 1936 in Coldharbour, Surrey, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Does science leave no mystery? On the contrary it proclaims mystery where others profess knowledge. There is mystery enough in the universe of sensation and in its capacity for containing those little corners of consciousness which project their own products, or order and law and reason, into an unknown and unknowable world. There is mystery enough here, only let us clearly distinguish it from ignorance within the field of possible knowledge. The one is impenetrable, the other we are daily subduing.


The Grammar of Science
The Scientific Law, Conclusion
(p. 97)


Reference #: 3543

Peat, F. David
General Category: QUANTUM

The choice before us is either to abandon any hope of knowing the nature of quantum reality or to accept a nonlocal universe.


Einstein's Moon
(p. 124)
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America: Contemporary Books, 1990


Reference #: 16257

Peattie, Donald Culross
General Category: LIFE

Whatever life is (and nobody can define it) it is something forever changing shape, fleeting, escaping us into death. Life is indeed the only things that can die, and it begins to die as soon as it is
Born, and never ceases dying. Each of us is constantly experiencing cellular death. For the renewal of our tissues means a corresponding death of them, so that death and rebirth become biologically, right and left hand of the same thing. All growing is at the same time a dying away from that which lived yesterday.


The Road of a Naturalist
Chapter 12
(pp. 149-150)


Reference #: 17787

Peattie, Donald Culross
General Category: WIND

The oldest voice in the world is the wind.


Weather: A National Journal
(p. 24)


Reference #: 1072

Peattie, Donald Culross
General Category: EVOLUTION

In short, evolution is not so much progress as it is simply change. It does not leave all its primitive forms behind. It carries them over from age to age, well knowing that they are the precious base of the pyramid on which the more fantastic and costly experiments must be carried.


An Almanac for Moderns
April Eighteenth
(p. 31)


Reference #: 4308

Peattie, Donald Culross
General Category: SCIENCE

Of our windows on the universe, science is set with the clearest pane; it is not warped or waved to make the images appear to support any dogma; the glass is not rose-tinted, neither is it leaded with a picture that shuts out the sun and, coming between the light of day and you, enforces the credence of the past upon the young present.


Flowering Earth
Chapter 18
(p. 244)


Reference #: 4309

Peattie, Donald Culross
General Category: FUNGI

The fungi are the underworld of plant life, that lives clandestinely, by its unconscious wits, taking to cover in unfavorable times, rioting at another.


Flowering Earth
Chapter 18
(p. 234)


Reference #: 14926

Peattie, Donald Culross
General Category: SCIENCE

Scientists are justified if they do not forgive a writer who sets out knowingly to distort their meanings for effect. They have reason to be grateful to the expert journalists who faithfully translate their technicalities into the language of Everyman….The purpose of science is knowledge, and everyone has the right to know. What science has discovered is common property, and should be made easily available to all. This is not always remembered by a great many scientific writers who have never spoken outside of classrooms where attendance and attention are compulsory, never written a book which they could not order their students to buy. If the scientists practicing inside the college close are not always and widely understood, they may not be always and widely supported. They take that support for granted, along with their intellectual liberties.


The Naturalist


Reference #: 8834

Peebles, Phillip James Edwin
General Category: COSMOLOGY

In cosmology the reliance on physical simplicity, pure thought and revealed knowledge is carried well beyond the fringe because we have so little else to go on. By this desperate course we have arrived at a few simple pictures of what the Universe may be like. The great goal is now to become more familiar with the Universe, to learn whether any of these pictures may be a reasonable approximation, and if so how the approximation may be improved. The great excitement in cosmology is that the prospects for doing this seem to be excellent.


Physical Cosmology
(p. vii)


Reference #: 79

Peers, John
General Category: FACT

Gross's Postulate. Facts are not all equal. There are good facts and bad facts. Science consists of using good facts.


1001 Logical Laws
(p. 35)


Reference #: 80

Peers, John
General Category: CHANCE

Nick the Greek's Law of Life. All things considered, life is 9 to 5 against.


1001 Logical Laws
(p. 50)


Reference #: 78

Peers, John
General Category: RANDOMN

Hardyman's Truism. Random stomping seldom catches bugs.


1001 Logical Laws
(p. 27)


Reference #: 958

Peirce, Benjamin
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is not the discoverer of laws, for it is not induction; neither is it the framer of theories, for it is not hypothesis; but it is the judge over both, and it is the arbiter to which each must reter its claims; and neither law can rule nor theory explain without the sanction of mathematics.


American Journal of Mathematics
Linear Associative Algebra, Vol. 4, 1881
(p. 97)


Reference #: 955

Peirce, Benjamin
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.


American Journal of Mathematics
Linear Associative Algebra, Vol. 4, 1881
(p. 97)


Reference #: 12112

Peirce, Benjamin
General Category: OUTLIERS

In almost every true series of observations, some are found, which differ so much from the others as to indicate some abnormal source of error not contemplated in the theoretical discussions, and the introduction of which into the investigations can only serve, in the present state of science, to perplex and mislead the inquirer.


The Astronomical Journal
(p. 160)


Reference #: 2306

Peirce, C. S.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, when it comes to understand itself, regards facts as merely the vehicle of eternal truth, while for Practice they remain the obstacles which it has to turn, the enemy of which it is determined to get the better.


Collected Papers (1934)
V. 412


Reference #: 7154

Peirce, C.S.
General Category: CHEMICAL

A chemical compound might be expected to be quite as much a proposition as like an algebraic invariant.


Monist
Vol. 7, 1896
(p. 168)


Reference #: 2302

Peirce, C.S.
General Category: VARIABILITY

The endless variety in the world has not been created by law. It is not the nature of uniformity to originate variation, nor of law to beget circumstance.


Collected Papers
Vol. VI, Chapter 6, Section 2
(p. 373)


Reference #: 20

Peirce, Charles S.
General Category: REASON

Every work of science great enough to be remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic.


The Popular Science Monthly
Inquiry and Belief, Volume 12, 1877-1878


Reference #: 18116

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: PROBABILITY

This branch of mathematics [probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results entirely erroneous.


Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce
Vol. 3
(p. 279)


Reference #: 17667

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: QUESTION

Who would have said, a few years ago, that we could ever know of what substances stars are made of whose light may have been longer in reaching us than the human race existed? Who can be sure of what we shall now know in a few hundred years? Who can guess what would be the result of continuing the pursuit of science for ten thousand years, with the activity of the last hundred? And if it were to go on for a million, or a billion, or any number of years you please, how is it possible to say that there is any question which might not ultimately be solved.


Values in a Universe of Chance
How to make Ideas Clear
(p. 134)


Reference #: 18115

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: PROBABILITY

...it may be doubtful if there is a single extensive treatise on probabilities in existence which does not contain solutions absolutely indefensible.


Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce
Vol. 3
(p. 278)


Reference #: 18114

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: PROBABILITY

The idea of probability essentially belongs to a kind of inference which is repeated indefinitely. An individual inference must be either true or false, and can show no effect of probability; and, therefore, in reference to a single case considered in itself, probability can have no meaning.


Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce
Vol. 3
(p. 281)


Reference #: 3153

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

The great difference between induction and hypothesis is, that the former infers the existence of phenomena such as we have observed in cases which are similar, while hypothesis supposes something of a different kind from what we have directly observed, and frequently something which it would be impossible for us to observe directly.


Chance, Love and Logic
Deduction, Induction, Hypothesis
(p. 149)


Reference #: 1877

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: TABLE

Worst of all, however, are journals that publish tables giving the results, mostly unintelligible, of multiple range tests, the said results receiving no mention in the text. The last fault arises possibly from the misconceived idea that the property of significance resides in the data themselves, not in the contrasts they estimate. Accordingly, if the data are "significant," the author is free to comment on any feature however trivial; if they are not, interpretation is deemed impermissible.


In Samuel Kotz and Norman L. Johnson
Breakthroughs in Statistics
Vol. II
(p. 61)


Reference #: 7121

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The man of action has to believe, the inquirer has to doubt; the scientific investigator is both.


In J.B. Conant
Modern Science and Modern Man
Science and Spiritual Values
(p. 103)


Reference #: 8777

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The scientific spirit requires a man to be at all times ready to dump his whole cartload of beliefs, the moment experience is against them.


In Justus Buchler (ed.)
Philosophical Writings of Peirce
Chapter 4
(pp. 46-47)


Reference #: 14807

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

If hypotheses are to be tried haphazard, or simply because they will suit certain phenomena, it will occupy the mathematical physicists of the world say half a century on the average to bring each theory to the test, and since the number of possible theories may go up into the trillion, only one of which can be true, we have little prospect of making further solid additions to the subject in our time.


The Monist
The Architecture of Theories, Vol. I, No. 2, January 1891
(p. 164)


Reference #: 14805

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...metaphysics has always been the ape of mathematics.


The Monist
The Architecture of Theories, Vol. 1, No. 2, January 1891
(p. 174)


Reference #: 14804

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the most abstract of all the sciences. For it makes no external observations, nor asserts anything as a real fact. When the mathematician deals with facts, they become for him mere "hypotheses"; for with their truth he refuses to concern himself. The whole science of mathematics is a science of hypotheses; so that nothing could be more completely abstracted from concrete reality.


The Monist
The Regenerated Logic, Vol. 7, No. 1, October 1896
(p. 23)


Reference #: 12681

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: TRUTH

...truths, on the average, have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities have. Were it otherwise, considering that there are myrids of false hypotheses to account for any given phenomenon, against one sole true one (or if you will have it so, against every true one), the first step towards genuine knowledge must have been next door to a miracle.


The Collected Works of Charles Sanders Peirce
Vol. 5, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism
(p. 431)


Reference #: 8775

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: ERROR

In those sciences of measurement which are the least subject to error - meteorology, geodesy, and metrical astronomy - no man of self-respect ever now states his results, without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is not followed in other sciences it is because in those the probable errors are too vast to be estimated.


Philosophical Writing of Peirce
(p. 3)


Reference #: 9150

Peirce, Charles Sanders
General Category: PROBABILITY

The relative probability of this or that arrangement of Nature is something which we should have a right to talk about if universes were as plenty as blackberries, if we could put a quantity of them in a bag, shake them well up, draw out a sample, and examine them to see what proportion of them had one arrangement and what proportion another. But, even in that case, a higher universe would contain us, in regard to whose arrangements the conception of probability could have no applicability.


Popular Science Monthly
The Probability of Induction, Vol. 12, April 1878
(p. 714)


Reference #: 4398

Peitgen, Heinz-OttoJurgens, HartmutSa, Dietmar
General Category: DIMENSION

Dimension is not easy to understand. At the turn of the century it was one of the major problems in mathematics to determine what dimension means and which properties it has. And since then the situation has become somewhat worse because mathematicians have come up with some ten different notions of dimension: topological dimension, Hausdoff dimension, fractal dimension, self-similarity dimension, box-counting dimension, capacity dimension, information dimension, Euclidean dimension, and more. They are all related. Some of them, however, make sense in certain situations, but not at all in others, where alternative definitions are more helpful. Sometimes they all make sense and are the same. Sometimes several make sense but do not agree. The details can be confusing even for a research mathematician.


Fractals in the Classroom


Reference #: 6305

Pekkanen, John
General Category: DOCTOR

Being a good doctor means being incredibly compulsive. It has nothing to do with flights of intuition or brilliant diagnoses or even saving lives. It's dealing with a lot of people with chronic diseases that you really can't change or improve. You can help patients. You can make a difference in their lives, but you do that mostly by drudgery - day after day paying attention to details, seeing patient after patient and complaint after complaint, and being responsive on the phone when you don't feel like being responsive.


M.D.-Doctors Talk About Themselves
Chapter 3
(p. 70)


Reference #: 11484

Peltier, Leslie C.
General Category: PLEIADS

So clear and sparkling is this autumn night that, with averted vision, I can see quite readily the wraithlike wisps of nebulosity that festoon and enmesh this entire little cluster.


Starlight Nights
Chapter 1
(p. 5)


Reference #: 11483

Peltier, Leslie C.
General Category: CONSTELLATIONS

No true star-gazer will fail to become familiar with the constellations and fortunate is he whose introduction to the skies comes to him through nature's eyes alone and not through any telescope.


Starlight Nights
Chapter 6
(p. 39)


Reference #: 11485

Peltier, Leslie C.
General Category: COMET

I had watched a dozen comets, hitherto unknown, slowly creep across the sky as each one signed its sweeping flourish in the guest book of the Sun.


Starlight Nights
Chapter 6
(p. 43)
Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1965


Reference #: 11486

Peltier, Leslie C.
General Category: COMET

Time has not lessened the age-old allure of the comets. In some ways their mystery has only deepened with the years. At each return a comet brings with it the questions which were asked when it was here before, and as it rounds the sun and backs away toward the long, slow night of its aphelion, it leaves behind with us those questions, still unanswered.
To hunt a speck of moving haze may seem a strange pursuit, but even though we fail the search is still rewarding, for in no better way can we come face to face, night after night, with such a wealth of riches as old Croseus never dreamed of.


Starlight Nights
Chapter 27
(p. 231)
Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1965


Reference #: 11487

Peltier, Leslie C.
General Category: TELESCOPE

Old telescopes never die, they are just laid away.


Starlight Nights
Chapter 28
(p. 232)
Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1965


Reference #: 11482

Peltier, Leslie C.
General Category: STARS

The skies were full of stars for me to learn.


Starlight Nights
Chapter 6
(p. 39)


Reference #: 7419

Pendry, John
General Category: PROBLEM

It has been said that tackling a new scientific problem is like going into a darkened room. First you fall over the furniture, then you collide with other people in the room; arguments might develop. With time things settle down, as you learn where most of the furniture is and don't fall over so often. Eventually someone finds the light switch and everything becomes obvious.


Nature
Optics: Positively negative, 2003 May 1;423(6935)
(p. 22)


Reference #: 16465

Penfield, Wilder
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is the organ of destiny. It holds within its humming mechanism secrets that will determine the future of the human race.


The Second Career


Reference #: 13996

Penfield, Wilder
General Category: BRAIN

It is fair to say that science provides no method of controlling the mind. Scientific work on the brain does not explain the mind-not yet.


The Great Issues of Conscience in Modern Medicine


Reference #: 15149

Penjer, Michael
General Category: FORECAST

We are making forecasts with bad numbers, but bad numbers are all we've got.


The New York Times
September 1, 1989


Reference #: 10395

Penman, Sheldon
General Category: MUON

For the time being, however, the muon itself qualifies as a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.


Scientific American
The Muon, Vol. 205, No. 1, July 1961
(p. 55)


Reference #: 2526

Penn, Granville
General Category: GEOLOGY

EDWARD: Sea-shells, did you say, mother, in the heart of solid rocks, and far inland? There must surely be some mistake in this; at least it appears to me incredible.
.
MRS. R.: The history of the shells, my dear, and many other things no less wonderful, is contained in the science called GEOLOGY, which treats of the first appearance of rocks, mountains, valleys, lakes, and rivers; and the changes they have undergone, from the Creation and the Deluge, till the present time.


Conversations on Geology
Conversation First
(p. 1, 3)


Reference #: 2365

Penn, William
General Category: REPRODUCTION

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.


Collected Works
Vol. 5, Some fruits of solitude, in reflections and maxims relating to the conduct of human life. 1693


Reference #: 10350

Penrose, Roger
General Category: TRUTH

Scientists do not invent truth - they discover it.


In John Horgan
Scientific American
Quantum Consciousness, Vol. 261, No. 5, November 1989
(p. 32)


Reference #: 8197

Penrose, Roger
General Category: MYSTERY

...once you have put more and more of your physical world into a mathematical structure, you realize how profound and mysterious this mathematical structure is. How you can get all these things out of it is very mysterious...


In Alan Lightman and Robert Brawer (eds.)
Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists
Roger Penrose
(p. 433)


Reference #: 12865

Penrose, Roger
General Category: BEAUTY

A beautiful idea has a much greater chance of being a correct idea than an ugly one.


The Emperor's New Mind
Chapter 10
(p. 421)


Reference #: 10377

Penrose, Roger
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Yet nature does not always prefer conventional explanations, least of all in astronomy.


Scientific American
Black Holes, Vol. 226, No. 5, May 1972
(p. 46)


Reference #: 12864

Penrose, Roger
General Category: TIME

Our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake-up - even greater, perhaps, than that which has already been provided by present-day relativity and quantum mechanics.


The Emperor's New Mind
(p. 371)


Reference #: 10375

Penrose, Roger
General Category: AESTHETIC

Aesthetic qualities are important in science, and necessary, I think, for great science.


In John Hogan
Scientific American
Quantum Consciousness, Vol. 261, No. 5, November 1989
(p. 32)


Reference #: 3251

Penzias, Arno
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan.


In H. Margenau and R.A. Varghese
Cosmos, Bios, and Theos
Chapter 16
(p. 83)


Reference #: 9699

Penzias, Arno
General Category: UNIVERSE

Either we've seen the birth of the universe, or we've seen a pile of pigeon shit.


In Roylston Roberts
Serendipity


Reference #: 18094

Pepper, Stephen
General Category: ANALOGY

A man desiring to understand the world looks about for a clue to its comprehension. He pitches upon some area of commonsense fact and tries to understand other areas in terms of this one. The original area becomes his basic analogy or root metaphor.


World Hypotheses
(pp. 91-92)


Reference #: 6773

Percival, Thomas
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The relations in which a physician stands to his patients, to his brethren, and to the public, are complicated, and multifarious; involving much knowledge of human nature, and extensive moral duties.


Medical Ethics
(p. viii)


Reference #: 6774

Percival, Thomas
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Hospital PHYSICIANS and SURGEONS should minister to the sick, with due impressions of the importance of their office; reflecting that the ease, the health, and the lives of those committed to their charge depend on their skill, attention, and fidelity.


Medical Ethics
(p. 9)


Reference #: 9829

Percy, Thomas
General Category: MOON

Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone,
Wi' the auld moon in hir arme.


Reliques—Sir Patrick Spens


Reference #: 10734

Percy, Walker
General Category: SIMPLICITY

It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.


Signposts in a Strange Land
From Fact to Fiction
(p. 187)


Reference #: 2648

Perelman, S.J.
General Category: SCIENTIST

I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atomsmashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.


Crazy like a Fox
Captain Future, Block that Kick
(p. 210)


Reference #: 2649

Perelman, S.J.
General Category: DENTIST

I had always thought of dentists as of the phlegmatic type - square-jawed sadists in white aprons who found release in trying out new kinds of burs on my shaky little incisors.


Crazy Like a Fox
Nothing but the Tooth
(p. 69)


Reference #: 2650

Perelman, S.J.
General Category: TEETH

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.


Crazy Like a Fox
Nothing but the Tooth
(p. 72)


Reference #: 2651

Perelman, S.J.
General Category: DENTIST

For years I have let dentists ride roughshod over my teeth; I have been sawed, hacked, chopped, whittled, bewitched, bewildered, tattooed, and signed on again; but this is cuspid's last stand.


Crazy Like a Fox
Nothing but the Tooth
(p. 72)


Reference #: 15220

Perfect, D.C.
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Said a mathematician (age 7)
`Shall I ever get into Heaven
If I cannot tell why
hc/p
2e2 must be 137?'


The Observatory
Vol. 73 , No. 216, 1953


Reference #: 16351

Perl, Martin
General Category: SCIENCE

I was following an old idea in science: 'If you can't understand a phenomenon, look for more examples of that phenomenon...'


The Science Teacher
December 1980
(p. 16)


Reference #: 7522

Perrett, J.
General Category: LIFE

Life is potentially self-perpetuating open system of linked organic reactions, catalyzed stepwise and almost isothermally by complex and specific organic catalysts which are themselves produced by the system.


New Biology
Biochemistry and Bacteria
Vol. 12, 1952


Reference #: 7139

Perrin, Jean
General Category: STATISTICS

It is thus that statistics reveals more and more the inconstance and the irregularity of much social phenomena, when in lieu of applying it to a great nation altogether, one descends to a province, a town, a village.


In Mary Jo Nye
Molecular Reality: A Perspective on the Scientific Work of Jean Perrin
(p. 25)
New York: MacDonald, London, England 1972


Reference #: 10630

Perrin, Noel
General Category: ANIMAL PIG

Pigs get bad press. Pigs are regarded as selfish and greedy—as living garbage pails. Pigs are the villains in George Orwell's Animal Farm. Pigs have little mean eyes. There is truth in this account—not that it's entirely the fault of the pigs. For perhaps five thousand generations pigs have been deliberately bred to be gluttonous....Do the same thing with human beings for five thousand generations, and it would be interesting to see what kind of people resulted.


Second Person Rural
Pig Tales
(p. 143)


Reference #: 17564

Perry, Georgette
General Category: NEUTRINO

To trap them is almost impossible.
You may wait for months in a deep mine
Inside an anti-coincidence shield.
No charge deflects them.
Desireless, they cruise through the world
As if it's nothing, not there.


Twigs
Neutrinos, 1977


Reference #: 7042

Perry, Lilla Cabot
General Category: VOLCANO

Forgive me not! Hate me and
I shall know
Some of love's fire still burns
in your breast!
Forgiveness finds its home in
hearts at rest,
On dead volcanoes only lies the snow.


Ode to Volcanoes and the Living Earth


Reference #: 16041

Perry, Ralph Barton
General Category: SCIENTIST

Every scientist, furthermore, is himself a 'self-made man.' He owes hisstrictly scientific attainment to his own efforts and to the endowment with which nature has equipped him. Whatever elevation in life he reaches is not an artificial status created by institutions or traditions, but a measure of solid achievement. The scientist, therefore, respects man for what he is rather than for his class or station.


The Present Conflict of Ideals
Chapter IX
(pp. 101-2)


Reference #: 16306

Persius
General Category: DISEASE

...check the ailment before it's got to you....


The Satires of Persius
Satire Three
l. 67


Reference #: 5509

Perutz, Max
General Category: SCIENCE

It seems to me that, just as the Church did in former times, science offers a safe niche where you can spend a quiet life classifying spiders, away from what E. M. Forster called the world of telegrams and anger.


Is Science Necessary?
How to Become a Scientist
(p. 193)
E.P. Dutton, New York, New York, United States of America; 1989


Reference #: 5508

Perutz, Max
General Category: RESEARCH

...research consists of formulation of imaginative hypotheses that are open to falsification by experiment.


Is Science Necessary?
How to Become a Scientist
(p. 199)
E.P. Dutton, New York, New York, United States of America; 1989


Reference #: 11877

Pétard, H. (Pondiczery, E.S.)
General Category: MATHEMATICAL WRITING

Since authors seldom, if ever, say what they mean, the following glossary is offered to neophytes in mathematical research to help them understand the language that surrounds the formulas...

ANALOGUE. This is an a. of: I have to have some excuse for publishing it.
APPLICATIONS. This is of interest in a.: I have to have some excuse for publishing it.
COMPLETE. The proof is now c.: I can't finish it.
DETAILS. I cannot follow the d. of X's proof: It's wrong. We omit the d.: I can't do it.
DIFFICULT. This problem is d.: I don't know the answer. (Cf. Trivial.)
GENERALITY. Without loss of g.: I have done an easy special case.
IDEAS. To fix the I.: To consider the only case I can do.
INGENIOUS. X's proof is I.: I understand it.
INTEREST. It may be of I. I have to have some excuse for publishing it.
INTERESTING. X's paper is I.: I don't understand it.
KNOWN. This is a k. result but I reproduce the proof for the convenience of the reader: My paper isn't long enough.
Language. Par abus de l.: In the terminology used by other authors. (Cf. Notation.)
NATURAL. It is n. to begin with the following considerations: We have to start somewhere.
NEW. This was proved by X but the following n. proof may present points of interest: I can't understand X.
NOTATION. To simplify the n.: It is too much trouble to change now.
OBSERVED. It will be o. that: I hope you have not noticed that.
OBVIOUS. It is o.: I can't prove it.
READER. The details may be left to the r.: I can't do it.
REFEREE. I wish to thank the r. for his suggestions: I loused it up.
STRAIGHTFORWARD. By a s. computation: I lost my notes.
TRIVIAL. This problem is t.: I know the answer (Cf. Difficult.)
WELL-KNOWN. The result is w.: I can't find the reference.


The American Mathematical Monthly
A Brief Dictionary of Phrases Used in Mathematical Writing, Vol. 73, No. 2, February 1966
(pp. 196-197)


Reference #: 785

Peter Medawar
General Category: EXPERIMENT

All experimentation is criticism. If an experiment does not hold out the possibility of causing one to revise one's views, it is hard to see why it should be done at all.


Advice to a Young Scientist
Chapter 11
(p. 94)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1979


Reference #: 4559

Peter, Lawrence J.
General Category: MEASURE

Coomb's Law. If you can't measure it, I'm not interested.


Human Behavior
Peter's People, August, 1976
(p. 9)


Reference #: 8971

Peters, Ted
General Category: NATURE

Nature as we daily experience it is ambiguous, fraught with benefits and liabilities.


Playing God?
Playing God with DNA
(p. 20)


Reference #: 7690

Peterson, Ivars
General Category: MYSTERY

The voyage of discovery into our own solar system has taken us from clockwork precision into chaos and complexity. This still unfinished journey has not been easy, characterized as it is by twists, turns, and surprises that mirror the intricacies of the human mind at work on a profound puzzle. Much remains a mystery. We have found chaos, but what it means and what its relevance is to our place in the universe remains shrouded in a seemingly impenetrable cloak of mathematical uncertainty.


Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System
Chapter 12
(p. 293)
W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1993


Reference #: 454

Peterson, Ivars
General Category: MYSTERY

Mystery is an inescapable ingredient of mathematics. Mathematics is full of unanswered questions, which far outnumber known theorems and results. It's the nature of mathematics to pose more problems than it can solve. Indeed, mathematics itself may be built on small islands of truth comprising the pieces of mathematics that can be validated by relatively short proofs. All else is speculation.


A Mathematical Mystery Cruise


Reference #: 5518

Peterson, Ivars
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mystery is an inescapable ingredient of mathematics. Mathematics is full of unanswered questions, which far outnumber known theorems and results. It's the nature of mathematics to pose more problems than it can solve. Indeed, mathematics itself may be built on small islands of truth comprising the pieces of mathematics that can be validated by relatively short proofs. All else is speculation.


Islands of Truth: A Mathematical Mystery Cruise
Preface
(p. xvi)


Reference #: 5519

Peterson, Ivars
General Category: PATTERNS

In their search for patterns and logical connections, mathematicians face a vast, mysterious ocean of possibilities. Over the centuries, they have discovered an extensive archipelago of truth and beauty. Much of that accumulated knowledge is passed on to succeeding generations. Even more wonders await future explorers of deep, mathematical waters.


Islands of Truth: A Mathematical Mystery Cruise
Chapter 8
(p. 292)


Reference #: 14674

Peterson, Ivars
General Category: MATHEMATICS

To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.


The Mathematical Tourist
Preface
(p. xiii)


Reference #: 4007

Petit, Jean-Pierre
General Category: THEORY

Sir, please believe me, it's the first time this has ever happened. Have another try, don't get upset. You know our Theorems are GUARANTEED.


Euclid Rules OK?
(p. 11)


Reference #: 4008

Petit, Jean-Pierre
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

I'VE UNDERSTOOD IT! Well, that is...I'm not exactly sure WHAT I've understood, but I have the impression I've understood SOMETHING.


Euclid Rules OK?
(p. 44)


Reference #: 10252

Petrarch
General Category: NATURE

There are fools who seek to understand the secrets of nature.


In Richard Olson
Science Deified and Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture
Chapter 7
(p. 210)


Reference #: 6050

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)
General Category: MEDICINE

When we see how doctors themselves live, how their slight illnesses turn to tragic ends, we may well suspect that this thing called medicine, whatever it may be in itself, is yet among men a certain art of deception, invented to men's peril, to enrich a few and endanger many. Or we may think it a true art, contrived for useful ends, but little understood by men of our time. Or perhaps better, it may be understood, but hardly applicable to men's natures, in their infinite and incredible variety.


Letters from Petrarch
Letters; Book XII, 2
To Giovanni Dondi of Padua
(p. 283)
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America; 1966


Reference #: 6051

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)
General Category: RECOVERY

I once heard a physician of high standing in his profession say:… If a hundred men, or a thousand of the same age and general constitution and accustomed to the same diet should all fall victim to a disease at the same time, and if half of them should follow the prescriptions of our contemporary doctors, and if the other half should be guided by their natural instinct and common sense, with no doctors at all, I have no doubt that the latter group would do better.


In M. Bishop
Letters from Petrarch
Book V, 3
(p. 250)
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America; 1966


Reference #: 16313

Petronius
General Category: DOCTOR

What good's a doctor but for peace of mind?


The Satyricon
XLII
(p. 50)


Reference #: 16314

Petronius
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Medicus nihil aliud est quam animi consolatio.
A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind.


The Satyricon
section 42


Reference #: 17411

Petroski, Henry
General Category: ENGINEER

The work of the engineer is not unlike that of the writer. How the original design for a new bridge comes to be may involve as great a leap of the imagination as the first draft of a novel.


To Engineer is Human
(p. 78)


Reference #: 17407

Petroski, Henry
General Category: BRIDGE

Designing a bridge or any other large structure is not unlike planning a trip or vacation. The end may be clear and simple: to go from here to there. But the means may be limited only by our imagination.


To Engineer is Human
(p. 64)


Reference #: 17408

Petroski, Henry
General Category: ENGINEER

Engineers ...are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch them is imperative. Thus it is the essence of modern engineering not only to be able to check one's own work, but also to have one's work checked and to be able to check the work of others.


To Engineer Is Human
(p. 52)


Reference #: 17410

Petroski, Henry
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering, like poetry, is an attempt to approach perfection. And engineers, like poets, are seldom completely satisfied with their creations. They notice, even if no one else does, the word that is not quite le mot juste or the hairline crack that blemishes the structure.


To Engineer is Human
(p. 83)


Reference #: 17409

Petroski, Henry
General Category: ENGINEER

The engineer no less than the poet sees the faults in his creations, and he learns more from his mistakes and those of others than he does from all the masterpieces created by himself and his peers.


To Engineer is Human
(p. 82)


Reference #: 11374

Petroski, Henry
General Category: PHYSICIST

Embedded in a matrix of mistakes
And slips of sighs, his next equation lies
About its symmetry. Among the lines
Of exercise and bold heuristic thrusts
Of algebra and calculus, it takes
His magic mirror mind to recognize
A juxtaposition that unifies
His theory of another universe.

Extracting the law from the accidents,
He calls it Theorem and proceeds to prove
It logically follows from stronger laws.
He makes some definitions and extends
The theorem more and more and marvels at the rules
His universe follows, effect from cause.


Southern Humanities Review
The Mathematical Physicist, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1972
(p. 184)


Reference #: 499

Pettie, George
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Sutch as the cause of every thing is, sutch wilbe the effect.


A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure
Vol. I, Germanicus and Agrippina


Reference #: 6875

Pfeiffer, Carl C.
General Category: BRAIN

Brains, like cabbages, are beautiful—but in a different way. Cabbage heads are dumb and sterile, whereas brains are personal, intelligent and vibrant.


Mental and Elemental Nutrients


Reference #: 6873

Philip, Prince
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Our way of life has been influenced by the way technology has developed. In future, it seems to me, we ought to try to reverse this and so develop our technology that it meets the needs of the sort of life we wish to lead.


Men, Machines and Sacred Cows


Reference #: 6626

Philips, J. D.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Students must learn that mathematics is the most human of endeavors. Flesh and blood representatives of their own species engaged in a centuries long creative struggle to uncover and to erect this magnificent edifice. And the struggle goes on today. On the very campuses where mathematics is presented and received as an inhuman discipline, cold and dead, new mathematics is created. As sure as the tides.


Mathematics as an Aesthetic Discipline
Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, No. 12, Oct. 1995


Reference #: 6625

Philips, J. D.
General Category: TRIGONOMETRY

The notion that anyone other than a scientist will ever use even the most elementary trigonometry or algebra is laughable. Imagine the absurdity of being in a car or on a plane when suddenly the need arises to solve a quadratic equation or to graph a trigonometric function. But this is precisely the scenario that the traditional defense has coerced us into accepting as realistic. Clearly this is absurd. And so is our complicity.


Mathematics as an Aesthetic Discipline
Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, No. 12, Oct. 1995


Reference #: 6624

Philips, J. D.
General Category: GEOMETRY

When school children study analytic geometry, they should be made aware that his seemingly trivial and esoteric subject exists to us only because of the heroic efforts of a succession of brilliant minds, culminating in the work of Descartes. Its depth, originality, and profundity are lost on students. It has been carefully polished and refined so exquisitely, presented so elegantly and simply, that students myopically receive it as a trifle.


Mathematics as an Aesthetic Discipline
The Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal, No. 12, Oct. 1995


Reference #: 10053

Phillip Hauge
General Category: SCIENCE

Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals who love knowledge and the creation of it. Just as important to the integrity of science have been the unwritten rules of the game. These provide recognition and approbation for work which is imaginative and accurate, and apathy or criticism for the trivial or inaccurate....Thus, it is the communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of science....The system of rewards and punishments tends to make honest, vigorous, conscientious, hardworking scholars out of people who have human tendencies of slothfulness and no more rectitude than the law requires.


Science
The Roots of Scientific Integrity, 1963


Reference #: 669

Phillips, John
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

All human knowledge is limited; but who has reached the boundary in any direction?


A Treatise on Geology
Geology, Progress of Geology
(p. 4)


Reference #: 575

Phillpotts, Eden
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.


A Shadow Passes


Reference #: 403

Philolaus
General Category: NUMBER

All things which can be known have number; for it is not possible that without number anything can be either conceived or known.


In Carl B. Boyer
A History of Mathematics
(p. 60)


Reference #: 11103

Phrase, Latin
General Category: FACT

Res ipse laquitur
The fact speaks for itself


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11254

Phrase, Latin
General Category: INFINITE

Ad infinitum
To infinity


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8732

Piaget, Jean
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering - is more pragmatic and less - relatively less - speculative; it is production, operation, and management, as well as research, analysis, planning and design. Its goal is usually a clearly specified utility such as public health, communication, power, transportation, or housing, rather than the attainment of abstract truth.


In Thomas C. Dean
Phi Kappa Phi Journal
Challenges in Higher Education


Reference #: 17462

Picard, Charles Emile
Born: 24 July 1856 in Paris, France
Died: 11 December, 1941 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

I am not unaware of the difficulties of the task which I am undertaking. Activity in mathematical thinking today is such that it is perhaps presumptuous to attempts to sketch, in so vast an area, the present state of the science. The portrait, even if it is a good likeness, is fated, in parts at least, to become dated quickly. But that does not matter so long as I propose merely to be useful as a guide to those who wish to acquaint themselves with modern analysis and who fear that, alone, they may lose their way in the multiplicity of papers which fill the learned scientific periodicals.


Traite d'analyse
Preface


Reference #: 14793

Picard, Charles Emile
Born: 24 July 1856 in Paris, France
Died: 11 December, 1941 in Paris, France
General Category: ORDER

We no longer pretend to be able to grasp reality in a physical theory; we see in it rather an analytic or geometric mold useful and fertile for a tentative representation of phenomena, no longer believing that the agreement of a theory with experience demonstrates that the theory expresses the reality of things. Such statements have sometimes seemed discouraging; we ought rather to marvel that, with representations of things more or less distant and discolored, the human spirit has been able to find its way through the chaos of so many phenomena and to derive from scientific knowledge the ideas of beauty and harmony. It is no paradox to say that science puts order, at least tentative order, into nature.


In Lucienne Felix
The Modern Aspect of Mathematics
(p. 31)


Reference #: 10010

Picasso, Pablo
General Category: BRAIN

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.


Saturday Review
September 1, 1956


Reference #: 16592

Pickering, James Sayre
General Category: MAN

Man is a freak, colloidal combination of thirteen elements which happen to have a chemical affinity for each other, and is the strangest and one of the most amusing accidents of nature. The market value of the substance of the average man is about 98c.


The Stars are Yours
(p. 230)


Reference #: 12471

Pickering, William H.
General Category: ENGINEER

We need a new kind of engineer, one who can build bridges to society as well as bridges across rivers.


The Bridge of ETA Kappa Gnu
The Engineer-1968, May 1968
(p. 7)


Reference #: 13950

Pickover, Clifford A.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I do not know if God is a mathematician, but mathematics is the loom upon which God weaves the fabric of the universe.


The Loom of God


Reference #: 10889

Piechowski, Otto Rushe
General Category: STARS

For most of us stargazing remains a soothing balm and intellectual uplift - even if it isn't cutting edge science. It satisfies human needs. Sometimes out of embarrassment, we might shroud these deeper yearnings with scientific talk. But we shouldn't need such `covers'. If our romantic encounters with stars reach some psychological, emotional, or spiritual level, so be it.


Sky & Telescope
Feb. 1993


Reference #: 2303

Pierce, C.S.
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character.


Collected Papers
Vol. VI


Reference #: 3154

Pierce, Charles Sanders
General Category: IDEA

It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty.


Chance, Love and Logic
Second Paper, section I
(p. 37)


Reference #: 15367

Pierce, R.V.
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is not, like the liver, heart and other internal organs, capable from the moment of birth of all the functions which it ever discharges; for while in common with them, it has certain duties for the exercise of which it is especially intended, its high character in man, as the organ of conscious life, the supreme instrument of his relations with the rest of nature, is developed only by a long and patient training.


The People's Common Sense Medical Advisor in Plain English


Reference #: 15355

Pieri, Mario
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the hypothetico-deductive science.


In Cassius J. Keyser
The Pastures of Wonder
The Realm of Mathematics
(p. 24)


Reference #: 2019

Pierpont, James
General Category: MATHEMATICS

We who stand on the threshold of a new century can look back on an era of unparalleled progress. Looking into the future an equally bright prospect greets our eyes; on all sides fruitful fields of research invite our labor and promise easy and rich returns. Surely this is the golden age of mathematics!


Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society2nd Series
The History of Mathematics in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 11, 1904-1905
(p. 159)


Reference #: 2004

Pierpont, James
General Category: MATHEMATICAL REASONING

Mathematical reasoning which seemed quite sound has led to distressing contradictions. As long as one of these is unexplained in a final and conclusive manner there is no guarantee that other forms of reasoning now in good standing may not lead to other contradictions as yet unsuspected. For ages the reasoning employed in mathematics has been regarded as a model of logical perfection; mathematicians have prided themselves that their science is the one science so irrefutably established that never in its long history has it had to take a backward step. No wonder then, that these paradoxes of Burali-Forti (1897), Russell, and others produced consternation in the camp of mathematicians; no wonder that the foundations on which mathematics rest are being scrutinized as never before. Elaborate attempts are now in progress to give mathematics a foundation as secure as it was thought to have in the days of Euclid or of Weierstrass. Personally we do not believe that absolute rigor will ever be attained and if a time arrives when this is thought to be the case, it will be a sign that the race of mathematicians has declined.


Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
Mathematical Rigor, Past and Present, Vol. 34January-February, 1928
(p. 23)


Reference #: 2010

Pierpont, James
General Category: INFINITE

...the notion of infinity is our greatest friend; it is also the greatest enemy of our peace of mind...Weirstrass taught us to believe that we had at last thoroughly tamed and domesticated this unruly element. Such however is not the case; it has broken loose again. Hilbert and Brouwer have set out to tame it once more. For how long? We wonder.


Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
Mathematical Rigor, Vol. 34, Jan-Feb 1928
(p. 47)


Reference #: 2816

Pietschmann, H.
General Category: MEASURE

The model that science constructs appears to us more serious, more important and more real than experienced reality. Contradictions are not merely eliminated; they become mistakes that are regarded as a breakdown. Thus today we must expand Galileo's description of modern scientific method by saying: to measure everything measurable; to make everything which is not measurable measurable; and to deny everything which cannot be made measurable.


Das Ende des naturwissenschaftlichen Seitalters
(p. 29)


Reference #: 2163

Pigford, R.L.
General Category: CHEMICAL AFFINITIES

The chemical engineer...needs to understand chemistry, physics, and mathematics in approximately equal proportion in order that he, apparently better than those from other backgrounds, can assemble and evaluate whatever knowledge is required to 'bring things together.'


Chemical Engineering News
Chemical Engineering Technology: The Past 100 Years, Vol. 54, No. 15, 1976
(p. 190)


Reference #: 10944

Pima Creation Myth
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

In the beginning there was nothing at all except darkness....The Earth Doctor saw that when the sun and moon were not in the sky, all was inky darkness. So he sang a magic son, and took some water into his mouth and blew it into the sky, in a spray, to make little stars....Next he took his walking stick and placed ashes on the end of it. Then he drew it across the sky to form the Milky Way...


In Raymond Van OverSun
Songs
(p. 28)


Reference #: 13638

Pindar
General Category: MEASURE

But in everything is there due measure.


The Extant Odes of Pindar
Olympia 13
(pp. 45-46)


Reference #: 5439

Pindar, Paean IX
General Category: ECLIPSE

Beam of the Sun!
What wilt thou be about, far-seeing one,
O mother of mine eyes, O star supreme,
In time of day
Reft from us? Why, O why has thou perplexed
The might of man,
And wisdom's way,
Rushing forth on a darksome track?


In Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Introduction to Astronomy


Reference #: 15148

Pines, David
General Category: PHYSICS

The central task of theoretical physics in our time is no longer to write down the ultimate equations but rather to catalog and understand emergent behavior in its many guises...


In George Johnson
The New York Times
Challenging Particle Physics as Path to TruthF5, columns 2,3Tuesday, December 4, 2001


Reference #: 5019

Pinker, Steven
General Category: COMBINATORICS

Journalists say that when a dog bites a man, that is not news, butwhen a man bites a dog, that is news ...Thanks to the mathematicsof combinatorics, we will never run out of news.


How the Mind Works
W. W. Norton, 1997


Reference #: 14103

Pinter, Harold
General Category: UNKNOWN

In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?


The Homecoming
Act Two
(p. 52)


Reference #: 6018

Piozzi, Hester Lynch
General Category: PHYSICIAN

A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hourglass.


Letter to Fanny Burney, 12 November 1781


Reference #: 8148

Piper, Robert J.
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and the spaces between them.


Opportunities in an Architecture Career
(p. 13)


Reference #: 2231

Pippard, A.B.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

It may be objected by some that I have concentrated too much on the dry bones, and too little on the flesh which clothes them, but I would ask such critics to concede at least that the bones have an austere beauty of their own.


Classical Thermodynamics
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 3582

Pippard, A.B.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

There is thus no justification for the view, often glibly repeated, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations repeatedly occur, but never violations of any serious magnitude. On the contrary, no evidence has ever been presented that the Second Law breaks down under any circumstances.


Elements of Chemical Thermodynamics for Advanced Students of Physics
(p. 100)


Reference #: 15774

Pirandello, Luigi
General Category: FACT

The facts are to blame my friend. We are all imprisoned by facts.


The Rules of the Game
The Life I Gave you [and] Lazarus


Reference #: 10772

Pirandello, Luigi
General Category: FACT

Producer. Let's get to the point, let's get to the point. This is all chat.
Father. Right then! But a fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.


Six Characters in Search of an Author
Act One
(p. 21)


Reference #: 14753

Pirie, N.W.
General Category: LIVING

…systems are being discovered and studied which are neither obviously living nor obviously dead, and it is necessary to define these words or else give up using them, and coin others. When one is asked whether a virus is living or dead the only sensible answer is, :I don't know; we know a number of things it will do and a number of things it won't and if some commission will define the word 'living' I will try to see how the virus fits into the definition" This answer does not as a rule satisfy the questioner, who generally has strong but unfortunate opinions about what he means by the words living and dead.


In A.J. Khuyver and C.B. Van Neil (eds)
The Microbe's Contribution to Biology
(p. 162)


Reference #: 7239

Pirquet von Cesenatico, C.P.
General Category: ALLERGY

For this general concept of the changed capacity for reaction, I propose the term "allergy". "Allo" denotes the deviation from the original state, from the behavior of the normal, as in 'allorhythmia", "allotropy".


Muenchener medizinische wochenschrift
Allergie, Vol. 53, July 24, 1906


Reference #: 18122

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: TECHNICAL

The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology, that's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is - not an exploitation of nature, but the fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values


Reference #: 18127

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: GEOMETRY

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
Part III, Chapter 22
(p. 264)


Reference #: 18128

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: EXPERIMENT

The TV scientist who mutters sadly 'The experiment is a failure: we havefailed to achieve what we hoped for,' is suffering mainly from a badscriptwriter. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails toachieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also failsadequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it producesdon't prove anything one way or the other.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
Bodley Head, London, England, 1974


Reference #: 18129

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: MONKEYS TYPEWRITERS

In a paraphrase of the gist of Henri's Poincare's philosophy: ...What are facts? Poincare proceeded to examine these critically. ``Which' facts are you going to observe? he asked. There is an infinity of them. There is no more chance that an unselective observation of facts will produce science than there is that a monkey at a typewriter will produce the Lord's Prayer.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
New York: Morrow, 1974


Reference #: 18123

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values


Reference #: 18130

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: METHOD

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
Part III, Chapter xxiv
(p. 273)


Reference #: 18126

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

When I think of formal scientific method an image sometimes comes to mind of an enormous juggernaut, a huge bulldozer—slow, tedious, lumbering, laborious, but invincible. It takes twice as long, five times as long, maybe a dozen times as long as informal mechanic's techniques, but you know in the end you're going to get it. There's no fault isolation problem in motorcycle maintenance that can stand up to it. When you've hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, 'Okay, Nature, that's the end of the nice guy,' and you crank up the formal scientific method.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
(p. 93)


Reference #: 18124

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: SCIENCE

If science is a study of substances and their relationships, then the field of cultural anthropology is a scientific absurdity. In terms of substance there is no such thing as culture. It has no mass, no energy. No scientific laboratory instrument has ever been devised that can distinguish a culture from a nonculture....But if science is a study of stable patterns of value, then cultural anthropology becomes a supremely scientific field. A culture can be defined as a network of social patterns of value.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
(p. 121)
New York: Quill, William Morrow and Co. 1974


Reference #: 18121

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know. There's not a mechanic or scientist or technician alive who hasn't suffered from that one so much that he's not instinctively on guard....If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values


Reference #: 18125

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: SCIENCE

The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with is mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers exists only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exists in the mind. It's that only that gets me. Science is only in your mind too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. Or ghosts either....Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity it was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
(p. 42)
New York: Quill, William Morrow and Co. 1974


Reference #: 1153

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: MORALS

Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and social nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to become free of the social level, has ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological level under control.


An Inquiry into Morals
(p. 308)


Reference #: 6176

Pirsig, Robert M.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science values static patterns.


Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals
Chapter 11
(p. 142)


Reference #: 18068

Pisarev, Dmitry
General Category: FACT

For one man to discover a fruitful fact a hundred must burn up their lives in unsuccessful search and sad error.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 16797

Pitkin, Walter B.
General Category: DOCTOR

A country doctor needs more brains to do his work passably than the fifty greatest industrialists in the world require.


The Twilight of the American Mind
Medicine
(p. 118)


Reference #: 10894

Pittendreigh, W. Maynard Jr.
General Category: CURIOSITY

I burn with curiosity about what lies beyond the sky.


Sky & Telescope
Pittendreigh's Law of Planetary Motion, Vol. 87, No. 2, February 1994
(p. 6)


Reference #: 1656

Pittendrigh, Colin S.
General Category: BIOLOGICAL

The study of adaptation is not an optional preoccupation with fascinating fragments of natural history, it is the core of biological study.


In A. Roe and G.G. Simpson (eds.)
Behavior and Evolution
Adaptation, Natural Selection, and Behavior
(p. 395)


Reference #: 12385

Pizan, Chrintine de
General Category: SCIENCE AND WOMEN

I will tell you again - and don't fear a contradiction - if it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.


The Book of the City of Ladies
I.27.1
(p. 63)


Reference #: 9208

Planche, James Robinson
General Category: SCIENCE

The science of fools with long memories.


Preliminary Observations—Pursuivant of Arms


Reference #: 17901

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion belongs to that realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter V
(p. 168)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17073

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: RADIATION

Either the quantum of action was a fictional quantity, then the whole deduction of the radiation law was in the main illusionary and represented nothing more than an empty nonsignificant play on formulae, or the derivation of the radiation law was based on sound physical conception.


In Jefferson Weaver
The World of Physics
Vol. II
(p. 284)


Reference #: 16842

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

Modern Physics impresses us particularly with the truth of the old doctrine which teaches that there are realities existing apart from our sense-perceptions, and that therre are problems and conflicts where these realities are of greater value for us than the richest treasures of the world of experience.


The Universe in the light of Modern Physics
Section 8
(p. 138)
Unwin Brothers Limited, London, England 1937


Reference #: 16843

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics is an exact Science and hence depends upon measurement, while all measurement itself requires sense-perception. Consequently all the ideas employed in Physics are derived from the world of sense-perception.


The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics
Section 1
(p. 7)
Unwin Brothers Limited, London, England 1937


Reference #: 17638

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: LAW

How do we discover the individual laws of Physics, and what is their nature? It should be remarked, to begin with, that we have no right to assume that any physical law exists, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future. It is perfectly conceivable that one fine day Nature should cause an unexpected event to occur which would baffle us all; and if this were to happen we would be powerless to make any objection, even if the result would be that, in spite of our endeavors, we should fail to introduce order into the resulting confusion. In such an event, the only course open to science would be to declare itself bankrupt. For this reason, science is compelled to begin by the general assumption that a general rule of law dominates throughout Nature...


Universe in the Light of Modern Physics
(pp. 58-59)


Reference #: 16841

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics would occupy an exceptional position among all the other sciences if it did not recognize the rule that the most far-reaching and valuable results of investigation can only be obtained by following a road leading to a goal which is theoretically unobtainable. This goal is the apprehension of true reality.


The Universe in the light of Modern Physics
Section 1
(p. 15)
Unwin Brothers Limited, London, England 1937


Reference #: 17187

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: LAW

Thus from the outset we can be quite clear about one very important fact, namely, that the validity of the law of causation for the world of reality is a question that cannot be decided on grounds of abstract reasoning.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter IV
(p. 113)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 16844

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

Modern Physics impresses us particularly with the truth of the old doctrine which teaches that there are realities existing apart from our sense-perceptions, and that there are problems and conflicts where these realities are of greater value for us than the richest treasures of the world of experience.


The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics
(p. 107)
George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, England, 1931


Reference #: 17899

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: FAITH

…if we did not have faith but could solve puzzle in life by an application of the human reason, what an unbearable burden life would be.


Where Is Science Going?
Epilogue
(p. 218)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17186

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: FAITH

Science demands also the believing spirit. Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is the quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.


Where is Science Going?
Epilogue
(p. 214)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17905

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

...every hypothesis in physical science has to go through a period of difficult gestation and parturition before it can be brought out into the light of day and handed to others, ready-made in scientific form so that it will be, as it were, fool-proof in the hands of outsiders who wish to apply it.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter VI
(p. 178)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17185

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: AXIOM

Axioms are instruments which are used in every department of science, and in every department there are purists who are inclined to oppose with all their might any expansion of the accepted axioms beyond the boundary of their logical application.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter VI
(p. 179)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17249

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: HEAT

The concept of heat, like all other physical concepts, originates in a sense-perception, but it acquires its physical significance only on the basis of a complete separation of the events in the sense-organs from the external events which excite the sensation. So heat, regarded physically, has no more to do with the sense of hotness than colour, in the physical sense, has to do with the perception of colour.


Translated by Henry L. Brose
Theory of Heat
Introduction
(p. 1)
The Macmillan Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1957; First edition, 1932


Reference #: 17516

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: ENTROPY

It would be absurd to assume that the validity of the second law depends in any way on the skill of the physicist or chemist in observing or experimenting. The gist of the second law has nothing to do with experiment; the law asserts briefly that there exists in nature a quantity which changes always in the same sense in all natural processes. The proposition stated in this general form may be correct or incorrect; but whichever it may be, it will remain so, irrespective of whether thinking and measuring beings exist on earth or not..The limitations to the law, if any, must lie in the same province as its essential idea, in the observed Nature, and not in the Observer. That man's experience is called upon in the deduction of the law is of no consequence; for that is, in fact, our only way of arriving at knowledge of natural law. But the law once discovered must receive recognition of its independence, at least in so far as Natural Law can be said to exist independent of Mind. Whoever denies this must deny the possibility of natural science.


Treatise on Thermodynamics
(p. 106)


Reference #: 17902

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.


Where is Science Going?
Epilogue
(p. 217)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17906

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: TEMPLE OF SCIENCE

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.


Where is Science Going?
Epilogue
(p. 214)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17898

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the compliment of the other.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter V
(p. 168)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17903

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE

That we do no construct the external world to suit our own ends in the pursuit of science, but that vice versa the external world forces itself upon our recognition with its own elemental power, is a point which ought to be categorically asserted again and again in these positivistic times. From the fact that in studying the happenings of nature we strive to eliminate the contingent and accidental and to come finally to what is essential and necessary, it is clear that we always look for the basic thing behind the dependent thing, for what is absolute behind what is relative, for the reality behind the appearance and for what abides behind what is transitory. In my opinion, this is characteristic not only of physical science but all of science.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter VI
(pp. 198-199)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 17189

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: DISCOVERY

Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.


Where is Science Going?
Chapter IV
(p. 138)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 614

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: THEOREM

...Leibniz's theorem...sets forth fundamentally that of all the worlds that may be created, the actual world is that which contains, besides the unavoidable evil, the maximum good.


A Survey of Physics
The Principle of Least Action
(p. 71)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 613

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: NATURE

In all cases, the quantum hypothesis has given rise to the idea, that in Nature, changes occur which are not continuous, but of an explosive nature.


A Survey of Physics
New Paths of Physical Knowledge
(p. 51)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 621

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: OBSERVATION

As long as Natural Philosophy exists, its ultimate highest aim will always be the correlating of various physical observations into a unified system, and, where possible, into a single formula.


A Survey of Physics
The Unity of the Physical Universe
(p. 1)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 622

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: NATURE

If one wishes to obtain a definite answer from Nature one must attack the question from a more general and less selfish point of view.


A Survey of Physics
(p. 15)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 623

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

In endeavoring to claim your attention for a short time, I would remark that our science, Physics, cannot attain its object by direct means, but only gradually along numerous and devious paths, and that therefore a wide scope is provided for the individuality of the worker. One works at one branch, another at another, so that the physical universe with which we are all concerned appears in different lights to different workers.


A Survey of Physics
The Unity of the Phsical Universe
(p. 1)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 620

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

The chief law of physics, the pinnacle of the whole system is, in my opinion, the principle of least action.


A Survey of Physics
The Place of Modern Physics in the Mechanical View of Nature
(p. 41)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 1768

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: ETHER SPACE

The ether, this child of sorrow of classical mechanics...


In Jean-Pierre Luminet
Black Holes
(p. 18)


Reference #: 619

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: LAW

Self-determination is given to us by our consciousness and is not limited by any causal law...


A Survey of Physics
Dynamical Laws and Statistical Laws
(p. 68)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 612

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

Since Galileo's time, physics has achieved its greatest success by rejecting all teleological methods.


A Survey of Physics
The Principle of Least Action
(p. 73)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 618

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PHYSICS

...[T]he second law of thermodynamics appears solely as a law of probability, entropy as a measure of the probability, and the increase of entropy is equivalent to a statement that more probable events follow less probable ones.


A Survey of Physics
The Relation Between Physical Theories
(p. 86)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 193

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: FORMULA

Ever since the observation of nature has existed, it has held a vague notion of its ultimate goal as the composition of the colorful multiplicity of phenomena in a uniform system, where possible, in a single formula.


In Ernest Peter Fischer
Beauty and the Beast
Chapter 2
(p. 47)


Reference #: 617

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PROBABLE

The measure of the value of a new hypothesis in physics is not its obviousness but its utility.


A Survey of Physics
The Place of Modern Physics in the Mechanical View of Nature
(p. 39)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 616

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: FACT

Nothing is more interesting to the true theorist than a fact which directly contradicts a theory generally accepted up to that time, for this is his particular work.


A Survey of Physics
New Paths of Physical Knowledge
(p. 46)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 615

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: PROBABLE

Nature prefers more probable to less probable states,...Heat flows from a body of high temperature to a body of lower temperature, because the state of equal temperature is more probable than a state of unequal distribution of temperature.


A Survey of Physics
The Unity of the Physical Universe
(p. 15)
Methuen & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1925


Reference #: 10545

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: IMAGINATION

...the pioneer in science...must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination. Nevertheless, the worth of a new idea is invariably determined, not by the degree of its intuitiveness—which, incidentally, is to a major extent a matter of experience and habit—but by the scope and accuracy of the individual laws to the discovery of which it eventually leads.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 10535

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be, 'On to God.'


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Religion and Natural Science, Part IV
(p. 187)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 10536

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion and natural science...are in agreement, first of all, on the point that there exists a rational world order independent from man, and secondly, on the view that the character of this world order can never be directly known but can only be indirectly recognized or suspected. Religion employs in this connection its own characteristic symbols, while natural science uses measurements founded on sense experiences.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Religion and Natural Science, Part IV
(pp. 182-183)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 10537

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENTIST

Since the real world, in the absolute sense of the word, is independent of individual personalities, and in fact of all human intelligence, every discovery made by an individual acquires a completely universal significance. This gives the inquirer, wrestling with his problem in quiet seclusion, the assurance that every discovery will win the unhesitating recognition of all experts throughout the entire world, and in this feeling of the importance of his work lies his happiness. It compensates him fully for many a sacrifice which he must make in his daily life.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
The Meaning and Limits of Exact Science, Part III
(p. 103)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 10538

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: IRREVERSABLE

A process which in no manner can be completely reversed I called a "natural" one. The term for it in universal use today, is: "Irreversible."


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
(p. 17)


Reference #: 10539

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: LAWS

The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Scientific Autobiography, and Other Papers


Reference #: 10540

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: QUANTUM

My futile attempts to fit the elementary quantum of action somehow into the classical theory continued for a number of years and they cost me a great deal of effort. Many of my colleagues saw in this something bordering on a tragedy. But I feel differently about it, for the thorough enlightenment I thus received was all the more valuable. I now knew for a fact that the elementary quantum of action played a far more significant part in physics than I had originally been inclined to suspect, and this recognition made me see clearly the need for the introduction of totally new methods of analysis and reasoning in the treatment of atomic problems.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
William and Norgate, London, England; 1950


Reference #: 10541

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: TRUTH

...'to believe' means 'to recognize as a truth,' and the knowledge of nature, continually advancing on incontestably safe tracks, has made it utterly impossible for a person possessing some training in natural science to recognize as founded on truth the many reports of extraordinary occurrences contradicting the laws of nature, of miracles which are still commonly regarded as essential supports and confirmations of religious doctrines, and which formerly used to be accepted as facts pure and simple, without doubt or criticism.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers


Reference #: 10542

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: TRUTH

If we seek a foundation for the edifice of exact science which is capable of withstanding every criticism, we must first of all tone down our demands considerably. We must not expect to succeed at a stroke, by one single lucky idea, in hitting on an axiom of universal validity, to permit us to develop, with exact methods, a complete scientific structure. We must be satisfied initially to discover some form of truth which no skepticism can attack. In other words, we must set our sights not on what we would like to know, but first on what we do not know with certainty.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
(p. 84)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 10543

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: EXPERIMENT

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
(p. 110)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 15433

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: EXPERIENCE

It is only when we have planted our feet on the firm ground which can be won only with the help of the experience of real life, that we have a right to feel secure in surrendering to our belief in a philosophy of the world based upon a faith in the rational ordering of this world.


Translated by W.H. Johnston
The Philosophy of Physics
Chapter IV
(p. 125)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1936


Reference #: 15430

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning...


The Philosophy of Physics
Chapter III
(p. 97)


Reference #: 10546

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: LIGHT

The velocity of light occupies an extraordinary place in modern physics. It is lèse majesté to make any criticism of the velocity of light. It is a sacred cow within a sacred cow, and it is just about the Absolutest Absolute in the history of human thought.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
(p. 47)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 9860

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: IDEA

When a scientific idea first takes shape in the brain of a researcher its origin is always due to some concrete experience. This experience may be in the nature of a discovery or an observation. It is a verification of some sort or other, whether in relation to a measurement in physics or astronomy, a chemical or biological observation, some document that has been brought to light from historical archives or some monument that has been excavated from the ruins of a past civilisation.


Research and Progress
The Origin and Effect of Scientific Ideas, Vol. I, No. 1, January 1935
(p. 3)


Reference #: 10544

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Experimenters are the shocktroops of science.


Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
(p. 110)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1949


Reference #: 15432

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: EXPERIMENT

It is wholly absurd to maintain that an intellectual experiment is important only in proportion as it can be checked by measurement; for if this were so, there could be not exact geometrical proof. A line drawn on paper is not really a line but a more or less narrow strip, and a point a larger or smaller spot.


Translated by W.H. Johnston
The Philosophy of Physics
Chapter I
(p. 27)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1936


Reference #: 15431

Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
Born: 23 April, 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died: 4 October, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
General Category: SCIENCE

Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development towards an aim, which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.


Translated by W.H. Johnston
The Philosophy of Physics
Chapter II
(p. 83)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1936


Reference #: 9729

Plantamour
General Category: OBSERVATION

Try to verify any law of nature and you will find that the more precise your observations, the more certain they will be to show irregular departure from the law.


Recherches Experimentales sur le mouvement simultane d'un pendule et de ses supports
(pp. 3-4)


Reference #: 2779

Plantinga, Alvin
General Category: EVOLUTION

Modern science was conceived, and
Born, and flourished in the matrix of Christian theism. Only liberal doses of self-deception and double-think, I believe, will permit it to flourish in the context of Darwinian naturalism.


Darwin, Mind and Meaning
(p. 8)


Reference #: 1305

Plaskett, J.S.
General Category: MAN

…when we consider how the human mind, though inhabiting for only a few years this minute planet, accompanying a comparatively insignificant star of the system, has been able to reach out to the inconceivable depths of space and reduce some of the confusion of stars to orderly systems, has been able to deduce the laws which govern these systems, thus unifying, in certain degree, all the wonderful phenomena of suns and planets, comets, stars, nebulae and clusters, into one whole, we do not lose hope that eventually it will be able to much further unravel the mystery of the universe.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1911
Developmvents in Atsronomy
(p. 270)


Reference #: 12197

Plath, Sylvia
General Category: DOCTOR

Sunday - the doctor's paradise! Doctors at country clubs, doctors at the seaside, doctors with mistresses, doctors with wives, doctors in church, doctors in yachts, doctors everywhere resolutely being people, not doctors.


The Bell Jar
Chapter Nineteen
(p. 276)


Reference #: 12633

Plath, Sylvia
General Category: FLOWER NARCISSI

...the terrible wind tries his breathing.
The narcissi look up like children, quickly and whitely.


The Collected Poems
Among the Narcissi


Reference #: 16204

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The most skillful physicians are those who, from their youth upwards, have combined with the knowledge of their art the greatest experience of disease; they had better not be robust in health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their own persons.


The Republic
Book III, [408]
(p. 337)


Reference #: 17326

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: TIME

[The creator] sought to make the universe eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fullness upon a creature was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity, and this image we call time.


Timaeus
37d


Reference #: 17325

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: TIME

Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together.


Timaeus
38


Reference #: 17328

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: PROBABLE

As being is to become, so is truth to belief ...Enough if we adduce probabilities as likely as any other; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and you who are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to accept the tale which is probable and enquire no further...


Timaeus
29


Reference #: 18018

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: SCIENCE AND WOMEN

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice, which prevails in our country, of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strength and with one mind, for thus the state, instead of being a whole, is reduced to a half.


In United Nations
Women And Science
(p. 2)


Reference #: 16205

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere moneymaker.


The Republic
Book I [342]
(p. 303)


Reference #: 16203

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: DISEASE

...and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace?'Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and new-fangled names to diseases.'Yes, I said, and I do not believe there were any such diseases in the days of Asclepius.


The Republic
Book III [405]
(p. 335)


Reference #: 17324

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: STARS

...when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time had attained motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their appointed task...


Timaeus
38


Reference #: 17323

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: STAR

Vain would be the attempt of telling all the figures of them circling as in a dance, and their juxtapositions, and the return of them in their revolutions upon themselves, and their approximations...


Timaeus
Section 40


Reference #: 17322

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: UNIVERSE

...had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered.


Timaeus
Section 47


Reference #: 17329

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: SUN

That there might be some visible measure of their relative swiftness and slowness as they proceeded in their eight courses, God lighted a fire, which we now call the sun, in the second from the earth of these orbits...


Timaeus
39


Reference #: 17330

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: CHANCE

The lover of intellect and knowledge ought to explore causes of intelligent nature first of all, and, secondly, of those things which, being moved by others, are compelled to move others. And this is what we too must do. Both kinds of causes should be acknowledged by us, but a distinction should be made between those which are endowed with mind and are the workers of things fair and good, and those which are deprived of intelligence and always produce chance effects without order or design.


Timaeus
46


Reference #: 17327

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ASTRONOMY

But the race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who, although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight...


Timaeus
91


Reference #: 4762

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: COSMOS

...this universe is called Cosmos, or order, not disorder or misrule.


Gorgias
Section 508


Reference #: 4759

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Polus. O chaerephon, there are many arts among mankind which are experimental, and have their origin in experience, for experience makes the days of men to proceed according to art, and inexperience according to chance, and different persons in different ways are proficient in different arts, and the best persons in the best arts.


Gorgias
448


Reference #: 4760

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARITHMETIC

SOC. "And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric." But I do not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry would be so called by you.


Gorgias
Section 450


Reference #: 2936

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARITHMETIC

...those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would otherwise have been...


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, Section 526
(p. 394)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2929

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: GEOMETRY

…geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, VII
(p. 394)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2935

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARITHMETIC

Can we deny that a warrior should have a knowledge of arithmetic?


Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Chapter VII [522]


Reference #: 2934

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ASTRONOMY

...in astronomy, as in geometry, we should employ problems, and let the heavens alone if we would approach the subject in the right way and so make the natural gift of reason to be of any real use.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, 530c
(p. 396)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2938

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: MOTION

Motion...has many forms, and not one only; two of them are obvious enough even to wits no better than ours; and there are others, as I imagine, which may be left to wiser persons.


Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Chapter VII [530]


Reference #: 7915

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: CALCULATION

He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.


In Francis Bacon
Novum Organum
Second Book, 26 (near end)


Reference #: 5886

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: CHANCE

Athenian Stranger. They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, molds and fashions all those lessor works which are generally termed artificial.


Laws
Book X, 889


Reference #: 4761

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ASTRONOMY

...astronomy tells us about the motions of the stars and sun and moon, and their relative swiftness.


Gorgias
Section 451


Reference #: 2933

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: GEOMETRY

...we are concerned with that part of geometry which relates to war; for in pitching a camp, or taking up a position, or closing or extending the lines of an army, or any other maneuver, whether in actual battle or on a march, it will make all the difference whether a general is or is not a geometrician.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, section 526
(p. 394)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2943

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: GEOMETRY

...the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of aught perishing and transient.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, section 527
(p. 394)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2930

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ASTRONOMY

…astronomy tell us about the motions of the stars and sun and moon, and their relative swiftness.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
Gorgias, 451
(p. 254)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2704

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: CHANCE

Crito. But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to any one who has lost their good opinion. Socrates. I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil; for then they would be able to do the greatest good—and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither, for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance.


Crito, 44


Reference #: 2941

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, section 531
(p. 397)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2942

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: NUMBER

[Socrates.] And all arithmetic and calculations have to do with number?
[Glaucon.] Yes.
[Socrates
. And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?
[Glaucon.] Yes, in a very remarkable manner.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, section 525
(p. 393)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 5887

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: CHANCE

...in human affairs chance is almost everything.


Laws
Book IV, 709


Reference #: 5885

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: STARS

...he who has not contemplated the mind of nature which is said to exist in the stars, and gone through the previous training, and seen the connection of music with these things, and harmonized them all with laws and institutions, is not able to give a reason of such things as have a reason.


Laws
Book XII, 967


Reference #: 2932

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARITHMETIC

...arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, section 525
(p. 393)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2937

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: SCIENCE

As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion. And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief...


Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Chapter VII [534]


Reference #: 2143

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: CALCULATION

I can show you that the art of computation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.


Charmides
Section 166


Reference #: 2931

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ASTRONOMY

For everyone, as I think, must see that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, section 529
(p. 395)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2940

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: GEOMETRY

...geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy...


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, Section 527
(p. 394)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 2939

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARITHMETIC

...arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 7
Dialogues of Plato
The Republic, Book VII, Section 526
(p. 394)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 6849

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: GOD

God ever geometrizes.


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


Reference #: 8529

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

I think that you should consider not only the consequences which flow from a given hypothesis; but also the consequences which flow from denying the hypothesis.


Parmenides
135


Reference #: 8970

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: IMMORTAL

But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine, if he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal;…


In Great Books of the Western World
Plato
Vol. 7, Timaeus
(p. 476)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 8727

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: BODY

...we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster to his shell.


Phaedrus
[250]
(p. 126)


Reference #: 8726

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses, would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist ...what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.


Phaedrus


Reference #: 11673

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...so to in the body the good and healthy elements are to be indulged and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skillful practitioner.


Symposium[186]
(p. 156)


Reference #: 8723

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ECLIPSE

...people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of only looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium.


Phaedo
Section 99


Reference #: 8724

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: PROBABILITY

I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are impostors, and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to be deceptive.


Phaedo
92


Reference #: 8735

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ARITHMETIC

SOC. ...if arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing be taken away from any art, that which remains will not be much.


Philebus
Section 55


Reference #: 14873

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: UNIVERSE

Time and the heavens came into being at the same instant, in order that, if they were ever to dissolve, they might be dissolved together. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of time.


In James Jeans
The Mysterious Universe
(p. 143)


Reference #: 8725

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth...and he was the inventor of many arts such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy...


Phaedrus
274


Reference #: 11496

Plato
Born: 428 BC in Athens, Greece
Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
General Category: MEASURE

The points that I mean are length and shortness, excess and defect, with all of which the art of measurement is conversant.


Statesman
283


Reference #: 4437

Platonov, Andrey
General Category: MACHINE

Frossia's husband had the ability to feel the voltage of an electric current like a personal emotion. He animated everything that his hands or mind touched, so he really understood the flow of forces in any piece of mechanism and could actually feel the painful, patient resistance of the metal body of a machine.


Fro and Other Stories
Fro
(p. 88)


Reference #: 10046

Platt, J.R.
General Category: PROOF

There is no such thing as proof in science—because some later alternative explanation may be as good or better—so that science advances only by disproofs. There is no point in making hypotheses that are not falsifiable, because such hypotheses do not say anything: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.


Science
Strong Inference, Vol. 46, 1964
(p. 350)


Reference #: 13993

Platt, John R.
General Category: EARTH

The earth is finite, and when we have come to the ends of it, we have come to the ends of it.


The Great Ideas Today, 1968
The New Biology and the Shaping of the Future
(p. 124)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc; 1968


Reference #: 13991

Platt, John R.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

We have bitten into the apple of knowledge and our eyes are opened. We have been driven out of the Eden of irresponsibility into the world of decision.


The Great Ideas Today, 1968
The New Biology and the Shaping of the Future
(p. 169)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc; 1968


Reference #: 13992

Platt, John R.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

We are like men coming out of the dark house of the past into a world of dazzling sunlight. We have climbed up out of the dark cellar where we have been trapped for centuries, isolated, ignorant, selfish, combative, and helpless. Suddenly, we find ourselves standing on the threshold of a doorway through which we can see a vista of almost incredible knowledge, abundance, and well-being.


The Great Ideas Today, 1968
The New Biology and the Shaping of the Future
(p. 122)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc; 1968


Reference #: 1901

Platt, Sir Robert
General Category: RESEARCH

The conventional picture of the research worker is that of a rather austere man in a white coat with a background of complicated glassware. My idea of a research worker, on the other hand, is a man who brushes his teeth on the left side of his mouth only so as to use the other side as a control and see if tooth-brushing has any effect on the incidence of caries.


British Medical Journal
Vol. 1, 1953
(p. 577)


Reference #: 3362

Plattes, Gabriel
General Category: SEA

The sea never resting, but perpetually winning land in one place and losing in another, doth show what may be done in length of time by a continual operation not subject unto ceasing or intermission.


Discovery of Subterraneal Treasure
(p. 52)


Reference #: 1575

Plautus
General Category: FACT

Res ipsa testit.
Facts speak for themselves.


Aulularia
1, 421


Reference #: 1065

Plautus
General Category: PHYSICIAN

When sickness comes call for the physician.


Amphitruo
Fragment 12


Reference #: 17486

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: CHEMIST

The chemist, indeed, is flattered more than any one else with the hopes of discovering in what the essence of matter consists; and Nature, while she keeps the astronomer and the mechanician at a great distance, seems to admit him to a more intimate acquaintance with her secrets. The vast powers which he has acquired over matter, the astonishing transformations which he effects, his success in analysing almost all bodies, and in reproducing so many, seem to promise that he shall one day discover the essence of a substance which he has so thougoughly subdued.


Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Biographical Account of the Late James Hutton, Vol. 5, 1805
(p. 74)


Reference #: 17488

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: TIME

The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.


Transactions of the Royal Society of Edniburgh
Biographical Account of the Late James Hutton, F.R.S., Vol. V, Part III, 1805
(p. 73)


Reference #: 5175

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: GEOLOGIST

...the outlines, at least, of geology have now been traced with tolerable truth, and are not susceptible of great variation...The mass of knowledge is in that state of termination, from which the true theory may be expected to emerge.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 449, 451
(pp. 515, 516)


Reference #: 5170

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: THEORY

The want of theory, then, does not secure the candour of an observer, and it may very much diminish his skill. The discipline that seems best calculated to promote both, is a thorough knowledge of the methods of inductive investigation; an acquaintance with the history of physical discovery; and the careful study of those sciences in which the rules of philosophizing have been most successfully applied.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Note XXVI, 459
(p. 528)


Reference #: 4570

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: GEOLOGIST

The geologist must not content himself with examining the insulated specimens of his cabinet, or with pursuing the nice subtleties of mineralogical arrangement; he must study the relations of fossils, as they actually exist; he must follow nature into her wildest and most inaccessible abodes; and must select, for the places of his observations, those points, from which the variety and gradation of her works can be most extensively and accurately explored.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 133
(p. 138)


Reference #: 5168

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: FOSSILS

The series of changes which fossil bodies are defined to undergo, does not cease with their elevation above the level of the sea; it assumes, however, a new direction, and from the moment that they are raised up to the surface, is constantly exerted in reducing them again under the dominion of the ocean. The solidity is now destroyed which was acquired in the bowels of the earth; and as the bottome of the sea is the great laboratory, where loose materials are mineralized and formed into stone, the atmosphere is the region where stones are decomposed, and again resolved into earth.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section III, 92
(p. 97)


Reference #: 4571

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: GEOLOGY RELIGION

It is admitted, on all hands, that the Scriptures are not intended to resolve physical questions, or to explain matters in no way related to the morality of human actions; and if, in consequence of this principle, a considerable latitude of interpretation were not allowed, we should continue at this moment to believe that the earth is flat; that the sun moves around the earth; and that the circumference of a circle is not more than three times its diameter. It is but reasonable, therefore, that we should extend to the geologist the same liberty of speculation, which the astronomer and mathematicians are already in possession of; and this may be done, by supposing that the chronology of Moses relates only to the human race.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 125
(pp. 126-127)


Reference #: 4569

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: LAW

The Author of nature has not given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not permitted, in his works, any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as he no doubt gave a beginning, to the present system, at some determinate period; but we may safely conclude, that this great catastrophe will not be brought about by any of the laws now existing, and that it is not indicated by anything which we perceive.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 118
(pp. 119-120)


Reference #: 5174

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: GEOLOGIST

The geologist sadly mistakes, both the object of his science and the limits of his understanding, who thinks it his business to explain the means employed by INFINITE WISDOM for establishing the laws which now govern the world.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 119
(p. 121)


Reference #: 5169

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: THEORY

A theory is never more unfairly dealt with, than when those parts are separated which were meant to support one another, and each left to stand or fall by itself.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 303
(p. 340)


Reference #: 5167

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: MIND

But to reason and to arrange are very different occupations of the mind; and a man may deserve praise as a mineralogist, who is but ill qualified for the researches of geology.


Illustration of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 422
(p. 482)


Reference #: 5172

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: FOSSILS

A very little attention to the phenomena of the mineral kingdom, is sufficient to convince us, that the conditions of the earth's surface has not been the same at all times that it is at the present moment. When we observe the impressions of plants in the heart of the hardest rocks; when we discover trees converted into flint, and entire beds of limestone or of marble composed of shells and corals; we see the same individual in two states, the most widely different from one another; and, in the latter instance, we have clear proof, that the present land was once deep immersed under the waters of the ocean.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Illustrations, &c.
(p. 1)
Edinburgh, 1802


Reference #: 5176

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: LAW

Amid all the revolutions of the globe, the economy of nature has been uniform, and her laws are the only thing that have resisted the general movement. The rivers and the rocks, the seas and the continents have changed in all their parts; but the laws which they are subject have remained invariably the same.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 373
(p. 421)


Reference #: 5173

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: RIVER

A river, of which the course is both serpentine and deeply excavated in the rock, is among the phenomena, by which the slow waste of the land, and also the cause of that waste, are most directly pointed out.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 101
(p. 104)


Reference #: 5177

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: GLACIER

For the moving of large masses of rock, the most powerful engines without doubt which nature employes are the glaciers, those lakes or rivers of ice which are formed in the highest valleys of the Alps, and other mountains of the first order.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Section 348
(p. 388)


Reference #: 5171

Playfair, John
Born: 10 March, 1748 in Benvie (near Dundee), Scotland
Died: 20 July, 1819 in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
General Category: THEORY

If it is once settled, that a theory of the earth ought to have no other aim but to discover the laws that regulate the changes on the surface, or in the interior of the globe, the subject is brought within the sphere either of observation or analogy; and there is no reason to suppose, that man, who has numbered the stars, and measured their forces, shall ulitmately prove unequal to this investigatin.


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
(p. 498)


Reference #: 16595

Playfair, William
General Category: STATISTICS

No study is less alluring or more dry and tedious than statistics, unless the mind and imagination are set to or that the person studying is particularly interested in the subject; which last can seldom be the case with young men in any rank of life.


The Statistical Breviary
(p. 16)


Reference #: 12711

Playfair, William
General Category: TABLE

Information that is imperfectly acquired, is generally as imperfectly retained; and a man who has carefully investigated a printed table, finds, when done, that he has only a very faint and partial idea of what he has read; and that like a figure imprinted on sand, is soon totally erased and defaced.


The Commercial and Political Atlas
(p. 3)


Reference #: 12710

Playfair, William
General Category: GRAPH

As to the propriety and justness of representing sums of money, and time, by parts of space, tho' very readily agreed to by most men, yet a few seem to apprehend there may possibly be some deception in it, of which they are not aware...


The Commercial and Political Atlas


Reference #: 11500

Playfair, William
General Category: STATISTICAL

Statistical knowledge, though in some degree searched after in the most early ages of the world, has not till within these last 50 years become a regular object of study.


Statistical Breviary


Reference #: 16734

Pliny
General Category: WORM

Nature crying out and speaking to country people in these words: Clown, wherefore dost thou behold the heavens? Why dost thou seek after the stars? When thou art now werry with short sleep, the nights are troublesome to thee. So I scatter little stars in the grass, and I shew them in the evening when thy labour is ended, and thou art miraculously allured to look upon them when thous passest by: Dost thou not see how a light like fire is covered when she closeth her wings, and she carrieth both night and day with her.


In Thomas Moffett
The Theater of Insects
Glow-Worms


Reference #: 7393

Pliny
General Category: TRUTH

Most men are not acquainted with a truth known to the founders of the science from their arduous study of the heavens, that what when they fall to earth are termed thunderbolts are the fires of the three upper planets, particularly those of Jupiter, which is in the middle position - possibly because it voids in this way the charge of excessive moisture from the upper circle (of Saturn) and of excessive heat from the circle below (of Mars); and that this is the origin of the myth that thunderbolts are the javelins hurled by Jupiter. Consequently heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crackling charcoal flies from a burning log, bringing prophecies with it And this is accompanied by a very great disturbance of the air, because moisture collected causes an overflow or because it is disturbed by the birth-pangs so to speak of the planet in travail.


Naturalis historia

II. 18. 82
In H. Rackham
Pliny
I-X: I (p. 224f)


Reference #: 1

Pliny (C. Plinius Secundus)
General Category: PROTECTION

To all the rest, given she hath sufficient to clad them everie one according to their kind: as namely, shells, cods, hard hides, prickes, shagge, bristles, haire, downe feathers, quils, skailes, and fleeces of wooll. The verie trunkes and stemmes of trees and plants, shee hath defended with barke and rind, yea and the same sometime double, against the iniuries both of heat and cold: man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that he is
Borne into this world…


In Philemon Holland (translator)
The Historie of the World
Book VII
(p. 152)


Reference #: 7365

Pliny the Elder
General Category: NUMBER

Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful.


Natural History
Vol. VIII, Book XXVIII, sec 23


Reference #: 7368

Pliny the Elder
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The medical profession is the only one in which anybody professing to be a physician is at once trusted, although nowhere else is an untruth more dangerous.


Natural History
XXIX, viii, 17


Reference #: 7366

Pliny the Elder
General Category: PHYSICIAN

But for these Physitians, who are the judges themselves to determine of our lives, and who many times are not long about it, but give us a quick dispatch and send us to heaven or hell; what regard is there had, what inquiry and examination is made of their quality and worthiness?


Natural History
XXIX, I


Reference #: 11963

Plonk, Phineas
General Category: DEFINITIONS

Inference, n. A mysterious process allowing us to reach a conclusion that is desired.

An old sea captain kept a personal diary. On his sixty-fifth birthday he wrote: "Awoke this morning with a fine erection, couldn't bend it with both hands." On his seventieth birthday he wrote: "Awoke this morning with a fine erection; couldn't bend it with both hands." On his seventy-fifth birthday he wrote: "Awoke this morning with a fine erection; could barely bend it with both hands. Must be getting stronger."


Quoted in Edmund H. Volkart's
The Angel's Dictionary


Reference #: 16518

Plotinus
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

On the assumption that all happens by Cause, it is easy to discover the nearest determinants of any particular act or state to trace it plainly to them.


The Six Enneads
Third Ennead, First Tractate, Fate, 1


Reference #: 16517

Plotinus
General Category: NUMBER

Objects of sense are not unlimited and therefore the Number applying to them cannot be so. Nor is an enumerator able to number to infinity; though we double, multiply over and over again, we still end with a finite number ....


The Six Enneads
Sixth Ennead, VI.2


Reference #: 16519

Plotinus
General Category: GEOMETRY

Geometry, the science of the Intellectual entities...


The Six Enneads
Fifth Ennead IX.11


Reference #: 3744

Plotinus
General Category: TIME

The origin of Time, clearly, is to be traced to the first stir of the Soul's tendency towards the production of the sensible Universe with the consecutive act ensuing. This is how 'Time'-as we read-'came into Being simultaneously with' this All: the Soul begot at once the Universe and Time; in that activity of the Soul this Universe sprang into being; the activity is Time, the Universe is the content of Time.


Enneads
III. 7, 12


Reference #: 3745

Plotinus
General Category: TIME

Time at first-in reality before that 'first' was produced by desire of succession-Time lay, though not yet as Time, in the Authentic Existent together with the Cosmos itself; the Cosmos also was merged in the Authentic and motionless within it. But there was an active principle there, one set on governing itself and realizing itself ( = the All-Soul), and it chose to aim at something more than its present: it stirred from its rest, and the Cosmos stirred with it. 'And we (the active principle and the Cosmos), stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the discrimination of identity and the establishment of ever new difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and produced an image of Eternity, produced Time.'


Enneads
III. 7, 11


Reference #: 7617

Plum, David
General Category: METEOR

Then bear us, O Earth, with our eyes upward gazing,
To the place where the Star-God his fireworks displays;
When countless as snowflakes are meteors blazing
With their red, green and orange and amber-like rays.


New York Evening Post
Meteors, November 20, 1866


Reference #: 2846

Plutarch
General Category: ROTATION EARTH

Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressiv e motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center.'


In Nicholas Copernicus
De Revolutionibus
Preface


Reference #: 14504

Plutarch
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...a skillful physician, who, in a complicated and chronic disease, as he sees occasion, at one while allows his patient the moderate use of such things as please him, at another while gives him keen pains and drugs to work the cure.


The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Pericles
(p. 129)


Reference #: 8980

Plutarch
General Category: DICE

Jacta alea est.
The die is cast.


Plutarich's Lives
Caesar


Reference #: 15471

Podolsky, Boris
General Category: SCIENCE

In recent years the power of Science has received such popular recognition, that the adjective scientific attached to merchandise or statement is known to give to such merchandise or to a statement prestige having definite advertising value. As a consequence the words Science and scientific are frequently abused by those who find it profitable to borrow reputation instead of earning it.


The Physics Teacher
What is science?, 3, 71-73 (1965)


Reference #: 4022

Poe, Edgar Alan
General Category: UNIVERSE

I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical-of the Material and Spiritual Universe:-of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny.


Eureka
(p. 1)


Reference #: 4023

Poe, Edgar Alan
General Category: UNIVERSE

Telescopic observations, guided by the laws of perspective, enables us to understand that the perceptible Universe exists as a roughly spherical cluster of clusters irregularly disposed.


Eureka
(p. 96).


Reference #: 4025

Poe, Edgar Alan
General Category: BIG BANG

I am fully warranted in announcing that the Law which we have been in the habit of calling Gravity exists on account of Matter's having being irradiated, at its origin, atomically, into a limited sphere of Space, from one, individual, unconditional, irrelative, and absolute Particle Proper, by the sole process in which it is possible to satisfy, at the same time, the two conditions, irradiation and generally-equable distribution throughout the sphere, that is to say, by a force varying in direct proportion with the squares of the distances between the irradiated atoms, respectively, and the Particular centre of Irradiation.


Eureka
(p. 67)


Reference #: 4021

Poe, Edgar Alan
General Category: UNIVERSE

...the perceptible universe exists as a cluster of clusters, irregularly disposed.


Eureka


Reference #: 14833

Poe, Edgar Alan
General Category: TRUTH

Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.


The Murders in the Rue Morgue


Reference #: 16325

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: STAR

Look down into the abysmal distances!-attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus-and thus-and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?-the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?


In H. Beaver (ed.)
The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe
The Power of Words
(p. 171)


Reference #: 16114

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: BIRD RAVEN

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!


The Raven and Other Poems
The Raven, Stanza 18


Reference #: 16113

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!


The Raven
Stanza 15


Reference #: 436

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification...the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics.


Quoted in Stanley Gudder
A Mathematical Journey
(p. 55)
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1976


Reference #: 4024

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: STARS

Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the galaxy - since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.


Eureka
(p. 273)


Reference #: 6212

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: ANIMAL

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.


Little Masterpieces
The Black Cat
(p. 128)


Reference #: 13051

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: MATTER

...matter exists only as attraction and repulsion - that attraction and repulsion are matter.


The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Eureka
(p. 214)


Reference #: 10689

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: MATHEMATICS

As poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect.


Seven Tales
The Purloined Letter
(p. 231)


Reference #: 12726

Poe, Edgar Allan
General Category: CALCULATION

...to calculate is not in itself to analyze.


The Complete Edgar Allan Poe Tales
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
(p. 246)


Reference #: 16112

Poe, Edgar Allen
General Category: DREAMS

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.


The Raven


Reference #: 817

Poe, Edgar Allen
General Category: SCIENCE

Science! true daughter of old Time thou art
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes!
Why prey'st thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture! whose wings are dull realities!


Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems
(p. 11)


Reference #: 369

Poe, Edgar Allen
General Category: MYSTERY

I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see.


A Descent into the Maelstrom


Reference #: 12708

Pohl, Frederik
General Category: PROBABILITY

I think we can see the extent of the problem. I've measured harmonics up to the sixth-order already, and still propagating." He paused to look at the other faces for disagreement. There wasn't any. "If this goes on," he said evenly, "I project a nine-nines probability that within one standard year the disturbances will be effectively both plenary and irreversible.


The Coming of the Quantum Cats
(p. 189)


Reference #: 12709

Pohl, Frederik
General Category: CALCULATION

I sat down in the back, calculating as best I could. Number forty-two. Say, at the most optimistic, an average of a minute and a half a case. That meant the judge would get to me in a little over an hour.


The Coming of the Quantum Cats
August 1983, A.M. Nicky DeSota
(p. 18)


Reference #: 12707

Pohl, Frederik
General Category: CHANCE

But from outside there is no knowing which is true. From outside, there is a five-tenths chance that the cat's alive. But a cat can't be five-tenths alive.


The Coming of the Quantum Cats
22 August 1983, 4:20 A.M., Senator Dominic DeSota
(p. 57)


Reference #: 6670

Poiani, Eileen L.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics plays the critical filter role not only at the college level, but also in the work force.


In Lynn Arthur Steen
Mathematics Tomorrow
(p. 160)


Reference #: 6671

Poiani, Eileen L.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Like it or not, mathematics opens career doors, so it's downright practical to be prepared.


In Lynn Arthur Steen
Mathematics Tomorrow
(p. 158)


Reference #: 16872

Poincare, Henri
General Category: SCIENCE

...science is a rule of action which is successful…


The Value of Science
(p. 114)


Reference #: 7453

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: GEOMETRY

That being so what ought one to think of this question: Is the Euclidean Geometry true?The question is nonsense. One might as well ask whether the metric system is true and the old measures false; whether Cartesian co-ordinates are true and polar co-ordinates false.


Nature
Non-Euclidean Geometry, Vol. 46, 1891-1892
(p. 407)


Reference #: 1303

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I do not know whether or not I have said somewhere that mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 128)


Reference #: 1307

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SCIENCE

As science progress, it becomes more and more difficult to fit in the new facts when they will not fit in spontaneously. The older theories depend upon the coincidences of so many numerical results which can not be attributed to chance. We should not separate what has been joined together.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1912
The Ether and Matter
(pp.209-210)


Reference #: 3058

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SET

Later generations will regard Mengenlehre as a disease from which one has recovered.


Apocraphyl
The Mathematical Intelligencer, Did Poincare say


Reference #: 3054

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: VALUE

If a new result has value it is when, by binding together long-known elements, until now scattered and appearing unrelated to each other, it suddenly brings order where there reigned apparent disorder.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 126)


Reference #: 3053

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is as weak as the senses, and it would be lost in the complexities of the world were there not harmony in that complexity. After the manner of the short-sighted, we would see only detail after detail, losing sight of each detail before the examination of another, unable to bind them together.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 126)


Reference #: 3052

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ECONOMY

We should always aim toward the economy of thought. It is not enough to give models for imitation. It must be possible to pass beyond these models and, in place of repeating their reasoning at length each time, to sum this in a few words.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 128)


Reference #: 3051

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FORMULA

Thanks to the formula, a single algebraic demonstration spares us the pains of going over the same ground time after time for each new calculation.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 126)


Reference #: 452

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impressions as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.


In Stanley Gudder
A Mathematical Journey
(p. 55)
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1976


Reference #: 3046

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: RIGOR

In mathematics rigor is not everything, but without it there would be nothing; a demonstration which is not rigorous is void.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 127)


Reference #: 1304

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

The mere fact is oftentimes without interest; it has been noted many times, but has rendered no service to science; it becomes of value only on that day when some happily advised thinker perceives a relationship which he indicates and symbolizes by a word.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 128)


Reference #: 3047

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The true method of forecasting the future of mathematics lies in the study of its history and its present state.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 123)


Reference #: 1322

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: GEOMETRY

...the facts of geometry are nought else than the facts of algebra and analytical geometry expressed in another language.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 138)


Reference #: 7140

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ATOM

...the long-standing mechanistic and atomistic hypotheses have recently taken on enough consistency to cease almost appearing to us as hypotheses; atoms are no longer a useful fiction; things seem to us in favour of saying that we see them since we know how to count them....The brilliant determination of the number of atoms made by M. Perrin has completed this triumph of atomism....The atom of the chemist is now a reality.


In M.J. Nye
Molecular Reality: A Perspective on the Scientific Work of Jean Perrin
(p. 157)
New York: MacDonald, London, England 1972


Reference #: 1317

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

The importance of a fact is known by its fruits, that is to say, by the amount of thought which it enables us to economize.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 125)


Reference #: 956

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION

If one looks at the different problems of the integral calculus which arise naturally when he wishes to go deep into the different parts of physics, it is impossible not to be struck by the analogies existing. Whether it be electrostatics or electrodynamics, the propagation of heat, optics, elasticity, or hydrodynamics, we are led always to differential equations of the same family.


American Journal of Mathematics
Sur les Equations aux Dérivées Partielles de la Physique Mathématique, Vol. 12, 1890
(p. 211)


Reference #: 1318

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: RESULT

To obtain a result of real worth it will not suffice to grind it out or to have a machine for putting our facts in order. It is not alone order but the unexpected order which is of real worth. The machine may grind upon the mere fact, but the soul of the fact will always escape it.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 127)


Reference #: 1319

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: GROUPS

The theory of groups is an extensive subject upon which there is much to be said. There are many kinds of groups, and whatever classification may be adopted we will always find new groups which will not fit it.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 137)


Reference #: 1321

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: GEOMETRY

Common geometry has a great advantage in that the senses may come to the help of our reason and aid it in finding what path to follow, and many minds prefer to put their problems of analytical geometry in the ordinary geometrical form. Unfortunately our senses can not lead us so very far, and they fail us when we try to escape from the classical three dimensions.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 138)


Reference #: 7925

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Mathematicians do not deal in objects, but in relations between objects; thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant: they are interested in form only.


In Tobias Dantzig
Number: The Language of Science (Fourth Edition)
(p. 317)
The Macmillan Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1954


Reference #: 1302

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

An isolated fact can be observed by all eyes; by those of the ordinary person as well as of the wise. But it is the true physicist alone who may see the bond which unites several facts among which the relationship is important though obscure.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 124)


Reference #: 1301

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ELEGANCE

In a word, the sentiment of mathematical elegance is naught else than the satisfaction due to some, I know not just what, adaptation between the solution just found and the needs of our mind, and it is because of this adaptation itself that the solution becomes an instrument to us.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(pp. 126-127)


Reference #: 5263

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MONKEYS TYPEWRITERS

Le savant doit ordonner; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres; mais une accumulation de faits n'est pas plus une science qu'un tas de pierres n'est une maison.


La Science et l'Hypothese
Chapter IX
(p. 168)
Paris: Flammarion, 1908


Reference #: 1320

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ARITHMETIC

Arithmetic does not present to us that feeling of continuity which is such a precious guide; each whole number is separate from the next of its kind and has in a sense individuality; each in a manner is an exception and that is why general theorems are rare in the theory of numbers; and that is why those theorems which may exist are more hidden and longer escape those who are searching for them.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 131)


Reference #: 1323

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

Facts are sterile until there are minds capable of choosing between them and discerning those which conceal something and recognizing that which is concealed; minds which under the bare fact see the soul of the fact.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909
The Future of Mathematics
(pp. 124-125


Reference #: 12888

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

For a superficial observer, scientific truth is beyond the possibility of doubt; the logic of science is infallible, and if the scientists are sometimes mistaken, this is only from their mistaking its rules.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 27)


Reference #: 12887

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SCIENCE AND MORALS

There can no more be immoral science than there can be scientific morals.


The Foundations of Science
The Values of Science, Introduction
(p. 206)


Reference #: 12886

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MILKY WAY

Consider now the Milky Way; there also we see an innumerable dust; only the grains of this dust are not atoms, they are stars; these grains move also with high velocities; they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distance that their trajectories are straight; and yet, from time to time, two of them may approach near enough to be deviated from their path, like a comet which had passed too near Jupiter. In a world, to the eyes of a giant for whom our suns would be as for us our atoms, the Milky Way would seem only a bubble of gas.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, The Milky Way and the Theory of Gases
(p. 524)


Reference #: 12891

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: THEORY

At the first blush it seems to us that theories last only a day and that ruins upon ruins accumulate....But if we look more closely, we see that what thus succumb are the theories properly so called, those which pretend to teach us what things are. But thee is in them something which usually survives. If one of them taught us a true relation, this relation is definitively acquired, and it will be found again under a new disguise in the other theories which will successively come to reign in place of the old.


The Foundations of Science
The Value of Science, Science and Reality
(p. 351)


Reference #: 13782

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: PROBABILITY

No matter how solidly founded a prediction may appear to us, we are never absolutely sure that experiment will not contradict it, if we undertake to verify it...It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 129)


Reference #: 13783

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: DISTRIBUTION

We know not to what are due the accidental errors, and precisely because we do not know, we are aware they obey the law of Gauss. Such is the paradox.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 406)


Reference #: 12890

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SCIENCE

Man, then can not be happy through science, but to-day he can be much less be happy without it..


The Foundations of Science
The Value of Science, Introduction
(p. 206


Reference #: 13750

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Hypothesis in Physics
(p. 127)


Reference #: 13760

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ETHICS

Ethics and science have their own domain which touch but do not interpenetrate. The one shows us to what goal we should aspire, the other, given the goal, teaches us how to attain it. So they can never conflict since they can never meet. There can no more be immoral science than there can be scientific morals.


The Foundations of Science
Value of Science, Introduction
(p. 206)


Reference #: 13759

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

There are facts common to several sciences, which seem the common source of streams diverging in all directions which are comparable to that knoll of Saint Gothard whence springs waters which fertilize four different valleys.


The Foundations of Science


Reference #: 13758

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

The scientific fact is only the crude fact translated into a convenient language.


The Foundations of Science
The Value of Science, Is Science Artificial?
(p. 330)


Reference #: 13757

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ARBITRARY

Are the law of acceleration, the rule of the composition of forces only arbitrary conventions? Conventions, yes; arbitrary, no; they would be so if we lost sight of the experiments which led the creators of the science to adopt them, and which, imperfect as they may be, suffice to justify them. It is well that from time to time our attention is carried back to the experimental origin of these conventions.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Part IChapter VI
(p. 106)


Reference #: 13756

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

A fact is a fact.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 128)


Reference #: 13755

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

We have had prophets of evil. They blithely reiterate that all problems capable of solution have already been solved and that nothing is left but gleaning. Happily the case of the past reassures us. Often it was thought all problems were solved or at least an inventory was made of all admitting solutions. And then the sense of the word solution enlarged, and insoluble problems became the most interesting of all, and others unforeseen presented themselves. ...The pessimists thus found themselves always outflanked, always forced to retreat, so that at present I think there are no more.


In G.B. Halsted (trans.)
The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 369)
The Science Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1929


Reference #: 13753

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

...the most interesting facts are those which may serve many times; these are the facts which have a chance of coming up again. We have been so fortunate as to be
Born in a world where there are such.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 363)


Reference #: 13770

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: NATURE

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, The Choice of Facts
(p. 366)


Reference #: 13751

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: EXPERIMENT

It is often said that experiments must be made without preconceived idea. That is impossible. Not only would it make all experiment barren, but that would be attempted which could not be done.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 129)


Reference #: 13763

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: PROBABILITY

The very name calculus of probabilities is a paradox. Probability opposed to certainty is what we do not know, and how can we calculate what we do not know?


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 155)


Reference #: 13749

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

Well, this is one of the characteristics by which we recognize the facts which yield great results. They are those which allow of these happy innovations of language. The crude fact then is often of no great interest; we may point it out many times without having rendered great services to science. It takes value only when a wiser thinker perceives the relation for which it stands, and symbolizes it by a word.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, The Future of Mathematics
(p. 375)
The Science Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1921


Reference #: 13748

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ECLIPSE

Why do the rains, the tempests themselves seem to us to come by chance, so that many persons find it quite natural to pray for rain or shine, when they would think it ridiculous to pray for an eclipse?


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, Book I, Chapter IV, section II
(p. 398)


Reference #: 13747

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: BEAUTY

...what are the mathematical entities to which we attribute this character of beauty and elegance, and which are capable of developing in us a kind of aesthetic emotion? They are those whose elements are harmoniously disposed so that the mind without effort can embrace their totality while realizing the details. This harmony is at once a satisfaction of our esthetic needs and an aid to the mind, sustaining and guiding.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, Chapter III
(p. 391)


Reference #: 13746

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

The historian, the physicist, even, must make a choice among facts; the head of the scientist, which is only a corner of the universe, could never contain the universe entire; so that among the innumerable facts nature offers, some will be passed by, others retained.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, Book I, Chapter II
(p. 369)


Reference #: 13745

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SPACE

Space is only a word that we have believed a thing.


The Foundations of Science
Author's Preface to Translation
(p. 5)


Reference #: 13744

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: THEORY

It is not sufficient for a theory to affirm no false relations, it must not hide true relations.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, The Theories of Modern Physics
(p. 145)


Reference #: 13743

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: STARS

The stars are majestic laboratories, gigantic crucibles, such as no chemist could dream.


The Foundations of Science
The Value of Science, Astronomy
(p. 295)


Reference #: 13752

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Hypothesis in Physics
(p. 127)


Reference #: 12885

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SIMPLICITY

...it is because simplicity, because grandeur, is beautiful that we preferably seek simple facts, sublime facts, that we delight now to follow the majestic courses of the stars, now to examine with the microscope that prodigious littleness which is also grandeur, now to seek in geologic time the traces of a past which attracts because it is far away..


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, Book IChapter I
(p. 367)


Reference #: 13780

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MILKY WAY

...to the eyes of a giant for whom our suns would be as for us our atoms, the milky way would seem only a bubble of gas.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, Book IV, Chapter I
(p. 524)


Reference #: 13779

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: PHYSICIST

Nothing but facts are of importance. John Lackland passed by here. Here is something that is admirable. Here is a reality for which I would give all the theories in the world." Carlyle was a fellow countryman of Bacon; but Bacon would not have said that. That is the language of the historian. The physicist would say rather: "John Lackland passed by here; that makes no difference to me, for he never will pass this way again.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Hypotheses in Physics
(p. 128)


Reference #: 13778

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FORECAST

It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 129)


Reference #: 13777

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: INSPIRATION

One need only open the eyes to see that the conquest of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who
Died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, Science and the Scientist
(p. 363)


Reference #: 13776

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: GEOMETRY

If, then, if there were no solid bodies in nature, there would be no geometry.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Space and Geometry
(p. 73)


Reference #: 13775

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: CHANCE

And first, what is chance? The ancients distinguished between phenomena seemingly obeying harmonious laws, established one and for all, and those which they attributed to chance; these were the ones unpredictable because rebellious to all law. In each domain the precise laws did not decide everything, they only drew limits between which chance might act. In this conception the word chance had a precise and objective meaning: what was chance for one was also chance for another and even for the gods.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 395)


Reference #: 13774

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ERROR

A final word about the theory of errors. Here it is that the causes are complex and multitude. To how many snares is not the observer exposed, even with the best instruments.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 402)


Reference #: 13761

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: AESTHETIC

And it is because simplicity, because grandeur, is beautiful, that we preferably seek simple facts, sublime facts, that we delight now to follow the majestic course of the stars, not to examine with the microscope that prodigious littleness which is also a grandeur, now to seek in geologic time the traces of a past which attracts because it is far away.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method, The Choice of Facts
(p. 23)


Reference #: 13771

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: GEOMETRY

...geometry is not true, it is advantageous.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Experiment and Geometry
(p. 91)


Reference #: 13762

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: FACT

The facts of greatest outcome are those we think simple; may be they really are so, because they are influenced only by a small number of well-defined circumstances, may be they take on an appearance of simplicity because the various circumstances upon which they depend obey the laws of chance and so come to mutually compensate.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(pp. 544-545)


Reference #: 13769

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

For a Latin, truth can be expressed only by equations; it must obey laws simple, logical, symmetric and fitted to satisfy minds in love with mathematical elegance. The Anglo-Saxon to depict a phenomenon will first be engrossed in making a model, and he will make it with common materials, such as our crude, unaided senses show us them....He concludes from the body to the atom. Both therefore make hypotheses, and this indeed is necessary, since no scientist has ever been able to get on without them. The essential thing is never to make them unconsciously.


The Foundations of Science
Author's Preface to Translation
(p. 6)


Reference #: 12852

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful.


In H.E. Huntley
The Divine Proportion: a Study in Mathematical Beauty
(p. 1)


Reference #: 13768

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: PROBABLE

Predicted facts ...can only be probable.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis
(p. 155)


Reference #: 13767

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: OBSERVATION

...to observe is not enough. We must use our observations, and to do that we must generalize.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Hypothesis in Physics
(p. 127)


Reference #: 13766

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: THEOREM

I beg your pardon; I am about to use some technical expressions, but they need not frighten you for you are not obliged to understand them. I shall say, for example, that I have found the demonstration of such a theorem under such circumstances. This theorem will have a barbarous name unfamiliar to many, but that is unimportant; what is of interest for the psychologist is not the theorem but the circumstances...


The Foundations of Science
Mathematical Creation


Reference #: 13765

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: CHANCE

The greatest bit of chance is the birth of a great man. It is only by chance that the meeting of two germinal cells, of different sex, containing precisely, each on its side, the mysterious elements whose mutual reaction must produce the genius. One will agree that these elements must be rare and that their meeting is still more rare. How slight a thing it would have required to deflect from its route the carrying spermatozoon. It would have suffered to deflect it a tenth of a millimeter and Napoleon would not have been
Born and the destinies of a continent would have been changed. No example can better make us understand the veritable characteristics of chance.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(pp. 410-411)


Reference #: 13764

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: CHANCE

Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 395)


Reference #: 13781

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: CHANCE

Every phenomenon, however minute, has a cause; and a mind infinitely powerful, infinitely well-informed about the laws of nature, could have foreseen it from the beginning of the centuries. If such a mind existed, we could not play with it at any game of chance; we should always lose.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 395)


Reference #: 13772

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

The firm determination to submit to experiment is not enough; there are still dangerous hypotheses; first, and above all, those which are tacit and unconscious. Since we make them without knowing it, we are powerless to abandon them.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Hypothesis, Hypothesis in Physics
(p. 134)


Reference #: 10198

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The scientific method consists in observation and experiment. If the scientist had an infinity of time at his disposal, it would be sufficient to say to him, "Look, and look carefully." But since he has not the time to look at everything, and above all to look carefully, and since it is better not to look at all than to look carelessly, he is forced to make a selection.


Science and Method


Reference #: 10186

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

To the superficial observer scientific truth is unassailable, the logic of science is infallible; and if scientific men sometimes make mistakes, it is because they have not understood the rules of the game. Mathematical truths are derived from a few self-evident propositions, by a chain of flawless reasonings; they are imposed not only on us, but on Nature itself. By them the Creator is fettered, as it were, and His choice is limited to a relatively small number of solutions. A few experiments, therefore, will be sufficient to enable us to determine what choice He has made. From each experiment a number of consequences will follow by a series of mathematical deductions, and in this way each of them will reveal to us a corner of the universe. This, to the minds of most people, and to students who are getting their first ideas of physics, is the origin of certainty in science.


Science and Hypothesis
Author's Preface
(p. xxi)


Reference #: 10195

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MYSTERY

It is the task of scientists to clear away the mysteries, on the understanding that they find them back a bit further on. But still, it is agreeable to have progressed a little.


Science and Mathematics


Reference #: 10196

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

It is necessary to add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible.


Science and Method
Mathematical Discovery
(p. 47)


Reference #: 10197

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

How does it happen that there are people who do not understand mathematics? If the science invokes only the rules of logic, those accepted by all well-formed minds, if its evidence is founded on principles that are common to all men, how does it happen that there are so many people who are entirely impervious to it?


Science and Method
Mathematical Discovery
(pp. 46-47)


Reference #: 10199

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

What, in fact, is mathematical discovery? It does not consist in making new combinations with mathematical entities that are already known. That can be done by any one, and the combinations that could be so formed would be infinite in number, and the greater part of them would be absolutely devoid of interest. Discovery consists precisely in not constructing useless combinations, but in constructing those that are useful, which are an infinitely small minority. Discovery is discernment, selection.


Science and Method
Mathematical Discovery
(pp. 50-51)


Reference #: 10200

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

The genesis of mathematical discovery is a problem which must intensely inspire the psychologist with the keenest interest. For this is the process in which the human mind seems to borrow least from the exterior world, in which it acts, or appears to act, only by itself and on itself, so that by studying the process of geometric thought we may hope to arrive at what is most essential in the human mind.


Science and Method
Mathematical Discovery
(p. 47)


Reference #: 10201

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: ORDER

To obtain a result of real value, it is not enough to grind out calculations or to have a machine to put things in order; it is not order alone, it is unexpected order, which is worth while. The machine may gnaw on the crude fact, the soul of the fact will always escape it.


Science and Method
The Future of Mathematics
(p. 32)


Reference #: 10202

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

It may appear surprising that sensibility should be introduced in connection with mathematical demonstrations, which, it would seem, can only interest the intellect. But not if we bear in mind the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and forms and of geometric elegance. It is a real aesthetic feeling that all true mathematicians recognize, and this is truly sensible.


Science and Method
Mathematical Discovery
(p. 59)


Reference #: 11741

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as useful science...if there can be no science for science's sake there can be no science.


In James Kip Finch
Technology and Culture
Engineering and Science, Fall 1961
(p. 330)


Reference #: 12884

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: SCIENCE

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the past centuries.


The Foundations of Science
The Value of Science, Introduction
(p. 208)


Reference #: 11626

Poincaré, Henri
Born: 29 April, 1854 in Nancy, France
Died: 17 July, 1912 in Paris, France
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics has a triple end. It is to furnish an instrument for the study of nature. But that is not all. It has a philosophic end, and I dare say it, an esthetic end....Those skilled in mathematics find in it pleasure akin to those which painting and music give. They admire the delicate harmony of numbers and of forms; they marvel when a new discovery opens an unexpected perspective; and is this pleasure not esthetic, even though the senses have no part in it?


Sur les rapports de l'analyse pur et de la physique mathématique
Report Internat. Cong. Math.Zurich 1897
(p. 82)


Reference #: 13773

Poincare, Henri Joseph
General Category: HEAT

And a well-made language is no indifferent thing; not to go beyond physics, the unknown man who invented the word heat devoted many generations to error. Heat has been treated as a substance, simply because it was designated by a substance, and it has been thought indestructible.


The Foundations of Science
The Value of Science, Analysis and Physics
(p. 289)


Reference #: 1680

Poincare, Henri Planck, Max Karl Ernst Ludwig
General Category: SCIENTIST

The scientist should not waste his time on the achievement of practical goals. He will surely reach such goals, but this must be marginal with respect to his principal activity. He should never forget that the specific object he is investigating is part of a whole which is infinitely greater than this object; love for this whole and an interest in it should constitute the only motives of the actions of the scientist. Science has marvelous applications, but a science in which applications were the only aim would no longer be science but only a kitchen. There is no science other than disinterested science.


In Stefan Amsterdamski
Between History and Method
Chapter V
(p. 94)


Reference #: 15131

Poincare, Lucien
General Category: PROGRESS

There are no limits to progress, and the field of our investigations has no boundaries. Evolution will continue with invincible force. What we to-day call the unknowable, will retreat further and further before science, which will never stay her onward march. Thus physics will give greater and increasing satisfaction to the mind by furnishing new interpretations of phenomena; but it will accomplish, for the whole of society, more valuable work still, by rendering, by the improvements it suggests, life every day more easy and more agreeable, and by providing mankind with weapons against the hostile forces of Nature.


The New Physics and its Evolution
Chapter XI
(p. 328)


Reference #: 15130

Poincare, Lucien
General Category: FUTURE

It would doubtless be exceedingly rash, and certainly very presumptuous, to seek to predict the future which may be reserved for physics. The role of prophet is not a scientific one, and the most firmly established precisions of to-day may be overthrown by the reality of to-morrow.


The New Physics and its Evolution
Chapter XI
(p. 322)


Reference #: 9263

Poinsot, Louis
General Category: TIME

If anyone asked me to define time, I should reply: 'Do you know what it is that you speak of?' If he said 'Yes,' I should answer, 'Very well, let us talk about it.' If he said 'No,' I should answer, 'Very well, let us talk about something else.'


In William Maddock Bayliss
Principles of General Physiology
Preface
(p. xvii)


Reference #: 6573

Poisson, Simeon
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.


Mathematical Magazine
Filler, Vol. 64, No. 1, February 1991
(p. 44)


Reference #: 12889

Poisson, Simeon
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The engineer should receive a complete mathematical education, but for what should it serve him?To see the different aspects of things and to see them quickly; he has no time to hunt mice.


The Foundations of Science
Science and Method
(p. 438)


Reference #: 16206

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: SCIENCE

You can kill or mutilate the advance of science, you cannot shape it. For it can advance only be essentially unpredictable steps, putsuing problems of its own, and the practical benefits of these advances will be incidental and hence doubly unpredictable.


The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory
(p. 6).


Reference #: 5657

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Admittedly, religious conversion commits our whole person and changes our whole being in a way that an expansion of natural knowledge does not do. But once the dynamics of knowing are recognized as the dominant principle of knowledge, the difference appears only as one of degree....it established a continuous ascent from our less personal knowing of inanimate matter to our convivial knowing of living beings and beyond this to knowing our responsible fellow men. Such I believe is the true transition from the sciences to the humanities and also from our knowing the laws of nature to our knowing the person of God.


Journal of Religion
Faith and Reason, Vol. XLI, No. 4, October 1961
(p. 244, 245)


Reference #: 4590

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: IDEA

A vital judgment practiced in science is the assessment of plausibility. Only plausible ideas are taken up, discussed and tested by scientists. Such a decision may later be proved right, but at the time that it is made, the assessment of plausibility is based on a broad exercise of intuition guided by many subtle indications, and thus it is altogether undemonstrable. It is tacit.


Knowing and Being
The Growth of Science in Society
(p. 76)


Reference #: 8628

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe is still dead, but it already has the capacity of coming to life.


In Freeman Dyson
Personal Knowledge
Infinite in All Directions, Part I, Chapter 3 Infinite in All Directions, Part I, Chapter 3
(p. 404)


Reference #: 8629

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: FACT

Just as the eye sees details that are not there if they fit in with the sense of the picture, or overlooks them if they make no sense, so also very little inherent certainty will suffice to secure the highest scientific value to an alleged fact, if only it fits in with a great scientific generalization, while the most stubborn facts will be set aside if there is no place for them in the established framework of science.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 6
(p. 138)


Reference #: 8630

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: PRINCIPLE

...I have come to the conclusion that the principle by which the cyclist keeps his balance is not generally known. The rule observed by the cyclist is this. When he starts falling to the right he turns the handlebars to the right, so that the course of the bicycle is deflected along a curve towards the right. This results in a centrifugal force pushing the cyclist to the left and offsets the gravitational force dragging him down to the right. This maneuver presently throws the cyclist out of balance to the left, which he counteracts by turning the handlebars to the left; and so he continues to keep himself in balance by winding along a series of appropriate curves. A simple analysis shows that for a given angle of unbalance the curvature of each winding is inversely proportional to the square of the speed at which the cyclist is proceeding. But does this tell us exactly how to ride a bicycle? No. You obviously cannot adjust the curvature of your bicycle's path in proportion to the ratio of your unbalance over the square of your speed; and if you could you would fall off the machine, for there are a number of other factors to be taken into account in practice which are left out in the formulation of this rule. Rules of art can be useful, but they do not determine the practice of an art; they are maxims, which can serve as a guide to an art only if they can be integrated into the practical knowledge of the art. They cannot replace this knowledge.


Personal Knowledge


Reference #: 8631

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: MATHEMATICS

All these difficulties are but consequences of our refusal to see that mathematics cannot be defined without acknowledging its most obvious feature: namely, that it is interesting.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 6, section 10
(p. 188)


Reference #: 8632

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Modern mathematics can be kept alive only by a large number of mathematicians cultivating different parts of the same system of values: a community which can be kept coherent only by the passionate vigilance of universities, journals and meetings, fostering these values and imposing the same respect for them on all mathematicians.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 6, section 11
(p. 192)


Reference #: 8633

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: MATHEMATICS

We should declare instead candidly that we dwell on mathematics and affirm its statements for the sake of its intellectual beauty, which betokens the reality of its conceptions and the truth of its assertions. For if this passion were extinct, we would cease to understand mathematics; its conceptions would dissolve and its proofs carry no conviction. Mathematics would become pointless and would lose itself in a welter of insignificant tautologies and of Heath Robinson operations, from which it could no longer be distinguished.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 6, Section 11
(p. 192)


Reference #: 8684

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: MATHEMATICS

While applied mathematics is object-directed, pure mathematics has no outside object; being concerned with objects of its own creation, it may be described as 'object creating'.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 5
(p. 76)


Reference #: 8685

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: X-RAY

One of the greatest and most surprising discoveries of our own age, that of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals (in 1912) was made by a mathematician, Max von Laue, by the sheer power of believing more concretely than anyone else in the accepted theory of crystals and X-rays.


Personal Knowledge
(p. 277)


Reference #: 10298

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: SCIENCE

This coherence of valuation throughout the whole range of science underlies the unity of science. It means that any statement recognized as valid in one part of science can, in general, be considered as underwritten by all scientists. It also results in a general homogeneity of and a mutual respect between all kinds of scientists, by virtue of which science forms an organic unity.


Science, Faith and Society
(p. 49)


Reference #: 10299

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: SCIENTIST

There are differences in rank between scientists, but these are of secondary importance: everyone's position is soverign. The Republic of Science realizes the ideal of Rousseau, of a community in which each is an equal partner in a General Will. But this identification makes the General Will appear in a new light. It is seen to differ from any other will by the fact that it cannot alter its own purpose. It is shared by the whole community because each member of it shares in a joint task.


Science, Faith and Society
Background and Prospect
(pp. 16-17)


Reference #: 8683

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: ZOOLOGY

The existence of animals was not discovered by zoologists, nor that of plants by botanists, and the scientific value of zoology and botany is but an extension of man's pre-scientific interests in animals and plants.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 6
(p. 139)


Reference #: 10300

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: LAW

Now, I am not suggesting that it is impossible to find natural laws; but only that this is not done, and cannot be done, by applying some explicitly known operation...


Science, Faith, and Society
(p. 22)


Reference #: 8686

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Nowhere is intellectual beauty so deeply felt and fastidiously appreciated in its various grades and qualities as in mathematics, and only the informal appreciation of mathematical value can distinguish what is mathematics from a welter of formally similar, yet altogether trivial statements and operations.


Personal Knowledge
Chapter 6, section 10
(p. 188)


Reference #: 10297

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: SCIENCE

The morsels of science which [the young scientist] picks up - even though often dry or else speciously varnished - instill in him the intimation of intellectual treasures and creative joys far beyond his ken. His intuitive realization of a great system of valid thought and of an endless path of discovery sustain him in laboriously accumulating knowledge and urge him on to penetrate into intricate brain-racking theories. Sometimes he will also find a master whose work he admires and whose manner and outlook he accepts for his guidance. Thus his mind will become assimilated to the premise of science. The scientific institution of reality henceforth shapes his perception. He learns the methods of scientific investigation and accepts the standards of scientific value.


Science, Faith and Society
(p. 44)


Reference #: 10547

Polanyi, Michael
General Category: DISCOVERY

Discoveries made by the surprising configuration of existing theories might in fact be likened to the feat of a Columbus whose genius lay in taking literally and as a guide to action that the earth was round, which his contemporaries held vaguely and as a mere matter for speculation.


In A.C. Crombie (ed.)
Scientific Change
Commentaries
(p. 379)


Reference #: 16175

Polkinghorne, J.C.
General Category: QUANTUM

Quantum theory is both stupendously successful as an account of the small-scale structure of the world and it is also the subject of unresolved debate and dispute about its interpretation. That sounds rather like being shown an impressively beautiful palace and being told that no one is quite sure whether its foundations rest on bedrock or shifting sand.


The Quantum World
Chapter 1
(p. 1)


Reference #: 9453

Polkinghorne, John
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

Only in the media, and in the popular and polemical scientific writing, does there persist the myth of the light of pure scientific truth confronting the darkness of obscurantist religious error. Indeed, when one reads writers like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, one sees that nowadays the danger of a facile triumphalism is very much a problem for the secular academy rather than the Christian Church.
You can't just stare at the world; you have to view it from a chosen point of view. Choosing the point of view involves an intellectual daring in betting that things might be this way. This means that in science, experiment and theory, fact and interpretation, are always mixed up with each other.


Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity
(p. 5)


Reference #: 11907

Pollak, Henry O.
General Category: MATHEMATICAL ACTIVITY

Mathematical activity-like all of Gaul-may be divided into three areas: Education, Research, and Applications...much of the strength of the mathematical fabric comes from the interaction among these three.


The American Statistician
The Role of Industrial Members in the Mathematical Association of America, American Mathematical Monthly (p. 551)Volume 68, June-July 1961


Reference #: 18243

Pollard, William
General Category: PLANET EARTH

…the earth with its vistas of breathtaking beauty, its azure seas, beaches, mighty mountains, and soft blanket of forest and steppe is a veritable wonderland in the universe. It is a gem of rare and magic beauty hung in a trackless space filled with lethal radiations and accompanied in its journey by sister planets which are either viciously hot or dreadfully cold, arid, and lifeless chunks of raw rocks. Earth is choice, precious, and sacred beyond all comparison or measure.


In Michael Hamilton (ed.)
This Little Planet
God and His Creation
(p. 59)
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, New York, United States of America; 1970


Reference #: 2639

Pollok, Robert
General Category: OCEAN

He laid his hand upon 'the Ocean's mane,'And played familiar with his hoary locks.


Course of Time
bk. IV
l. 689


Reference #: 9345

Polya, George
General Category: REASONING

Why should a mathematician care for plausible reasoning? His science is the only one that can rely on demonstrative reasoning alone. The physicist needs inductive evidence, the lawyer has to rely on circumstantial evidence, the historian on documentary evidence, the economist on statistical evidence. These kinds of evidence may carry strong conviction, attain a high level of plausibility, and justly so, but can never attain the force of a strict demonstration. ...Perhaps it is silly to discuss plausible grounds in mathematical matters. Yet I do not think so. Mathematics has two faces. Presented in finished form, mathematics appears as a purely demonstrative science, but mathematics in the making is sort of an experimental science. A correctly written mathematical paper is supposed to contain strict demonstrations only, but the creative work of the mathematician resembles the creative work of the naturalist: observation, analogy, and conjectural generalizations, or mere guesses, if you prefer to say so, play an essential role in both. A mathematical theorem must be guessed before it is proved. The idea of a demonstration must be guessed before the details are carried through.


Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians-1950
Vol. 1
On Plausible Reasoning
(p. 739)
American Mathematical Society, Providence; 1952


Reference #: 5041

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: IDEA

...it is hard to have a good idea if we have little knowledge of the subject, and impossible to have it if we have no knowledge. Good ideas are based on past experience and formerly acquired knowledge.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part I, Section 9
(p. 9)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5042

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: GEOMETRY

Geometry is the art of correct reasoning on incorrect figures.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, The traditional mathematics professor
(p. 208)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5043

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: DISCOVERY

A great discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
From the Preface to the First Printing
(p. v)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5044

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: DISCOVERY

The first rule of discovery is to have brains and good luck. The second rule of discovery is to sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, Rules of discovery
(p. 172)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5046

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: METHOD

My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, The traditional mathematics professor
(p. 208)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5040

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: PRINCIPLE

This principle is so perfectly general that no particular application is possible.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, The traditional mathematics professor
(p. 208)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5047

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The traditional mathematics professor of the popular legend is absentminded. He usually appears in public with a lost umbrella in each hand. He prefers to face a blackboard and to turn his back on the class. He writes a, he says b, he means c, but it should be d.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, The traditional mathematics professor
(p. 208)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5048

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION

In order to solve a differential equation you look at it till a solution occurs to you.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, The traditional mathematics professor
(p. 208)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 5045

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: METHOD

What is the difference between a method and device? A method is a device which you use twice.


How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Part III, The traditional mathematics professor
(p. 208)
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973; Copyright 1945 by Princeton University Press, Copyright renewed 1973 by Princeton University Press, Second Edition Copyright 1957 by G. Polya


Reference #: 6555

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: PROBLEM

Solving problems is a practical art, like swimming, or skiing, or playing a piano; you can learn it only by imitation and practice...


Mathematical Discovery
Vol. I, Preface
(p. v)


Reference #: 5318

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is being lazy. Mathematics is letting the principles do the work for you so that you do not have to do the work yourself.


In Marion Walter and Tom O'Brien article
Mathematics Teaching
Memories of George P=lya, Vol. 116, September 1986
(p. 4)


Reference #: 8548

Pólya, George
Born: 13 December, 1887 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7 September, 1985 in Palo Alto, California, United States of America
General Category: DICE

One day in Naples the reverend Galiana saw a man from the Basilicata who, shaking three dice in a cup, wagered to throw three sixes; and, in fact, he got three sixes right away. Such luck is possible, you say. Yet the man succeeded a second time, and the bet was repeated. He put back the dice in the cup, three, four, five times, and each time he produced three sixes. `Sangue di Bacco,' exclaimed the reverend, `the dice are loaded'! And they were.


Patterns of Plausible Inference
(p. 74)


Reference #: 4356

Polyakov, Alexander
General Category: GOD

We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.


In S. Gannes
Fortune
Alexander Polyakov; 40: Probing the Forces of the Universe, Vol. 114, No. 8, October 13, 1986
(p. 57)


Reference #: 14054

Polybius
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

We must rather seek for a cause, for every event whether probable or improbable must have some cause.


The Histories
Book II, 38.5


Reference #: 15940

Pomfret, John
General Category: ERROR

The best may slip, and the most cautious fall;
He's more than mortal that ne'er err'd at all.


The Poetical Works of John Pomfret
Love Triumphant over Reason
l. 145


Reference #: 11610

Pompidou, George
General Category: GAMBLING

There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.


Sunday Telegraph
26 May 1968


Reference #: 15248

Ponnamperuma, Cyril
General Category: LIFE

Physicists might eventually be able to come up with a grand unification theory that encompasses not just subatomic particles and the basic elements, but the code of life as well. Who knows? Life elsewhere in the universe may even be five feet tall and standing on two legs.


In Pamela Weintraub (ed.)
The Omni Interviews
Seeds of Life
(p. 3)


Reference #: 5747

Pontecorvo, Bruno
General Category: NEUTRINO

It is difficult to find a case where the word 'intuition' characterises a human achievement better than in the case of the neutrino invention by Pauli.


Journel de Phys.
Supplement C8, Vol. 48, 1982
(p. 221)


Reference #: 9489

Pope Paul VI
General Category: SCIENCE

It is all too evident that science is not self-sufficient, cannot be an end in itself. Science is made by man for man; it must therefore come out of the sphere of its research and reflect on man and through man on human society and universal history...The faithful scientist cannot, confronted with the consequents of his discovery, ignore the complex being that is, in the last analysis, the human person.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
August 7, 1966
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 2068

Pope Pius XI
General Category: ABORTION

However we may pity the mother whose health and even life is imperiled by the performance of her natural duty, there yet remains no sufficient reason for condoning the direct murder of the innocent.


Casti connubii
December 31, 1930


Reference #: 731

Pope Pius XII
General Category: SCIENCE AND GOD

The more true science advances, the more it discovers God, almost, as though he were standing, vigilant behind every door which science opens.


Address
November 22, 1951


Reference #: 6110

Pope Pius XII
General Category: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Science descends ever more deeply into the hidden recesses of things, but it must halt at a certain point when questions arise which cannot be settled by means of sense observations. At that point the scientist needs a light which is capable of revealing to him truth which entirely escapes his senses. This light is philosophy.


In Philip G. Fothergill
Life and Its Origin
Pontifical Academy of Science, Meeting 1955
(p. 12)


Reference #: 3763

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: ANTIQUITY

With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore,
Th' inscription value, but the rust adore.
This the blue varnish, that the green endears;
The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.


Epistle to Mr. Addison
l. 35


Reference #: 3919

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

See plastic Nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbor to embrace.


Essay on Man
ep. III
l. 9


Reference #: 3918

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners, living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.


Essay on Man
ep. I
l. 13


Reference #: 3917

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through nature up to nature's God.


Essay on Man
ep. IV
l. 330


Reference #: 3916

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

Seas roll to waft me,
suns to light me rise;
My footstool Earth,
my canopy the skies.


Essay on Man
ep. I
l. 139


Reference #: 3915

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That chang'd thro' all, and yet in all same,
Great in the earth as in th' ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart.


Essay on Man
ep. I
l. 267


Reference #: 1131

Pope, Alexander
General Category: SCIENCE

Trace Science then, with Modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of Pride.


An Essay on Man
epistle II
l. 43-44


Reference #: 3820

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome, ....No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to th' admiring eyes.


Essay on Criticism
pt. II
l. 47


Reference #: 12306

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the sun;
.
.
.
Go teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. II, Essay on Man, Epistle II
l. 19-22, 29-30
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12770

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

Those rules of old, discove? d, not devi? d,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodized;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd
By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Criticism, Part I
l. 88-91
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12429

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: SCIENCE

How Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail:...


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. IV, Duncaid, Book I
l. 279-80
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12430

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Far eastward cast thine eye, from whence the Sun
And orient Science their brite course begun:.


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. IV, Duncaid, Book III
l. 73-74
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12760

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: DOCTOR

...Banish'd the doctor, and expell'd the friend?


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. III, ii, Epistle iii, To Allen Lord Bathurst
l. 330
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12431

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Beneath her footstools, Science groans in Chains,...


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. IV, Duncaid, Book IV
l. 21
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12432

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: UNIVERSE

Order is Heav'n's first law.


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Man, Epistle IV
l. 49
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12436

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: REASON

What can we reason but from what we know?


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Man
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12773

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CIRCLE

As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads.


The Complete Poetical Works
Essays on Man, Epistle IV
l. 364
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12434

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: MATHEMATICS

See Mystery to Mathematics fly!


The Complete Poetical Works
The Duncaid, Book IV, l 647
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12751

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: ADDITION

Ah! why, ye Gods! Should two and two make four?


The Complete Poetical Works
The Dunciad, Book 2
l. 285
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12756

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: DISECTION

Life following life through creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.


The Complete Poetical Works
Moral Essays, Epistle I
l. 29-30
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12433

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: SPACETIME

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.


The Complete Poetical Works
Martinus Scriblerus of The Art of Sinking in Poetry, 11
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12441

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: FLOWER HEATH

E'en wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And 'midst the desert fruitful fields arise.


The Complete Poetical Works
Windsor Forest
l. 25-26
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12440

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: BIRD PHEASANT

See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exhaulting on triumphant wings:
Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.


The Complete Poetical Works
Windsor Forest
l. 111-114
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12437

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: ANIMAL BEAR

The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear.


The Complete Poetical Works
Essay on Man, Epistle III
l. 44
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12774

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: DEATH

But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds.


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. III, Essay on Man, Epis. Iii
l. 165-166
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12439

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: COMMON SENSE

Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And through no science, fairly worth the seven.


The Complete Poetical Works
Moral Essays, Ep. IV
l. 43
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12438

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CHANCE

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony, not understood,
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, "Whatever is, is Right."


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Man, Epistle
I, 289


Reference #: 12772

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CHAOS

Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out Order, and extinguish Light...


The Complete Poetical Works
The Duncaid, Book IV
l. 13-14
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12303

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: TREE LOTUS

A spring there is, whose silver waters show
Clear as a glass the shining sands below:
A flowering lotos spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove.


The Complete Poetical Works
Sappho to Phaon
l. 177
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12766

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CHAOS

Here she beholds the Chaos dark and deep,
Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep...


The Complete Poetical Works
The Duncaid, Book I
l. 55-56
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12767

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

To observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th' observer's sake.


The Complete Poetical Works
Moral Essays, Epis. I
l. 11-12
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12768

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NUMBER

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.


The Complete Poetical Works
An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
l. 127
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12765

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: PHYSIC

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. III, Essay on Man, Epis. Iii
l. 174
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12764

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS

A mighty maze! but not without a plan...


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Man, Epistle I
l. 6
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12763

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CHAOS

Not chaos-like, together crus? d and brui? d,
But, as the world, harmoniously confused:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree.


The Complete Poetical Works
Windsor Forest
l. 13-16
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12762

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: ORDER

Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.


The Complete Poetical Works
Windsor Forest
l. 15-16
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12753

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: EXTRATERRESTIAL LIFE

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied Being peoples every star,
May tell why Heaven has made us as we are...


The Complete Poetical Works
Essay on Man, Epistle I
l. 23-28
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12761

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: DOCTOR

Who shall decide, when Doctors disagree,
And soundest Casuists doubt, like you and me?


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. III, ii, Epistle iii, To Allen Lord Bathurst
l. 1-2
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12305

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: SCIENCE

One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit;


The Complete Poetical Works
Vol. II, Essay on Criticism, Part I
l. 60 - 61
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12769

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NATURE

All nature is but art, unknown to thee.


The Complete Poetical Works
Essay on Man, Epistle I
l. 289
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12759

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: FLOWER ASPHODEL

By the streams that ever flow,
By the fragrant winds that blow
O'er the Elysian flow'rs;
By those happy souls who dwell
In yellow mead of asphodel.


The Complete Poetical Works
Ode on St. Celia's Day, Stanza V,
l. 71-75
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12758

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CHEMIST

The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blest.


The Complete Poetical Works
Essay on Man, Ep. II
l. 260
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12757

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: NEWTON, SIR ISSAC

Nature and Natur? s laws lay hid in Night.
God said: "Let Newton be"; and all was Light.


The Complete Poetical Works
Epitaph Intended for Sir Isaac Newton
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York. 1903


Reference #: 12771

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: CHAOS

Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is resto? d;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand great Anarch! lets the curtain
fall;
And universal Darkness buries all.


The Complete Poetical Works
The Duncaid, Book IV
l. 653-656
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12754

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: ATOM

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Man, Epistole I, Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to the Universe, Argument
l. 89-90
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12435

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: MINERAL AMBER

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.


The Complete Poetical Works
Epistle to Arbuthnot
l. 169
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 12752

Pope, Alexander
Born: 21 May, 1688 in London, England
Died: 30 May, 1744 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England
General Category: APOTHECARY

So modern Pothecaries taught the Art
By Doctor's Bills to play the Doctor's Part,
Bold in the Practice of mistaken Rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their Masters Fools.


The Complete Poetical Works
An Essay on Criticism, Part I
l. 108-111
Houghton Mifflin and Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1903


Reference #: 2466

Popper, Karl
General Category: GOD

The earlier, naturalistic, revolution against God replaced the name 'God' by the name 'Nature'. Almost everything else was left unchanged. Theology, the Science of God, was replaced by the Science of Nature; God's laws by the laws of Nature; God's will and power by the will and power of Nature (the natural forces); and later God's design and God's judgement by Natural Selection. Theological determinism was replaced by naturalistic determinism; that is, God's omnipotence and omniscience were replaced by the omnipotence of Nature and the omniscience of Science.


Conjectures and Refutations
(p. 364)


Reference #: 7952

Popper, Karl
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The theory of knowledge which I wish to propose is a largely Darwinian theory of the growth of knowledge. From the amoeba to Einstein, the growth of knowledge is always the same: we try to solve our problems, and to obtain, by a process of elimination, something approaching adequacy in our tentative solutions.


Objective knowledge: An evolutionary Approach
(p. 261)
Clarendon Press, Oxford; 1979


Reference #: 7953

Popper, Karl
General Category: THEORY

If an experiment or observation seems to support a theory, remember that what it really does is to weaken some alternative theory—perhaps one which you have not thought of before. And let it be your ambition to refute and replace your own theories: this is better than defending them, and leaving it to others to refute them. But remember also that a good defence of a theory against criticism is a necessary part of any fruitful discussion since only by defending it can we find out its strength, and the strength of the criticism directed against it. There is no point in discussing or criticizing a theory unless we try all the time to put it in its strongest form, and to argue against it only in that form.


Objective knowledge: An evolutionary Approach
(p. 256)
Clarendon Press, Oxford; 1979


Reference #: 2478

Popper, Karl
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can neither be established as certainly true nor as 'probable' (in the sense of probability calculus). Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it makes us understand the difficulties of the problem which we are trying to solve. This is how we become better acquainted with our problems, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory—that is, of any serious tentative solution to our problem—is always a step forward that takes us nearer to the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 14538

Popper, Karl
General Category: DISCOVERY

...I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of a purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science…


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part I, Chapter I, section 4
(p. 38)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14540

Popper, Karl
General Category: THEORY

The initial stage, the act of conceiving or inventing a theory, seems to me neither to call for logical analysis nor to be susceptible of it. The question how it happens that a new idea occurs to a man—whether it is a musical theme, or a dramatic conflict, or a scientific theory—may be of great interest to empirical psychology; but it is irrelevant to the logical analysis of scientific knowledge.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part I, Chapter I, section 2
(p. 31)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 16033

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

The fact that the evolutionary hypothesis is not a universal law of nature [Even a statement such as 'All vertebrates have one common pair of ancestors' is not, in spite of the word 'all', a universal law of nature; for it refers to the vertebrates existing on earth, rather than to all organisms at any place and time which have that constitution which we consider characteristic of vertebrates.] but a particular (or, more precisely, singular) historical statement about the ancestry of a number of terrestrial plants and animals is somewhat obscured by the fact that the term 'hypothesis' is so often used to characterize the status of universal laws of nature. But we should not forget that we quite frequently use this term in a different sense. For example, it would undoubtedly be correct to describe a tentative medical diagnosis as a hypothesis even though such a hypothesis is of singular and historical character rather than of the character of a universal law. In other words, the fact that all laws of nature are hypotheses must not distract our attention from the fact that not all hypotheses are laws, and that more especially historical hypotheses are, as a rule, not universal but singular statements about one individual event, or a number of such events.


The Poverty of Historicism
(p. 107)


Reference #: 16034

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

The evolution of life on earth, or of human society, is a unique historical process. Such a process, we may assume, for example, the laws of mechanics, of chemistry, of heredity and segregation, of natural selection, etc. Its description, however, is not a law but only a singular historical statement.


The Poverty of Historicism
(p. 108)


Reference #: 17628

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: QUESTION

Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they cause.


Unended Quest
7
(p. 19)


Reference #: 17631

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

Scientific theories, if they are not falsified, for ever remain hypotheses or conjectures.


Unended quest


Reference #: 17630

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: UNDERSTANDING

Bohr thought of understanding in terms of pictures and models - in terms of a kind of visualization. This was too narrow I felt; and in time I developed an entirely different view. According to this view what matters is the understanding not of pictures but of the logical force of a theory: its explanatory power, its relation to the relevant problems and to other theories.


Unended quest


Reference #: 17629

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise.


Unended Quest
Chapter 7
(p. 19)


Reference #: 17627

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

As with our children, so with our theories, and ultimately with all the work we do: our products become largely independent of their makers. We may gain more knowledge from our children or from our theories than we ever imparted to them.


Unended Quest
Chapter 40
(p. 196)


Reference #: 7947

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: UNDERSTAND

The activity of understanding is, essentially, the same as that of all problem solving.


Objective Knowledge
(p. 166)


Reference #: 7950

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: AMOEBA

The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it...


Objective Knowledge
Chapter 2, Section 16
(p. 70)


Reference #: 4379

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science is most significant as one of the greatest spiritual adventures that man has yet known.


In John Oulton Wisdom
Foundations of Inference in Natural Science
(p. v)


Reference #: 2465

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: QUESTION

...a young scientist who hopes to make discoveries is badly advised if his teacher tells hem,


Conjectures and Refutations
Chapter 4
(p. 129)


Reference #: 2468

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

But this is sufficient to show that a high probability cannot be one of the aims of science. For the scientist is most interested in theories with a high content. He does not care for highly probable trivialities but for bold and severely testable (and severely tested) hypotheses. If (as Carnap tells us) a high degree of confirmation is one of the things we aim at in science, then degree of confirmation cannot be identified with probability. This may sound paradoxical to some people. But if high probability were an aim of science, then scientists should say as little as possible, and preferably utter tautologies only. But their aim is to `advance' science, that is to add to its content. Yet this means lowering its probability. An in view of the high content of universal laws, it is neither surprising to find that their probability is zero...


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
(p. 286)


Reference #: 2469

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Scientific theories are not the digest of observations, but they are inventions - conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations; with observations which were rarely accidental, but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 1, section IV
(p. 46)


Reference #: 2467

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

The dogmatic attitude of sticking to a theory as long as possible is of considerable significance. Without it we could never find out what is in a theory - we should give the theory up before we had real opportunity of finding out its strength; and in consequence no theory would ever be able to play its role of bringing order into the world, of preparing us for future events, of drawing our attention to events we should otherwise never observe.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 15, fn 1
(p. 312)


Reference #: 1959

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

Every 'good' scientific theory is one which forbids certain things to happen; the more a theory forbids, the better it is.


In C.A. Mace (ed.)
British Philosophy in the Mid-Century
Philosophy of Science: A Personal ReportI
(p. 159)


Reference #: 7948

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: COMMON SENSE

All science and all philosophy are enlightened common sense.


Objective Knowledge
(p. 34)


Reference #: 7949

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Physics and chemistry are not very different, and there seems to be no great difference in the kind of things to which they apply, except that chemistry, as it is usually understood, becomes inapplicable, at very high temperatures and also, perhaps, at very low ones. It therefore would not be very suprising if the hopes, held for a long time, that chemistry can be reduced to physics, were to come true, as indeed they seem to be doing...by a reduction I mean, of course, that all the findings of chemistry can be fully explained by (that is to say, deduced from) the principles of physics.


Objective Knowledge
Chapter 8
(p. 290)


Reference #: 2470

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

...our critical examinations of our theories lead us to attempts to test and to overthrow them; and these lead us further to experiments and observations of a kind which nobody would ever have dreamed of without the stimulus and guidance both of our theories and of our criticisms of them. For indeed, the most interesting experiments and observations were carefully designed in order to test our theories, especially our new theorie.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 10, section I
(pp. 215-216)


Reference #: 3538

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: EXPERIMENT

I admit, of course, that we attempt to control the purely speculative elements of our theories by ingenious experiments. Nevertheless, all our experiments are guided by theory and they cannot be interpreted except by theory. It is our inventiveness, our imagination, our intellect, and especially the use of our critical faculties in discussing and comparing our theories that make it possible for our knowledge to grow.


In C.J. Whitrow
Einstein: The Man and His Achievement
Einstein: Early Years


Reference #: 7951

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...we should have to represent the tree of knowledge as springing from countless roots which grow up into the air rather than down, and which ultimately, high up, tend to unite into one common stem.


Objective Knowledge
Chapter 7
(pp. 262-263)


Reference #: 2472

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

The more a theory forbids, the better it is.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter III, Section I
(p. 41)


Reference #: 2474

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance-the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
(p. 28)


Reference #: 1960

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: MYTH

Thus science must begin with myths - and with the criticism of myths...


In C.A. Mace (ed.)
British Philosophy in the Mid-Century
Philosophy of Science: A Personal Report, VII
(p. 177)


Reference #: 2475

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: PROBLEM

Science should be visualized as progressing from problem to problem - to problems of ever increasing depth....Problems crop up especially when we are disappointed in our expectations, or when our theories involve us in difficulties, in contradictions; and these may arise either within a theory, or between two different theories, or as the result of a clash between our theories and our observations....Thus science starts from problems, and nor from observations; though observations may give rise to a problem, especially if they are unexpected; that is to say, if they clash with our expectations or theories.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
(p. 222)


Reference #: 2476

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: PROBLEM

All this means that a young scientist who hopes to make discoveries is badly advised if his teacher tells him: 'Go round and observe' and that he is well advised if his teacher tell him:'Try to learn what people are discussing nowadays in science. Find out where difficulties arise, and take an interest in disagreements. These are the questions which you should take up'. In other words, you should study the problems of the day. This means that you pick up, and try to continue, a line of inquiry which has the whole background of the earlier development of science behind it.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 4
(p. 129)


Reference #: 2473

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 10, section I
(p. 216)


Reference #: 2477

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: ERROR

But science is one of the very few human activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 10, section I
(p. 216)


Reference #: 7954

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

...it is the aim of science to find satisfactory explanations, of whatever strikes us as being in need of explanation.


Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Chapter 5
(p. 191)


Reference #: 7955

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: MYTH

Science never starts from scratch; it can never be described as free from assumptions; for at every instant it presupposes a horizon of expectations—yesterday's horizon of expectations, as it were. Today's science is built upon yesterday's science [and so it is the result of yesterday's searchlight] ;and yesterday's science, in turn, is based on the science of the day before. And the oldest scientific theories are built on pre-scientific myths, and these, in their turn, on still older expectations.


Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Appendix
(pp. 346-347)


Reference #: 7956

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

From the amoeba to Einstein, the growth of knowledge is always the same: we try to solve our problems, and to obtain, by a process of elimination, something approaching adequacy in our tentative solutions.


Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Chapter 7
(p. 261)


Reference #: 2471

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

We have no reason to regard the new theory as better than the old theory-to believe that it is nearer to the truth-until we have derived from the new theory new predictions which were unobtainable from the old theory (the phases of Venus....) and until we have found that these new predictions were successful.


Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Chapter 10
(p. 246)


Reference #: 14530

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

Theories are nets cast to catch what we call 'the world': to rationalize, to explain, and to master it. We endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter III
(p. 59)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 9711

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: PROBLEM

I think there is only one way to science - or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part - unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you ay then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.


Realism and the Aim of Science
Vol. 1
(p. 8)


Reference #: 9712

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

Some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whiskey. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing or by repeating observations.


Realism and the Aim of Science
(p. 36)


Reference #: 8134

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: UNDERSTAND

Only a man who understands science (that is scientific problems) can understand its history;…only a man who has some real understanding of its history (the history of its problem situations) can understand science.


On the Theory of the Objective Mind


Reference #: 14539

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

The best we can say of a hypothesis is that up to now it has been able to show its worth, and that it has been more successful than other hypotheses although, in principle, it can never be justified, verified or even shown to be probable. The appraisal of the hypothesis relies solely upon deductive consequences (predictions) which may be drawn from the hypothesis: There is no need even to mention 'induction'.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
New Appendices, Two Notes on Induction and Demarcation 1933-1934
(p. 315)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14528

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

...what is to be called 'science' and who is to be called a 'scientist' must always remain a matter of convention or decision.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part I, Chapter II, section 10
(p. 52)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 15222

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.


The Observer, London
1 August 1982


Reference #: 14531

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be `absolutely certain'....


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(p. 280)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14532

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense: but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part I, Chapter I, section 6
(p. 40)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14533

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not a system of certain, or well-established statements, nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality...Like Bacon we might describe our own contemporary science...as consisting of 'anticipations, rash and premature', and as 'prejudices'.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(p. 278)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14534

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

The empirical basis of objective science has thus nothing 'absolute' about it. Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and when we cease our attempts to drive our piles into a deeper layer, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that they are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter V, section 30
(p. 111)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14535

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: EXPERIENCE

...it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part I, Chapter I, section 6
(p. 41)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14544

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: COSMOLOGY

I, however, believe that there is at least one philosophical problem in which all thinking men are interested. It is the problem of cosmology: the problem of understanding the world-including ourselves and our knowledge, as part of the world. All science is cosmology, I believe, and for me the interest of philosophy lies solely in the contributions which it has made to it.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Preface to English Edition
(p. 15)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 9188

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

...science is most significant as one of the greatest spiritual adventures that man has yet known...


Poverty of Historicism
Chapter III, Section 19
(p. 56)


Reference #: 14892

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

A limited amount of dogmatism is necessary for progress. Without a serious struggle for survival in which the old theories are tenaciously defended, none of the competing theories can show their mettle—that is, their explanatory power and their truth content. Intolerant dogmatism, however, is one of the main obstacles to science. Indeed, we should not only keep alternative theories alive by discussing them, but we should systematically look for new alternatives. And we should be worried whenever there are no alternatives—whenever a dominant theory becomes too exclusive. The danger to progress in science is much increased if the theory in question obtains something like a monopoly.
But there is an even greater danger: a theory, even a scientific theory, may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an entrenched ideology.


The Myth of Framework
(p. 16)


Reference #: 14541

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: PROBLEM

Science never pursues the illusory aim of making its answers final or even probable. Its advance is rather toward an infinite yet attainable aim: that of ever discovering new, deeper, and more general problems.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(p. 281)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14542

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: PROBABILITY

The most important application of the theory of probability is to what we may call 'chance-like' or 'random' events, or occurrences. These seem to be characterized by a peculiar kind of incalculability which makes one disposed to believe - after many unsuccessful attempts - that all known rational methods of prediction must fail in their case. We have, as it were, the feeling that not a scientist but only a prophet could predict them. And yet, it is just this incalculability that makes us conclude that the calculus of probability can be applied to these events.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter VII, section 49
(p. 150)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14529

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science does not aim, primarily, at high probabilities. It aims at a high informative content, well backed by experience. But a hypothesis may be very probable simply because it tells us nothing, or very little.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Appendix ix
(p. 399)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14543

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

…it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(p. 281)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14545

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: DECISION

We do not know: we can only guess.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(p. 278)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14546

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: PROBABLE

I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge'. but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know that they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable'.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
New Appendices, Two Notes on Induction and Demarcation 1933-1934
(p. 317)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 9322

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: THEORY

...in order that a new theory should constitute a discovery or a step forward it should conflict with its predecessor...it should contradict its predecessor; it should overthrow it. In this sense, progress in science - or at least a striking progress - is always revolutionary.


In Rom Harré
Problems of Scientific Revolution
The Rationality of Scientific Revolutions
(pp. 82-83)


Reference #: 14440

Popper, Karl R.
Born: 28 July, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 17 September, 1994 in London, England
General Category: DETERMINISM

The intuitive idea of determinism may be summed up by saying that the world is like a motion-picture film: the picture or still which is just being projected is the present. Those parts of the film which have already been shown constitute the past. And those which have not yet been shown constitute the future.
In the film, the future co-exists with the past; and the future is fixed, in exactly the same sense as the past. Though the spectator may not know the future, every future event, without exception, might in principle be known with certainty, exactly like the past, since it exists in the same sense in which the past exists. In fact, the future will be known to the producer of the film—to the Creator of the world.


The Open Universe
Chapter I
(p. 5)
Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa


Reference #: 6228

Popper, Sir Carl
General Category: IDEA

Bold ideas, unjustifiable anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her.


Logic of Scientific Discovery


Reference #: 14537

Popper, Sir Karl
General Category: EXPERIENCE

Even the careful and sober testing of our ideas by experience is in its turn inspired by ideas: experiment is planned action in which every step is guided by theory. We do not stumble upon our experiences, nor do we let them flow over us like a stream. Rather, we have to be active: we have to "make" our experiences. It is we who always formulate the questions to be put to nature; it is we who try again and again to put these questions so as to elicit a clear-cut "yes" or "no" (for nature does not give an answer unless pressed for it). And in the end, it is again we who give the answer; it is we ourselves who, after severe scrutiny, decide upon the answer to the question which we put to nature-after protracted and earnest attempts to elicit from her an unequivocal "no."


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(p. 280)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 14536

Popper, Sir Karl
General Category: CERTAINTY

With the idol of certainty (including that of degrees of imperfect certainty or probability) there falls one of the defences of obscurantism which bar the way of scientific advance. For the worship of this idol hampers not only the boldness of our questions, but also the rigour and the integrity of our tests. The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.


The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Part II, Chapter X, section 85
(pp. 280-281)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 7373

Porta, John Baptista
General Category: MAGIC

There are two sorts of Magick: the one is infamous, and unhappie, because it hath to do with foul spirits, and consists of Inchantments and wicked Curiosity; and this is called Sorcery; an art which all learned and good men detest; neither is it able to yield any truth of Reason or Nature, but stands merly upon fancies and imaginations, such as vanish presently away and leave nothing behind them....The other Magick is natural; which all excellent wise men do admit and embrace, and worship with great applause; neither is there anything more highly esteemed, or better thought of by men of learning....I think that Magick is nothing else but the survey of the whole course of Nature.


Natural Magick
The First Book of Natural Magick, Chapter II
(pp. 1-2)


Reference #: 7837

Porter, George
General Category: PROBLEM

To solve a problem is to create new problems, new knowledge immediately reveals new areas of ignorance, and the need for new experiments.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1967


Reference #: 15068

Porter, Roy
General Category: MEDICINE

Medicine is a notoriously messy mix of laboratory research and clinical crisis, the itch for knowledge and the need to act. Different experts contribute diverse skills, and the whole has been likened to a jigsaw [puzzle] being pieced together by total strangers, each of whom is only guessing at the picture.


The New York Times
Offering Resistance: the Checkered History and Contemporary Travails of Cancer Immunotherapy
29 June, 1997
(p. 9)


Reference #: 7586

Porter, Sir George
General Category: APPLIED SCIENCE

To feed applied science by starving basic science is like economising on the foundations of a building so that it may be built higher.


New Scientist
Lest the Edifice of Science Crumble
(p. 16)


Reference #: 11081

Porter, Sir George
General Category: SCIENCE

Should we force science down the throats of those that have no taste for it? Is it our duty to drag them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century? I am afraid that it is.


Source undetermined
Speech 1966


Reference #: 9526

Porter, T.C.
General Category: ENERGY

Old Dr. Joule he made this rule:
The self-same energee
Which lifts a gram of matter to
42640 c. (centimeters)
Will heat a gram of water through
One centigrade degree.


Radio Times
February 1933


Reference #: 16250

Porter, Theodore M.
General Category: STATISTICS

'Statistics' as a plural means to us simply numbers, or more particularly, number of things, and there is no acceptable syNouym.


The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900
(p. 11)


Reference #: 16251

Porter, Theodore M.
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics derives from a German term, Statistik, first used as a substantive by the Gottingen professor Gottfried Achenwall in 1749.


The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900
(p. 23)


Reference #: 2666

Porterfield, Austin L.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, in the broadest sense, is the entire body of the most accurately tested, critically established, systematized knowledge available about that part of the universe which has come under human observation. For the most part this knowledge concerns the forces impinging upon human beings in the serious business of living and thus affecting man's adjustment to and of the physical and the social world....Pure science is more interested in understanding, and applied science is more interested in control...


Creative Factors in Scientific Research
Chapter II
(p. 11)


Reference #: 4573

Posner, Michael I.
Raichle, Marcus E.
General Category: BRAIN

The microscope and telescope opened up unexpectedly vast domains of scientific discovery. A similar opportunity has now been created in the study of human cognition by the introduction of methods to visualize the brain systems involved as we think.


Images of Mind


Reference #: 5868

Postel, Sandra
General Category: ENVIRONMENT

For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.


Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity.


Reference #: 2047

Poteat, William Louis
General Category: SCIENCE

Science confers power, not purpose. It is a blessing, therefore, if the purpose which it serves is good; it is a curse, if the purpose is bad.


Can a Man Be a Christian Today?
Part I, section 2
(p. 27)


Reference #: 7057

Potter, Stephen
General Category: PATIENTS

If Patient turns out to be really ill, it is always possible to look grave at the same time and say 'You realise, I suppose, that 25 years ago you'd have been dead?'


One-Upmanship
Chapter II
(p. 28)


Reference #: 2831

Poullain de la Barre, Frantois
General Category: SCIENCE AND WOMEN

L'esprot n'a point de sexe.
The mind has no sex.


De l'éducation des dames pour la conduite de l'esprit dans les sciences et dans les moeurs


Reference #: 7840

Powell, Cecil
General Category: COSMIC RAYS

Coming out of space and incident on the high atmosphere, there is a thin rain of charged particles known as the primary cosmic radiation.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Physics)
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1950


Reference #: 13893

Power, Richard
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.


The Goldbug Variations
Dialog


Reference #: 14759

Powers, Henry
General Category: MICROSCOPE

Of all the Inventions none ther is Surpasses
the Noble Florentine's Dioptrick Glasses
For what a better, fitter guift Could bee
in this World's Aged Luciosity.
To help our Blindnesse so as to devize
a paire of new & Articicial eyes
By whose augmenting power wee now see more
than all the world Has ever doun Before.


In S. Bradbury
The Microscope Past and Present
In Commendation of ye Microscope
(p. v)


Reference #: 13892

Powers, Richard
General Category: STUDY

My chief problem is what to study. Something empirical, something hard. My prospect of success depends on where in the hierarchy I attach myself. I start with top magnification, fix my lens on cosmology. If that level remains abstract, I could drop to the step below, stop down an order of magnitude, make due with astronomy. A working knowledge of galaxies must be of some use in naming the place where I'm left.

But the light-year is too long for me to get my bearing. I must reduce the magnification another exponent, start my study with the earth under my lens. A geologist, I suppose, or oceanographer. But the explanations of this critical niche are still too large. I am after not earth science but its underwriting specific. Down another order. The search for a starting point begins to resemble that painful process of elimination from freshman year, spent in the university clinic, a knot accross my abdomen from having to choose which million disciplines I would exclude myself from forever.

This time I narrow ruthlessly. I sharpen my focus to the raw component populations inhabiting this planet. Zoologist, anthropologist? Neither would yet clamp down on the why I'm after. I go a finer gauge, assuming that understanding can be best arrived at by isolating terms. That means downshifting again to the vocabulary of political science. The first limb of the heirarchy that speaks human dialect: what do we need, and how best to get it? The question is powerful, but as I zoom in on the increasingly precise concern, explainations recede, grow fuzzy and qualified. A faction of me secedes, insists that political science can be understood only in terms of constituent economics. But the study of goods, services, and distribution produces more problems than prescriptions.


The Gold Bug Variations
(pp. 88-89)
A Harper Perennial Book, 1991


Reference #: 645

Pownall, Thomas
General Category: TREE

The individual Trees of those Woods grow up, have their Youth, their old Age, and a Period to their Life, and die as we Men do. You will see many a Sapling growing up, many an old Tree tottering to its Fall, and many fallen and rotting away, while they are succeeded by others of their Kind, just as the Race of Man is: By this Succession of Vegetation this Wilderness is kept cloathed with Woods just as the human Species keeps the Earth peopled by its continuing Succession of Generations.


A Topographical Description of the Dominion of the United States
Section I, On the Face of the Country
(p. 24)


Reference #: 5482

Poynting, J.H.
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

The hypotheses of science are continually changing. Old hypotheses break down and new ones take their place. But the classification of known phenomena which a hypothesis has suggested, and the new discoveries of phenomena to which it has led, remain as positive and permanent additions to natural knowledge when the hypothesis itself has vanished from thought.


In J.A. Thomson
Introduction to Science
Chapter I
(p. 27)


Reference #: 2348

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Molecules, atoms and corpuscles are at the present day the letters of the alphabet in which we write our knowledge of Physical Nature.


Collected Scientific Papers
Molecules, Atoms and Corpuscles, 1902
(p. 664)
At the University Press, Cambridge; 1920


Reference #: 2347

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: NATURE

While the investigation of Nature is ever increasing our knowledge, and while each new discovery is a positive addition never again to be lost, the range of the investigation and the nature of the knowledge gainedd form the theme of endless discussion.


Collected Scientific Papers
Presidential Address
The Mathematical And Physical Section
The British Association
(Dover) 1899
(p. 599)
At the University Press, Cambridge; 1920


Reference #: 2349

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: LAW

A law may fail or cease to be true, not because Nature has changed her ways, but because we have failed in our statement of likenesses, or because we learn new details with which our old description does not tally.


Collected Scientific Papers
Physical Law and Life, 1903
(p. 686)
At the University Press, Cambridge; 1920


Reference #: 2350

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: CHOICE

If our mental experience convinces us that we have freedom of choice, we are obliged to believe that in mind there is territory which the physicist can never annex. Some of his laws may still hold good, but somewhere or other his scheme must cease to give a true account.


Collected Scientific Papers
Physical Law and Life, 1903
(p. 698)


Reference #: 2351

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: METAPHOR

To take an old but never-worn-out metaphor, the physicist is examining the garment of Nature, learning of how many, or rather of how few different kinds of thread it is woven, finding how each each separate thread enters into the pattern, and seeking from the pattern woven in the past to know the pattern yet to come.


Collected Scientific Papers
Presidential Address
The Mathematical And Physical Section
The British Association
(Dover) 1899
(p. 603)
At the University Press, Cambridge; 1920


Reference #: 2346

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: LIFE

The threads of life, coming in we know not where, now twining together, now dividing, are weaving patterns of their own, ever increasing in intricacy, ever gaining in beauty.


Collected Scientific Papers
Presidential Address
The Mathematical And Physical Section
The British Association
(Dover) 1899
(p. 612)
At the University Press, Cambridge; 1920


Reference #: 2352

Poynting, John Henry
General Category: MODEL

...while the building of Nature is growing spontaneously from within, the model of it, which we seek to construct in our descriptive science, can only be constructed by means of scaffolding from without, a scaffolding of hypotheses. While in the real building all is continuous, in our model there are detached parts which must be connected with the rest by temporary ladders and passages, or which must be supported till we can see how to fill in the understructure. To give the hypotheses equal validity with facts is to confuse the temporary scaffolding with the building itself.


Collected Scientific Papers
Part VII, Article 52
(p. 607)


Reference #: 15887

Praed, Winthrop
General Category: SCIENCE

Of science and logic he chatters,
As fine and as fast as he can;
Though I am no judge of such matters,
I'm sure he's a talented man.


The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed
The Talented Man


Reference #: 4389

Prakash, Satya
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

If the law of the relation of effect and cause does not exist, then the non-existence of cause will follow also from non-existence of effect. Non-existence of effect is not instrumental towards the non-existence of cause; but non-existence of cause is instrumental towards non-existence of effect.


Founders of Sciences in Ancient India
(p. 322)


Reference #: 18009

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: IGNORANCE

But then...it used to be so simple, once upon a time. Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition. Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like 'Hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's Third Law.' And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself-partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt.


Witches Abroad
(p. 7)


Reference #: 18008

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: IGNORANCE

Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition.


Witches Abroad
(p. 7)


Reference #: 3769

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: ANIMAL

[For animals] the whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.


Equal Rites
(p. 78)


Reference #: 7212

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: ALCHEMY

Most alchemists were nervous, in any case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were experimenting with was going to do next.


Moving Pictures
(p. 20)


Reference #: 13226

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: PROBABILITY

Understanding is the first step towards control. We now understand probability...


The Dark Side of the Sun
(p. 37)


Reference #: 13223

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: PROBABILITY

I can't pretend to understand probability math. But if the universe is so ordered, so-immutable-that the future can be told by a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?


The Dark Side of the Sun
(p. 22)


Reference #: 13224

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: PROBABILITY

'You haven't heard of probability math? You, and tomorrow you become Chairman of the Board of Widdershinss and heir to riches untold? Then first we will talk, and then we will eat.'


The Dark Side of the Sun
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13225

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: PROBABILITY

PROBABILITY MATH:
"As with the first Theory of Relativity and the Sadhimist One Commandment, so the nine equations of probability math provide and example of a deceptively simple spark initiating a great explosion of social change."
"Probability math predicts the future." So says the half-educated man...
"Probability math arises from the premise that we dwell in a truly infinite totality, space and time without limit, words without end—a creation so vast that what we are pleased to call our cause-and-effect datum Universe is a mere circle of candlelight. In such a totality we can only echo the words of Quixote: All things are possible..."


The Dark Side of the Sun
(p. 24)


Reference #: 13227

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: PROBABILITY

...by the mathemagic of probability, sifting through the population of the galaxy to find those who's probability profile matched the theoretical one for the discoverers of Jokers World.


The Dark Side of the Sun
(p. 153)


Reference #: 9716

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: LIGHT

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.


Reaper Man
(p. 230)


Reference #: 14391

Pratchett, Terry
General Category: THEORY

...theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.


The Light Fantastic
(p. 165)


Reference #: 16332

Pratchett, Terry
Stewart, Ian
Cohen, Jack
General Category: MOLECULE

A prion is a smallish protein molecule that can act as a catalyst for the formation of more protein molecules like just like itself. Unlike DNA, it doesn't do this by replication. Instead, it needs a supply of proteins that are almost like itself, but not quite-the right atoms, in the right order, but folded into the wrong shape. The prion attches itself to such a protein, jiggles it around a bit, and nudges it into the same shape as the prion. So now you've got more prions, and the process speeds up.

Prions are molecular preachers: they make more of themselves by converting the heathen, not by splitting into identical twins.


The Science of Discworld


Reference #: 14526

Pratt, C.C.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is a vast and impressive tautology.


The Logic of Modern Psychology
Chapter VI
(p. 154)


Reference #: 10075

Prelog, V.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry takes a unique position among the natural sciences for it deals not only with material from natural sources but creats the major parts of its objects by sythesis. In this respect, as stated many years ago by Macelin Bertholt, chemistry resembles the arts; the potential of creativity is terrifying.


Science
Vol. 193, 17, 1976


Reference #: 17586

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: DINOSAUR ALLOSAURUS

Allosaurus like to bite,
its teeth were sharp as sabers,
it frequently, with great delight,
made mincemeat of its neighbors.


Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
Allosaurus


Reference #: 17587

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: DINOSAUR ANKYLOSAURUS

Clankity clankity clankity clank!
Ankylosaurus was built like a tank,
its hide was a fortress as sturdy as steel,
it tended to be an inedible meal.


Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
Ankylosaurus


Reference #: 17584

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: DINOSAUR BRACHIOSAURUS

Brachiosaurus had little to do
but stand with its head in the treetops and chew,
it nibbled the leaves that were tender and green,
it was a perpetual eating machine.


Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
Brachiosaurus


Reference #: 17585

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: DINOSAUR LEPTOPTERYGIUS

Leptopterygius, big as a city bus,
was an insatiable ichthyosaur,
anything captured by Leptopterygius
Never was seen in the sea anymore.


Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
Leptopterygius


Reference #: 512

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: BIRD EMU

Do not approach an emu,
the bird does not esteem you.
It wields a quick and wicked kick
That's guaranteed to cream you.


A Pizza the Size of the Sun
Do Not Approach an Emu


Reference #: 513

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: BIRD PARROT

The parrots, garbed in gaudy dress,
with almost nothing to express,
delight in spouting empty words...
they are extremely verbal birds.


A Pizza the Size of the Sun
The Parrots


Reference #: 514

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: BUG

Bugs! Bugs!
I love bugs,
yes I truly do,
great big pink ones,
little green stink ones,
yellow bugs and blue.
I put you in my pockets,
and I wear you in my hair.
You are my close companions,
I take you everywhere.


A Pizza the Size of the Sun
Bugs! Bugs!


Reference #: 511

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: REPTILE PYTHON

A puzzled python shook its head
and said, "I simply fail
to tell if I am purely neck,
or else entirely tail."


A Pizza the Size of the Sun
A Puzzled Python


Reference #: 10942

Prelutsky, Jack
General Category: ANIMAL SQUIRREL

Squirrels, often found in parks,
have tails resembling question marks,
it's just coincidental, though..
there's little squirrels care to know.


Something Big Has Been There
Squirrels


Reference #: 4969

Prescott, William Hickling
General Category: SCIENCE

It is the characteristic of true science, to discern the impassable, but not very obvious, limits which divide the province of reason from that of speculation. Such knowledge comes tardily. How many ages have rolled away in which powers, that, rightly directed, might have revealed the great laws of nature, have been wasted in brilliant, but barren reveries on alchemy and astrology.


History of the Conquest of Mexico
Vol. I, Book I, Chapter IV
(p. 132)


Reference #: 9237

President's Advisory Committee's Report
General Category: LITERATURE

Science and technology can flourish only if each scientist interacts with his colleagues and his predecessors, and only if every branch of science interacts with other branches of science; in this sense science must remain unified if it is to remain effective. The ideas and data that are the substance of science and technology are embodied in the literature; only if the literature remains a unity can science itself be unified and viable.


President's Advisory Committee's Report
Science, Government, and Information, Part 1
(p. 7)


Reference #: 10301

President's Science Advisory Committee
General Category: INFORMATION

We shall cope with the information explosion, in the long run, only if some scientists and engineers are prepared to commit themselves deeply to the job of sifting, reviewing, and synthesizing information; i.e., to handling information with sophistication and meaning, not merely mechanically. Such scientists must create new science, not just shuffle documents: their activities of reviewing, writing books, criticizing, and synthesizing are as much a part of science as is traditional research.


Science, Government and Information
(p. 2)


Reference #: 16283

Preston, Margaret J.
General Category: TREE ALMOND

White as the blossoms which the almond tree,
Above its bald and leafless branches bear.


The Royal Preacher
Stanza 5


Reference #: 8027

Preston, Margaret Junkin
General Category: PAIN

Pain is no longer pain when it is past...


Old Songs and New
Nature's Lesson
(p. 260)


Reference #: 5787

Preston, Richard
General Category: PI

Pi is not the solution to any equation built from a less than infinite series of whole numbers. If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.


In Clifford A. Pickover
Keys to Infinity
(p. 60)


Reference #: 16740

Preston, Thomas
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The great lessons of history are not to be found in the records of battles or in the details of infamous amours and massacres, nor in the memory of dates, but rather in the full knowledge of the inner meaning of events, and a deep appreciation of their general bearing on the social development of mankind. So also in science, that knowledge which is power is not the mere memory of facts, but the comprehension of their whole meaning in the story of nature.


The Theory of Heat
Preface to the First Edition
(p. 4)
Macmillan and Co., Limited, London, England; 1904


Reference #: 17418

Pretorius, D.A.
General Category: GEOLOGIST

It is the nature of the history of the earth that a geologist has available to him only partial information. Occasional lines from disconnected paragraphs in obscurantist chapters are what can be read. Violence in the handling of the book through time has caused many of these chapters to be ripped and reassembled out of context. That the gist of the early chapters can be deciphered at all is a credit to the perseverance and imagination not always associated with other sciences. The geologist operates at all times in an environment characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and ornamented with end-products which are the outcomes of the interactions of many complex variables. He sees only the end, and has to induce the processes and the responses that filled the time since the beginning.


In Stanley A. Schumm
To Interpret the Earth
Chapter 1
(p. 5)


Reference #: 17509

Price, B.
General Category: REASONING

...the reasoning process [employed in mathematics] is not different from that of any other branch of knowledge, ...but there is required, and in a great degree, that attention of mind which is in some part necessary for the acquisition of all knowledge, and in this branch is indispensably necessary. This must be given in its fullest intensity; ...the other elements especially characteristic of a mathematical mind are quickness in perceiving logical sequence, love of order, methodical arrangement and harmony, distinctness of conception.


Treatise on Infinitesimal Calculus
Vol. 3
(p. 6)
Oxford, 1868


Reference #: 17510

Price, Bartholomew
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the most powerful instrument, which we possess, for this purpose [to trace into their farthest results those general laws which an inductive philosophy has supplied]: in many sciences a profound knowledge of mathematics is indispensable for a successful investigation. In the most delicate researches into the theories of light, heat, and sound it is the only instrument; they have properties which no other language can express; and their argumentative processes are beyond the reach of other symbols.


Treatise on Infinitesimal Calculus
Vol. 3
(p. 5)


Reference #: 7137

Price, C.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

As new knowledge develops, it has increasingly provided natural explanations for facts and phenomena formerly ascribed to the supernatural. Perhaps an understanding of chemical evolution and biological function can develop a philosophy of man more unified, less divisive, less of a major breeding ground for man's inhumanity to man than the many religious dogmas now so much used to inflame feelings of hatred, suspicion and prejudice in human society.


In D. Fohlfing and A. Oparin (eds.)
Molecular Evolution: Prebiological and Biological
Some Social and Philosophical Implication of Progress on the Origin and Synthesis of Life
(p. 462)


Reference #: 16378

Price, Don K.
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

...most scientists are prepared to work most of the time within the framework of ideas developed by their acknowledged leaders. In that sense, within any discipline, science is ruled by oligarchs who hold influence as long as their concepts and systems are accepted as the most successful strategy....Once in a great while, a rival system is proposed; then there can ususally be no settlement of the issue by majority opinion. The metaphor of 'scientific revolution' suggests the way in which the losing party is displaced from authority, discredited and its doctrines eliminated from textbooks.


The Scientific Estate
Chapter 6
(p. 172)


Reference #: 16380

Price, Don K.
General Category: SCIENCE AND POLITICS

...all sciences are considered by their professors, as equally significant; by the politicians, as equally incomprehensible; and by the military as equally expensive.


The Scientific Estate
Chapter 1
(p. 12)


Reference #: 16379

Price, Don K.
General Category: SCIENCE AND POLITICS

...it has begun to seem evident to a great many administrators and politicians that science had become something very close to an establishment, in the old and proper sense of that word: a set of institutions supported by tax funds but largely on faith and without direct responsibility to political control.


The Scientific Estate
Chapter 1
(p. 12)


Reference #: 5441

Price, Richard
General Category: LAW

The purpose I mean is, to show what reason we have for believing that there are in the constitution of things fixed laws according to which events happen...


Introduction to Bayes' Essays


Reference #: 1695

Priest, Graham
General Category: IDEA

Historians of ideas soon learn-to their dismay-that their subject appears to be mathematically dense: between any two people who wrote on the matter there appears to be another.


Beyond the Limits of Thought
Chapter 1
(p. 6)


Reference #: 2867

Priestley, J.B.
General Category: THEORY

A first encounter with any grand fantastic theory, not political or economic, delights me.


Delight
Fantastic Theories
(p. 52)


Reference #: 18144

Priestley, Joseph
General Category: GENIUS

It sometimes happens to men whose genius far transcends the level of their day, to be from that very circumstance neither understood nor believed by their contemporaries.


Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley
Volume I
Appendix No. 1
(p. 225)
J. Binns, Northumberland, Pennsylvania, United States of America; 1806


Reference #: 4139

Priestley, Joseph
General Category: SCIENCE

A successful pursuit of science makes a man the benefactor of all mankind and of every age.


Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
(p. xvii)


Reference #: 3554

Priestley, Joseph
General Category: EXPERIMENT

The history of science cannot but animate us in our attempts to advance still further, and suggest methods and experiments to assist us in our future progress.


In John G. McEvoy
Electricity, Knowledge, and the Nature of Progress in Priestley's Thought
(p. 6)


Reference #: 14058

Priestley, Joseph
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

Hypotheses, while they are considered merely as such, lead persons to try a variety of experiments, in order to ascertain them. In these experiments, new facts generally arise. These new facts serve to correct the hypothesis which gave occasion to them. The theory, thus corrected, serves to discover more new facts, which, as before, bring the theory still nearer to the truth. In this progressive state, or method of approximation, things continue...


The History and Present State of Electricity
Vol. II, Part III, Section I
(pp. 15-16)


Reference #: 14059

Priestley, Joseph
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

One of the most intimate of all associations in the human mind is that of cause and effect. They suggest one another with the utmost readiness upon all occasions; so that it is almost impossible to contemplate the one, without having some idea of, or forming some conjecture about the other.


The History and Present State of Electricity
Vol. I, IPart III, Section I
(p. 11)


Reference #: 8272

Priestley, Joseph
General Category: AGE

It may be my fate to be a kind of comet, or flaming meteor in science, in the regions of which (like enough to a meteor) I made my appearance very lately, and very unexpectedly; and therefore, like a meteor, it may be my destiny to move very swiftly, burn away with great heat and violence and become as suddenly extinct.


Philosophical Empiricism
Section V
(p. 67)


Reference #: 4140

Priestly, John
General Category: CHANCE

More is owing to what we call chance,...than to any proper design or preconceived theory in this business.


Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air


Reference #: 2954

Prigogine, Ilya
General Category: MATTER

When matter is becoming disturbed by non-equilibrium conditions it organizes itself, it wakes up. It happens that our world is a non-equilibrium system.


In Renée Weber
Dialogues with Scientists and Sages
(p. 51)


Reference #: 2947

Prigogine, Ilya
General Category: UNIVERSE

I certainly think we are only living in the prehistory of the understanding of our universe.


In Renée Weber
Dialogues with Scientists and Sages
(p. 199)


Reference #: 12312

Prigogine, Ilya
General Category: TIME

Time is creation. The future is just not there.


In Eric J. Lerner
The Big Bang Never Happened
Chapter 7
(p. 321)


Reference #: 12310

Prigogine, Ilya
General Category: TIME

The irreversibility [of time] is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos.


In Eric J. Lerner
The Big Bang Never Happened
Chapter 7
(p. 283)


Reference #: 8174

Prigogine, Ilya
Stengers, I.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is part of the Darwinian struggle for life. It helps us to organize our experience. It leads us to economy of thought. Mathematical laws are nothing more than conventions useful for summarizing the results of possible experiments.


Order Out of Chaos
(p. 97)
Bantam Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1984


Reference #: 2180

Primas, Hans
General Category: SCIENTIST

The legendary image of a scientist as a humble searcher for truth is more and more replaced by the image of a scientist as a well-paid brilliant expert, speaking an unintelligible professional jargon, highly competent in a narrowly defined domain but arrogantly extending his competence into fields in which he knows nothing, and neglecting the fact that science is only a small subdivision of human knowledge.


Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism: Perspectives in Theoretical Chemistry
Chapter 1, section 1.1
(p. 24)
Springer-Verlag, Berlin; 1981


Reference #: 2179

Primas, Hans
General Category: CHEMISTRY

The most important task of contemporary theoretical chemistry is to stimulate the mutual understanding of the various branches of chemistry and its neighboring sciences.


Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism
Chapter 1, Section 1.2
(p. 2)


Reference #: 15787

Prince Philip
General Category: WILD LIFE

Miners used to take a canary around the coal mines to warn them when the air was so foul that the canary
Died. This is the importance of wildlife to us; because if wildlife dies it is our turn next. If any part of the life of this planet is threatened, all is threatened. If you say 'not interested' to wildlife conservation then you are signing your own death warrant.


The Times (London)
May 17, 1988


Reference #: 8905

Princeton University Catalogue (1947-1959)
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is in a sense 'the language of science,' basic to advanced work in almost all the natural sciences and in some of the social sciences.


In Eric M. Rogers
Physics for the Inquiring Mind
(p. 467)


Reference #: 8720

Pringle, John R.
General Category: DINOSAUR ARCHAEOPTERYX

One day an Archaeopteryx
Sat brooding on her nest of sticks,
"Can it be true what I have heard,
That I'm a reptile, not a bird?"


Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
Identity Crisis, Vol. 18, No. 3, Spring 1975
(p. 33)


Reference #: 292

Pringle, Thomas
General Category: ANIMAL LION

Wouldst thou view the Lion's den?
Search afar from haunts of men, -
Where the reed-encircled rill,
Oozes from the rocky hill,
By its verdure far descried'Mid the desert brown and wide.


Afar in the Desert
The Lion and the Giraffe, Stanza 1


Reference #: 5542

Pringsheim, Alfred
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The true mathematician is always a great deal of an artist, an architect, yes, of a poet. Beyond the real world, though perceptibly connected with it, mathematicians have created an ideal world which they attempt to develop into the most perfect of all worlds, and which is being explored in every direction. None has the faintest conception of this world except him who knows it; only presumptuous ignorance can assert that the mathematician moves in a narrow circle. The truth which he seeks is, to be sure. broadly considered, neither more nor less than consistency; but does not his mastership show, indeed, in this very limitation? To solve questions of this kind he passes unenviously over others.


Jaresberichte der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung
Vol. 13, 1904
(p. 381)


Reference #: 5532

Pringsheim, Alfred
General Category: MATHEMATICS

It is true that mathematics, owing to the fact that its whole content is built up by means of purely logical deduction from a small number of universally comprehended principles, has not unfittingly been designated as the science of the self-evident. Experience however, shows that for the majority of the cultured, even of scientists, mathematics remains the science of the incomprehensible.


Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung
Ueber Wert and angeblichen Unwert der Mathematik, 1904
(p. 357


Reference #: 6704

Prior, Matthew
General Category: SCIENCE

Forc'd by reflective Reason I confess,
That human Science is uncertain guess.


Matthew Prior Literary Works
Vol. I, Solomon, Book 1
l. 740


Reference #: 1092

Prior, Matthew
General Category: PHYSICIAN

I sent for Ratcliffe; was so ill
That other doctors gave me over:
He felt my pulse—prescrib'd his pill,
And I was likely to recover.
But when the wit began to wheeze,
And wine had warm'd the politician
Cur'd yesterday of my disease,
I
Died last night of my physician.


In Helen & Lewis Melville
An Anthology of Humorous Verse
The Remedy Worse than the Disease


Reference #: 924

Prior, Matthew
General Category: ANTIQUITY

My copper-lamps, at any rate,
For being true antique, I bought;
Yet wisely melted down my plate,
On modern models to be wrought;
And trifles I alike pursue,
Because they're old, because they're new.


Alma
Canto III


Reference #: 14421

Prior, Matthew
General Category: PROBABILITY

In this case probability must atone for want of Truth.


The Literary Works of Matthew Prior
Solomon, Preface
(p. 309)


Reference #: 14420

Prior, Matthew
General Category: ASTRONOMER

At night astronomers agree...


The Literary Works of Matthew Prior
Vol. VI, Phillis's Age, Stanza 3
l. 2


Reference #: 15947

Prior, Matthew
General Category: DOCTOR

You tell your doctor, that you are ill,
And what does he, but write a bill,
Of which you need not read one letter:
The worse the scrawl, the dose the better.
For if you knew but what you take,
Though you recover, he must break.


The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior
Alma, Canto iii
l. 97-102


Reference #: 14506

Pritchett, V.S.
General Category: SCIENCE

A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.


The Living Novel & Later Appreciations
An Irish Ghost
(p. 123)


Reference #: 6576

Proclus
General Category: MATHEMATICS

This, therefore, is mathematics: she reminds you of the invisible form of the soul; she gives life to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she brings light to our intrinsic ideas; she abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth.


In Morris Kline
Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
(p. 24)


Reference #: 6580

Proclus
General Category: NUMBER

Wherever there is number, there is beauty.


In Morris Kline
Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
(p. 131)


Reference #: 15898

Procter, Bryan Waller
General Category: WISE

...he who can draw a joy
From rocks, or woods, or weeds, or things
That seem all mute, and does it—is wise.


The Poetical Works of Barry Cornwall
A Haunted Stream


Reference #: 8232

Proctor, R.A.
General Category: GEOLOGY

Astronomy and Geology owe much of their charm to the fact that they suggest thoughts of other forms of life than those with which we are familiar. Geology teaches us of days when this earth was peopled with strange creatures such as now are found upon its surface. We turn our thoughts to the epochs when those monsters throve and multiplied, and picture to ourselves the appearance which our earth then presented.


Other Worlds Than Ours
Introduction
(p. 17)


Reference #: 17491

Proctor, Richard
General Category: VENUS TRANSIT

I think the astronomers of the first years of the twenty first century, looking back over the long transit-less period which will then have passed, will understand the anxiety of astronomers in our own time to utilise to the full whatever opportunities the coming transits may afford...;and I venture to hope...they will not be disposed to judge over harshly what some in our own day may have regarded as an excess of zeal.


Transits of Venus, A Popular Account
(p. 231)


Reference #: 9509

Propp, Fred Jr.
General Category: DIET

Diet: Slowing down to make a curve.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
July 23, 1967
(p. 77)


Reference #: 5228

Proschan, Frank
General Category: STATISTICAL

Pronouncing each word with great deliberateness, Rep. Resent asked,"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the American Statistical Association?"
....
Looking Rep. Resent straight in the eye, Minnie defiantly replied. "I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me."


Industrial Quality Control
Investigation of Latin Squares, Vol. XI, No. 1, July 1954
(p. 31)


Reference #: 9203

Proudfit, David Law
General Category: EVOLUTION

A man sat on a rock and sought
Refreshment from his thumb;
A dinotherium wandered by
And scared him some.
His name was Smith. The kind of rock
He sat upon was shale.
One feature quite distinguished him:
He had a tail.


Prehistoric Smith


Reference #: 3027

Proust, J.L.
General Category: COMPOUND

We must recognize an invisible hand which holds the balance in the formation of compounds. A compound is a substance to which Nature assigns fixed ratios, it is, in short, a being which Nature never creates other than balance in hand, pondere et mensurd .


Ann. Chim
1799, xxxii, 26


Reference #: 17376

Proust, Marcel
General Category: BOOK

And certainly there were many others...from whom I had assimilated a word, a glance, but of whom as individual beings I remembered nothing; a book is a great cemetary in which, for the most part, the names upon the tombs are effaced.


Time Regained


Reference #: 5189

Proust, Marcel
General Category: MEDICINE

Medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years' time.


In Search of Lost Time
The Guermantes Way
Volume III, Part I
1920


Reference #: 5190

Proust, Marcel
General Category: BEAUTY

…beauty is a sequence of hypotheses which ugliness cuts short when it bars the way that we could already see opening into the unknown.


In Search of Lost Time
Volume II
Within a Budding Grove (In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 2)
Part Two, Place-Names: The Place
(p. 399)


Reference #: 8976

Proust, Marcel
General Category: TREE

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours.


Pleasures and Regrets
Regrets, Reveries, Changing Skies, Chapter XXVI
(p. 165)


Reference #: 14017

Proust, Marcel
General Category: DOCTOR

Inasmuch as a great part of what doctors know is taught them by the sick, they are easily led to believe that this knowledge which patients exhibit is common to them all, and they pride themselves on taking the patient of the moment by surprise with some remarks picked up at a previous bedside.


The Guermantes Way
Part I, My Grandmother's Illness
(p. 416)


Reference #: 9845

Proust, Marcel
General Category: IDEA

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.


Remembrance of Things Past
Vol. One, Within a Budding Grove, Part 1, Madame Swann at Home
(p. 428)


Reference #: 14016

Proust, Marcel
General Category: MEDICINE

For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years' time.


The Guermantes Way
Part I, My Grandmother's Illness
(p. 409)


Reference #: 2868

Prout, Curtis
General Category: SCIENCE

The study of science suggests the need for humility.


Demand and Get the Best Health Care for You: An Eminent Doctor's Practical Advice
(p. 148)
Faber & Faber, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1997


Reference #: 16648

Prout, William
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry forms the connecting link between that kind of knowledge which is founded on quantity, and those kinds of knowledge which rest solely on experience. Now so far as the logic of quantity is applicable, so far are we certain of our conclusions. But when this logic cannot be applied, our conclusions are no longer such as must be, but are only for the most part such as may be.


In Ida Freund
The Study of Chemical Composition
Chapter XIX
(p. 592)


Reference #: 2177

Prout, William
General Category: ELEMENT CARBON

...it is perhaps difficult to say what is most wonderful; but we have often thought, that the Diety has displayed a greater stretch of power, in accommodating to such an extraordinary variety of changes, a material so unpromising and so refractory as charcoal, and in finally uniting it with the human mind, than was requisite for the creation of the human mind itself.


Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion Considered with Reference to Natural Theology
Book III, Chapter I
(pp. 442-443)


Reference #: 2178

Prout, William
General Category: MINERAL CARBON

...it is perhaps difficult to say what is most wonderful; but we have often thought, that the Deity has displayed a greater stretch of power, in accommodating to such an extraordinary variety of changes, a material so unpromising and so refractory as charcoal, and in finally uniting it with the human mind, than was requisite for the creation of the human mind itself.


Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion Considered with Reference to Natural Theology
Book III, Chapter I
(pp. 442-443)


Reference #: 3472

Proverb
General Category: PATENT

A patent is merely a title to a lawsuit.


In Frank Lewis Dyer
Edison His Life and Inventions
Chapter XXVIII
(p. 700)


Reference #: 6758

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Where there are three physicians, there are two atheists.


In Oliver Wendell Holmes
Medical Essays
The Medical Profession in Massachusetts
(p. 364)


Reference #: 1832

Proverb
General Category: EXPERIENCE

Experience is a comb, which nature gives to men when they are bald.


In Herbert Samuel
Book of Quotations


Reference #: 8592

Proverb
General Category: DOCTOR

A doctor is one who kills you to-day to prevent you from dying to-morrow.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 255)


Reference #: 8586

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

A disobedient patient makes an unfeeling physician.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 255)


Reference #: 8593

Proverb
General Category: DOCTOR

A broken apothecary a new doctor.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 255)


Reference #: 8584

Proverb
General Category: SCIENCE

The sciences have bitter roots, but their fruits are sweet.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 236)


Reference #: 8590

Proverb
General Category: DOCTOR

A loquacious doctor is successful.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 256)


Reference #: 8589

Proverb
General Category: DOCTOR

A doctor's child dies not from disease but from medicine.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 256)


Reference #: 10966

Proverb
General Category: SICKNESS

Sickness is felt, but health not at all.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 10976

Proverb
General Category: SICKNESS

Sickness tells us what we are.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11258

Proverb
General Category: VARIABILITY

Jucunda vicissitudo rerum.
Variety is the spice of life.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8427

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

There are more Physitians in health than drunkards.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#903


Reference #: 10987

Proverb
General Category: STATISTICS

As the statists thinks, the bell clinks!


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8426

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

God heales, and the Physitian hath the thankes.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#169


Reference #: 11161

Proverb
General Category: BLOOD

Blood is thicker than water.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8425

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Deceive not thy Physitian, Confessor, nor Lawyer.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#105


Reference #: 8424

Proverb
General Category: TOOTHACHE

The tooth-ache is more ease,
than to deale with ill people.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#558


Reference #: 8423

Proverb
General Category: PHYSIC

Warre and Physicke are governed by the eye.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#906


Reference #: 8422

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The Physitian owes all to the patient, but the patient owes nothing to him but a little money.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#921


Reference #: 8421

Proverb
General Category: HEALTH

Health and sickness surely are men's double enemies.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#1011


Reference #: 8420

Proverb
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Go not for every grief to the Physitian, nor for every quarrel to the Lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot.


In George Herbert
Outlandish Proberbs
#290


Reference #: 10977

Proverb
General Category: SICKNESS

The chamber of sickness is the chapel of devotion.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8583

Proverb, Arabic
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is a plant whose roots indeed are at Mecca, but its fruit ripens at Herat.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 236)


Reference #: 481

Proverb, Chinese
General Category: DOCTOR

Patients worry over the beginning of an illness, doctors worry over its end.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 11343

Proverb, Chinese
General Category: MEASLE

Starve the measles and nourish the small-pox.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8588

Proverb, Chinese
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The physician can cure the sick, but he cannot cure the dead.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 259)


Reference #: 11197

Proverb, Chinese
General Category: DIET

He that takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctor.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 10974

Proverb, Chinese
General Category: GRAPH

A picture is worth more than ten thousand words.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11296

Proverb, Chinese
General Category: DECISION

To guess is cheap, to guess wrongly is expensive.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11325

Proverb, English
General Category: FIGURE

Figures never lie.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11250

Proverb, English
General Category: CHANCE

Wisdom liketh not chance.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11235

Proverb, English
General Category: PROOF

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 10440

Proverb, English
General Category: SURGEON

The best surgeon is he that hath been hacked himself.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 477

Proverb, French
General Category: DOCTOR

The presence of the doctor is the first part of the cure.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 482

Proverb, French
General Category: DOCTOR

After death the doctor.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 476

Proverb, German
General Category: DOCTOR

No doctor at all is better than three.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 480

Proverb, German
General Category: DOCTOR

Good doctors do not like big bottles.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 8591

Proverb, German
General Category: DOCTOR

A half doctor near is better than a whole one far away.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 256)


Reference #: 11373

Proverb, German
General Category: OBSERVATION

Keine Antwort is auch eine Antwort.
No answer is also an answer.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8594

Proverb, German
General Category: PHYSICIAN

A physician is an angel when employed, but a devil when one must pay him.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 256)


Reference #: 8587

Proverb, German
General Category: PHYSICIAN

When you call a physician call the judge to make your will.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
(p. 259)


Reference #: 11195

Proverb, Greek
General Category: FORECAST

Qui bene conjiciet, hunc vatem.
He who guesses right is the prophet.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11268

Proverb, Hebrew
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Do not dwell in a city whose governor is a physician.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11276

Proverb, Irish
General Category: INVALID

Every invalid is a physician.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 5326

Proverb, Italian
General Category: PHYSICIAN

From your confessor, lawyer and physician,
Hide not your case on no condition.


In Sir John Harrington
Metamorphosis of Ajax
The Second Section
(p. 154)


Reference #: 475

Proverb, Italian
General Category: DOCTOR

A doctor's mistake is the will of God.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 474

Proverb, Italian
General Category: DOCTOR

While the doctor is considering the patient dies.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 472

Proverb, Italian
General Category: DOCTOR

If the patient dies, the doctor killed him; if he gets well, the saints cured him.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 471

Proverb, Italian
General Category: DOCTOR

A doctor and a clown know more than a doctor alone.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 11226

Proverb, Italian
General Category: PHYSICIAN

A multiplicity of laws and of physicians in a country is equally a sign of its bad condition.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11265

Proverb, Italian
General Category: INVALID

Why live like an invalid to die as a healthy man?


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11286

Proverb, Italian
General Category: TEETH

Chi ha denti, non ha pane; e chi ha pane, non ha denti.
He that has teeth has not bread, he that has bread has not teeth.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 9242

Proverb, Italian
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Dove non va il sole, va il medico: where the sunlight enters not, there goes the physician.


In Robert Means Lawrence
Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery
The Blue-Glass Mania
(p. 95)


Reference #: 11223

Proverb, Italian
General Category: PROBABILITY

A thousand probabilities does not make one fact.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11266

Proverb, Japanese
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Better go without medicine than call in an unskillful physician.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 478

Proverb, Latin
General Category: DOCTOR

Before a doctor can cure one patient he must kill ten.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 11186

Proverb, Latin
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
After this, therefore because of this.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11199

Proverb, Latin
General Category: DISEASE

Occultare morbum funestam.
To hide disease is fatal.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11267

Proverb, Latin
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Judæus, momachus, histrio, rasor, anus.
Every idiot, priest, Jew, monk, actor, barber, and old woman, fancy themselves physicians.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11220

Proverb, Latin
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Sublata causa, tollitur effectus.
The cause being taken away, the effect is removed.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11209

Proverb, Pennsylvania German
General Category: NUMBER

It doesn't depend on size, or a cow would catch a rabbit.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11117

Proverb, Persian
General Category: FEVER

Show him death, and he'll be content with fever.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 473

Proverb, Portuguese
General Category: DOCTOR

If your friend is a doctor, send him to the house of your enemy.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 11187

Proverb, Russian
General Category: DOCTOR

Only a fool will make a doctor his heir.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 349

Proverb, Scottish
General Category: DEATH

Death defies the doctor.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 283)


Reference #: 11201

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: TEETH

My teeth are closer to me than my relatives.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11273

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: TEETH

God gives almonds to those who have no teeth.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8585

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: ALCHEMY

It is approved alchemy to have an income and spend nothing.


In Robert Christy
Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages
Alchemy
(p. 21)


Reference #: 11041

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: MEDICINE

El tiempo cura el enfermo, que el unguento.[Time, and not medicine, cures the sick.]


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11030

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: STATISTICS

La estadistics, otra mas que nos engana.
Statistics, yet another mistress to deceive us.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 10449

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: SURGEON

There is no better surgeon than one with many scars.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 10994

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: TOOTHACHE

Allá va la lengua, do duele la muela.
The tongue ever turns to the aching tooth.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 10982

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: SCIENCE

Ciencia es locura,
Si buen senso no la cura.
Science is madness
If good sense does not cure it.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 11370

Proverb, Spanish
General Category: OBSERVATION

De lo que veas cree muy poco,
De lo que te cuenten, nada.
Of what you see, believe very little,
Of what you are told, nothing.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 479

Proverb, Welsh
General Category: DOCTOR

Heaven defend me from a busy doctor.


In H.L. Mencken
A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles


Reference #: 12246

Proverbs 16:33
General Category: CHANCE

...the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong...


The Bible


Reference #: 1708

Proverbs 23:10-11
General Category: ANTIQUITY

Remove not the ancient landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.


Bible


Reference #: 12263

Proverbs 6:6
General Category: INSECT ANT

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise...


The Bible


Reference #: 6643

Prudhomme, Sully
General Category: ASTRONOMER

Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height
Exploring all the dark, descries from far
Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are.


In Morris Kline
Mathematics in Western Culture
(p. 60)
Oxford University Press, New York 1953


Reference #: 7011

Prusiner, Stanley B.
General Category: SCIENTIST

Being a scientist is a special privilege: for it brings the opportunity to be creative, the passionate quest for answers to nature's most precious secrets, and the warm friendships of many valued colleagues. Collaborations extend far beyond the scientific achievements, no matter how great the accomplishments might be, the rich friendships which have no national borders are treasured even more.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1997


Reference #: 18065

Pryanishnikov, D.N.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is not consummate, crystalised, and petrified; it is being eternally created and is eternally in motion.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 12260

Psalm 114
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs...


The Bible


Reference #: 12265

Psalm 24:1
General Category: PLANET EARTH

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.


The Bible


Reference #: 12248

Psalm 60
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it; heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.


The Bible


Reference #: 12281

Psalm civ:24
General Category: EARTH

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.


The Bible


Reference #: 12277

Psalms 106:29
General Category: INVENTION

Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them.


The Bible


Reference #: 12291

Psalms 106:39
General Category: INVENTION

Thus they were defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions.


The Bible


Reference #: 1709

Psalms 117:22
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.


Bible


Reference #: 12239

Psalms 139:14
General Category: BODY

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.


The Bible


Reference #: 10496

Psalms 147:1
General Category: MEDICINE

He healeth those that are broken in heart: and giveth medicine to heal their sickness.


The Bible


Reference #: 12237

Psalms 147:3
General Category: HEALING

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.


The Bible


Reference #: 10488

Psalms 40:2
General Category: MINERAL CLAY

He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.


The Bible


Reference #: 7309

Ptolemy
General Category: STAR ATTRIBUTED

I know that I am mortal and ephemeral. But when I search for the close-knit encompassing convolutions of the stars, my feet no longer touch the earth, but in the presence of Zeus himself I take my fill of ambrosia which the gods produce.


In Johannes Kepler
Mysterium Cosmographicum
Title page


Reference #: 1808

Puckett, Andrew
General Category: STATISTICAL

For the first five months they were virtually identical, but for the past four, they showed an increasing difference! With shaking fingers, I worked out a Standard Deviation on the sets of totals. There was no doubt: the difference between the Centre's and CPPL's totals were significant. Statistics don't lie...


Bloodstains
(p. 80)


Reference #: 1809

Puckett, Andrew
General Category: STATISTICS

They were in monthly columns. I added them and then compared the two tables. Well, there was a difference, and a difference on the right side, more blood packs had been separated in the Centre than plasma packs had arrived in CPPL, but it wasn't as large as I would have thought. I stared at the figures for a moment, then I worked out a statistical error rate on them. The difference between them was sot significant; it could be explained by random error. Statistics don't lie, not in the right hands.


Bloodstains
(p. 79)


Reference #: 12325

Pugh, Emerson M.
General Category: BRAIN

If the human brain were so simple
That we could understand ,
We would be so simple
That we couldn't.


In George E. Pugh
The Biological Origin of Human Values
(p. 154)


Reference #: 1326

Puiseux, P.
General Category: MIND

It is an illogical peculiarity of the human mind that while it can not comprehend an infinite universe it readily refuses to limit it.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1912
The Year's Progress in Astronomy
(p. 135)


Reference #: 2670

Pulitzer, Joseph
General Category: IMAGINATION

I know what you mean by imagination! That it is necessarily inexact or irresponsible. I hope you will recover from that. Imagination isn't disorder or sloppiness or substituting misinformation for something that should have been definitely ascertained....It isn't being lazy or indifferent or lacking personal or professional conscience. No It is what the astronomer has when he says that right there, though no one has located it, must be a star. It is what Darwin had when, with the long orchid in his hand, he said that somewhere they would find the long-tongued moth who visited it.


In Austin L. Porterfield
Creative Factors in Scientific Research
Chapter IV
(p. 61)


Reference #: 5165

Purcell, Rosamond Gould, Stephen Jay
General Category: ANIMAL

Animals in nature, contrary to the suspicions of cynics or the hopes of idealists, are neither intrinsically vicious nor altruistic. Competition and cooperation are both nature's ways.


Illuminations: A Bestiary
(p. 101)


Reference #: 637

Purchas the younger, Samuel
General Category: INSECT BEE

Bees are political creatures, and destinate all their actions to one common end; they have one common habitation, one common work, all work for all, and one common care and love towards all their young, and that under one Commander...


A Theatre of Political Flying-Insects
(p. 16)


Reference #: 7125

Putter, A.
General Category: LIFE

It [life] is the particular manner of composition of the materials and processes, their spatial and temporal organization which constitutes what we call life.


In L. van Bertalanffy
Modern Theories of Development: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology
(p. 51)


Reference #: 4337

Puzo, Mario
General Category: STATISTICS

'You got a ninety percent chance,' he said.
Osno said quickly, 'How do you get that figure?' He always did that whenever somebody pulled a statistic on him. He hated statisticians.


Fools Die: A Novel
Chapter 24
(p. 270)


Reference #: 4338

Puzo, Mario
General Category: GAMBLING

He felt the table was having a run of bad luck, but he knew. Gronevelt would never accept that explanation. Gronevelt believed that the house could not lose over the long run, that the laws of percentage were not subject to chance. As gamblers believed mystically in their luck so Gronevelt believed in percentages.


Fools Die: A Novel
Chapter 17
(pp. 187-188)


Reference #: 4791

Pynchon, Thomas
General Category: AVERAGE

...it suggests Haverie - average, you know...


Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 207)


Reference #: 4794

Pynchon, Thomas
General Category: STATISTICS

'I'm sorry. That's the Monte Carlo Fallacy. No matter how many have fallen inside a particular square, the odds remain the same as they always were. Each hit is independent of all the others. Bombs are not dogs. No link. No memory. No conditioning.'


Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 56)


Reference #: 4792

Pynchon, Thomas
General Category: DISTRIBUTION

But a hardon, that's either there, or it isn't. Binary, elegant. The job of observing it can even be done by a student.


Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 84)


Reference #: 4790

Pynchon, Thomas
General Category: STATISTICAL

Why am I surrounded," his usual understanding self today, "by statistical illiterates?


Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 54)


Reference #: 4789

Pynchon, Thomas
General Category: STATISTICAL

That he must always be lovable, in need of her and never, as now, the hovering statistical cherub who's never quite been to hell but speaks as if he's one of the most fallen.


Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 57)


Reference #: 4793

Pynchon, Thomas
General Category: DISTRIBUTION

Roger has tried to explain to her the V-bomb statistics: the difference between distribution ...She's almost got it; nearly understands his Poisson equation...


Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 54)


Reference #: 13586

Pythagoras
General Category: LIFE

...life resembles the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 25
The Essays
Of the Education of Children
(p. 69)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 7202

Pythagorean School
General Category: NUMBER

Number rules the universe


Motto


Reference #: 4530

Q.U.O.
General Category: SCIENTIST

What is a modern scientist? A modern scientist is, broadly speaking, a specialist of narrow outlook and, I fear, of narrow habit of mind. Broadly speaking, I say, for there are exceptions of importance but of limited number: persons of deep penetration and acquisitive powers; of open minds endowed with critical faculties. But clustering around these like the exterior of a nebula; or pendant from them like the tail of a comet, what do we find? Why, this. An indescribable mass of formless, shapeless satellites, almost invisible in their tenuosity, almost indistinguishable in their nebulosity; possessing minds of jelly—fish, revolving in orbits so circumscribed as to appear stationary. Who are what are these small souls, if souls they can be called? I cannot tell you who or what they are. But I can tell you what they call themselves. They style themselves "We Scientists.


G.K.'s Weekly


Reference #: 7343

Quammen, David
General Category: NATURE

Nature grants no monopolies in resourcefulness. She does not even seem to hold much with the notion of portioning it out hierarchically. Gold, she decrees, is where you find it.


Natural Acts
A Better Idea
(p. 3)


Reference #: 4906

Quarles, Francis
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Physicians of all men are most happy; what good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth, and what faults they commit, the earth coverth.


Hieroglyphikes
iv, Nicocles


Reference #: 18133

Queneau, Raymond
General Category: ZOOLOGY

In the dog days while I was in a bird cage at feeding time I noticed a young puppy with a neck like a giraffe who, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wore yet a precious beaver upon his head. This queer fish obviously had a bee in his bonnet and was quite bats, he started yak-yakking at a wolf in shee° s clothing claiming that he was treading on his dogs with his beetle-crushers. but the sucker got a flea in his ear; that foxed him, and quiet as a mouse he ran like a hare for a perch.
I saw him again later in front of the Zoo with a young buck who was telling him to bear in mind a certain drill about his fevers.


Zoological
Exercises in Style
(p. 179)


Reference #: 4121

Queneau, Raymond
General Category: LIKELIHOOD

There was not much likelihood now that a third encounter would take place, and the fact is that from that day to this I have never seen the young man again, in conformity with the established laws of probability.


Exercises in Style
Probabilist
(p. 1850
New Direction Publishing Corporation, New York,
1981


Reference #: 4120

Queneau, Raymond
General Category: FACT

I beg to advise you of the following facts of which I happen to be the equally impartial and horrified witness.


Exercises in Style
Official Letter
(p.54)
New Direction Publishing Corporation, New York,
1981


Reference #: 4118

Queneau, Raymond
General Category: PRECISION

In a bus of the S-line, 10 meters long, 3 wide, 6 high, at 3 km. 600 m. from its starting point, loaded with 48 people, at 12.17 p.m., a person of the masculine sex aged 27 years 3 months and 8 days, 1 m. 72 cm. tall and weighing 65 kg. and wearing a hat 35 cm. in height round the crown of which a ribbon 60 cm. long, interpellated a man aged 48 years 4 months and 3 days, 1 m. 68 cm. tall and weighing 77 kg., by means of 14 words whose enunciation lasted 5 seconds and which alluded to some involuntary displacements of from 15 to 20 mm. Then he went and sat down about 1 m. 10 cm. away. 57 minutes later he was 10 meters away from the suburban entrance to the gare Saint-Lazare and was walking up and down over a distance of 30 m. with a friend aged 28, 1 m. 70 cm. tall and weighing 71 kg. who advised him in 15 words to move by 5 cm. in the direction of the zenith a button which was 3 cm. in diameter.


Exercises in Style
Precision
(pp. 37-38)
New Direction Publishing Corporation, New York,
1981


Reference #: 4119

Queneau, Raymond
General Category: BOTANY

After nearly taking root under a heliotrope, I managed to graft myself on to a vernal speedwell where my hips and haws were squashed indiscriminately and where there was an overpowering axillary scent. There I ran to earth a young blade or garden pansy whose stalk had run to seed and whose nut, cabbage or pumpkin was surmounted by a capsule encircled by snakeweed. This corny, creeping sucker, transpiring at the palms, nettled a common elder who started to tread his daisies and give him the edge of his bristly ox-tongue, so the sensitive plant stalked off and parked himself. Two hours later, in fresh woods and pastures new, I saw this specimen again with another willowy young parasite who was shooting a line, recommending the sap to switch the top bulbous vegetable ivory element of his mantle blue to a more elevated apex - as an exercise in style.


Exercises in Style
Botanical
(pp. 171-172)
New Direction Publishing Corporation, New York,
1981


Reference #: 9187

Queneau, Raymond
General Category: PRIME

When One made love to Zerospheres embraced their archesand prime numbers caught their breath...


Pounding the Pavement, Beating the Bush, and Other Pataphysical Poems
Sines


Reference #: 1312

Quetelet, Adolphe
General Category: SCIENCE

The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a kind of center to which they all converge. We may even judge of the degree of perfection to which a science has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation.


In E. Mailly
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1874
Eulogy of Quetelet
(p. 173)


Reference #: 6041

Quetelet, Adolphe
General Category: NUMBER

The official documents would make it appear that, of the 100,000 men, 28,620 are of less height than 5 feet 2 inches: calculation gives only 26,345. Is it not a fair presumption, that the 2,275 men who constitute the difference of these numbers have been fraudulently rejected? We can readily understand that it is an easy matter to reduce one's height a half-inch, or an inch, when so great an interest is at stake as that of being rejected.


Letters addressed to H. R. H the Grand Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha on the Theory of Probabilities as applied to the Moral and Political Sciences


Reference #: 672

Quetelet, Adolphe
General Category: AVERAGE

l'homme moyen
the average man


A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties
(p. 100)


Reference #: 3570

Quine, W.V.O.
General Category: SET

We may more reasonably view set theory, and mathematics generally, in much the way in which we view theoretical portions of the natural sciences themselves; as comprising truths or hypotheses which are to be vindicated less by the pure light of reason than by the indirect systematic contribution which they make to the organizing of empirical data in the natural sciences.


Elementary Logic
(p. 4)


Reference #: 3569

Quine, W.V.O.
General Category: SET

To say that mathematics in general has been reduced to logic hints at some new firming up of mathematics at its foundations. This is misleading. Set theory is less settled and more conjectural than the classical mathematical superstructure than can be founded upon it.


Elementary Logic
(p. 125)


Reference #: 15330

Quine, W.V.O.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is like a boat, which we rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat.


In George Johnson
The Palaces of Memory
The End of Philosophy
(p. 222)


Reference #: 362

Quinton, A.M.
General Category: CONJECTURE

The conjectures of the scientific intelligence are genuine creative novelties, inherently unpredictable and not determined by the character of the scientist's physical environment. The thinking mind is not a causal mechanism.


In D.J. O'Connor (ed.)
A Critical History of Western Philosophy
(p. 551)
The Free Press of Glencoe, London, England; 1964


Reference #: 8486

Rabelais, Frantcois
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Happy is the physician, whose coming is desired at the declension of a disease.


Pantagruel
Book 3, Chapter 41
(p. 209)


Reference #: 3866

Rabelais, Frantois
General Category: DOCTOR

May a hundred devils leap on my body, if there aren't more old drunkards than old doctors!


Gargantua
Book I, Chapter 41
(p. 49)


Reference #: 4125

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICS

I think that physics should be the central study in all schools. I don't mean physics as it is usually taught-very badly, as a bunch of tricks-but, rather, an appreciation of what it means, and a feeling for it. I don't want to turn everybody into a scientist, but everybody has to be enough of a scientist to see the world in the light of science-to be able to see the world as something that is tremendously important beyond himself, to be able to appreciate the human spirit that could discover these things, that could make instruments to inquire and advance into its own nature. I rate this so highly that with this education people would find something above their religious affiliations, and find a basic unity in the spirit of man.


In Jeremy Bernstein
Experiencing Science
Part 1 Two Faces of Physics Chapter 2 Rabi: The Modern Age
(p. 126)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York,
1978


Reference #: 1951

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICS

I think physics is infinite. You don't have to try to exhaust it in your generation, or in your lifetime.


In Jeremy Bernstein
Experiencing Science
Part 1 Two Faces of Physics Chapter 2 Rabi: The Modern Age
(p. 56)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York,
1978


Reference #: 4126

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICIST

I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up, and they keep their curiosity.


In Jeremy Bernstein
Experiencing Science
Part 1 Two Faces of Physics Chapter 2 Rabi: The Modern Age
(p. 102)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York,
1978


Reference #: 12123

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: UNKNOWN

To science the unknown is a problem full of interest and promise; in fact science derives it sustenance from the unknown; all the good things have come from that inexhaustible realm.


The Atlantic Monthly
Faither in Science, Vol. 187, No. 1, January 1951
(p. 28)


Reference #: 13582

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The essence of the scientific spirit is to use the past only as a springboard to the future.


In A.A. Warner, Dean Morse and T.E. Cooney (eds.)
The Environment of Change
The Revolution in Science
(p. 47)


Reference #: 16004

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIST

There isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organisation.


In D. S. Greenberg
The Politics of Pure Science


Reference #: 12145

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

We are the inheritors of a great scientific tradition and of a beautiful structure of knowledge. It is the duty of our generation to add to the perfection of this structure and to pass on to the next generation the best traditions of our science for the edification and entertainment of all mankind.


The Atlantic Monthly
The Physicist Returns from the War, Vol. 176, No. 4, October 1945
(p. 114)


Reference #: 15160

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: EXPERIMENT

We don't teach our students enough of the intellectual content of experiments-their novelty and their capacity for opening new fields...My own view is that you take these things personally. You do an experiment because your own philosophy makes you want to know the result. It's too hard, and life is too short, to spend your time doing something because someone else has said it's important. You must feel the thing yourself...


The New Yorker Magazine
Profiles-Physicists, I, October 13, 1975


Reference #: 13873

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

The scientist does not defy the universe. He accepts it. It is his dish to savor, his realm to explore; it is his adventure and never-ending delight. It is complaisant and elusive but never dull. It is wonderful both in the small and in the large. In short, its exploration is the highest occupation for a gentleman.


In Leon Lederman
The God Particle
(p. 104)


Reference #: 13581

Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: UNDERSTAND

Scientific understanding...is an essential step to our finding a home for ourselves in the universe. Through understanding the universe, we become at home in it. In a certain sense we have made this universe out of human concepts and human discoveries. It ceases to be a lonely place, because we can to some extent actually navigate in it.


In A.A. Warner, Dean Morse and T.E. Cooney (eds.)
The Environment of Change
The Revolution in Science
(p. 49)


Reference #: 4495

Rabi, Isidor Issac
Born: 29 July, 1898 in Rymanów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]
Died: 11 January, l988 in New York City, New York, United States of America
General Category: FACT

Without facts we have no science. Facts are to the scientist what words are to the poet. The scientist has a love of facts, even isolated facts, similar to a poet's love of words. But a collection of facts is not a science any more than a dictionary is poetry. Around his facts the scientist weaves a logical pattern or theory which gives the facts meaning, order and significance.


From the essay %Faith in Science


Reference #: 3495

Rabinow, Jacob
General Category: INVENTOR

The job of the inventors is to provide the lead for a lagging system.


In Daniel V. DeSimone
Education for Innovation
The Process of Invention
(p. 75)


Reference #: 3498

Rabinow, Jacob
General Category: PROBLEM

...the creating of the problem is as big an invention as the solving of the problem - sometimes, a much greater invention.


In Daniel V. DeSimone
Education for Innovation
The Process of Invention
(p. 84)


Reference #: 3494

Rabinow, Jacob
General Category: INVENTOR

This is the penalty of being an inventor. If you invent something when everybody wants it, it is too late; it's been thought of by everybody else. If you invent too early, nobody wants it because it is too early. If you invent very late, after the need has passed, then it is just a mental exercise. I assure you that it is very hard to invent just at the right time.


In Daniel V. DeSimone
Education for Innovation
The Process of Invention
(p. 75)


Reference #: 15139

Rabinowitch, Eugene
General Category: SCIENCE AND POLITICS

Science has assumed such an important role in determining the parameters of national and international life, that participation in national decisions by people whose world picture has been affected by the study and practice of science (even if this picture has its own bias), is indispensable for many major political decisions - to correct the bias of the more traditional molders of national decisions, such as men with legal training.


The New Republic
Open Season On Scientists, January 1, 1966
(p. 21)


Reference #: 15038

Rabinowitch, Eugene
General Category: PHOTOSYNTHESIS

In photosynthesis we are like travelers in an unknown country around whom the early morning fog slowly begins to rise, vaguely revealing the outlines of the landscape. It will be thrilling to see it in bright daylight!


In A Scientific American Book
The Physics and Chemistry of Life
Photosynthesis
(p. 47)


Reference #: 11739

Rae, John A.
General Category: ENGINEER

...the scientist wants to know chiefly for the sake of knowing; the engineer wants to know for the sake of using.


Technology and Culture
Science and Engineering in the History of Aviation, Fall 1961
(p. 291)


Reference #: 3560

Raether, H.
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

There are more things between cathode and anode
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.


Electron Avalanches and Breakdown in Gasses
Introduction
(p. 1)


Reference #: 1994

Rainich, G.Y.
General Category: THEORY

Moreever, the really fundamental things have a way of appearing to be simple once they have been stated by a genius, who was in this case Minkowski..


Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
Analytic Function and Mathematical Physics, October 1931
(p. 700)


Reference #: 3914

Raju, P.T.
General Category: AXIOM

We are driven to conclude that science, like mathematics, is a system of axioms, assumptions, and deductions; it may start from being, but later leaves it to itself, and ends in the formation of a hypothetical reality that has nothing to do with existence; or it is the discovery of an ideal being which is of course, present in what we call actuality, and renders it an existence for us only by being present in it.


Idealistic Thought of India
(p. 84)


Reference #: 3028

Rakic, Pasko T.
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is the organ that sets us apart from any other species. It is not the strength of our muscles or of our bones that makes us different, it is our brain.


Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sciences
Great Issues for Medicine in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 882, 1999
(p. 66)


Reference #: 11444

Raleigh, Lord
General Category: ELEMENT ARGON

Indeed, I have seen some indications that the anomalous properties of argon are brought as a kind of accusation against us. But we had the very best intentions in the matter. The facts were too much for us, and all that we can do now is apologize for ourselves and for the gas.


In R. Aris, H.T. Davis and R.H. Stuewer (eds.)
Springs of Scientific Creativity
(p. 178)


Reference #: 5882

Raleigh, Sir Walter
General Category: TESTING

No instrument smaller than the World is fit to measure men and women: Examinations measures Examinees.


Laughter from a Cloud
Some Thoughts on Examinations
(p. 120)


Reference #: 15134

Raman, C.V.
General Category: NATURE

The face of Nature as presented to us is infinitely varied, but to those who love her it is ever beautiful and interesting.


The New Physics: Talks on Aspects of Science
Chapter V
(p. 29)
Philosophical Library, New York 1951


Reference #: 15135

Raman, C.V.
General Category: PHYSICS

The purpose of scientific study and research is to obtain an ever deeper understanding of the workings of nature. To the physicist falls the task of discovering the ultimate units or entities that constitute the material universe and of ascertaining the principles which govern their behavior.


The New Physics: Talks on Aspects of Science
Chapter II
(p. 9)
Philosophical Library, New York 1951


Reference #: 15136

Raman, C.V.
General Category: BEAUTY

The concept of beauty defies abstract analysis.


The New Physics: Talks on Aspects of Science
Chapter IV
(p. 23)
Philosophical Library, New York 1951


Reference #: 15481

Raman, V.V.
General Category: MOTION

Once during mass, Galileo in church Conducted a major scientific search.
He measured with his pulse how a
lamp did swing
That was to the ceiling tied with a
string.


The Physics Teacher
A Fable for Physicists, The Pendulum Period, Vol. 18, No. 7, October 1990
(p. 488)


Reference #: 14553

Ramanujan, Srinivasa
General Category: EQUATION

An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.


The Man Who Knew Infinity
Chapter Two
(p. 67)


Reference #: 9731

Ramon y Cajal, Santiago
General Category: BRAIN

To know the brain...is equivalent to ascertaining the material course of thought and will, to discovering the intimate history of life in its perpetual duel with external forces.


Recollections of My Life


Reference #: 16921

Ramón y Cajal, Santiago
General Category: UNIVERSE

As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe will also be a mystery.


In Victor Cohn
The Washington Post
Charting 'the Soul's Frail Dwelling-House, September 5, 1982, Final Edition
(p. A1)


Reference #: 9732

Ramón y Cajal, Santiago
General Category: BRAIN

Like the entomologist in pursuit of brightly coloured butterflies, my attention hunted, in the flower garden of the gray matter, cells with delicate and elegant forms, the mysterious butterflies of the soul, the beating of whose wings may some day - who knows? - clarify the secret of mental life.


Recollections of My Life
Chapter VII
(p. 363)


Reference #: 18191

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: QUESTIONS

Whosooever asks shall receive, but he must ask sensible questions in definite order, so that the answer to the first suggests a second, and the reply to the second suggests a third, and so on.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
How Discoveries Are Made
(p. 128)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 17924

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The young student, when he learns what is known, is too apt to think that little is left to be discovered; yet all our progress since the time of Sir Isaac Newton has not falsified the saying of that great man—that we are but children picking up here and there a pebble from the shore of knowledge, while a whole unknown ocean stretches before our eyes. Nothing can be more certain than this: that we are just beginning to learn something of the wonders of the world on which we live and move an have our being.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
What Is An Element?
(p. 160)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 17928

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: CONUNDRUM

The solving of conundrums has for many people a great attraction: Nature surrounds us with conundrums, and it is one of the greatest pleasures in life to attempt their solution.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
The Aurora Borealis
(p. 225)


Reference #: 17926

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: PROGRESS

Progress is made by trial and failure; the failures are generally a hundred times more numerous than the successes; yet they are usually left unchronicled.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
Radium and Its Products
(p. 179)


Reference #: 18192

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: SPECULATION

Speculation…has a deep fascination for many minds…


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
What Is An Element?
(p. 149)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 18188

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: AGE

The minds of most men, like their bodies, grow stiff with age and unreceptive of new impressions…


Essays Biographical and Chemical
The Great London Chemists
Lord Kelvin
(p. 100)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 18190

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: BEGINNING

Like every other endeavour, the beginning is in small things. Any one who tries to look into anything with sufficient care will find something new. A drop of water; a grain of sand; an insect; a blade of grass; we know indeed little about them when all is told.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
How Discoveries Are Made
(p. 116)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 18189

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: DISCOVERY

There is a difference between discovery and invention. A discovery brings to light what existed before, but what was not known; an invention is the contrivance of something that did not exist before.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
How Discoveries Are Made
(p. 115)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 17925

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: SPECULATION

Chemistry and physics are experimental sciences; and those who are engaged in attempting to enlarge the boundaries of science by experiment are generally unwilling to publish speculations; for they have learned, by long experience, that it is unsafe to anticipate events.


Essays Biographical and Chemical
Chemical Essays
Radium and Its Products
(p. 179)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 7827

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: CHEMISTRY

...I am leaving the regions of fact, which are difficult to penetrate, but which bring in their train rich rewards, and entering the regions of speculation, where many roads lie open, but where a few lead to a definite goal.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1904


Reference #: 1308

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: UNDERSTANDING

I trust we have not wearied you in giving some account of our attempts to see the invisible, touch the intangible, and weigh the imponderable.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1912
Measurements of Infinitesmal Quantities of Substances
(p. 229)


Reference #: 13838

Ramsay, Sir William
General Category: AIR

To tell the story of the development of men's ideas regarding the nature of atmospheric air is in great part to write a history of chemistry and physics.


The Gases of the Atmosphere
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 18181

Ramsay, William
General Category: SCIENCE

No process is so perfect that there is not plenty of room for improvement. There is no finality in science. And that which to-day is a scientific toy may be to-morrow the essential part of an important industry.


Essays Biological and Chemical
The Great London Chemists
Section I
(p. 19)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1908


Reference #: 13671

Ramsey, Frank Plumpton
General Category: PROBABILITY

I think I perceive or remember something but am not sure; this would seem to give me some ground for believing it, contrary to Mr. Keynes' theory, by which the degree of belief in it which it would be rational for me to have is that given by the probability relation between the proposition in question and the things I know for certain.


The Foundation of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays
Truth and Probability, The Logic of Consistency
(p. 190)


Reference #: 3400

Ramsey, James B.
General Category: STATISTICS

The political practice of citing only agreeable statistics can never settle economic arguments.


Economic Forecasting-Models or Market?
(p. 77)


Reference #: 1555

Rand, Ayn
General Category: SCIENCE

The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies, not of achievements.


Atlas Shrugged
Part II, Chapter 1


Reference #: 14622

Randi, James
General Category: SCIENCE

I believe that science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon the discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic, and it doesn't work.


The Mask of Nostradamus


Reference #: 14558

Rankin, William H.
General Category: MOON

Someday I would like to stand on the moon, look down through a quarter of a million miles of space and say, 'There certainly is a beautiful earth out tonight.'


The Man Who Rode the Thunder


Reference #: 10945

Rankine, W.J.M.
General Category: INTEGRATION

Now integrate L with respect to dt,
'(t Standing for time and persuasion);
'Then, between proper limits, 'tis easy to see,
'The definite integral Marriage must be -
'(A very concise demonstration).'


Songs and Fables
The Mathematician in Love, Verse 7


Reference #: 15422

Rankine, W.J.M.
General Category: FUNCTION

Let x denote beauty, y manners well-bred,
z fortune (this last is essential),
Let L stand for love—our philosopher said—
Then L is a function of x, y and z
Of the kind that is known as potential.


In Sir Arthur Eddington
The Philosophy of Physical Science
Chapter IX, Songs and Fables, The Mathematician in Love, Verse 6
(p. 138)


Reference #: 433

Rankine, William John Macquorn
General Category: ENGINEER

Thus it is that the commonest objects are by science rendered precious; and in like manner the engineer or the mechanic, who plans and works with understanding of the natural laws that regulate the results of his operations, raise to the dignity of a Sage.


A Manual of Applied Mechanics
(p. 11)


Reference #: 10946

Rankine, William John Macquorn
General Category: MEASUREMENT

A party of astronomers went measuring of the earth,
And forty million meters they took to be its girth;
Five hundred million inches, though, go through from pole to pole;
So lets stick to inches, feet, and yards, and the good old three-foot rule.


Songs and Fables
The Three-Foot Rule, Stanza III


Reference #: 15983

Ransom, John Crowe
General Category: FEVER

Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree.
Of chills and fever she dies, of fever and chills,
The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three,
And of medicos marveling sweetly on her ills.


The Poetry of John Crowe Ransom
Here Lies a Lady
(p. 64)


Reference #: 10411

Rapoport, Anatol
General Category: PARADOX

Paradoxes have played a dramatic part in intellectual history, often foreshadowing revolutionary developments in science, mathematics, and logic. Whenever, in any discipline, we discover a problem that cannot be solved within the conceptual framework that supposedly should apply, we experience an intellectual shock. The shock may compel us to discard the old framework and adopt a new one. It is to this process of intellectual molting that we owe the birth of many of the major ideas in mathematics and science.


Scientific American
Escape from Paradox, Vol. 217, No. 1, July 1967
(p. 50)


Reference #: 8146

Rapoport, Anatol
General Category: MAGIC

Magic is essentially metaphorical. So are dreams. So is most artistic activity, Finally, theoretical science is essentially disciplined exploitation of metaphor.


Operational Philosophy
Chapter 17
(p. 203)


Reference #: 10038

Rapoport, Anatol
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The aim of mathematical biology is to introduce into the biological sciences not only quantitative, but also deductive, methods of research. The underlying idea has been to apply to biology the methods which mathematics has been successfully utilized in the physical sciences.


In H.G. Landau
Science
Mathematical Biology, Vol. 114, July 27 1951
(p. 3)


Reference #: 10290

Rapoport, Anatol
General Category: PROBLEM

...the problems scientists are called on to solve are for the most part selected by the scientists themselves. For example, our Department of Defense did not one day decide that it wanted an atomic bomb and then order the scientists to make one. On the contrary, it was Albert Einstein, a scientist, who told Franklin D. Roosevelt, a decision maker, that such a bomb was possible.


Science, Conflict and Society: Readings from Scientific American
The Use and Misuse of Games Theory
(p. 286)


Reference #: 6548

Rashevsky, Nicolas
General Category: BIOLOGY

A very serious shortcoming is this:...There is no successful mathematical theory which would treat the integrated activities of the organism as a whole....The fundamental manifestation of life mentioned above drop out from all our theories in mathematical biology.


Mathematical Biophysics
Vol. 2
(p. 306)


Reference #: 6549

Rashevsky, Nicolas
General Category: PESSIMISM

Pessimism is not a healthy thing in science, but neither is unrealistic optimism.


Mathematical Biophysics
Vol. 2
(p. 307)


Reference #: 6547

Rashevsky, Nicolas
General Category: BIOLOGY

When we observe the phenomena of biological integration we notice, however, not quantities, varying continuously or discontinuously, but certain rather complex relations....Topological analogies go much deeper in the realm of the living when we observe not merely structural but functional (in a biological sense) relations. The unity of the organism and the unity of all life is expressed by just that kind of relations.


Mathematical Biophysics
Vol. 2
(p. 308)


Reference #: 6550

Rashevsky, Nicolas
General Category: BIOLOGY

Let us, however, appraise the problem realistically. In celestial mechanics, where we deal with forces varying as simply as the inverse square of the distance and acting on rigid masses, the three-body problem, let alone the n-body problem, still defies in its generality the ingenuity of mathematicians. The forces between cells are much more complex; they are non-conservative, and the cells themselves are not merely displaced but also changed externally and internally by these forces. What are the chances within a foreseeable number of generations to even approximately master the problem of an organism as an aggregate of cells, considering that this organism consists of some 1014 of cells, hundreds of different tissues, and thousands of complex interrelated structures. Pessimism is not a healthy thing in science, but neither is unrealistic optimism.


Mathematical Biophysics
Vol. 2
(p. 307)


Reference #: 7964

Ratzinger, Cardinal Joseph
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not an absolute to which all things have to be subordinated.


Observer
Sayings of the Week, 15 March 1987


Reference #: 7345

Raup, David
General Category: EXTINCT

To a first approximation, all species are extinct.


In Stephen Jay Gould
Natural History
The Golden Rule—A Proper Scale for Our Environmental Crisis, September 1990
(p. 31)


Reference #: 4155

Raup, David
General Category: EXTINCTION

Mass extinction is box office, a darling of the popular press, the subject of cover stories and television documentaries, many books, even a rock song…At the end of 1989, The Associated Press designated mass extinction as one of the "Top 10 Scientific Advances of the Decade." Everybody has weighed in, from the Economist to National Geographic.


Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?
Chapter 4
(p. 64)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1991


Reference #: 10330

Raven, Charles E.
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

To mention Science and Religion in the same sentence is...to affirm an antithesis and suggest a conflict.


Science, Religion and the Future
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 10571

Ravetz, J.R.
General Category: SCIENCE

The obsolescence of the conception of science as the pursuit of truth results from several changes in the social activity of science. First, the heavy warfare with 'theology and metaphysics' is over. Although a few sharp skirmishes still occur, the attacks on the freedom of science from this quarter are no longer significant. This is not so much because of the undoubted victory of science over its ancient contenders as for the deeper reason that the conclusions of natural science are no longer ideologically sensitive. What people, either the masses or the educated, believe about the inanimate universe or the biological aspects of humanity is not relevant to the stability of society as it was once thought to be.


Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems
Chapter I
(pp. 20-201)


Reference #: 16573

Rawnsley, Hardwick Drummond
General Category: ENGINEER

Yet as I watch the marvelous engineer
Guess at wind-pressure, and on favouring wind
Send forth at will her silk from stores within,
One message for men's souls I seem to hear
``Let others live to eat, I eat to spin,
Joy's soul is work: God helps the worker's mind!''


The Spider's Message
At a Gilchrist Lecture
l. 9-14


Reference #: 341

Ray, John
General Category: PHYSIC

If physic do not work, prepare for the kirk.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 149)


Reference #: 340

Ray, John
General Category: HEALTH

Health is better than wealth.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 120)


Reference #: 336

Ray, John
General Category: HEALTH

Health without money is half a sickness.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 12)


Reference #: 339

Ray, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 34)


Reference #: 337

Ray, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Piss clear, and defy the physician.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 35)


Reference #: 342

Ray, John
General Category: CURE

What cannot be cured must be endured.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 97)


Reference #: 3850

Ray, John
General Category: MANKIND

Whatever may be said for ye Antiquity of the Earth itself and bodies lodged in it ye race of mankind is new.


In Charles Robert Gunther
Further Correspondence of John Ray
(p. 260)
London, England, 1928


Reference #: 347

Ray, John
General Category: NURSE

A nurse's tongue is privileged to talk.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 17)


Reference #: 333

Ray, John
General Category: COUGH

A dry cough is the trumpeter of death.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 5)


Reference #: 332

Ray, John
General Category: PILL

Apothecaries would not give pills in sugar unless they were bitter.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 2)


Reference #: 348

Ray, John
General Category: CURE

A disease known, is half cured.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 100)


Reference #: 331

Ray, John
General Category: GOUT

With respect to gout, the physician is a lout.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 35)


Reference #: 343

Ray, John
General Category: DISEASE

Diseases are the interests of pleasure.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 6)


Reference #: 334

Ray, John
General Category: HOSPITAL

A suit of law and an urinal brings a man to the hospital.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 14)


Reference #: 335

Ray, John
General Category: HEADACHE

When the head aches all the body is the worse.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 12)


Reference #: 346

Ray, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

An old physician, a young lawyer.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 31)


Reference #: 345

Ray, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Every man is either a fool or a physician after thirty years of age.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 30)


Reference #: 344

Ray, John
General Category: HEALTH

Early to go to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 33)


Reference #: 338

Ray, John
General Category: TOOTHACHE

Who hath aching teeth hath ill tenants.


A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
(p. 26)


Reference #: 6846

Rayleigh, Lord
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Examples...which might be multiplied ad libitum, show how difficult it often is for an experimenter to interpret his results without the aid of mathematics.


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


Reference #: 627

Rayleigh, Lord
General Category: GENERALITY

Science is nothing without generalisations....The suggestion of a new idea, or the detection of a law, supersedes much that had previously been a burden upon the meory, and by introducing order and coherence facilitates the retention of the remainder in an available form.


In William C. McC. Lewis
A System of Physical Chemistry
Vol. I
(p. iv)


Reference #: 16555

Raymo, Chet
General Category: ASTRONOMY

It is easy to be overawed by the visions of the new astronomy. Many among us would prefer to retreat into a comfortable cloud of unknowing. But if we are truly interested in knowing who we are, then we must be brave enough to accept what our senses and our reason tell us. We must enter into the universe of the galaxies and the light-years, even at the risk of spiritual vertigo, and know what after all must be known.


The Soul of the Night
(p. ix)


Reference #: 16900

Raymo, Chet
General Category: TRUTH

Scientific truths are tentative and partial, and subject to continual revision and refinement, but as we tinker with truth in science-amending here, augmenting there-we always keep our ear attuned to the timbre of the web.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science
Chapter 16
(p. 145)


Reference #: 16897

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SCIENCE

...science is a spider's web. Confidence in any one strand of the web is maintained by the tension and resiliency of the entire web.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science
Chapter 16
(p. 144)


Reference #: 16899

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Perhaps the reason we, as a people, are disconnected from science is that we are disconnected from the natural world that science describes. ...Science is the conviction that the world is ruled by something more than chance and the whims of gods. Science is confidence that the human mind can make some sense of nature's complexity, and, almost paradoxically, science is humility in the face of nature's complexity. Science is respect for the evidence of the senses - seeing things as they are, and not as we wish them to be. And science is the courage and self-confidence to accept nature's indifference to our personal predicaments.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science


Reference #: 16902

Raymo, Chet
General Category: IMAGINATION

Science is not a collection of facts, nor is science something that happens in the laboratory. Science is something that happens in the head; it is a flight of imagination beyond the constraints of ordinary imagination.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science
Chapter 1
(p. 3)


Reference #: 16553

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SUN

For 5 billion years the sun has exhaled a faint breath as it burns, bathing the Earth in the flux of its exhalations, a wind of atoms and subatomic particles that feeds the Earth's atmosphere and ignites auroras.


The Soul of the Night
(p. 81)


Reference #: 16901

Raymo, Chet
General Category: TRUTH

Science is not a smorgasbord of truths from which we can pick and choose.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science
Chapter 16
(p. 144)


Reference #: 16898

Raymo, Chet
General Category: UNEXPECTED

Delight in the unexpected is part of the lifeblood of science. Almost alone among belief systems, science welcomes the disturbingly new.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science
Chapter 15
(p. 138)


Reference #: 16896

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

How is it that astronomers can tell such stories, stories more fabulous than any myth of gods and nymphs, when the ink of night offers to the eye only pinpricks of light? The answer is both simple and complex. We look, we invent, we look again. We test our inventions against what we see, and we insist that our inventions be consistent with one another, that our stories of the stars be consistent with our stories of the earth, of life, and of matter and energy. ...The story of the falling apple and the story of the stars must resonate together. Only then, when our stories of the world vibrate with a symphonic harmony, are we confident that our inventions partake of reality.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science


Reference #: 16895

Raymo, Chet
General Category: REALITY

Science is a map of reality.


The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science
Chapter 16
(p. 147)


Reference #: 16554

Raymo, Chet
General Category: UNIVERSE

Give me the ninety-two elements and I'll give you a universe. Ubiquitous hydrogen. Standoffish helium, Spooky boron. No-nonsense carbon. Promiscuous oxygen. Faithful iron. Mysterious phosphorous. Exotic xenon. Brash tin. Slippery mercury. Heavy-footed lead.


The Soul of the Night
(p. 65)


Reference #: 10885

Raymo, Chet
General Category: STAR

I weigh out nebulas. I dam up the Milky Way and use it to grind my grain. I put up summer stars like vegetables in jars for my delectation in winter. I have winter stars folded in boxes in the attic for cloudy summer nights.


Sky & Telescope
Night Brought to Numbers, Vol. 71, No. 6, June 1966
(p. 555)


Reference #: 10873

Raymo, Chet
General Category: YEARNING

We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we cry out for human affirmation from the cosmos, when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, art, and religions.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men and women, shaman. Learin is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments. Learning is dismantling the clock to see what makes it tick. or touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it (not even the word of parents, wise men and women, shamans). In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is flas as to prove it true, eve if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, or moving statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "New Born Baby Talks of Heaven" and "Aliens in U.S. Congress!" Yearning without learning is looking for healing in pretty crystals and the meaning of life in horoscopes. Yearning without learning is following whatever curretn guru offers the most promising prospects of eternal life.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, ideé fixes. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is rote science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty.
Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebular. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas.


Skeptics and True Believers
(pp. 59-61)


Reference #: 10881

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is exclusionary. If every idea has equal currency in the marketplace of ideas, then truth becomes a matter of whim, politics, expediency, or the tyranny of the strong. Science has evolved an elaborate system of social organization, communication, and peer review to ensure a high degree of conformism within an institutionally supported orthodoxy. This conservative approach to change allows for an orderly and exhaustive examination of fruitful ideas. It provides a measure of insulation from fads, political upheavals, religIous conflicts, and international strife. Yes, offbeat ideas do have a hard time of it in science. But not an impossible time. Revolutions in science are few and far between, but they do happen. Science is conservative, but of all truth systems that purport to explain the world, it is the most progressive.


Skeptics and True Believers
(p. 68)


Reference #: 10879

Raymo, Chet
General Category: MAN

We are not playthings of the gods, comet-warned and fearful; we are the comet's offspring, volatile compounds made animate, made conscious.


Skeptics and True Believers
(p. 251)


Reference #: 10874

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SCIENCE

Everything we have learned in science since the time of Galileo suggests that the nebulas and galaxies are oblivious to ur fates. Everything we have learned suggests that our souls and bodies are inseperable. Everything we have learned suggests that the grave is our destiny. Therefore, if the promise of eternal life is to have maximum drawing power, it is essential for Church and guru to undermine the legitimacy of science.


Skeptics and True Believers
(pp. 66-67)


Reference #: 10875

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SKEPTICISM

Skepticism is a critical reluctance to take anything as absolute truth, even one's own most cherished beliefs. Astonishment is the ability to be dazzled by the commonplace. At first glance these two qualities might seem opposed. The Skeptic is often thought to lack passionate commitment. The easily astonished person is sometimes thought of as gullible. In fact reasoned skepticism does not preclude passionate belief, and astonishment is enhanced by knowledge.


Skeptics and True Believers
(pp. 252-253)


Reference #: 10876

Raymo, Chet
General Category: FAITH

Let this, then, be the ground of my faith: All that we know, now and forever, all scientific knowledge that we have of this world, or will ever have, is an island in the sea [of mystery]....We live in our partial knowledge as the Dutch live on polders claimed from the sea. We dike and fill. We dredge up soil from the bed of mystery and build ourselves room to grow. And still the mystery surrounds us. It laps at our shores. It permeates the land. Scratch the surface of knowledge and mystery bubbles up like a spring. And occasionally, at certain disquieting moments in history (Aristarchus, Galileo, Planck, Einstein), a tempest of mystery come rolling from the sea and overwhelms our efforts, reclaims knowledge that has been built up by years of patient work, and forces us to retreat to the surest, most secure core of what we know, where we huddle in fear and trembling until the storm subsides, and then we start building again, throwing up dikes, pumping, filling, extending the perimeter of our know ledge and security.


Skeptics and True Believers
(p. 47)


Reference #: 14829

Raymo, Chet
General Category: MAP

Every map is a simplification of a real landscape; nevertheless, maps are enormously helpful, and it is hard to imagine how we could get along without them.


The Mouse and the Virgin
(p. 147)


Reference #: 10878

Raymo, Chet
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is an island in a sea of mystery. The metaphor takes its power from a firmly held fact: We live in a unverse that is infinite, or effectively so. Our brains are finite, a mere 100 billion nerve cells. Our mental maps of the world are therefore necessarily finite. As time passes, the scale and detail of our maps increase, but they no more exhaust the worldscape they describe than a map of the Grand Canyon depletes the power of that natural chasm to astonish and surprise.


Skeptics and True Believers
(pp. 47-48)


Reference #: 10877

Raymo, Chet
General Category: SKEPTICS

The difference between Skeptics and True Believers is not that Skeptics believe what is sensible and obvious, while True Believers accept what is fanciful and far-fetched. Often, it is the other way around.


Skeptics and True Believers
(p. 27)


Reference #: 10880

Raymo, Chet
General Category: COINCIDENCE

Coincidence is the evidence of the True Believer.


Skeptics and True Believers
(p. 107)


Reference #: 12522

Raymond, Eric S.
General Category: PROBLEM

Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.


The Cathedral and the Bazaar


Reference #: 1655

Read, H.H.
General Category: ROCKS

Watson, Janet...the best geologist is the one who has seen the most rocks.


Beginning Geology
Preface


Reference #: 3910

Read, Herbert
General Category: MEASURE

Beauty had been
Born, not, as we so often conceive it nowadays, as an ideal of humanity, but as measure, as the reduction of the chaos of appearances to the precision of linear symbols. Symmetry, balance, harmonic division, mated and mensurated intervals - such were its abstract characteristics.


Icon and Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness
Chapter IV
(p. 75)


Reference #: 13917

Read, Herbert Harold
General Category: GEOLOGIST

In these hurried days, geologists will take no harm from a quiet contemplation of the history of even this small part of their science.


The Granite Controversy
(p. xiii)


Reference #: 635

Reade, Charles
General Category: PROBABILITY

I feign probabilities. I record improbabilities.


A Terrible Temptation: a story of the day


Reference #: 6524

Reade, Winwood
General Category: GOD

When we have ascertained, by means of Science, the methods of nature's operations, we shall be able to take her place to perform them for ourselves...men will master the forces of nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then be perfect; he will be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as God.


Martyrdom of Man
Chapter IV
(pp. 513, 515)


Reference #: 6525

Reade, Winwood
General Category: EVOLUTION

There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.


Martyrdom of Man
Chapter III, Amphibious Mankind
(p. 392)


Reference #: 14621

Reade, Winwood
General Category: SPACE TRAVEL

A time will come when science will transform [our bodies] by means which we cannot conjecture...And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe.


The Martyrdom of Man


Reference #: 14620

Reade, Winwood
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe is aNouymous; it is published under secondary laws; these at least we are able to investigate, and in these perhaps we may find a partial solution of the great problem.


The Martyrdom of Man
Chapter IV
(p. 521)


Reference #: 14619

Reade, Winwood
General Category: SPACE

And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.


The Martyrdom Of Man
Chapter IV
(p. 515)


Reference #: 13240

Reanney, D.
General Category: PHYSICS

Some years ago, Stephen Hawking was elected to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, the chair once occupied by Isaac Newton. Hawking's inaugural lecture had the ambitious title 'Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?' That is, Hawking was suggesting that science was close to accomplishing its ultimate goal - the unification of all the laws of physics into one coherent, consistent framework which would define and encompass the whole of reality. Such a unified scheme would not just 'represent' truth in some abstract way, it would in an important sense be truth. By now, this should not surprise us. As we have seen, the homely metaphors of commonsense and everyday life offer us no guidance when we look at the bewildering cosmos in which we find ourselves. Only mathematics, in whose code nature writes her secrets, can tell us what is 'real'.


The Death of Forever
(p. 156)


Reference #: 13238

Reanney, D.
General Category: QUANTUM MECHANICS

...quantum mechanics is par excellence the field of science where commonsense breaks down completely. In particular, the link between cause and effect blurs. In our everyday world of ordinary experience, we take it for granted that a ball will not move unless some force (like a kick) is imparted to it. In the micro world of the quantum, an electron on one side of a barrier can simply 'reappear' on the other, without physically 'moving' - an effect called quantum tunnelling.


The Death of Forever
(p. 145)


Reference #: 13239

Reanney, D.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is like a fishing line which we can cast into the future by virtue of its logical coherence and predicative power. When we analyze the cargo of information it brings back into the present, we find ourselves struggling to understand concepts for which there are no words, no images, no layers of reinforced experience. What we see in these mathematical cryptograms are signals from the future which our brains, at this verbal, ego-self stage of their evolution, cannot hope to comprehend.


The Death of Forever
(p. 140)


Reference #: 18140

Record, Robert
General Category: REASON

…who so ever will travail in the sciences with profit, must lean rather to reason, than to authority, else he may be deceaved.


The Castle of Knowledge
The Fourth Treatise
(p. 182)


Reference #: 18139

Record, Robert
General Category: AUTHORITY

No man can worthely praise Ptolemye, his travell being so great, his diligence so exacte in observations, and conference with all nations, and all ages, and his reasonable examination of all opinions, with demonstrable confirmation of his owne assertion, yet muste you and all men take heed, that both in him and in all mennes workes, you be not abused by their authoritye, but evermore attend to their reasons, and examine them well, ever regarding more what is saide, and how it is proved, than who saieth it for authorite often times deceaveth many menne…


The Castle of Knowledge
The Fourth Treatise
(p. 119)
Imprinted by R. Wolfe, London, England; 1556


Reference #: 17929

Record, Robert
General Category: REASON

If reasons reache transcende the skye,

Why shoulde it then to earthe be bounde?

The witte is wronged and leadde awrye,

If mynde be maried to the grounde.


The Castle of Knowledge
The Preface
Imprinted by R. Wolfe, London, England; 1556


Reference #: 17933

Record, Robert
General Category: UNDERSTANDING

I see in the heaven marvelous motions; and in the reste of the worlde straunge transmutations, and therfore desire muche to know what the worlde is, and what are the principall partes of it, and also how all these strange sightes doo come.


The Castle of Knowledge
The First Treatise
(p. 3)
Imprinted by R. Wolfe, London, England; 1556


Reference #: 18141

Record, Robert
General Category: REASON

You are to farre deceived, and therefore I interrupt your woordes, for all things are to bee governed by reason.


The Castle of Knowledge
The Fourth Treatise
(p. 243)


Reference #: 17932

Record, Robert
General Category: IGNORANCE

…the greatest pointe of all ignorance, not to know the goossenes of ignorance, and not to understand the benefite of knowledge…


The Castle of Knowledge
The First Treatise
(pp. 1-2)
Imprinted by R. Wolfe, London, England; 1556


Reference #: 17931

Record, Robert
General Category: RESEARCH

The time seemeth longe (bee it never so shorte indeed) to hym that desirously looketh for any thing: for as the obtaining of it bringeth great pleasure, namelye the thinge itselfe being profitable, so the wante thereof causeth displeasure and cotinuall grief tyll the desire be eyther fully satisfied, other partly (at the least) accomplished.


The Castle of Knowledge
The First Treatise
(p. 1)
Imprinted by R. Wolfe, London, England; 1556


Reference #: 6616

Recorde, Robert
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Beside the mathematical arts there is no infallible knowledge, except it be borrowed from them.


In Morris Kline
Mathematics and the Physical World
(p. 130)


Reference #: 2093

Reddy, Francis
Walz-Chojnacki, Grey
General Category: BEAUTY

We live in an age when the complex and forbidding explanations of science often masks the simple beauty of nature.


Celestial Delights
Introduction
(p. ix)
Celestialarts, Berkeley; 1992


Reference #: 5226

Redfield, Casper L.
General Category: INVENTOR

A man's capacity as an inventor depends upon his faculty of making guesses which have some semblance of possibility...


In Joseph Rossman
Industrial Creativity: The Psychology of the Inventor
(p. 111)


Reference #: 4171

Redfield, Roy A.
General Category: PROBABILITY

Good and bad come mingled always. The long-time winner is the man who is not unreasonably discouraged by persistent streaks of ill fortune not at other times made reckless with the thought that he is fortune's darling. He keeps a cool head and trusts in the mathematics of probability, or as often said, the law of averages.


Factors of Growth in a Law Practice
(p. 168)


Reference #: 4170

Redfield, Roy A.
General Category: AVERAGE

Make sure that the real average is what you are dealing with.


Factors of Growth in a Law Practice
(p. 170)


Reference #: 3143

Redford, Sophie E.
General Category: DENTIST

There is a time, there is a place,
When he looks down into my face—
And now my senses madly thrill:
He "fills" a place none else can fill!

Without him that dull, aching void
But mocks at me when I'm annoyed
Beyond endurance, by the tricks
of Demons only he can "fix!"

"Tis then he means to me so much!
Vexations vanish by his touch!
And though my list of friends is full,
"Tis he, alone, who has the "pull!"

They say this fellow has much nerve,
That his strong are must never swerve,
His surplus nerve I think I see
Replensih as he "unnerves" me!

So I would build an arch prodigious
To him who builds the little "bridges,"
And fashion then a laurel wreath
To crown the man who "crowns our teeth!"


Cartoon Magazine
To the D.D.S., Vol. 18, No. 6, December 1920
(p. 829)


Reference #: 4145

Redi, Francesco
General Category: LIFE

And, although it be a matter of daily observation that infinite numbers of worms are produced in dead bodies and decayed plants, I feel, I say, inclined to believe that these worms are all generated by insemination and that the putrefied matter in which they are found has no other office than that of serving as a place, or suitable nest, where animals deposit their eggs at the breeding season, and in which they also find nourishment….


Experiments on the Generation of Insects
(p. 27)


Reference #: 4143

Redi, Francesco
General Category: LIFE

Although content to be corrected by any one wiser than myself, if I should make erroneous statements, I shall express my belief that the Earth after having brought forth the first plants and animals at the beginning by order of the Supreme and Omnipotent Creator, has never since produced any kinds of plants or animals, either perfect or imperfect….


Experiments on the Generation of Insects
(pp. 26-27)


Reference #: 4144

Redi, Francesco
General Category: BELIEF

Belief would be vain without the confirmation of experiment, hence in the middle of July, I put a snake, some fish, some eels of the Arno, and a slice of milk-fed veal in four large, wide-mouthed flasks; having well closed and sealed them, I then filled the same number of flasks in the same way, only leaving these open.


Experiments on the Generation of Insects
(p. 33)


Reference #: 3020

Reed, Ishmael
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe is a spiraling Big Band in a polka-dotted speak-easy, effectively generating new lights every one-night stand.


In A. Zee
An Old Man's Toy
(p. 123)


Reference #: 12179

Reed, T.D.
General Category: TYPOLOGY

Towards the end of the last century those strange new gods Typology and Chronology, Athanasian in their relationship, arose and the archaeologists bowed down and worshipped them...The younger archaeologist of to-day is a sad, wise, disillusioned, and almost human being.


The Battle for Britain in the 5th Century: An Essay in Dark Age History
(pp. 5-6)


Reference #: 5305

Rees, Mina
General Category: MATHEMATICS

In dealing with academics, it is absolutely superb to be able to say you're a mathematician! Nobody dares to say mathematics is not important or not significant. ...No discipline surpasses mathematics in pure academic prestige.


In Donald J Albers and G.L. Alexanderson (eds.)
Mathematical People
Mina Rees
(p. 260)


Reference #: 7644

Rees, Sir Martin
General Category: ATOM

If we are to understand an everyday question like "Where did the atoms we are made of come from?" we must understand the stars.


New York Times
Interview by Claudia Dreifus, April 26, 1998


Reference #: 201

Rees, Sir Martin
General Category: ASTRONOMER

Everything astronomers observe turns out to be a small and atypical fraction of what exists.


Before the Beginning
(p. 103)


Reference #: 7652

Rees, Sir Martin
General Category: DUST

We are the dust of long dead stars. Or, if you want, to be less romantic, we are nuclear waste.


New York Times
Interview by Claudia Dreifus, April 26, 1998


Reference #: 8235

Rees, Sir Martin
General Category: BIG BANG

There could have been more than one Big Bang, each creating its own universe; in other words, there may be a 'multiverse' ...Our universe may be just one of an ensemble of all possible universes, constrained only by the requirement that it allows our convergence.


Our Cosmic Habitat


Reference #: 17483

Reese, C.L.
General Category: CHEMICAL AFFINITIES

Our friends from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have, perhaps, done more to establish the idea of what a chemical engineer is than anyone else, and there idea is that a chemical engineer is one who understands and knows and has learned the fundamentals of the elementary processes such as distillation, filtration, precipitation, flow of gases and liquids, heat transmission, and so on.


Transactions of the Institute of Chemical Engineering
Presidential Address, Vol. 2, 1924
(p. 16)


Reference #: 1838

Reese, Lisette Woodworth
General Category: BOOK

A book may be a flower that blows;
A road to a far town;
A roof, a well, a tower;
A book
May be a staff, a crook.


Books


Reference #: 11884

Reeve, F.D.
General Category: REALITY

Because all things balance-as on a wheel-and we cannot see nine-tenths of what is real, our claims of self-reliance are pieced together by unpanned gold. The whole system is a game: the planets are the shells; our earth, the pea. May there be no moaning of the bar. Like ships at sunset in a reverie, We are shadows of what we are.


The American Poetry Review
Coasting, Vol. 24, No. 4, July-August 1995
(p. 38)


Reference #: 3104

Reeves, Hubert
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

In the beginning was the absolute rule of the flame: The universe was in limbo. Then after countless eras, the fires slowly abated like the sea at the outgoing tide. Matter awoke and organized itself; the flame gave way to music.


Atoms of Silence
Introduction
(p. 5)
The MIT Press, Cambridge 1984


Reference #: 3105

Reeves, Hubert
General Category: COSMOS

Knowledge of the cosmos is much more than a luxury for cultivated souls. It is the foundation of a cosmic consciousness. It casts light on the heavy responsibilities that have fallen upon us.


Atoms of Silence
Chapter 13
(p. 146)
The MIT Press, Cambridge 1984


Reference #: 3106

Reeves, Hubert
General Category: MATTER

The organization of the universe demands that matter abandon itself to the games of chance.


Atoms of Silence
Chapter 16
(p. 177)
The MIT Press, Cambridge 1984


Reference #: 17769

Regan, Ronald
General Category: ERROR

I will stand on, and continue to use, the figures I have used, because I believe they are correct. Now, I'm not going to deny that you don't now and then slip up on something; no one bats a thousand.


Washington Post
On Bandwagon, Regan Seeks to Stiffen Credibility Grip, 20 April 1980 (A8)


Reference #: 8743

Regnault, Pére
General Category: WORLD

We have not...Eyes piercing enough to penetrate so far as the Surface of the World; we don't see the external Figure of it: But if we judge it by the common Persuasion, and by what is offered to our Senses, when the Weather is serene, and the Heavens sparkles with Stars, the World is round: It is a Sphere.


Philosophical Conversations
Vol. I, Conversation XIII
(p. 158)


Reference #: 8266

Regnault, Pére
General Category: TEACH

Will you discover to me...those Secrets which Nature has imparted to you?


Philosophical Conversations
Vol. I, Conversation XII
(p. 154)


Reference #: 8745

Regnault, Pére
General Category: MOTION

Nothing seems more clear at first than the Idea of Motion, and yet nothing is more obscure when one comes to search thoroughly into it.


Philosophical Conversations
Vol. I, Conversation VI
(p. 58)


Reference #: 8265

Regnault, Pére
General Category: PARTICLE

The Imagination is lost here. Rather than the Minds; for if you divide a Particle into the most inconceivably minute Parts, the Mind will always find therein something that regards the West, and something that regards the East; and what regards the West, is not that which regards the East.


Philosophical Conversations
Vol. I, Conversation I
(p. 9)


Reference #: 8744

Regnault, Pére
General Category: WORLD

Till you have discovered to me the Mysteries of the Loadstone, I shall be no more at Quiet than a Loadstone itself, which is not in its natural Situation, and which is seeking out the Poles of the Earth.


Philosophical Conversations
Vol. I, Conversation XV
(p. 196)


Reference #: 14007

Reich, Charles A.
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Technology and production can be great benefactors of man, but they are mindless instruments, and if undirected they careen along with a momentum of their own. In our country, they pulverize everything in their path: the landscape, the natural environment, history and tradition, the amenities and civilities, the privacy and spaciousness of life, beauty, and the fragile, slow-growing social structures which bind us together.


The Greening of America
Chapter 1
(p. 6)


Reference #: 16238

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: UNIVERSE

Instead of asking for a cause of the universe, the scientist can ask only for the cause of the present state of the universe; and his task will consist in pushing farther and farther back the date from which he is able to account for the universe in terms of laws of nature.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 12
(p. 208)


Reference #: 16248

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: CELL

The production of just one living cell from inorganic matter is the most urgent problem which concerns the biologist who wants to make the theory of evolution complete....Presumably, biologists will someday construct synthetic albumen molecules of the gene type and of the protoplasm type, put them together, and thus produce an aggregate which possesses all the characteristics of a living cell. Should the experiment succeed, it would demonstrate conclusively that the origin of life can be traced back to inorganic matter.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 12
(p. 202)


Reference #: 16247

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: CHANCE

Like pebbles on the beach, biological species are ordered through a selective cause; chance in combination with selection produces order.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 12
(p. 199)


Reference #: 16246

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: PROBABLE

To say that observations of the past are certain, whereas predictions are merely probable, is not the ultimate answer to the question of induction; it is only a sort of intermediate answer, which is incomplete unless a theory of probability is developed that explains what we should mean by "probable" and on what ground we can assert probabilities.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
(p. 93)


Reference #: 16241

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The belief in science has replaced in large measure, the belief in God. Even where religion was regarded as compatible with science, it was modified by the mentality of the believer in scientific truth.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 3
(p. 44)


Reference #: 16244

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: LOGICIAN

The act of discovery escapes logical analysis; there are no logical rules in terms of which a 'discovery machine' could be constructed that would take over the creative function of the genius. But it is not the logician's task to account for scientific discoveries; all he can do is to analyze the relation between given facts and a theory presented to him with the claim that it explains these facts. In other words, logic is concerned with the context of justification.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 14
(p. 231)


Reference #: 16243

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: ORDER

...whereas inorganic nature was seen to be controlled by the laws of cause and effect, organic nature appeared to be governed by the law of purpose and means.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 12
(p. 192)


Reference #: 16242

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: DEFINITIONS

A posit is a statement which we treat as true although we do not know whether it is so.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
(p. 240)


Reference #: 16239

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: THEORY

The study of inductive inference belongs to the theory of probability, since observational facts can make a theory only probable but will never make it absolutely certain.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
(p. 231)


Reference #: 16240

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: TELEOLOGY

Teleology is analogism, is pseudo explanation; it belongs in speculative philosophy, but has no place in scientific philosophy.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 12
(p. 195)


Reference #: 16245

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: DISCOVERY

The scientist who discovers a theory is usually guided to his discovery by guesses; he cannot name a method by means of which he found the theory and can only say that it appeared plausible to him, that he had the right hunch or that he saw intuitively which assumption would fit the facts.


The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
Chapter 14
(p. 230)


Reference #: 829

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: SPACETIME

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibnitz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.


In Paul Schilpp
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist
The Philosophical Significance of the Theory of Relativity, IV
Open Court, La Salle. 1979


Reference #: 1567

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: PHYSICS

If one knows physics fro a distance only, if he hears merely strange names and mathematical formulae in it, he will, indeed, come to believe that it is an affair of the learned alone—ingeniously and wisely constructed, but without significance for men of other interests and problems.


Atoms and Cosmos
Chapter 19
(p. 293)
The Macmillan Company, New York 1933


Reference #: 12987

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: TIME

There is no other way to solve the problem of time than the way through physics….If time is objective the physicist must have discovered the fact. If there is Becoming, the physicist must know it….If there is a solution to the philosophical problem of time, it is written down in the equations of mathematical physics.


The Direction of Time
(p. 16)
University of California Press, Berkeley; 1956


Reference #: 12988

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: TIME

There is no other way to solve the problem of time than the way through physics. More than any other science, physics has been concerned with the nature of time. If time is objective the physicist must have discovered that fact.


The Direction of Time
(p. 16)
University of California Press, Berkeley; 1956


Reference #: 15419

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: TRUTH

He who searches for truth must not appease his urge by giving himself up to the narcotic of belief.


In Ruth Renya
The Philosophy of Matter in the Atomic Era
(p. 16)


Reference #: 15438

Reichenbach, Hans
General Category: DIMENSION

Let us assume that the three dimensions of space are visualized in the customary fashion, and let us substitute a color for the fourth dimension. Every physical object is liable to changes in color as well as in position. An object might, for example, be capable of going through all shades from red through violet to blue. A physical interaction between any two bodies is possible only if they are close to each other in space as well as in color. Bodies of different colors would penetrate each other without interference...If we lock a number of flies into a red glass globe, they may yet escape: they may change their color to blue and then able to penetrate the red globe.


The Philosophy of Space & Time
Section 44
(pp. 281-282)


Reference #: 7810

Reichstein, Tadeus
General Category: CHEMIST

If a chemist wishes to do research on the isolation of physiologically active materials, he is dependent upon the collaboration of physiologists who assist him by controlling t he grading through experimentation on animals.


Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1950


Reference #: 17580

Reid, Constance
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is a world created by the mind of man, and the mathematicians are people who devote their lives to what seems to me a wonderful kind of play!


In G.L. Anderson
Two Year College Mathematical Journal
An Interview with Constance Reid, Vol. 11, 1980
(p. 238)


Reference #: 5427

Reid, Constance
General Category: MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM

The answer to the question Can there be a general method for solving all mathematical problems? is no!
Perhaps, in a world of unsolved and apparently unsolvable problems, we would have thought that the desirable answer to this question from any point of view, would have been yes. But from the point of view of mathematicians a yes would have been far less satisfying than a no is.Not only are the problems of mathematics infinite and hence inexhaustible, but mathematics itself is inexhaustible.


Intorduction to Higher Mathematics for the General Reader
(p. 180)
Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, New York, United States of America 1959


Reference #: 17032

Reid, Thomas
General Category: IMAGINATION

It is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error andfalse theory. A creative imagination disdains the mean offices of digging for a foundation, of removing rubbish, and carrying materials; leaving these servile employments to the drudges in science, it plans a design, and raises a fabric. Invention supplies materials where they are wanting, and fancy adds colouring and every befitting ornament. The work pleases the eye, and wants nothing but solidity and a good foundation.


The Works of Thomas Reid
Vol. I, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, Chapter I, section ii
(p. 99)


Reference #: 17031

Reid, Thomas
General Category: ANATOMY

If a thousand of the greatest wits that ever the world produced were, without any previous knowledge in anatomy, to sit down and contrive how, and by what internal organs, the various functions of the human body are carried on, how the blood is made to circulate and the limbs to move, they would not, in a thousand years, hit upon anything like the truth.


The Works of Thomas Reid
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay I, Chapter III
(p. 235)


Reference #: 3702

Reid, Thomas
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The mathematician pays not the least regard either to testimony or conjecture, but deduces everything by demonstrative reasoning, from his definitions and axioms. Indeed, whatever is built upon conjecture, is improperly called science; for conjecture may beget opinion, but cannot produce knowledge.


Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Essay 1, Chapter 3


Reference #: 3973

Reid, Thomas
General Category: MATHEMATICS

In mathematics it [sophistry] had no place from the beginning: Mathematicians having had the wisdom to define accurately the terms they use, and to lay down, as axioms, the first principles on which their reasoning is grounded. Accordingly we find no parties among mathematicians, and hardly any disputes.


Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Essay 1, Chapter 1


Reference #: 3974

Reid, Thomas
General Category: SIMPLICITY

Men are often led into errors by the love of simplicity, which disposes us to reduce things to few principles, and to conceive a greater simplicity in nature than there really is.


Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Essay VI, Chapter VIII
(p. 696)


Reference #: 3701

Reid, Thomas
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics, once fairly established on the foundation of a few axioms and definitions, as upon a rock, has grown from age to age, so as to become the most solid fabric that human reason can boast.


Essays on the Intellectual Power of Man (4th Edition)
(p. 461)


Reference #: 17234

Reidel, Dordrecht
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

The Second Law can never be proved mathematically by means of the equations of dynamics alone.


In B. McGuinness (ed.)
Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems. Selected Writings
(p. 204)


Reference #: 11751

Reines, F.
Cowan, C.
General Category: NEUTRINO

We are happy to inform you that we have definitely detected neutrinos from fission fragments by observing beta-decay of protons.


Telegram to W. Pauli
14 June 1956


Reference #: 7608

Reiser, Anton
General Category: THEORY

Our experience and observations alone never lead to finalities. Theory, however, creates reliable roads over which we may pursue our journeys through the world of observations.


In Bernard Jaffee
New World of Chemistry
(p. 133)


Reference #: 6925

Reiss, H.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

Almost all books on thermodynamics contain some errors which are not purely typographical.


Methods of Thermodynamics
Preface
(p. ix)


Reference #: 6926

Reiss, H.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

...the almost certain truth that nobody (authors included) understands thermodynamics completely. The writing of a book therefore becomes a kind of catharsis in which the author exorcises his own demon of incomprehension and prevents it from occupying the soul of another.


Methods of Thermodynamics
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 16167

Renan, Ernest
General Category: TRUTH

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.


In L.I. Ponomarev
The Quantum Dice
(p. 34)


Reference #: 7161

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, and science alone, can give to humanity what it most craves, a symbol and a law.


In Louis Trenchard
More
The Limitations of Science, Chapter I
(p. 2)


Reference #: 6128

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Socrates founded philosophy, and Aristotle science. There was philosophy before Socrates, and science before Aristotle; and since Socrates and since Aristotle, philosophy and science have made immense progress: but all has all been built upon the foundations they laid.


Life of Jesus
Chapter 28
(p. 411)


Reference #: 10396

Renan, Ernest
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

With the saints, the heroes, the great men of all ages we may fearlessly compare our men of scientific minds, given solely to the research of truth, indifferent to fortune, often proud of their poverty, smiling at the honors they are offered, as careless of flattery as of obloquy, sure of the worth of that they are doing, and happy because they possess truth.


Scientific American
The Nobility of Science, Vol. XL, No. 20, New Series17 May 1879
(p. 310)


Reference #: 13821

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE

...science is a religion, science alone will henceforth make the creeds, science alone can solve for men the eternal problems, the solutions of which his nature imperatively demands.


The Future of Science
Chapter V
(p. 97)


Reference #: 13823

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Orthodox people have as a rule very little scientific honesty. They do not investigate, they try to prove and this must necessarily be so. The result has been given to them beforehand; this result is true, undoubtedly true. Science has no business with it, science which starts from doubt without knowing whither it is going, and gives itself up bound hand and foot to criticism which leads it wheresoever it lists.


The Future of Science
Chapter III
(p. 33)


Reference #: 13820

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE

The lofty serenity of science becomes possible only on the condition of impartial criticism, which without regard for the beliefs of a certain portion of humanity, handles its imperturbable instrument with the inflexibility of the geometrician, without anger and without pity. The critic never insults.


The Future of Science
Chapter XV
(p. 257)


Reference #: 13822

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE

A little true science is better than a great deal of bad science. One is less liable to error by confessing one's ignorance than by fancying that one knows a great many things one does not.


The Future of Science
Preface
(p. xix)


Reference #: 13824

Renan, Ernest
General Category: TRUTH

Science has no enemies save those who consider truth as useless and making no difference, and those who granting to truth its priceless value profess to get at it by other roads than those of criticism and rational investigation.


The Future of Science
Chapter IV
(p. 68)


Reference #: 13825

Renan, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE

...science must pursue its road without minding with whom it comes in collision. Let the others get out of the way. If it appears to raise objections against received dogmas, it is not for science but the received dogmas to be on the defensive and to reply to the objections. Science should behave as if the world were free from preconceived opinions, and not heed the difficulties it starts.


The Future of Science
Chapter V
(p. 83)


Reference #: 132

Renard, Jules
General Category: MEDICAL

There is nothing so sickening as to leaf through a medical dictionary.


In Evan Esar
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Doubleday, Garden City. 1968


Reference #: 16271

Renard, Maurice
General Category: UNIVERSE

Man, peering at the Universe through only a few tiny windows-his senses-catches mere glimpses of the world around him. He would do well to brace himself against unexpected surprises from the vast unknown; from that immeasurable sector of reality that has remained a closed book.


In Charles Nodl Martin
The Role of Perception in Science
(p. 8)


Reference #: 13799

Renaudot, Eusébe
General Category: ELEMENT ANTIMONY

We, the undersigned Doctors of medicine of the Faculty of Paris, certify to all to whom it may concern, that the qualities of antimony are recognized by us to be very useful for the cure of a number of illnesses. We certify this on the basis of long usage and continued experience. Further we declare that this remedy which has for so long been charged with having a poisonous malignity has many rare virtues and that a physician can successfully employ it to combat a great number of diseases provided that he uses it with a prudence and discretion.


In Allen G. Debus
The French Paracelsians
Chapter 3
(p. 97)


Reference #: 12469

Restak, Richard
General Category: BRAIN

But if the brain is not like a computer, then what is it like? What kind of model can we form in regard to its functioning? I believe there's only one answer to that question, and perhaps it will disturb you: there is no model of the brain, nor will there ever be. That's because the brain, as the constructor of all models, transcends all models. The brain's uniqueness stems from the fact that nowhere in the known universe is there anything even remotely resembling it.


The Brain Has A Mind of Its Own


Reference #: 14798

Restak, Richard
General Category: REDUCTIONISM

I cannot think of a single example of a simpler level of organization 'explaining' the operations in entirety of a more complex one.


The Modular Brain


Reference #: 12470

Restak, Richard M.
General Category: BRAIN

Since the brain is unlike any other structure in the known universe, it seems reasonable to expect that our understanding of its functioning - if it can ever be achieved - will require approaches that are drastically different from the way we understand other physical systems.


The Brain. The Last Frontier


Reference #: 5444

Reswick, J.B.
General Category: DESIGN

Design is the essential purpose of engineering.


In Morris Asimow
Introduction to Design
Forward


Reference #: 12215

Revelation 12:3-4
General Category: METEOR

And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth.


The Bible


Reference #: 10487

Revelation 21:18
General Category: MINERAL GLASS

And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.


The Bible


Reference #: 12221

Revelation 21:21
General Category: MINERAL AMETHYST

And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones...the twelfth, an amethyst.


The Bible


Reference #: 12298

Revelation 4:2-3
General Category: MINERAL SARDINE STONE

...and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone...


The Bible


Reference #: 10491

Revelation 4:3
General Category: MINERAL EMERALD

And he that sat was was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.


The Bible


Reference #: 12227

Revelation 7:3
General Category: CONSERVATION

Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.


The Bible


Reference #: 10845

Revelation 9:1-2
General Category: METEOR

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened.


The Bible


Reference #: 4549

Rexroth, Kenneth
General Category: STARS

When in your middle years
The great comet comes again
Remember me, a child,
Awake in the summer night,
Standing in my crib and
Watching that long-haired star
So many years ago.
Go out in the dark and see
Its plume over water
Dribbling on the liquid night,
And think that life and glory
Flickered on the rushing
Bloodstream for me once, and for
All who have gone before me,
Vessels of the billion-year-long
River that flows now in your veins.


Halley's Comet


Reference #: 12676

Rexroth, Kenneth
General Category: LOGIC

The space of night is infinite,
The blackness and emptiness
Crossed only by thin bright fences
Of logic.


The Collected Shorter Poems
Theory of Numbers
(p. 165)


Reference #: 16594

Rey, H.A.
General Category: NATURE

No matter what part of nature one studies – microbes or Milky Ways – there is a point where one begins but never an end.


The Stars: A New Way to See Them
Part 4
(p. 108)
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachussetts, United States of America; 1967


Reference #: 1242

Reynolds, H.T.
General Category: MEASURE

Crude measurement usually yields misleading, even erroneous conclusions no matter how sophisticated a technique is used.


Analysis of Nominal Data
(p. 56)


Reference #: 1243

Reynolds, H.T.
General Category: STATISTICS

...statistics - whatever their mathematical sophistication and elegance - cannot make bad variables into good ones.


Analysis of Nominal Data
(p. 8)


Reference #: 17266

Reynolds, William C.
General Category: SCIENCE

Concepts form the basis for any science. These are ideas, usually somewhat vague (especially when first encountered), which often defy really adequate definition. The meaning of a new concept can seldom be grasped from reading a one-paragraph discussion. There must be time to become accustomed to the concept, to investigate it with prior knowledge, and to associate it with personal experience. Inability to work with details of a new subject can often be traced to inadequate understanding of its basic concepts.


Thermodynamics
McGraw-Hill, New York, New York, United States of America 1968


Reference #: 6655

Reznick, Bruce
General Category: SET

A set is a set
(you bet; you bet!)
And nothing could not be a set,
you bet!
That is, my pet
Until you've met
My very special set!
If this were a set,

It'd be a threat,
And lead to conclusions
That you'd regret
An make you fret
And wet with sweat—
This very special set!

Let A be the set or every U
That doesn't belong to U.
Then if A's in A, it's not in A
And if not, then what can you do?

So don't use the het-
Erological set
`Cause somethings cannot
Be a set, my pet.
Or better yet,
Go out and get
The class of very set.
Oh, Bertrand.


Mathematics Magazine
A Set is A Set, Vol. 66, No. 2, April 1993
(p. 95)


Reference #: 593

Rhazes
General Category: PATIENTS

The patient who consults a great many physicians is likely to have a very confused state of mind.


In Samuel Evans Massengill
A Sketch of Medicine and Pharmacy
(p. 45)


Reference #: 16529

Rheticus, Georg Joachin
General Category: ASTRONOMER

The astronomer who studies the motion of the stars is surely like a blind man who, with only a staff [mathematics] to guide him, must make a great, endless, hazardous journey that winds through innumerable desolate places. What will be the result? Proceeding anxiously for a while and groping his way with his staff, he will at some time, leaning upon it, cry out in despair to Heaven, Earth and all the Gods to aid him in his misery.


In Arthur Koestler
The Sleepwalkers
Part III, I, 10
(p. 161)


Reference #: 13383

Rhinehart, Luke
General Category: CHANCE

In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Chance and without him was not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men.


The Dice Man


Reference #: 15238

Rhodes, Charles E.
General Category: LAW

When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deduced, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably, an infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.


In Paul Dickson
The Official Explanations
(p. R-192)


Reference #: 5850

Rhodes, Frank H.T.Stone, Richard O.
General Category: FACT

Science, it is generally asserted, is concerned with facts. But ultimately there is nothing in Nature labeled "fact." Facts represent human abstractions, and our recognition and understanding of facts are based upon individual perception and experience.


Language of the Earth
Chapter 2
(p. 45)


Reference #: 5897

Rich, Adrienne
General Category: MILKY WAY

Driving at night I feel the Milky Way
Streaming above me like the graph of a cry.


Leaflets, Poems 1965-1968
Ghazals 7/24/68: ii


Reference #: 17475

Richards, Dickinson W.
General Category: THEORY

The problems are the ones that we have always known. The little gods are still with us, under different names. There is conformity: of technique, leading to repetition; of language, encouraging if not imposing conformity of thought. There is popularity: it is so easy to ride along on an already surging tide; to plant more seed in an already well-ploughed field; so hard to drive a new furrow into stony ground. There is laxness: the disregard of small errors, of deviations, of the unexpected response; the easy worship of the smooth curve. There is also fear: the fear of speculation; the overprotective fear of being wrong. We are forgetful of the curious and wayward dialectic of science, whereby a well-constructed theory even if it is wrong, can bring a signal advance.


Transactions of the Association of American Physicians
Vol. 75, 1962
(p. I)


Reference #: 10206

Richards, I.A.
General Category: SCIENCE

For science, which is simply our most elaborate way of pointing to things systematically, tells us and can tell us nothing about the nature of things in any ultimate sense. It can never answer any question of the form: What is so and so? it can only tell us how so and so behaves. And it does not attempt to do more than this.


Science and Poetry
Chapter V
(pp. 52-53)


Reference #: 10205

Richards, I.A.
General Category: SCIENTIST

We believe a scientist because he can substantiate his remarks, not because he is eloquent and forcible in his enunciation. In fact, we distrust him when he seems to be influencing us by his manner.


Science and Poetry
Chapter II
(p. 24)


Reference #: 9278

Richards, I.A.
General Category: BOOK

A book is a machine to think with...


Principles of Literary Criticism
Preface
(p. 1)


Reference #: 5898

Richards, Peter
General Category: DOCTOR

A doctor must accept and live with uncertainty and fallability, inescapable parts of any walk of life but harder to bear in matters of life or death.


Learning Medicine: An Informal Guide to a Career in Medicine
(pp. 9-10)
BMJ Publishing Group, London, England; 1985


Reference #: 7612

Richards, Theodore W.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry has not grown spontaneously to its present state; it is a product of human mentality. The science which we know today is but an echo of the eternal and incomprehensible 'music of the spheres' as heard and recorded by the minds of individual men.


In Bernard Jaffe
New World of Chemistry
(p. vi)


Reference #: 7836

Richards, Theodore W.
General Category: ATOMIC WEIGHT

If our inconceivably ancient Universe even had any beginning, the conditions determining that beginning must even now be engraved in the atomic weights. They are the hieroglyphics which tell in a language of their own the story of the birth or evolution of all matter, and the Periodic Table containing the classification of the elements is the Rosetta Stone, which may enable us to interpret them. Until, however, these hieroglyphics are clearly visible in their true form, we cannot hope for an interpretation.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 6, 1919


Reference #: 7831

Richards, Theodore W.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

The importance of accurate knowledge in a case of this sort was foreseen long ago by Plato, who perhaps drew his inspiration from yet more ancient knowledge, coming from wise men of the Far East. As I have often quoted, he said: 'If from any art that which concerns weighing and measuring and arithmetic is taken away, how little is left of that art!' The implication of this wise saying as regards the study of atomic weights is clear; any increase in the accuracy of the determination of these quantities must of necessity add greatly to our insight into the profound mysteries with which chemistry has to deal.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 6, 1919


Reference #: 7832

Richards, Theodore W.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

If our inconceivably ancient Universe even had any beginning, the conditions determining that beginning must even now be engraved in the atomic weights. They are the hieroglyphics which tell in a language of their own the story of the birth or evolution of all matter, and the Periodic Table containing the classification of the elements is the Rosetta Stone which may enable us to interpret them. Until, however, these hieroglyphics are clearly visible in their true form, we cannot hope for an interpretation. The first task of the investigator is to define sharply the outlines of these graven characters, in order that their true form may be manifest. Then perhaps there is hope of deciphering their meaning.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 6, 1919


Reference #: 7818

Richards, Theodore W.
General Category: SCIENCE

Every student of Science, even if he cannot start his journey where his predecessors left off, can at least travel their beaten track more quickly than they could while they were clearing the way: and so before his race is run he comes to virgin forest and becomes himself a pioneer.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 6, 1919


Reference #: 1325

Richards, Theodore William
General Category: UNIVERSE

The mystery that enshrouds the ultimate nature of the physical universe has always stimulated the curiosity to the thinking man.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1911
(Faraday Lecture) The Fundamental Properties of the Elements
(p. 100)


Reference #: 1306

Richards, Theodore William
General Category: MYSTERY

No one can predict how far we shall be enabled by means of our limited intelligence to penetrate into the mysteries of a universe immeasurably vast and wonderful; nevertheless, each step in advance is certain to bring new blessings to humanity and new inspiration to greater endeavor.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1911
(Faraday Lecture) The Fundamental Properties of the Elemets
(p. 215)


Reference #: 3273

Richardson, Lewis
General Category: INFINITE

Big whorls have little whorls
Which feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have lessor whorls,
And so on to viscosity.


In Ian Stewart
Does God Play Dice? (2nd Edition)
Chapter 5
(p. 84)


Reference #: 994

Richardson, Moses
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...I propose the following, if not as a definition, then at least as a partial description; mathematics is persistent intellectual honesty.


American Mathematical Monthly
Mathematics and Intellectual Honesty, Vol. 59, No. 2, February 1952
(p. 73)


Reference #: 7739

Richardson, Owen Willans
General Category: PHYSICS

The trouble with Physics at the present time is that there are so many workers making discoveries so fast, and important discoveries too, that it is difficult for any one worker to keep a balanced view of the state of the subject.


Nobel Banquet Speech
December 10, 1929


Reference #: 17022

Richardson, Samuel
General Category: DOCTOR

...when medical men are at a loss what to prescribe, they inquire what their patients best like and forbid them that.


The Works of Samuel Richardson
Vol. VII, The History of Clarissa Harlowe, Vol. IV, Letter CXVI
(p. 460)


Reference #: 17021

Richardson, Samuel
General Category: ANATOMIST

And I believe that anatomists allow that women have more watery heads than men.


The Works of Samuel Richardson
Vol. VII, The History of Clarissa Harlowe, Vol. IV, Letter XXVII
(p. 130)


Reference #: 2230

Richardson, Samuel
General Category: ANIMAL

All animals in creation are more or less in a state of hostility with each other.


Clarissa Harlow
II


Reference #: 10760

Richardson, Samuel
General Category: NURSE

Male nurses are unnatural creatures!


Sir Charles Grandison
Part 2, Vol. III, Letter XI
(p. 58)


Reference #: 16315

Richet, Charles
General Category: SCIENTIST

Probably, what characterizes all scientists, whatever they may be, archivists, mathematicians, chemists, astronomists, physicists, is that they do not seek to reach a practical conclusion by their work.


The Savant


Reference #: 7793

Richet, Charles
General Category: ANAPHYLAXIS

Phylaxis, a word seldom used, stands in the Greek for protection. Anaphylaxis will thus stand for the opposite. Anaphylaxis, from its Greek etymological source, therefore means that state of an organism in which it is rendered hypersensitive, instead of being protected.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 11, 1913


Reference #: 13972

Richet, Charles
General Category: SCIENCE

No one has the right to encumber science with premature assertions.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter X
(p. 122)


Reference #: 13975

Richet, Charles
General Category: CHEMISTRY

If the progress of chemistry consisted only in producing still more noxious gases capable of destroying a regiment in a few minutes, then chemistry would be an accursed science.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter II
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13970

Richet, Charles
General Category: RESEARCH

The gift for investigation appears at an early age: the demon of research sepaks to men whilst they are still young.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter VI
(pp. 38-39)


Reference #: 13969

Richet, Charles
General Category: SCIENCE

To neglect science is to exclude fair hope, to condemn ourselves to live in a uniform monotonous existence.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter XIII
(p. 147)


Reference #: 13973

Richet, Charles
General Category: SCIENCE

All...believe in the sovereignty of science; which like the grammar of Martine, rules even over kings, and imperiously subjects them to its laws.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter II
(p. 13)


Reference #: 13971

Richet, Charles
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Scientific doubt is a first-class quality, but rather eliminates piquancy from controversy.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter III
(p. 25)


Reference #: 13966

Richet, Charles
General Category: SCIENCE

The future and the happiness of humanity depend on science.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter XIII
(p. 155)


Reference #: 13974

Richet, Charles
General Category: TRUTH

...if you would discover a new truth, do not seek to know what use will be made of it.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter XII
(p. 133)


Reference #: 13967

Richet, Charles
General Category: RESEARCH

Understand this clearly; that the right method, even for obtaining a useful practical result, is not to worry about the practice, but to concentrate intensely on pure investigation, without being hampered by any parasitic considerations other than whatever conduces to greater facility for research.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter XII
(p. 134)


Reference #: 13977

Richet, Charles
General Category: NATURE

Nature guards her secrets jealously: it is necessary to lay violent siege to her for a long time to discover a single one of them, however small it be.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter XIII
(p. 149)


Reference #: 14907

Richet, Charles
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The aim of science is knowledge about phenomena.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter VI
(p. 42)


Reference #: 13968

Richet, Charles
General Category: THEORY

I often recall to my students the history of Don Quixote, who, having constructed a helmet of cardboard and wood, wished to prove it solidity. Alas, the poor helmet flew to bits when his own good sword struck it. Then the knight, no whit discouraged, made a new and stronger helmet. He raised his sword.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter II
(p. 17)


Reference #: 14908

Richet, Charles
General Category: CHEMIST

A chemist cannot find, already in his mind, the laws and the phenomena which govern matter.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter XI
(p. 126)


Reference #: 13976

Richet, Charles
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

In the history of science, nobody has left his mark on the world unless he has been, in this sense, an innovator.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter VI
(p. 38)


Reference #: 14909

Richet, Charles
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

Be as bold in the conception of hypotheses as rigorous in their demonstration.


The Natural History of a Savant
Chapter X
(p. 123)


Reference #: 10943

Richler, Mordecai
General Category: DOCTOR

...if you ask me, doctors should be taken with a grain of salt. Certain diseases are still a mish-mash to them.


Son of A Smaller Hero
3, Spring 1935
(p. 110)


Reference #: 1987

Richter, Charles
General Category: SEISMOGRAPHY

Since my first attachment to seismology, I have had the horror of [earthquake] predictions and of predictors. Journalists and the general public rush to any suggestion of earthquake prediction like hogs toward a full trough.


Bulletin American Seismological Society
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Ethical and Scientific issues Posed by Human Uses of Molecular Genetics, Announcements, Vol. 67, No. 4, August 1977
(p. 1246)


Reference #: 10052

Richter, Curt P.
General Category: RESEARCH PLANS

Good researchers use research plans merely as starters and are ready to scrap them at once in the light of actual findings.


Science
Vol. 118, 1953
(p. 92)


Reference #: 6216

Rickard, Dorothy
General Category: RADIUM>

Little Willie,
full of glee,
Put radium in Grandma's tea.
Now he thinks it quite a lark
To see her shining in the dark.


Little Willie


Reference #: 3397

Ricklefs, R.
General Category: VARIATION

Variation in the environment is a fact of life for all plants and animals, except perhaps for inhabitants of the abyssal depths of the sea.


Ecology
(p. 159)


Reference #: 6737

Rickover, H. G.
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

...technology can have no legitimacy unless it inflicts no harm.


Mechanical Engineering
A Humanistic Technology, November 1982
(p. 45)


Reference #: 16308

Rickover, H.G.
General Category: AVERAGE

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.


The Saturday Evening Post
The World of the Uneducated, November 28, 1959
(p. 59)


Reference #: 11776

Rickover, Hyman G.
General Category: ENVIRONMENT

It is a profound mistake to think of land only in terms of its money values and, however natural it may be for individuals to do this, the nation or state should never do so. It should instead act always to preserve, foster, and cause to be developed to the maximum of its capacity not the monetary, but the real and physical value of every acre of its soil, both rural and urban. This is its educative, esthetic, and, in the fullest and widest sense of the meaning, productive, creative and enduring worth.


Testimony
House Appropriations defense subcommittee, June 19, 1973


Reference #: 17383

Ridley, B.K.
General Category: GRAVITY

What a remarkable idea, that when you accelerate into a run, your muscles are fighting the influence of galaxies scarcely visible even with the most powerful telescopes!


Time, Space and Things


Reference #: 4693

Ridley, Matt
General Category: BLUEPRINT

Incidentally, you will not find the tired word 'blueprint' in this book, after this paragraph, for three reasons. First, only architects and engineers use blueprints and even they are giving them up in the computer age, whereas we all use books. Second, blueprints are very bad analogies for genes. Blueprints are two-dimensional maps, not one-dimensional digital codes. Third, blueprints are too literal for genetics, because each part of a blueprint makes an equivalent part of the machine or building; each sentence of a recipe book does not make a different mouthful of cake.


Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters


Reference #: 4694

Ridley, Matt
General Category: SCIENCE

The fuel on which science runs is ignorance. Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surround us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more ignorance comes into view. ...A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed. The forest is more interesting than the clearing.


Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters


Reference #: 4695

Ridley, Matt
General Category: GENOME

This is the reality of genes for behaviour. Do you see now how unthreatening it is to talk of genetic influences over behaviour? How ridiculous to get carried away by one 'personality gene' among 500? How absurd to think that, even in a future brave new world, some-body might abort a foetus because one of its personality genes is not up to scratch - and take the risk that on the next conception she would produce a foetus in which two or three other genes were of a kind she does not desire? Do you see now how futile it would be to practise eugenic selection for certain genetic personalities, even if somebody had the power to do so? You would have to check each of 500 genes one by one, deciding in each case to reject those with the 'wrong' gene. At the end you would be left with nobody, not even if you started with a million candidates. We are all of us mutants. The best defence against designer babies is to find more genes and swamp people in too much knowledge.


Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters


Reference #: 4692

Ridley, Matt
General Category: GENOME

The truth is that nobody is in charge. It is the hardest thing for human beings to get used to, but the world is full of intricate, cleverly designed and interconnected systems that do not have control centres. The economy is such a system. The illusion that economies run better if somebody is put in charge of them - and decides what gets manufactured where and by whom - has done devastating harm to the wealth and health of people all over the world, not just in the former Soviet Union, but in the west as well. ...It is the same with the body. You are not a brain running a body by switching on hormones. Nor are you a body running a genome by switching on hormone receptors. Nor are you a genome running a brain by switching on genes that switch on hormones. You are all of these at once.


Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters


Reference #: 14048

Riemann, Bernhard
General Category: CONCEPT

Science is the attempt to comprehend nature by means of concepts.


In C.J. Keyser
The Hibbert Journal
Vol. 3 1904-1905
(pp. 312-313)


Reference #: 16275

Riggs, Arthur Stanley
General Category: MAN

Man is what he is today—as our descendants will be a million years hence—because of the virtues of all our ancestors.


The Romance of Human Progress
Introduction
(p. xix)
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, New York, New York, United States of America; 1938


Reference #: 13050

Riley, Charles Whitcomb
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

Then—sudden—did the earth moan as it slept,
And start as one in evil dreams, and toss
Its peopled arms up, as the horror crept.


The Complete Works of Charles Whitcomb Riley
Vol. V, The Earthquake


Reference #: 16560

Riley, James Whitcomb
General Category: SUN

And the sun had on a crown
Wrought of gilded thistledown,
And a scarf of velvet vapor
And a raveled rainbow gown;
And his tinsel-tangled hair
Tossed and lost upon the air
Was glossier and flossier
Than any anywhere.


The South Wind and the Sun


Reference #: 13059

Riley, James Whitcomb
General Category: INSECT CRICKET

But thou, O cricket, with thy roundelay,
Shalt laugh them all to scorn! So wilt thou,
pray
Trill me thy glad song o'er and o'er again:
In thy sweet prattle, since it sings the lone
Heart home again.


The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley
Vol. III, To the Cricket
P. F. Collier & Son, Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1916


Reference #: 13058

Riley, James Whitcomb
General Category: INSECT KATYDID

Sometimes I keep
From going to sleep,
To hear the katydids "cheep-cheep!"
And think they say
Their prayer that way;
But katydids don't have to pray!


The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley
Vol. VIII, The Katydids
P. F. Collier & Son, Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1916


Reference #: 13057

Riley, James Whitcomb
General Category: BIRD HUMMING-BIRD

And the humming-bird that hung
Like a jewel up among
The tilted honeysuckle-horns,
They mesmerized and swung
In the palpitating air,
Drowsed with odors strange and rare,
And, with whispered laughter, slipped away,
And left him hanging there.


The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley
Vol. IV, The South Wind and the Sunm Stanza 8
P. F. Collier & Son, Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1916


Reference #: 13060

Riley, James Whitcomb
General Category: NATURALIST

In gentlest worship has he bowed
To Nature. Rescued from the crowd
And din of town and thoroughfare,
He turns him from all worldly care
Unto the sacred fastness of
The forest, and the peace and love
That beats there prayer-like in the breeze.


The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley
Vol. VII, The Naturalist
P. F. Collier & Son, Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1916


Reference #: 13472

Rilke, Ranier Maria
General Category: CONSTELLATION

...who sets him in a constellation and puts the measuring-stick of distance in his hands?


The Duino Elegies
(p. 25)


Reference #: 10964

Rilke, Ranier Maria
General Category: STARS

...between stars, what distances...


Sonnets to Orpheus
Second Part, XX


Reference #: 4084

Rindler, Wolfgang
General Category: UNIVERSE

Modern scientific man has largely lost his sense of awe in the Universe. He is confident that given sufficient intelligence, perseverance, time, and money, he can understand all there is beyond the stars.


In M. Taube
Evolution of Matter and Energy
(p. 18)


Reference #: 3985

Rindler, Wolfgang
General Category: RELATIVITY

Relativity has taught us to be wary of time.


Essential Relativity
(p. 203)


Reference #: 1464

Rindos, David
General Category: PROGRESS SCIENCE

Progress in science depends not only upon new data but also upon the careful elaboration of new approaches to old data as well as new.


In Michael B. Schiffer (ed.)
Archaeological Method and Theory
Vol. I, Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 14139

Riordan, Michael
General Category: REALITY

Subatomic reality is a lot like that of a rainbow, whose position is defined only relative to an observer. This is not an objective property of the rainbow-in-itself but involves such subjective elements as the observer's own position. Like the rainbow, a subatomic particle becomes fully "real" only through the process of measurement.


The Hunting of the Quark
(p. 39)


Reference #: 13114

Ripley, George
General Category: FERMENTATION

True Firmentation few Workers understand,


The Compound of Alchymy


Reference #: 6810

Ritchie, A.D.
General Category: CONFUSION

If you are in the very thickest fog you are not confused because you see nothing to confuse you. But as the fog gradually disperses you catch sight indistinctly of a bit of something here and other bit of something there; you are not quite sure what each is or how it fits in with the rest. Then you are confused until it is clear enough to see everything.


Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society
The Atomic Theory, Vol. 86, 1944
(p. 180)


Reference #: 3777

Ritsos, Yannis
General Category: DICE

I hear the clack - who cast the diceon the bathroom tiles?


Erotica
Small Suite in Red Major


Reference #: 3883

Rivers, Joan
General Category: GYNECOLOGIST

The gynecologist says, Relax, relax, I can't get my hand out, relax. I wonder why I'm not relaxed. My feet are in the stirrups, my knees are in my face, and the door is open facing me...And my gynecologist does jokes Dr. Schwartz at your cervix! I'm dilated to meet you! Say ahhh. There's Jimmy Hoffa! There's no way you can get back at that son of a bitch unless you learn to throw your voice.


In Roz Warren
Glibquips
(p. 70)


Reference #: 749

Rivers, Pitt
General Category: DISCOVERY

A discovery dates only from the time of the record of it, and not from the time of its being found in the soil.


Address to the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Dorchester, August 3, 1887


Reference #: 5433

Robb, Alfred Arthur
General Category: ATOM

All preconceived notions he sets at defiance
By means of some neat and ingenious appliance
By which he discovers a new law of science
Which no one had ever suspected before.
All the chemists went off into fits,
Some of them thought they were losing their wits,
When quite without warning
(Their theories scorning)
The atom one morning
He broke into bits.


In Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Introduction to Astronomy
On J.J. Thomson
(p. 341)


Reference #: 11881

Robb, Alfred Arthur
General Category: ATOM

A Corpuscle once did oscillate so quickly to and fro,
He always raised disturbances wherever he did go.
He struggled hard for freedom against a powerful foe—
An atom—who wouldn't let him go.


The American Physics Teacher
The Revolution of the Corpuscle, Vol. 17, No. 3, June 1939
(p. 180)


Reference #: 11883

Robb, Alfred Arthur
General Category: FORCE

Her? s a health to Professor J.J.!
May he hunt for ions for many a day,
And take observations
And find the relations
Which forces obey.


The American Physics Teacher
Postprandial Proceedings of Cavendish SocietyThe Don of the DayVolume 7, Number 3, June 1939


Reference #: 3356

Robbins, R. Robert
Jefferys, William H.
Shawl, Stephen J.
General Category: BEAUTY

The beauty of the night can be overwhelming.


Discovering Astronomy (3rd edition)
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 4031

Robbins, Tom
General Category: PLANET

Our Moon has surrendered none of its soft charm to technology. The pitter-patter of little spaceboots has in no way diminished its mystery.


Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Chapter 19
(p. 60)


Reference #: 8701

Roberts, Catherine
General Category: BIOLOGY

The driving force of biology and medical science is not unalloyed idealism but a complex of factors including prestige, publication, professional advancement, grants and business interests.


Perspectives in Biological Medicine
The Use of Animals in Medical Research - Some Ethical Considerations, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Autumn 1964
(p. 116, fn 4)


Reference #: 10289

Roberts, Catherine
General Category: EVOLUTION

Derived from the Latin e (out) and volvere (to roll), the basic meaning of evolve is to roll out, unfold, develop. Thus, despite the seemingly random and fortuitous nature of many of the hereditary variations that permanently alter evolving individuals and populations, the scientific age generally regards the evolution of life on earth as a continuous progression from the simple to the complex and more highly organized, which has culminated in a biosphere dominated by man.


Science, Animals, and Evolution
Introduction
(p. 3)


Reference #: 15061

Roberts, Michael
General Category: PHOTON

While I, maybe, precisely seize
The elusive photon's properties
In a`s and b`s, set in bronze-
bright vectors, grim quaternions.


The New Statesman
Notes on q, f, and y, March 23, 1935


Reference #: 7687

Roberts, Michael
Thomas, E.R.
General Category: PHYSICS

The most brilliant discoveries in theoretical physics are not discoveries of new laws, but of terms in which the law can be discovered.


Newton and the Origin of Colours
(p. 6)


Reference #: 18014

Roberts, Nora
General Category: FACT

But it was a fact - not a theory, not a hypothesis, but a fact - that she was attracted, that she did trust, that she did believe.


Without a Trace
Chapter 5
(p. 104)


Reference #: 17552

Roberts, W. Milnor
General Category: EXPERIENCE

From the laying out of a line of tunnel to its final completion, the work may be either a series of experiments (made at the expense of the proprietors of the project), or a series of judicious applications of the results of previous experience.


In Henry Drinker
Tunneling, Explosive Compounds and Rock Drills
(p. 1005)


Reference #: 828

Robertson, Howard P.
General Category: EXPERIMENT

What is needed is a homely experiment which could be carried out in the basement with parts from an old sewing machine and an Ingersol watch, with an old file of Popular Mechanics standing by for reference!


In Paul Arthur Schlipp
Albert Einstein: Philosopher - Scientist
Geometry as a Branch of Physics
(p. 326)
Open Court, La Salle. 1979


Reference #: 5647

Robertson, Percival
General Category: FOSSIL

The greatest interest lies in the study of fossils in the field, but even if I were located where it was impossible to study fossils in the field , I still think that fossils should be the central theme of historical geology-not pictures of fossils, not drawings of fossils, not lantern slides of fossils, but the little "bugs" themselves.


Journal of Geological Education
Holding Student Interest in Historical Geology, Vol. 1, No. 3, April 1952
(pp. 34-35)


Reference #: 5641

Robertson, Percival
General Category: GEOLOGY

...teachers of geology have a great privilege in opening the pages of the earth's own autobiography and helping the student to interpret its inspiring pages.


Journal of Geological Education
Holding Student Interest in Historical Geology, Vol. 1, No. 3, April 1952
(p. 40)


Reference #: 15171

Robertson, Sir Dennis
General Category: MODEL

As soon as I could safely toddle
My parents handed me a Model.
My brisk and energetic pater
Provided the accelerator.
My mother, with her kindly gumption,
The function guiding my consumption;
And every week I had from her
A lovely new parameter,
With lots of little leads and lags
In pretty parabolic bags.

With optimistic expectations I started on my explorations,
And swore to move without a swerve
Along my sinusoidal curve.
Alas! I knew how it would end:
I've mixed the cycle and the trend,
And fear that, growing daily skinnier,
I have at length become non-linear.
I wander glumly round the house
As though I were exogenous,
And hardly capable of feeling
The difference 'tween floor and ceiling.
I scarcely now, a pallid ghost,
Can tell ex-ante from ex-post:
My thoughts are sadly inelastic,
My acts incurably stochastic.


The Non-Econometrician's Lament


Reference #: 10034

Robinson, Arthur
General Category: THEORY

In short, quantum mechanics, special relativity, and realism cannot all be true.


Science
Quantum Mechanics Passes Another Test, Vol. 217, No. 4558, July 30, 1982
(p. 435)


Reference #: 946

Robinson, Arthur H.
General Category: MAP

Mathematical equations and literary phrases are useful but they are no substitute for the spatial eloquence of the map.


American Cartographer
Uniqueness of the Map, Vol. 5, No.1, 1978
(p. )


Reference #: 14935

Robinson, Arthur H.
Petchenik, Barbara Bartz
General Category: MAP

[Map] ...a graphic representation of the milieu...


The Nature of Maps
Chapter 1
(p. 16)


Reference #: 2340

Robinson, Edwin Arlington
General Category: ASTRONOMER

And thus we die,
Still searching, like poor old astronomers,
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep
To dream of untriangulated stars.


Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson
Octaves, XI


Reference #: 9381

Robinson, Geoffrey
General Category: GEOMORPHOLOGY

Geomorphology, the study of earth sculpture, may be engaged in as a science of its own right.


Professional Geographer
A Consideration of the Relations of Geomorphology and Geography, Vol. 15, 1963
(p. 13)


Reference #: 8924

Robinson, Howard A.
General Category: PHYSICIST

Because physicists are a small group, they often suffer in many ways from psychoses similar to those found in political minorities. In an effort to keep their own individuality they feel it necessary to resist pressure from the outside and the result is...that a group of physicists tend to behave like an amoebae.


Physics Today
The Challenge of Industrial Physics, June 1948
(p. 7)


Reference #: 14137

Robinson, James Harvey
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Of all human ambitions an open mind eagerly expectant of new discoveries and ready to remold convictions in the light of added knowledge and dispelled ignorances and misapprehensions, is the noblest, the rarest and the most difficult to achieve.


The Humanizing of Knowledge
Chapter V
(p. 61)


Reference #: 14136

Robinson, James Harvey
General Category: RESEARCH

Research is mainly looking for things that are not there and attempting processes that will not occur.


The Humanizing of Knowledge
Chapter II
(p. 32)


Reference #: 4946

Robinson, Lewis Newton
General Category: STATISTICS

In this country the statistical side of criminology is very imperfectly developed, and while the same cannot be said with equal force of other English-speaking countries, it yet remains true that the statistical terminology of this social science is characterized, so far as the English language is concerned, by great vagueness and uncertainty.


History and Organization of Criminal Statistics in the United States
(p. 1)


Reference #: 7763

Rodbell, Robert
General Category: LIFE

Life, like the first blooming, emerges tantalizing to the curious:
Why, How, When, Where;
Interlocked questions arising from the mysterious
encompassing matters quite serious.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1994


Reference #: 6285

Rodd, T.
General Category: SPACE

I love to rove amidst the starry height,
To leave the little scenes of Earth behind,
And let Imagination wing her flight
On eagle pinions swifter than the wind.
Where sun-kings reign till break of dawn,
A shooting star darts fast and bright,
Then like a spectral light is gone;
It fades from sight, and leaves behind
No more a trace than passing wind.


Love of Night


Reference #: 8960

Roddenberry, Gene
General Category: SPACE TRAVEL

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.'


Planetary Report
Hailing Frequencies Open!, Vol. 1, April/May 1981
(p. 3)


Reference #: 10044

Roe, Anne
General Category: SCIENTIST

Science is the creation of scientists and every scientific advance bears somehow the mark of the man who made it....The creative scientist, whatever his field, is very deeply involved emotionally and personally in his work, and...he himself is his own most essential tool.


Science
The Psychology of the Scientist, Vol. 134, August 18, 1961


Reference #: 14610

Roe, Anne
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated....


The Making of a Scientist
Chapter I
(p. 17)


Reference #: 14609

Roe, Anne
General Category: SCIENCE

Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated…


The Making of a Scientist
Chapter 1


Reference #: 18093

Roe, Derek
General Category: PALEOLITHIC

Those less familiar with [the Paleolithic] should be surprised...to discover how much latent information of an entirely human kind awaits discovery amongst the dull old stones and bones.


World Archaeology
Introduction


Reference #: 14680

Roe, E.D., Jr.
General Category: FUNCTION

The continuous function is the only workable and usable function. It alone is subject to law and the laws of calculation. It is a loyal subject of the mathematical kingdom. Other so-called or miscalled functions are freaks, anarchists, disturbers of the peace, malformed curiosities which one and all are of no use to anyone, least of all to the loyal and burden-bearing subjects who by keeping the laws maintain the kingdom and make its advance possible....scholarship lies in the direction of paying deference to the loyal continuous function rather than to the outlaws of mathematical society.


The Mathematics Teacher
A Generalized Definition of Limit, Vol. III, No. 1, September 1910
(p. 4)


Reference #: 9856

Roebling, John
General Category: BRIDGE

The contemplated work, when constructed in accordance with my designs, will not only be the greatest Bridge in existence, but it will be the greatest engineering work of this continent, and of the age. Its most conspicuous features, the great towers, will serve as landmarks to the adjoining cities, and they will be entitled to be ranked as national monuments.


Report to the New York Bridge Company
1867


Reference #: 10140

Roelofs, Howard Dykema
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion can produce on occasion what science never does, namely, saints. Today we have science and scientists aplenty. We lack saints.


In Herbert J. Muller
Science and Criticism
Chapter III
(p. 59)


Reference #: 14641

Roentgen, Wilheelm Conrad
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The physicist in preparing for his work need three things, mathematics, mathematics, and mathematics.


The Mathematical Gazette
Vol. 22, No. 252, December 1938, 1225


Reference #: 1526

Rogers, Eric
General Category: PHYSICIST

The physicist who does not enjoy watching a dime and a quarter drop together has no heart.


Astronomy for the Inquiring Mind
(p. 4)


Reference #: 8903

Rogers, Eric
General Category: RELATIVITY

Since Relativity is a piece of mathematics, popular accounts that try to explain it without mathematics are almost certain to fail.


Physics for the Inquiring Mind
Chapter 31
(p. 472)


Reference #: 14930

Rogers, G.F.C.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering refers to the practice of organizing the design and construction [and, I would add, operation] of any artifice which transforms the physical world around us to meet some recognized need.


The Nature of Engineering, A Philosophy of Technology
(p. 51)


Reference #: 6675

Rogers, Hartley, Jr.
General Category: PARADOX

It is a paradox in mathematics and physics that we have no good model for the teaching of models.


In Lynn Arthur Steen
Mathematics Tomorrow
(p. 232)


Reference #: 5524

Rogers, Samuel
General Category: MOON

Day glimmer'd in the east, and the white Moon
Hung like a vapor in the cloudless sky.


Italy
The Lake of Geneva


Reference #: 17205

Rogers, Will
General Category: STATISTICS

The government keeps statistics on every known thing. But there is yet to be a statistics on how many laws we are living under.


The Writings of Will Rogers
Vol. IV-1
(p. 167)


Reference #: 17206

Rogers, Will
General Category: STATISTICS

Everything is figured out down to a Gnat's tooth according to some kind of statistics.


The Writings of Will Rogers
Vol. IV-3
(p. 254)


Reference #: 16971

Rogers, Will
General Category: GRAPH

You must never tell a thing. You must illustrate it. We learn through the eye and not the noggin.


The Will Rogers Book
June 25, 1933
(p. 121)


Reference #: 12153

Rogers, Will
General Category: DISEASE

We were primitive people when I was a kid. There were only a mighty few known diseases. Gunshot wounds, broken legs, toothache, fits, and anything that hurt you from the lower end of your neck down was known as a bellyache.


The Autobiography of Will Rogers
Chapter Twelve
(p. 151)


Reference #: 12152

Rogers, Will
General Category: GALL BLADDER

Then he turned and exclaimed with a practiced and well-subdued enthusiasm, 'It's the Gall-Bladder - just what I was afraid of.' Now you all know what the word 'afraid of,' when spoken by a doctor, leads to. It leads to more calls.


The Autobiography of Will Rogers
Chapter Twelve
(p. 153)


Reference #: 9916

Rohault, Jacques
General Category: CHANCE

Thus we must content our selves for the most part, to find out how Things may be; without pretending to come to a certain knowledge and determination of what they really are.[We must for the most part be content with probability.]


Rohault's System of Natural Philosophy
Vol. I, Part I, Chapter 3, 3


Reference #: 9915

Rohault, Jacques
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Every Effect Presupposes some Cause.


Rohault's System of Natural Philosophy
Vol. I, Part I, Chapter 5, 6


Reference #: 9933

Rohault, Jacques
General Category: CHANGE

Daily Experience, and a Thousand Observations made by the Industry of Men in past Ages, and which we our selves have confirmed, do sufficiently convince us, that there is no part of the Earth, be it never so great or small, but that in Time it undergoes some Alteration...


Rouhault's System of Natural Philosophy
Vol. II, Part III, Chapter I
(p. 123)


Reference #: 18203

Rolleston, George
General Category: NATURE

Let us hope that in the interludes of rhetoric the logic of facts may find a moment to make itself heard. It will teach men…to hold of Nature that her ways are not as our ways, nor her thoughts as our thoughts.


Scientific Papers and Addresses
Volume I
Chapter IV
(p. 61)
At the Clarendon Press, Oxford, England; 1884


Reference #: 10970

Rollins, Mavis M.
General Category: TEACHING

Our Father, we praise You for the privilege of new beginnings. Thank You for letting us peek into Your creation and explore Your handiwork. Thank You for the secrets You share with Science Teachers and Students.

Enable us to walk with integrity into the opportunities You lay before us. As we work out of our humanity, teach us to admire the accomplishments of others without envying their acclaim, to follow the example of leaders without belittling their discoveries, to praise the ingenuity of the creative without distracting them with flattery, to lead the learner without manipulating the mind, and to grow wise through reflection, experience and service.

Keep our hearts fresh and our minds open to the possibilities of growth through which You may choose to stretch us.

Help us to handle Your insight with wisdom so that we can honor You in all our ways, for we recognize that we abide in Your kingdom, under Your power, for Your glory. Amen.


Source undetermined
A Prayer for Science Teachers


Reference #: 3001

Rollins, R.C.
General Category: TAXONOMY

In other words, the field of taxonomy in a way epitomizes the work of all other branches of biology centered on the organism itself, and brings the varied factual information from them to bear on the problems of interrelationship, classification and evolution. Thus taxonomy, as has been aptly remarked, is at once the alpha and omega of biology.


American Journal of Botany
Taxonomy of the Higher Plants, Vol. 44, No. 1, January 1957
(p. 188)


Reference #: 601

Rollinson, Neil
General Category: ASTRONOMY POETRY

Your coffee grows cold on the kitchen table
which means the universe is dying.
Your dress on the carpet is just a dress,
it has lost all sense of you now.
I open the window, the sky is dark
and the house is also cooling, the garden,
the summer lawn, all of it finding an equilibrium.
I watch an ice-cube melt in my wine,
the heat of the Chardonnay passing into the ice.
It means the universe is dying: the second law
of thermodynamics. Entropy rising.
Only the fridge struggles to turn things round
but even here there's a hidden loss.
It hums in the corner, the only sound
on a quiet night. Outside, in the vast sky
stars are cooling. I think of the sun
consuming its fuel, the afternoon that is past,
and your dress that only this morning
was warm to my touch.


A Spillage of Mercury
Entropy


Reference #: 4589

Romains, Jules
General Category: HEALTH

Healthy people are sick people who don't know it.


Knock
Act 1
(p. 12)


Reference #: 4588

Romains, Jules
General Category: MEDICINE

Medicine is a rich soil but it doesn't yield its harvest unaided.


Knock
Act 1
(p. 11)


Reference #: 3636

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: BODY

To man the human body is most sacred.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 1538


Reference #: 3644

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: CURE

It is human nature to think that if a small dose helps, a double dose will cure.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 329


Reference #: 3620

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is advanced by husbands, but wives are often behind them.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 91


Reference #: 3621

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: SCIENCE

Into the life of a cultured man enter science, art, and poetic philosophy.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 1220


Reference #: 3622

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: SCIENCE

Pure science has no part in politics.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 1281


Reference #: 3643

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics can provide a ready proof
For doubtful facts which ought to stay aloff.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Couplets


Reference #: 3623

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: SCIENCE

Dedication to pure science or fine arts often is incompatible with a desire for economic gain.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorism 1457


Reference #: 3624

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: REASON

Reasoning goes beyond the analysis of facts.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 1973


Reference #: 3625

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: SCIENCE

Science and technology may lead to self-destruction; humanities to sensible social recovery.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 2937


Reference #: 3642

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: CURE

Activity is the best cure for many ills of body and mind.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 2252


Reference #: 3626

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: THEORY

A theory is worthless without good supporting data.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 2410


Reference #: 3629

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: RESEARCH

Scientific research provides the shortest route to useful practice.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 112


Reference #: 3640

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: HEALTH

One who does not care about his own health, or life, will soon be either disabled or dead.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 1033


Reference #: 3631

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: MEDICINE

The desire to live is the best medicine of all.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 2048


Reference #: 3639

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: DOCTOR

A doctor has to share the suffering of his patients.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 2385


Reference #: 3638

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: DOCTOR

Doctors are needed at birth, but are of no use at death.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 529


Reference #: 3637

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: DOCTOR

Each doctor has his own unselfish aim - On patients' health to have a rightful claim.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Couplets


Reference #: 3635

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: FACT

With solid facts on hand one may have only one undisputed explanation; with no facts, there can be a dozen argumentative ones.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 2411


Reference #: 3627

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: TRUTH

Science speaks the language of universal truth.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 961


Reference #: 3628

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: RESEARCH

Scientific research is based chiefly on creative thinking.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 219


Reference #: 3630

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: TEACHING

True teaching is a grave profession-Demands most thoughtful, wise discretion.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Couplets


Reference #: 3633

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: SCIENCE

Religions offer unbounded faith; science, logical preciseness; and the arts, creative imagination.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 1471


Reference #: 3632

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: MEDICINE

Good medicine is ma? s salvation;
Excessive use gives aggravation.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Couplets


Reference #: 3641

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: DOCTOR

The doctor is an angel to an ailing man - Until the bill appears - beyond his paying plan.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Couplets


Reference #: 3634

Romanoff, Alexis Lawrence
General Category: CURE

One's desire to live is the best cure for many illnesses.


Encyclopedia of Thoughts
Aphorisms 370


Reference #: 17976

Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad
General Category: EXPERIMENT

The experiment is the most powerful and most reliable lever enabling us to extract secrets from nature…. The experiment must constitute the final judgment as to whether a hypothesis should be retained or be discarded.


In O. Glasser
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and the Early History of the Roentgen Rays
(p. 74)
Charles C. Thomas, Springfield; 1934


Reference #: 5150

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
General Category: PATENT

Patents are the key to our technology; technology is the key to production.


In Robert A. Buckles
Ideas, Inventions, and Patents
(p. 1)


Reference #: 3041

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
General Category: NURSE

...I urge that the Selective Service Act be amended to provide for the induction of nurses into the armed forces...


Annual Message to Congress
January 6, 1945


Reference #: 11431

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
General Category: COMMON SENSE

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.


Speech
Oglethorpe University, May 22, 1932


Reference #: 2219

Roosevelt, Theodore
General Category: DEEDS

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.


Citizenship in a Republic
Speech at the Sorbonne, 23 April 1910


Reference #: 8433

Roosevelt, Theodore
General Category: POLLUTION

The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wontonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage...Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening.


Outlook
June 25, 1913


Reference #: 12131

Root, R.K.
General Category: BIOLOGY

I can hear my good friend, the Professor of Biology, rather impatiently reporting that his science asks assent only to what it can demonstrate. 'Come with me to my laboratory, and I will give you proofs....' But how am I, quite untrained in his science, to weigh his arguments or interpret what his microscopes may show?


The Atlantic Monthly
The Age of Faith, Vol. cx, July 1912
(p. 114)


Reference #: 16365

Root-Bernstein, R. S.
General Category: DISCOVERY

Scientific discovery is never entirely accidental. It holds an element of surprise, to be sure, the effective surprise that changes a person's perception of nature. But the best scientists know how to surprise themselves purposely. They master the widest range of mental tools (including, but not limited to, game playing, universal thinking, identification with subject matter, intuition, and pattern recognition) and identify deficiencies or inconsistences in their understanding of the world. Finally, they are clever enough to interpret their observations in such a way as to change the perceptions of other scientists, as well. As Albert Szent-Gyorgyi put it, `Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.'


The Sciences Setting the Stage for Discovery
May/June.


Reference #: 7546

Rorty, Richard
General Category: PHYSICIST

Here is one way to look at physics: the physicists are men looking for new interpretations of the Book of Nature. After each pedestrian period of normal science, they dream up a new model, a new picture, a new vocabulary, and then they announce that the true meaning of the Book has been discovered. But, of course, it never is, any more than the true meaning of Coriolanus or the Dunciad or the Phenomenology of the Spirit or the Philosophical Investigations. What makes them physicists is that their writing are commentaries on the writings of earlier interpreters of Nature, not that they all are somehow 'talking about the same thing'...


New Literary History
Philosophy as a Kind of Writing, Vol. X, No. 1, Autumn 1978
(p. 141)


Reference #: 8787

Rorty, Richard
General Category: MATTER

[When] we tell our Whiggish stories about how our ancestors gradually crawled up the mountain on whose (possibly false) summit we stand, we need to keep some things constant throughout the story. The forces of nature and the small bits of matter, as conceived by current physical theory, are good choices for this role.


Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Chapter VII
(p. 344)


Reference #: 9858

Roscoe, Henry
General Category: PERIODIC TABLE

We must then find that these numbers regularly increase by a definite amount, i.e. by the average age of a generation, which will be approximately the same in all the four families. Comparing the ages of the chemists themselves, we shall observe certain differences, but these are small in comparison with the period which has elapsed since the birth of their ancestors. Now each individual in this series of family trees represents a chemical element; and just as each family is distinguished by certain idiosyncrasies, so each group of the elementary bodies thus arranged shows distinct signs of consanguinity.


Reports of the British Association of the Advancement of Science
1887
(p. 10)


Reference #: 10961

Roscoe, William
General Category: MOON

Again thou reignest in thy golden hall,
Rejoicing in thy sway, fair queen of night!
The ruddy reapers hail thee with delight:
Theirs is the harvest, theirs the joyous call F
or tasks well ended ere the season's fall.


Sonnet
To the Harvest Moon


Reference #: 17521

Rose, Steven
General Category: BIOCHEMISTRY

Biochemists are different from organic and natural-product chemists in a number of important ways. First, for us the structure, sequence and molecular properties of substances derived from living organisms are not of great interest in their own right, but only insofar as they may be seen as providing information which casts light on the biological role of the substance....Second,...we are likely to be less interested in the properties of 'pure' molecules in isolation, and more concerned with the ways in which they are involved in complex interactions with other molecules.


Trends in Biochemical Sciences
Reflections on Reductionism, Vol. 13, 1988
(p. 161)


Reference #: 13141

Rose, Steven
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is biology's greatest challenge. Perhaps in a sense it is the greatest challenge for science as a whole, beyond moon landings, the ultimate particles of the physicist and the depths of astronomical space.


The Conscious Brain


Reference #: 6121

Rosen, Robert
General Category: BIOLOGY

This is a fateful situation. Once we have partitioned the ambience into a system and its environment, and (following Newton) once we have encoded system into a formalism whose only entailment is a recursion rule governing state succession, we have said something profound about causality, and indeed about Natural Law itself. In brief, we have automatically placed beyond the province of causality anything that does not encode directly into a state-transition sequence. Such things have become acausal, out of the reach of entailment in the formalism, and hence in principle undecodable from the formalism.


Life Itself
(p. 102)


Reference #: 6123

Rosen, Robert
General Category: BIOLOGY

To sum up: It may perhaps be true that the question 'What is life?' is hard because we do not yet know enough. But it is equally probable that we simply do not properly understand what we already know.


Life Itself
(p. 17)


Reference #: 6122

Rosen, Robert
General Category: BIOLOGY

Biology becomes identified with the class of material realizations of a certain kind of relational organization, and hence, to that extent divorced from the structural details of any particular kind of realization. It is thus not simply the study of whatever organisms happen to appear in the external world of the biologist; it could be, and in fact is, much more than that. Biology becomes in fact a creative endeavor....'


Life Itself
(p. 245)


Reference #: 9506

Rosenbach, A.S.
General Category: BOOK

After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
October 2, 1966
(p. 3)


Reference #: 6441

Rosenbaum, R.A.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematical abstraction, to be considered significant, must someday pass the test of generality, of applicability, of relatedness. Mathematics too long divorced from reality, it has been said, becomes baroque, decadent, and sterile.


Mathematical Teacher
Mathematics, the Artistic Science, Vol. 55, No. 7, November 1962
(p. 533)


Reference #: 14612

Rosenblatt, Roger
General Category: ARITHMETIC

...Uncle Scrooge preferred to let the poor die "and decrease the surplus population." Scrooge may not have God on his side, but his arithmetic was impeccable.


The Man in the Water
Do You Feel the Deaths of Strangers?
(p. 177)


Reference #: 1693

Ross, Hugh
General Category: ELEMENT

As you tune you radio, there are certain frequences where the circuit has just the right resonance and you lock onto a station. The internal structure of an atomic nucleus is something like that, with specific energy or resonance levels. If two nuclear fragments collide with a resulting energy that just matches a resonance level, they will tend to stick and form a stable nucleus. Behold! Cosmic alchemy will occur! In the carbon atom, the resonance just happens to match the combined energy of the beryllium atom and a colliding helium nucleus. Without it, there would be relatively few carbon atoms. Similarly, the internal details of the oxygen nucleus play a critical role. Oxygen can be formed by combining helium and carbon nuclei, but the corresponding resonance level in the oxygen nucleus is half a percent too low for the combination to stay together easily. Had the resonance level in the carbon been 4 percent lower, there would be essentially no carbon. Had that level in the oxygen been only half a percent higher, virtually all the carbon would have been converted to oxygen. Without that carbon abundance, neither you nor I would be here.


Beyond the Cosmos
(p. 32)


Reference #: 11761

Ross, JoAnn
General Category: FACT

Facts were facts, fantasies were fantasies. And never the twain should meet.


Tempting Fate
Chapter One


Reference #: 2153

Ross, John
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics....'


Chemical and Engineering News
July 27, 1980
(p. 40)


Reference #: 7769

Ross, Ronald
General Category: MALARIA

I cannot help remembering the dingy little military hospital, the old cracked microscope, and the medicine bottles which constituted all the laboratory and apparatus which I possessed for the purpose of attacking one of the most redoubtable of scientific problems.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1902


Reference #: 7943

Ross, Ronald
General Category: MOON

O Moon! When I look at thy beautiful face,
Careening along through the boundaries of space
The thought has quite frequently come to my mind
If ever I'll gaze on thy glorious behind.


O Moon


Reference #: 6809

Ross, Sir Ronald
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

A witty friend of mine once remarked that the world thinks of the man of science as one who pulls out his watch and exclaims, 'Ha! half an hour to spare before dinner: I will just step down to my laboratory and make a discovery.' Who but men of science themselves are to blame for such a misconception? Out of the many memoirs which fill our libraries few recount the labours of investigators, even of those who seek to solve the secrets of the great maladies which annually destroy millions of us - surely a matter of interest to everyone. Our books of science are records of results rather than of that sacred passion for discovery which leads to them. Yet many discoveries have really been the climax of an intense drama, full of hopes and despairs, visions seen in darkness, many failures, and a final triumph: in which the protagonists are man and nature, and the issue a decision for all the ages.


Memoirs
Preface
(pp. v-vi)


Reference #: 16544

Rosseau, Jean Jacques
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

...for no more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.


The Social Contract
Book II, Chapter 4


Reference #: 17229

Rosseland, S.
General Category: OBSERVATORY

...an astronomical observatory of to-day looks more like a factory plant than an abode for philosophers. The poetry of constellations has given way to the lure of plate libraries, and the angel of cosmogenic speculation has been caught in a cobweb of facts insistently clamoring for explanations.


Theoretical Astrophysics
Introduction
(p. xi)


Reference #: 17228

Rosseland, Svein
General Category: MIND

Who has not experienced the mysterious thrill of springtime in a forest, with sunbeams flickering through the foliage, and the low humming of insect life? It is the feeling of unity with nature, which is the counterpart of the attitude of the scientist, analysing the sunbeams into light quanta and the soft rustling of the dragon-fly into condensations and rarefactions of the air. But what is lost in fleeting sentiment is more than regained in the feeling of intellectual security afforded by the scientific attitude, which may grow into a trusting devotion, challenging the peace of the religious mystic. For in the majestic growth of science, analytical in its experimental groping for detail, synthetic in its sweeping generalizations, we are watching at least one aspect of the human mind, which may be believed to have a future of dizzy heights and nearly unlimited perfectibility.


Theoretical Astrophysics
Introduction
(p. xi)


Reference #: 14679

Rossetter, Jack C.
General Category: EINSTEIN

To Einstein, hair and violin,
we give our final nod;
though understood by just two folks,
himself—and sometimes—God!


The Mathematics Teacher
Mathematical Notes, Vol. XLIII, No. 7, November 1950
(p. 341)


Reference #: 2031

Rossetti, Christina Georgina
General Category: OCEAN

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.


By the Sea
st. 1


Reference #: 12744

Rossetti, Christina Georgina
General Category: FLOWER

Flowers preach to us if we will hear.


The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti
Vol. I, Consider the Lilies of the Field
(p. 76)


Reference #: 12745

Rossetti, Christina Georgina
General Category: BIRD LARK

The sunrise wakes the lark to sing.


The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti
Vol. I, Poems Added in 1875, Bird Raptures
(p. 210)


Reference #: 12351

Rossetti, Christina Georgina
General Category: MOON

The sun was gone now;
the curled moon was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf.


The Blessed Damozel
st. 10


Reference #: 7887

Rossi, Hugo
General Category: WRITING

It is extremely hard for mathematicians to do expository writing. It is not in our nature. In fact, the very nature of mathematical meaning and grammar militates against it. However, this puts us at a distinct disadvantage relative to other sciences...Good exposition should be valued, not only for the success in communication but also as evidence of real mathematical insight. It is no accident that among our greatest mathematicians are our greatest teachers and expositors.


Notices of the American Mathematical Society
From the Editor, Vol. 42, No. 1, January 1995
(p. 4)


Reference #: 7888

Rossi, Hugo
General Category: DERIVATIVE

In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.


Notices of the AMS
Mathematics Is an Edifice, Not a Toolbox, Vol. 43, no. 10, October 1996


Reference #: 5223

Rossman, Joseph
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

However, knowledge alone,...never gives rise to new inventions or industries. It is usually left to the inventor to utilize the facts and principles of science, and to apply them for practical purposes.


Industrial Creativity: The Psychology of the Inventor
(p. 19)


Reference #: 5227

Rossman, Joseph
General Category: INVENTOR

Inventors are unconscious social changers.


Industrial Creativity: The Psychology of the Inventor
(p. 6)


Reference #: 5225

Rossman, Joseph
General Category: FAILURE

One seldom perfects an idea without many failures...


Industrial Creativity: The Psychology of the Inventor
Chapter IV
(p. 45)


Reference #: 5224

Rossman, Joseph
General Category: INVENTOR

The inventor experiences a need which he wishes to satisfy.


Industrial Creativity: The Psychology of the Inventor
(p. 81)


Reference #: 2048

Rostand, Jean
General Category: BIOLOGY

[Biology] is the least self-centered, the least narcissistic of the sciences - the one that, by taking us out of ourselves, leads us to re-establish a link with nature and to shake ourselves free from our spiritual isolation.


Translated by Jonathan Griffin
Can Man be Modified?
Victories and the Hopes of Biology
(p. 31)
Basic Books, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1959


Reference #: 17907

Roszak, Theodore
General Category: MICROSCOPE

...nature composes some of her loveliest music for the microscope and telescope.


Where the Wasteland Ends
Chapter 9
(p. 330)


Reference #: 14608

Roszak, Theodore
General Category: PROBLEM

If a problem does not have a technical solution, it must not be a real problem. It is but an illusion...a figment
Born of some regressive cultural tendency.


The Making of a Counter Culture
Chapter I
(p. 10)


Reference #: 14607

Roszak, Theodore
General Category: SCIENTIST

...science rests itself not in the world the scientist beholds at any particular point in time, but in his mode of viewing that world. A man is a scientist not because of what he sees, but because of how he sees it.


The Making of a Counter Culture
Chapter VII
(p. 213)


Reference #: 6539

Rota, Gian-Carlo
General Category: MATHEMATICIANS

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.


Math. Intell.
Two Turning Points in Invariant Theory, 21(1) Winter 1999
(p. 26)


Reference #: 11407

Rota, Gian-Carlo
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step.
It would probably be counterproductive to let it be known that behind every "genius" there lurks a beehive of research mathematicians who gradually built up to the "final" step in seemingly pointless research papers. And it would be fatal to let it be known that the showcase problems of mathematics are of little or nonterest for the progress of mathematics. We all know that they are dead ends, curiosities, good only as confirmation of the effectiveness of theory. What mathematicians privately celebrate when one of their showcase problems is solved is Polya's adage : "no problem is ever solved directly".


In Bergeron, Labelle and Leroux
Species
Foreword


Reference #: 14633

Rota, Gian-Carlo
General Category: MATHEMATICS

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of 'proving theorems.' Is a writer's job mainly that of 'writing sentences?'


In P. Davis and R. Hersh
The Mathematical Experience
Introduction
(p. xviii)
Birkhäuser, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1981


Reference #: 14627

Rota, Gian-Carlo
General Category: THEORY

Theorems are not to mathematics what successful courses are to a meal. The nutritional analogy is misleading.


In Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh
The Mathematical Experience
Introduction
(pp. xviii-xix)
Birkhäuser, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1981


Reference #: 14639

Rota, Gian-Carlo Pringsheim, Alfred
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.


In Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh
The Mathematical Experience
Introduction
(p. xviii)
Birkhäuser, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America; 1981


Reference #: 16331

Rothman, Milton A.
General Category: BEAUTY

A sense of beauty and proportion may assist in the initial creation of a theory, but no matter how beautiful a theory is, if it doesn't work, it is not a good theory. If intuition were as all-important as is claimed, and if data were as unimportant, we might wonder why scientists have spent so many billions of dollars over the past several decades to build particle accelerators, particle detectors, telescopes of all kinds, and the rest of the paraphernalia of experimental science. The answer is simple: theory without empirical evidence is akin to art, poetry, literature, and music. It may have beauty and symmetry, but you don't know that it has truth unless you compare what is inside your mind with that which is outside your mind.


The Science Gap: Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the Reality of Science


Reference #: 16330

Rothman, Milton A.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

It takes very little imagination to believe naively that anything is possible. Any ten-year-old child can believe this. It takes a great deal of knowledge to know what things are possible and what things are impossible.


The Science Gap: Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the Reality of Science


Reference #: 16329

Rothman, Milton A.
General Category: SCIENTIST

It makes no sense to complain about a lack of imagination in scientists when their failure is simply that they cannot make the world be what it is not, and they cannot make the world do what it cannot do.


The Science Gap: Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the Reality of Science


Reference #: 5362

Rothman, Tony
General Category: QUANTUM

Quantum mechanics - the theory that explains phenomena on the size of atoms - is right. It is also so conceptually weird that physicists to this day feel uncomfortable with it.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 7
(p. 159)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5361

Rothman, Tony
General Category: EXPERIMENT

The Physicist's Code: A single good observation is worth a century of bad philosophy.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Introduction
(p. xii)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5363

Rothman, Tony
General Category: ANSWER

You only arrive at the right answer after making all possible mistakes. The mistakes began with the Greeks.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Prologue
(p. 1)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5360

Rothman, Tony
General Category: HEAT

Like atoms, heat is so intangible that it was one of the last concepts in classical physics to be sorted out. In the process, the science of thermodynamics was created. Pollyannas who believe anything is possible should be subjected to a course in thermodynamics.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 3
(p. 68)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5359

Rothman, Tony
General Category: ATOM

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS: Atoms cannot be seen. To show that the world was made of particles a million times smaller than objects visible to the naked eye was so difficult that their existence was not established beyond reasonable doubt until the end of the nineteenth century.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 2
(p. 47)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5358

Rothman, Tony
General Category: RELATIVITY

Relativity does not mean everything is relative. And the brilliance of Einstein's discoveries is so great that no amount of journalistic overkill has managed to dim it. Einstein and Bach are the only two people who deserve their reputations.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 5
(p. 115)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5364

Rothman, Tony
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Principle of Magnification: New discoveries follow on the heels of new equipment.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 2
(p. 56)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 5355

Rothman, Tony
General Category: SCIENCE

Principle of Literary Oversight: Textbooks may be straightforward and succinct, but the path of science is crooked and tortuous.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Introduction
(p. xi)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 510

Rothman, Tony
General Category: THEORY

It is not difficult to calculate that if one inflated the world to keep up with the current rate of population growth, then after 2598 years the earth would be expanding at the speed of light. The growth of science is proceeding even faster. Several years ago, in physics at least, we crossed the point at which the expected lifetime of a theory became less than the lead time for publication in the average scientific journal. Consequently, most theories are
Born dead on arrival and journals have become useless, except as historical documents.


A Physicist on Madison Avenue
Chapter 8
(p. 118)


Reference #: 5356

Rothman, Tony
General Category: SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

The Graveyard Principle: To be behind one's time is permanent death. To be ahead of one's time may be temporary death. But Confucius say: dead is dead.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 2
(p. 56)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 509

Rothman, Tony
General Category: SCIENTIST

The makers of Revenge of the Nerds know, as do millions who have seen it, that all scientists when young are undernourished sociophobics who relate best to a computer terminal through coke bottle eyeglasses after midnight in a basement laboratory.


A Physicist on Madison Avenue
Chapter 1
(p. 3)


Reference #: 5357

Rothman, Tony
General Category: THEORY

A theory is accepted only when the last of its opponents dies off. The Copernican Revolution was a great shift in mankind's thinking, but did not take place overnight.


Instant Physics: From Aristotle to Einstein, and Beyond
Chapter 1
(p. 15)
Ballentine Books, New York, New York, United States of America; 1995


Reference #: 8496

Rothman, Tony
General Category: UNIVERSE

When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.


In J.L. Casti
Paradigms Lost
(pp. 482-483)


Reference #: 3428

Rothman, Tony
Sudarshan, George
General Category: THINKING

...one result of unimaginative, mechanistic thinking was that societies eventually ceased to burn people at the stake for witchcraft.


Doubt and Certainty


Reference #: 3427

Rothman, Tony
Sudarshan, George
General Category: THEORY

The everyday usage of 'theory' is for an idea whose outcome is as yet undetermined, a conjecture, or for an idea contrary to evidence. But scientists use the word in exactly the opposite sense. [In science] 'theory' ...refers only to a collection of hypotheses and predictions that is amenable to experimental test, preferably one that has been successfully tested. It has everything to do with the facts.


Doubt and Certainty


Reference #: 377

Rothschild, Lord Nathaniel Mayer
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

It is sometimes said in justification of basic research, that chance observations made during such work, and their subsequent study may be just as important as those made during applied R & D. While there is some truth in this contention, the country's needs are not so trivial as to be left to the mercies of a form of scientific roulette, with many more than the conventional 37 numbers on which the ball may land.


A Framework for Government Research and Development
(p. 3)


Reference #: 2634

Rouelle, Guillame-Frantois
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry is a physical art which, by means of certain operations and instruments, teaches us to separate the various substances which enter into the composition of bodies, and to recombine these again, either to reproduce the former bodies, or to form new ones from them.


Cours de Chimie
(p. 1)


Reference #: 17315

Rous, Francis
General Category: DEATH

Now Death his servant Sickness forth hath sent.....


Thule
The Second Book, Canto 4
(p. 103)


Reference #: 940

Rouse, Irving
General Category: CLASSIFICATION

Classification, like statistics, is not an end in itself but a technique by means of which to attain specific objectives, and so it must be varied with the objective.


American Antiquity
The Classification of Artifacts in Archaeology, Vol. 25, January 1960
(p. 313)


Reference #: 5472

Rouse, Irving
General Category: CLASSIFICATION

A good archaeologist is distinguished from a bad one by his ability to make valid classificatory judgements.


Introduction to Prehistory: A Systematic Approach
Chapter 2, section 7
(p. 46)


Reference #: 3615

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
General Category: ENVIRONMENT

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.'


Emile


Reference #: 5650

Rouvray
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematical chemistry concerns itself primarily with the novel application of mathematical methods in the chemical realm. The novelty is commonly expressed in one of two ways, viz. (i) the development of new chemical theory, and (ii) the development of new mathematical approaches which enable us to gain insights into or to solve problems of chemical interest. The typr of mathematics employed is immaterial, its novelty in respect to the chemical problem under consideration is all important.


Journal of Mathematical Chemistry
Editorial Forward


Reference #: 56

Roux, Joseph
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.


Meditations of a Parish Priest
Part I, No. 71


Reference #: 8391

Rowan-Robinson, Miachael
General Category: TELESCOPE

Once it was the navigators crossing the oceans to find new continents and new creatures, the globe opening up before their eyes, and at the same time the unknown areas, white on the map, shrinking.

Now it is the astronomers' telescopes penetrating the void to find new worlds, voyages of discoveries made with giant metal eyes, seeing light we cannot see.


Our Universe: An Armchair Guide
(p. x)


Reference #: 15495

Rowland, Henry
General Category: LAW

He who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is the benefactor of mankind; but he who obscurely worked to find the laws of such growth is the intellectual superior as well as the greater benefactor of the two.


The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland
The Highest Aim of the Physicist
(p. 669)


Reference #: 15493

Rowland, Henry
General Category: ATOM

The round hard atom of Newton which God alone could break into pieces has become a molecule composed of many atoms and each of these smaller atoms has become so elastic that after vibrating 100,000 times its amplitude of vibration is scarcely diminished. It has become so complicated that it can vibrate with as many thousand notes. We cover the atom with patches of electricity here and there and make of it a system compared with which the planetary system, nay the universe itself, is simplicity.


The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland
The Highest Aime of the Physicist
(p. 671)


Reference #: 15494

Rowland, Henry Augustus
General Category: STUDY

The whole universe is before us to study. The greatest labor of the greatest minds has only given us a few pearls; and yet the limitless ocean, with its hidden depths filled with diamonds and precious stones, is before us. The problem of the universe is yet unsolved, and the mystery involved in one single atom yet eludes us. The field of research only opens wider and wider as we advance, and our minds are lost in wonder and astonishment at the grandeur and beauty unfolded before us.


The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland
A Plea for Pure Science
(p. 613)


Reference #: 15496

Rowland, Henry Augustus
General Category: PUBLICATION

A hermit philosopher we can imagine might make many useful discoveries. Yet, if he keeps them to himself, he can never claim to have benefited the world in any degree. His unpublished results are his private gain, but the world is not better off until he has made them known in language strong enough to call attention to them and to convince the world of their truth.


The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland
The Highest Aim of the Physicist
(p. 669)


Reference #: 12513

Roy, Gabrielle
General Category: SICKNESS

The Christian Scientists held that it was not God Who wanted sickness, but man who puts himself in the way of suffering. If this were the case, though, wouldn't we all die in perfect health?


The Cashier
Chapter 3
(pp. 36-37)


Reference #: 17037

Royce, Josiah
General Category: INFINITE

...let us suppose, if you please, that a portion of the surface of England is very perfectly leveled and smoothed, and is the devoted to the production of our precise map of England. That in general, then, should be found upon the surface of England, map constructions which more or less roughly represent the whole of England, - all this has nothing puzzling about it....But now suppose that this our resemblance is to be made absolutely exact....A map of England, contained within England, is to represent, down to the minutest detail, every contour and marking, natural or artificial, that occurs upon the surface of England...One who, with absolute exactness of perception, looked down upon the ideal map thus supposed to be constructed, would see lying upon the surface of England, and at a definite place thereon, a representation of England on as large of small a scale as you please....This representation, which would repeat in the outer portions the details of the former, but upon a smaller space, would be seen to contain yet another England, and this another, and so on without limit.


The World and the Individual
Supplementary Essay, Section III


Reference #: 1950

Royce, Josiah
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Science is never merely knowledge; it is orderly knowledge.


Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
Vol. I, Logic, The Principles of Logic


Reference #: 8598

Rozeboom, W.W.
General Category: STATISTICAL TESTS

The statistical folkways of a more primitive past continue to dominate the local scene.


Psychological Bulletin
The fallacy of the null-hypothesis significance test, Vol. 57, 1960


Reference #: 8972

Rózsa, Péter
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The eternal lesson is that Mathematics is not something static, closed, but living and developing. Try as we may to constrain it into a closed form, it finds an outlet somewhere and escapes alive.


Playing with Infinity
(p. 265)


Reference #: 2058

Rubin, Harry
General Category: CELL

...we cannot disrupt the cell to understand its living behavior because in doing so we destroy the very property we wish to understand...


Cancer Research
Cancer as a Developmental Disorder, Vol. 45, July 1985
(p. 2940)


Reference #: 5699

Rubin, Harry
General Category: SCIENCE

...one of the great pitfalls of science is the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Scientists seem to prefer questionable explanations to no explanation at all.


Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Does Somatic Mutation Cause Most Cancers?, Vol. 64, No. 5. May 1980
(p. 999)


Reference #: 18060

Rubinstein, Anton
General Category: IMPOSSIBLE

Do not forget to dare the impossible in order to achieve the possible.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 5243

Rucker, Rudy
General Category: INFINITE

The study of infinity is much more than a dry academic game. The intellectual pursuit of the Absolute Infinite is, as Georg Cantor realized, a form of the souls quest for God. Whether or not the goal is ever reached, an awareness of the process brings enlightenment.


Infinity and the Mind
Preface
(p. ix)
Princeton University Press, Princeton; 1995


Reference #: 13787

Rucker, Rudy
General Category: COSMOLOGY

I love cosmology: there's something uplifting about viewing the entire universe as a single object with a certain shape. What entity, short of God, could be nobler or worthier of man's attention than the cosmos itself? Forget about interest rates, forget about war and murder, let's talk about space.


The Fourth Dimension
(p. 91)


Reference #: 13788

Rucker, Rudy
General Category: PHOTON

A photon is a wavy yet solid little package that can zip through empty space without the benefit of any invisible jelly vibrating underfoot.


The Fourth Dimension how to get there from here
(p. 73)


Reference #: 1039

Ruderman, M.A.Rosenfeld, A.H.
General Category: NEUTRINO

Every second, hundreds of billions of these neutrinos pass through each square inch of our bodies, coming from above during the day and from below at night, when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth!


American Scientist
An Elementary Statement on Elementary Particle Physics, Vol. 48, No. 2, June 1960
(p. 214)


Reference #: 1025

Ruderman, M.A.Rosenfeld, A.H.
General Category: UNIVERSE

We are peeling an onion layer by layer, each layer uncovering in a sense another universe, unexpected, complicated, and - as we understand more - strangely beautiful.


American Scientist
An Explanatory Statement on Elementary Particle Physics, Vol. 48, June 1960, No. 2
(p. 210)


Reference #: 17375

Rudloe, Jack
General Category: REPTILE TURTLE

The timeless turtle will look on as man works feverishly to develop destructive nuclear weapons that will blow the world apart many times over. And perhaps one day when he pops his head up from the sea, he'll see a world empty of man, with barnacles growing on the ruins of the cities and buildings. And somewhere, perhaps on a Mexican beach, a handful of Kemp's ridleys filled with eggs will crawl out on the sand, unmolested and free.


Time of the Turtle
Chapter 9
(p. 106)


Reference #: 10577

Rudner, R.
General Category: STATISTICAL

Since no scientific hypothesis is ever completely verified, in accepting a hypothesis on the basis of evidence, the scientist must make the decision that the evidence is sufficiently strong or that the probability is sufficiently high to warrant the acceptance of the hypothesis. Obviously, the decision with respect to the evidence and how strong is "strong enough" is going to be a function of the importance, in the typically ethical sense, of making a mistake in accepting or rejecting the hypothesis.


Scientific Monthly
Remarks on Value Judgment in Scientific Validation, Vol. 79, September 1954
(p. 152)


Reference #: 4965

Rudwick, M.J.S.
General Category: GEOLOGICAL

The emergence of a visual language for geological science...helps in a small way to counter the common but intellectually arrogant assumption that visual modes of communication are either a sop to the less intelligent or a way of pandering to a generation soaked in television.


History of Science
Vol. 14, 1976


Reference #: 14687

Rudwick, M.J.S.
General Category: PALAEONTOLOGY

As palaeontology now prepares for a great leap forward into a computerised age there is perhaps a danger that it may lose sight of its historic origins in the 'steam age' of science and before.


The Meaning of Foddils, Episodes in the History of Palaeontology
(p. 266)
Macdonald, London, England; 1972


Reference #: 6221

Rudwick, Martin J.S.
General Category: BRACHIOPODS

Brachiopods are not generally familiar animals, and neither ther Latin name nor the English term :lamp-shells" means very much to most people. To explain that they are "a kind of shell-fish but really quite different from other shell-fish" is still not very helpful, though it does at least convey the fact that they are acquatic animals with a hard external shell. Even among zoologists they are not well known, and most textbooks of systematic zoology give them merely a page or two in a chapter on "minor phyla." Yet on turning to any textbook on paleontology we find that that this minor phylum has become "major," and dozens of pages may be devoted to what now appears to be highly complicated objects equipped with a most formidable terminology. But at the end of this they are likely to remain no more than "objects," and the reader may still feel he has litt idea what these fossils were like when they were living animals.


Living and Fossil Brachiopods
Chapter I
(p. 13)
Hutchinson University Library, London, England; 1970


Reference #: 184

Rudzewiz, Eugene
General Category: INSECT GNAT

Gnats are gnumerious
But small.
We hardly gnotice them
At all.


In John Gardner
A Child's Beastiary
The Gnat


Reference #: 3145

Ruelle, David
General Category: PHYSICIST

What is the origin of the urge, the fascincation that drives physicists, mathematicians, and presumably other scientists as well? Psychoanalysis suggests that it is sexual curiosity. You start by asking where little babies come from, one thing leads to another, and you find yourself preparing nitroglycerine or solving differential equations. This explanation is somewhat irritating, and therefore probably basically correct.


Chance and Chaos


Reference #: 1781

Ruffini, Remo
General Category: BLACK HOLE

No more revolutionary views of man and the universe has one ever been driven to consider seriously than those that come out of pondering the paradox of gravitational collapse, greatest crisis of physics of all time.


Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Cosmology
(p. 307)


Reference #: 1038

Ruffini, Remo
General Category: BLACK HOLE

What was once the core of a star no longer visible. The core like a Cheshire cat fades from view. One leaves behind only its grin, the other, only its gravitational attraction. Gravitational attraction, yes; light, no. No more than light do any particles emerge. Moreover, light and particles incident from outside emerge and go down the black hole only to add to its mass and increase its gravitational attraction.


American Scientist
Our Universe: The Known and the Unknown, Vol. 56, No. 1, Spring 1968
(p. 9)


Reference #: 9329

Ruffini, Remo Wheeler, John A.
General Category: BLACK HOLE

A black hole has no hair.


Proceedings of Conference on Space Physics
Relativistic Cosmology and Space Platforms


Reference #: 16571

Rukeyser, Muriel
General Category: ATOM

The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms.


The Speed of Darkness
The Speed of Darkness, Stanza IX


Reference #: 18180

Rumford, Benjamin
General Category: EXPERIMENT

It frequently happens, that in the ordinary affairs and occupations of life, opportunities present themselves of contemplating some of the most curious operations of Nature; and very interesting philosophical experiments might often be made, almost without trouble or expense, by means of machinery contrived for the mere mechanical purposes of the arts and manufacturers.


The Complete Works of Count Rumford
Inquiry Concerning the Source of Heat Excited by Friction


Reference #: 3165

Runyon, Damon
General Category: CHANCE

I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.


Collier's
A Nice Place, 8 September 1934
(p. 8)


Reference #: 17422

Rusby, Henry H.
General Category: FLOWER COLUMBINE

Sweet flower of the golden horn,
Thy beauty passeth praise!
But why should spring thy gold adorn
Most meet for summer days?


To the Golden Columbine


Reference #: 2797

Ruse, Michael
General Category: EVOLUTION

...one often sees it said that "evolution is not a fact, but a theory." Is this the essence of my claim? Not really! Indeed, I suggest that this wise-sounding statement is confused to the point of falsity: it almost certainly is if, without regard for cause, one means no more by `evolution' than the claim that all organisms developed naturally from primitive beginnings. Evolution is a fact, fact, FACT!


Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies
Part I, Chapter 2
(p. 58)


Reference #: 10332

Ruse, Michael
General Category: SCIENTIST

A scientist should not cheat or falsify data or quote out of context or do any other thing that is intellectually dishonest. Of course, as always, some individuals fail; but science as a whole disapproves of such action. Indeed, when transgressors are detected, they are usually expelled from the community.


Science, Technology & Human Values
Response to the Commentary: Pro Judice, Vol. 7, No. 41, Fall 1982
(p. 74)


Reference #: 10333

Ruse, Michael
General Category: DEFINITIONS

It is simply not possible to give a neat definition - specifying necessary and sufficient characteristics - which separates all and only those things that have ever been called 'science'.


Science, Technology & Human Values
Response to the Commentary: Pro Judice, Vol. 7, No. 41, Fall 1982
(p. 72)


Reference #: 10331

Ruse, Michael
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, like most human cultural phenomena, has evolved. What was allowable in the early nineteenth century is not necessarily allowable in the late twentieth century. Specifically, science today does not break with law. And this is what counts for us. We want criteria of science for today, not for yesterday.


Science, Technology & Human Values
Response to the Commentary: Pro Judice, Vol. 7, No. 41, Fall 1982
(p. 21)


Reference #: 13232

Rush, J.H.
General Category: LIFE

Life pushes its way through this fatalistically determined world like a river flowing upstream. It is a system of utterly improbable order, a message in a world of noise.


The Dawn of Life
Chapter I
(p. 34)


Reference #: 5659

Rushton, J.P.
General Category: SCIENTIST

Research has suggested that scientists differ from non-scientists by exhibiting a high level of curiosity, especially at an early age, and in demonstrating a relatively low level of sociability. Scientists also tend to be shy, lonely, slow in social development, and indifferent to close personal relationships, group activities and politics. Other attributes include skepticism, preoccupation, reliability, and a facility for precise, critical thinking. Generally they are cognitively complex, independent, non-conformist, assertive, and unlikely to suppress thoughts and impulses; and, like successful entrepreneurs, eminent scientists are also calculated risk-takers.


Journal of Social and Biological Structure
Vol. 11, 1980
(p. 140)


Reference #: 17534

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.


True and Beautiful
Sculpture


Reference #: 17536

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECT

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.


True and the Beautiful
Part 3, The Lamp of Power
(p. 129)


Reference #: 17537

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

The value of Architecture depended on two distinct characters:—the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.


True and the Beautiful
Part 3, The Lamp of Beauty
(p. 130)


Reference #: 16598

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.


The Stones of Venice
Vol. I, Chapter II


Reference #: 17542

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: BUILD

Therefore when we build, let us think that we build (public edifices) forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone to stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! this our fathers did for us.'


True and the Beautiful
Part 3, The Lamp of Memory
(pp. 142-143)


Reference #: 17539

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: BUILDING

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention.


True and the Beautiful
Part 3, The Lamp of Memory
(p. 142)


Reference #: 16180

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: SEEDS

The reason for seeds is that flowers may be; not the reason of flowers that seeds may be.


The Queen of the Air
II, section 60
(p. 174)


Reference #: 17540

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: BUILDER

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.


True and the Beautiful
Part 4, Sculpture
(p. 209)


Reference #: 17541

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

We may live without her [architecture], and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her.


True and the Beautiful
Part 3, The Lamp of Memory
(p. 140)


Reference #: 16597

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: BUILDING

...we require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.


The Stones of Venice
Vol. I, Chapter II, section 1
(p. 39)


Reference #: 17293

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: FAILURE

Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.


In Henry Attwell
Thoughts From Ruskin
(p. 12)


Reference #: 17292

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science does its duty, not in telling us the causes of spots in the sun, but in explaining to us the laws of our own life, and the consequences of their violation.


In Henry Attwell
Thoughts From Ruskin
(p. 29)


Reference #: 17538

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is the work of nations...


True and the Beautiful
Part 4, Sculpture
(p. 187)


Reference #: 17535

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter, can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.


True and Beautiful
Sculpture


Reference #: 7117

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

A stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in minature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is more interesting that the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and incomparably richer in colour-the last quality being most noble in stones of good birth (that is to say, fallen from the crystalline mountain ranges).


Modern Painters
Vol. 5, Chapter 18 (1860)


Reference #: 9706

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

It was stated, ...that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters:—the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.


Seven Lamps of Architecture
The Lamp of Beauty


Reference #: 13105

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: DOCTOR

They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick, and, - if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them, - would rather cure their patient and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it.


The Crown of Wild Olives
Work
(p. 30)


Reference #: 9701

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: BOOK

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.


Sesame and Lilies
(p. 55)


Reference #: 10688

Ruskin, John
Born: 8 February, 1819 in London, England
Died: 20 January, 1900 in Coniston, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: ...with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.


Seven Lamps of Architecture
The Lamp of Memory


Reference #: 17960

Russell, Bertrand
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: REASONING

Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, ‘The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance’; You would say, ‘Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment’; and that is really what a scientific person would say about the universe.


Why I Am Not A Christian: And Other Essays On Religion And Related Subjects
Why I Am Not A Christian
(p. 13)


Reference #: 10023

Russell, Bertrand
General Category: PROPOSITION

...I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true…


Sceptical Essays
Chapter 1
(p. 11)
Routledge, London, England; 1999


Reference #: 16059

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MEASURE

Measurement demands some one-one relations between the numbers and magnitudes in question - a relation which may be direct or indirect, important or trivial, according to circumstances.


The Principles of Mathematics
Entry 164


Reference #: 16400

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: TRUTH

When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.


The Scientific Outlook
Characteristics of Scientific Method
(p. 65)


Reference #: 17959

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: DESIGN

You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it.


Why I Am Not a Christian
Why I Am Not A Christian
(p. 9)


Reference #: 17079

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PARADOX

Although this may seem a paradox; all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.


In Jefferson Hane Weaver
The World of Physics
Vol. II
(p. 22)


Reference #: 17829

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: WATER

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissooloution we should be inclined to be skeptical.


What I Believe


Reference #: 16410

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: METHOD

Scientific method...consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter I
(p. 15)


Reference #: 17647

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Some men are so impressed by what science knows that they forget what it does not know; others are so much more interested in what it does not know than in what it does that they belittle its achievements.


Unpopular Essays
Philosophy for Laymen


Reference #: 16060

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...none of the raw material of the world has smooth logical properties, but whatever appears to have such properties is constructed artificially to have them.


The Principles of Mathematics
Preface
(p. xi)


Reference #: 17958

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: UNIVERSE

The Universe may have a purpose, but nothing that we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.


Why I am Not a Christian
Do We Survive Death?
(p. 92)


Reference #: 16411

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The world as we perceive it is full of a rich variety: some of it is beautiful, some of it is ugly; parts seem to us good, parts bad. But all this has nothing to do with the purely causal properties of things, and it is the properties with which science is concerned. I am not suggesting that if we knew these properties completely we should have a complete knowledge of the world, for its concrete variety is an equally legitimate object of knowledge. What I am saying is that science is that sort of knowledge which gives causal understanding, and that this sort of knowledge can in all likelihood be completed, even where living bodies are concerned, without taking account of anything but their physical and chemical properties.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter V
(p. 133)


Reference #: 17957

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: UNIVERSE DYING

In the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man's achievements must inevitable be buried beneath all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.


Why I am not a Christian
(p. 107)


Reference #: 17956

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: UNIVERSE

So far as scientific evidence goes, the universe has crawled by slow stages to a somewhat pitiful result on this earth, and is going to crawl by still more pitiful stages to a condition of universal death.


Why I am Not a Christian
Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization
(p. 32)


Reference #: 16409

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Science, as its name implies, is primarily knowledge; by convention it is knowledge of a certain kind, the kind namely, which seeks general laws connecting a number of particular facts.


The Scientific Outlook
Introduction
(p. 10)


Reference #: 17057

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: NOTATION

...for a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which make it seem, at times, like a live teacher. Notational irregularities are often the first sign of philosophical errors, and a perfect notation would be a substitute for thought.


The World of Mathematics


Reference #: 16405

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: REPRODUCTION

...impregnation will be regarded in an entirely different manner, more in the light of a surgical operation, so that it will be thought not ladylike to have it performed in the natural manner.


The Scientific Outlook


Reference #: 16406

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

I come now to the statistical part of physics, which is concerned with the study of large aggregates. Large aggregates behave almost exactly as they were supposed to do before quantum theory was invented, so that in regard to them the older physics is very nearly right. There is, however, one supremely important law which is only statistical; this is the second law of thermodynamics. It states, roughly speaking, that the world is growing continuously more disorderly.


The Scientific Outlook
Scientific Metaphysics
(p. 92)


Reference #: 18107

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: UNIVERSE

All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.


In George Smoot
Wrinkles in Time
Chapter 4
(p. 69)


Reference #: 16404

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: AGE OF SCIENCE

To say that we live in an age of science is a common place, but like most common places, it is only partially true. From the point of view of our predecessors, if they could view our society, we should, no doubt, appear to be very scientific, but from the point of view of our successors, it is probable that the exactly opposite would seem to be the cause.


The Scientific Outlook
Introduction
(p. 9)


Reference #: 17104

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; there it is false.


In John D. Barrow
The World within the World
(p. 144)
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 17103

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.


In John D. Barrow
The World within the World
(p. 278)
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 17648

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: THEORY

...it is only theory that makes men completely incautious.


Unpopular Essays
Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind
(p. 163)


Reference #: 16403

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

In arriving at a scientific law there are three main stages: The first consists in observing the significant facts; the second in arriving at a hypothesis, which, if it is true, would account for these facts; the third is deducing from this hypothesis consequences which can be tested by observation. If the consequences are verified, the hypothesis is provisionally accepted as true, although it will usually require modification later on as a result of the discovery of further facts.


The Scientific Outlook
(p. 57)
London, England: Free Press 1931


Reference #: 16088

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices....To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.


The Problems of Philosophy
Chapter XV
(pp. 156-157)


Reference #: 16402

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ABSTRACTION

The power of using abstractions is the essence of intellect, and with every increase in abstraction the intellectual triumphs of science are enhanced.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter III
(p. 87)


Reference #: 16407

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

The man of science looks for facts that are significant, in the sense of leading to general laws; and such facts are frequently quite devoid of intrinsic interest.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter I
(p. 49)


Reference #: 16408

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Whatever knowledge we possess is either knowledge of particular facts or scientific knowledge.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter III
(p. 73)


Reference #: 17830

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.


What I Believe


Reference #: 16399

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

...the scientific attitude is in some degree unnatural to man; the majority of our opinions are wish-fulfulments, like dreams in the Freudian theory.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter I
(p. 16)


Reference #: 16401

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: FACT

A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance.


The Scientific Outlook
Chapter II
(p. 59)


Reference #: 16089

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MINERALOGIST

If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen.


The Problems of Philsophy
Chapter XV
(p. 154)


Reference #: 6861

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.


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


Reference #: 7316

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ORDER

The notion of continuity depends upon that of order, since continuity is merely a particular type of order.


Mysticism and Logic
Mathematics and Metaphysics, Chapter V
(p. 91)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7328

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: RELATIVITY

Einstein's theory of relativity is probably the greatest synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time.


N.Y. Times
April 19, 1955


Reference #: 7315

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: METHOD

In science the man of real genius is the man who invents a new method. The notable discoveries are often made by his successors, who can apply the method with fresh vigour, unimpaired by the previous labour of perfecting it; but the mental caliber of the thought required for their work, however brilliamt, is not so great as that required by the first inventor of the method.


Mysticism and Logic
Chapter II
(p. 41)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7325

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...the rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The Study of Mathematics
(p. 61)


Reference #: 4982

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SENSE

If the world of sense does not fit the world of mathematics, so much the worse for the world of sense.


History of Western Philosophy
(p. 53)


Reference #: 7314

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

There are in science immense numbers of different methods, appropriate to different classes of problems; but over and above them all, there is something not easily definable, which may be called the method of science. It was formerly customary to identify this with the inductive method, and to associate it with the name of Bacon. But the true inductive method was not discovered by Bacon, and the true method of science is something which includes deduction as much as induction, logic and mathematics as much as botany and geology.


Mysticism and Logic
The Place of Science in a Liberal Education, Section II
(p. 40)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7313

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE

A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.


Mysticism and Logic
Chapter II
(p. 45)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7324

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

But mathematics takes us...into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform...


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The Study of Mathematics
(p. 69)


Reference #: 5403

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The nineteenth century which prides itself upon the invention of steam and evolution, might have derived a more legitimate title to fame from the discovery of pure mathematics.


International Monthly
Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics, Vol. 4, July-December 1901
(p. 83)


Reference #: 7312

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: TIME

There is some sense—easier to feel than to state—in which time is an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality. Past and future must e acknowledged to be as real as the present, and a certain emancipation from slavery to time is essential to philosophic thought.


Mysticism and Logic
(p. 21)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7323

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The Study of Mathematics
(p. 60)


Reference #: 6029

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.


Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, March 1912


Reference #: 4566

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: METHOD

Scientific method...consists mainly in eliminating those beliefs which there is reason to think a source of shocks, while retaining those against which no definite argument can be brought.


Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
Chapter III
(p. 201)


Reference #: 3700

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SPACE

All points are qualitatively similar, and distinguished by the mere fact that they lie outside one another


Essays on the Foundations of Geometry
(p. 52)


Reference #: 7321

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The discovery that all of mathematics follows inevitably from a small collection of fundamental laws is one which immeasurably enhances the intellectual beauty of the whole; to those who have been oppressed by the fragmentary and incomplete nature of most chains of deduction this discovery comes with all the overwhelming force of a revelation; like a palace emerging from the autumn mist as the traveler ascends an Italian hillside, the stately stories of the mathematical edifice appear in due order and proportion, with a new perfection in every part.


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The Study of Mathematics
(p. 67)


Reference #: 4983

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PYTHAGORAS

Pythagoras was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise.


History of Western Philosophy
(p. 49)


Reference #: 4984

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: AGE OF SCIENCE

So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts. ...The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.


History of Western Philosophy
Book Three, Chapter I
(p. 480)
George Allen and Unwin, London, England, 1961


Reference #: 4985

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICAL KNOWLEDGE

...mathematical knowledge ...is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. '3' means '2 + 1', and '4' means '3 + 1'. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that '4' means the same as '2+2'. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.


History of Western Philosophy
George Allen and Unwin, London, England, 1961


Reference #: 3026

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATTER

Matter" is a convenient formula for describing what happens where it isn't.


An Outline of Philosophy
Chapter XV
(p. 165)


Reference #: 1670

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: IMAGINATION

...if you have a good scientific imagination you can think of all sorts of things that might be true, and that's the essence of science. You first think of something that might be true-then you look to see if it is, and it generally isn't.


Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind
What is Philosophy
(p. 13)
Greenwood Press, Westport, 1960


Reference #: 7320

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

It was formerly supposed that Geometry was the study of the nature of the space in which we live, and accordingly it was urged, by those who held that what exists can only be known empirically, that Geometry should really be regarded as belonging to applied mathematics. But it has gradually appeared, by the increase of non-Euclidean systems, that Geometry throws no more light upon the nature of space than Arithmetic throws upon the population of the United States.


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
(p. 92)
London, England: George Allen and Unwin, 1917


Reference #: 7319

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possess not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture...


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The Study of Mathematics
(p. 60)


Reference #: 7300

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: COMMON SENSE

It used to be supposed by empiricists that the justification of such inference rests upon induction. Unfortunately, it can be proved that induction by simple enumeration, if conducted without regard to common sense, leads very much more often to error than the truth. And if a principle needs common sense before it can be safely used, it is not the sort of principle than can satisfy a logician. We must, therefore, look for a principle other than induction if we are to accept the broad outlines of science, and of common sense in so far as it is not refutable. This is a very large problem.


My Philosophical Development
Chapter 1
(p. 11)


Reference #: 7318

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: EVOLUTION FAITH

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms ...that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.


Mysticism and Logic
A Free Man's Worship (first published as %The Free Man's Worship% in Dec. 1903)
(p. 47)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7317

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: LAW

The discovery that all mathematics follows inevitably from a small collection of fundamental laws is one which immeasurably enhances the intellectual beauty of the whole; to those who have been oppressed by the fragmentary and incomplete nature of most existing chains of deduction this discovery comes with all the overwhelming force of a revelation; like a palace emerging from the autumn mist as the traveler ascends an Italian hill-side, the stately storeys of the mathematical edifice appear in their due order and proportion, with a new perfection in every part.


Mysticism and Logic
Chapter IV
(pp. 67-68)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 7322

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Pure mathematics consists entirely of asseverations to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is, of which it is supposed to be true ....If our hypothesis is about anything, and not about some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.


Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
(p. 75)


Reference #: 6967

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ARITHMETIC

All knowledge must be recognition, on pain of being mere delusion; Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians….Whatever can be thought of has being and its being is a precondition, not a result, of its being though of.


Mind
Is Position in Space and Time Absolute or Relative, Vol. X, 1901.
(p. 312)


Reference #: 5457

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: LOGIC

...logic is the youth of mathematics...


Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Mathematics and Logic
(p. 194)


Reference #: 1134

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: GEOMETRY

...Geometry has been, throughout, of supreme importance in the theory of knowledge.


An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry
Chapter II
(p. 54)


Reference #: 5456

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ORDER

Dimensions, in geometry, are a development of order. The conception of a limit, which underlies all higher mathematics, is a serial conception. There are parts of mathematics which do not depend upon the notion of order, but they are very few in comparison with the parts in which this notion is involved.


Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
The Definition of Order
(p. 29)


Reference #: 5458

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics is the manhood of logic...


Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Mathematics and Logic
(p. 194)


Reference #: 5455

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology...


Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
(p. 169)


Reference #: 1135

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: GEOMETRY

GEOMETRY, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, remained, in the war against empiricism, an impregnable fortress of the idealists. Those who held - as was generally held on the Continent - that certain knowledge, independent of experience, was possible about the real world, had only to point to Geometry: none but a madman, they said, would throw doubt on its validity, and none but a fool would deny its objective reference.


An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry
Introduction
(p. 1)


Reference #: 1132

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SPACE

How can a certain line, or a certain surface, form an impassable barrier to space, or have any mobility different in kind from that of all other lines or surfaces? The notion cannot, in philosophy, be permitted for a moment, since it destroys that most fundamental of all the axioms, the homogeneity of space.


An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry
Chapter I, section 45
(p. 49)


Reference #: 7720

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PROBABILITY

There is a special department of hell for students of probability. In this department there are many typewriters and many monkeys. Every time that a monkey walks on a typewriter, it types by chance one of Shakespeare's sonnets.


Nightmares of Eminent Persons
The Metaphysician's Nightmare
(p. 29)


Reference #: 5454

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: POSTULATE

The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. Let us leave them to others and proceed with our honest toil.


Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
(p. 71)


Reference #: 379

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE

In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stands upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where on man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.


A Free Man's Worship and Other Essays
Chapter 3 (first published as %The Free Man's Worship% in Dec. 1903)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 6227

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

...science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know.


Logic and Knowledge
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
(p. 281)


Reference #: 1133

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: GEOMETRY

All geometrical reasoning is, in the last resort, circular: if we start by assuming points, they can only be defined by the lines or planes which relate them; and if we start by assuming lines or planes, they can only be defined by the points through which they pass.


An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry
Chapter III
(p. 120)


Reference #: 1771

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: COMMON SENSE

Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time. The aim of science is to save it from such surprises.


In Jean-Pierre Luminet
Black Holes
(p. 182)


Reference #: 14169

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things, and (2) to enable us to do things.


The Impact of Science on Society
Chapter II
(p. 18)


Reference #: 10024

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: LEARN

William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.'...What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.


Sceptical Essays
Chapter XII
(pp. 154, 157)


Reference #: 9642

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Unless we can know something without knowing everything, it is obvious that we can never know something.


In John E. Leffler
Rates and Equilibria of Organic Reactions
(p. v)


Reference #: 10026

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MACHINE

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful, and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous, and loathed because they impose slavery.


Sceptical Essays
Chapter VI
(p. 83)


Reference #: 12177

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SCIENCE

Science has always prided itself on being empirical and believing only what could be verified.


In Robert E. Egener and Lester E. Denonn (eds.)
The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
New York: Simon and Schuster


Reference #: 12178

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MAN

...Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.


In Robert E. Egner and Lester E. Denonn
The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
A Free Man's Worship (first published as %The Free Man's Worship% in Dec. 1903)
(p. 67)
Allen & Unwin, London, England; 1917


Reference #: 10025

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MACHINE

A machine is like a Djinn in the Arabian Nights: beautiful and beneficent to its master, but hideous and terrible to his enemies.


Sceptical Essays
Chapter VI
(p. 83)


Reference #: 9813

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PREDICTION

Science is the attempt to discover, by means of observation, and reasoning based upon it, first, particular facts about the world, and then laws connecting facts with one another and (in fortunate cases) making it possible to predict future occurrences.


Religion and Science
Grounds of Conflict
(p. 8)


Reference #: 9279

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Pure Mathematics is the class of all propositions of the form "p implies q," where p and q are propositions containing one or more variables, the same in the two propositions, and neither p or q contains any constants except logical constants. And logical constants are all notions definable in terms of a class of the following: Implication, the relation of a term to a class of relation, and such further notions as may be involved in the general notion of propositions of the above form. In addition to these, Mathematics uses a notion which is not a constituent of the propositions which it considers - namely, the notion of truth.


Principles of Mathematics
(p. 1)


Reference #: 11792

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ENERGY

As a proposition of linguistics: 'Energy' is the name of the mathematical expression in question....As a proposition of psychology: our senses are such that we notice what is roughly the mathematical expression in question, and we are led nearer and nearer to it as we refine upon our crude perceptions by scientific observation.


The ABC of Relativity
(p. 113)


Reference #: 11921

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

It is obvious that a man who can see, knows things that a blind man cannot know; but a blind man can know the whole of physics.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XXXVII
(p. 389)


Reference #: 11920

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

The aim of physics, consciously or unconsciously, has always been to discover what we may call the causal skeleton of the world.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XXXVII
(p. 391)


Reference #: 8116

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: CAUSATION

All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation is one of the fundamental
axioms or postulates of science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word “cause” never occurs… The reason why physics has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact, there are no such things. The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.


In C. A. Fritz Jr.(ed.)
On the Philosophy of Science
On the Notion of Cause
(p. 163)


Reference #: 9280

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SPACE

There is no logical implication of other entities in space. It does not follow, merely because there is space, that therefore there are things in it. If we are to believe this, we must believe it on new grounds, or rather on what is called the evidence of the senses. Thus we are taking an entirely new step.


Principles of Mathematics
Chapter 53
(p. 465)
Norton, New York, New York, United States of America 1903; 2nd edition, 1938


Reference #: 11918

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: COMMON SENSE

Common sense starts with the notion that there is matter where we can get sensations of touch, but not elsewhere. Then it gets puzzled by wind, breath, clouds, etc., whence it is led to the conception of "spirit" - I speak etymologically. After "spirit" has been replaced by "gas," there is a further stage, that of the aether.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XIII
(p. 121)


Reference #: 11917

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics, ideally, are accurate laws about large groups; they differ from other laws only in being about groups, not about individuals.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XIX
(p. 191)


Reference #: 11919

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: COMMON SENSE

The supposition of common sense and naive realism, that we see the actual physical object, is very hard to reconcile with the scientific view that our perception occurs somewhat later than the emission of light by the object; and this difficulty is not overcome by the fact that the time involved, like the notorious baby, is a very little one.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XV
(p. 155)


Reference #: 9812

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: TRUTH

Science thus encourages abandonment of the search for absolute truth, and the substitution of what may be called 'technical' truth, which belongs to any theory that can be successfully employed in inventions or in predicting the future. 'Technical' truth is a matter of degree: a theory from which more successful inventions and predictions spring is truer than one which give rise to fewer.


Religion and Science
Grounds of Conflict
(p. 15)


Reference #: 11923

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: LAW

Scientific laws, when we have reason to think them accurate, are different in form from the common-sense rules which have exceptions: they are always, at least in physics, either differential equations, or statistical averages.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XIX
(p. 191)


Reference #: 9814

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: EVOLUTION

It appears that during those ages when animals were torturing each other with ferocious horns and agonizing stings, Omnipotence was quietly waiting for the ultimate emergence of man, with his still more widely diffused cruelty. Why the Creator should have preferred to reach his goal by a process, instead of going straight to it, these modem theologians do not tell us.


Religion and Science
(p. 73)


Reference #: 9815

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ETHICS

Science can discuss the causes of desires, and the means for realizing them, but it cannot contain any genuinely ethical sentences, because it is concerned with what is true or false.


Religion and Science
Science and Ethics
(p. 237)


Reference #: 9816

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PROBABILITY

According to quantum mechanics, it cannot be known what an atom will do in given circumstances; there are a definite set of alternatives open to it, and it chooses sometimes one, sometimes another. We know in what proportion of cases one choice will be made, in what proportion a second, or a third, and so on. But we do not know any law determining the choice in an individual instance. We are in the same position as a booking-office clerk at Paddington, who can discover, if he chooses, what proportion of travelers from that station go to Birmingham, what proportion to Exeter, and so on, but knows nothing of the individual reasons which lead to one choice in one case and another in another.


Religion and Science
(pp. 158-159)


Reference #: 9817

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: LAW

The discovery of causal laws is the essence of science and therefore there can be no doubt that scientific men do right to look for them. If there is any region where there are no causal laws, that region is inaccessible to science. But the maxim that mushroom gathers should seek mushrooms.


Religion and Science
Determinism
(pp. 146-147)


Reference #: 9818

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: METHOD

Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.


Religion and Science
Science and Ethics
(p. 243)


Reference #: 9819

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: DATA

...there is more difficulty in stating our principle so as to be applicable when our data are confined to a finite part of the universe. Things from outside may always crash in and have unexpected effects.


Religion and Science
Determinism
(p. 149)


Reference #: 11791

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: TENSOR

A man punting walks along the boat, but keeps a constant position with reference to the river bed so long as he does not pick up his pole. The Lilliputians might debate endlessly whether he is walking or standing still: the debate would be as to words, not as to facts. If we choose co-ordinates fixed relatively to the boat, he is walking; if we choose co-ordinates fixed relatively to the river bed, he is standing still. We want to express physical laws in such a way that it shall be obvious when we are expressing the same law by reference to two different systems of co-ordinates, so that we shall not be misled into supposing we have different laws when we have one law in different words. This is accomplished by the method of tensors.


The ABC of Relativity
(pp. 177-178)


Reference #: 13139

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.


The Conquest of Happiness
X
(p. 146)


Reference #: 11794

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

Broadly speaking, traditional physics has collapsed into two portions, truisms and geography.


The ABC of Relativity
(p. 222)


Reference #: 11790

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: X-RAY

Everybody knows something about X-rays, because of their use in medicine. Everybody knows that they can take a photograph of the skeleton of a living person, and show the exact position of a bullet lodged in the brain. But not everybody knows why this is so. The reason is that the capacity of ordinary matter for stopping the rays varies approximately as the fourth power of the atomic number of the elements concerned...


The ABC of Atoms
(p. 106)


Reference #: 11995

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which numbers holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.


The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Prologue
(pp. 3-4)


Reference #: 9180

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I though that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new kind of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.


Portraits from Memory and Other Essays
Reflections on My Eightieth Birthday
(p. 54)


Reference #: 11924

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

But we are not likely to find science returning to the crude form of causality believed in by Fijians and philosophers of which the type is "lightning causes thunder".


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XI
(p. 102)


Reference #: 11925

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: DATA

When a man of science speaks of his 'data,' he knows very well in practice what he means. Certain experiments have been conducted, and have yielded certain observed results, which have been recorded. But when we try to define a 'datum' theoretically, the task is not altogether easy. A datum, obviously, must be a fact known by perception. But it is very difficult to arrive at a fact in which there is no element of inference, and yet it would seem improper to call something a 'datum' if it involved inferences as well as observation. This constitutes a problem...


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XIX
(p. 187)


Reference #: 11926

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

Thus it would seem that wherever we infer from perceptions, it is only structure that we can validly infer; and structure is what can be expressed by mathematical logic, which includes mathematics.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XXIV
(p. 254)


Reference #: 11927

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

The notion of causality has been greatly modified by the substitution of space-time for space and time....Thus geometry and causation become inextricably intertwined.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter XXX
(p. 313)


Reference #: 11928

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: NEWTON, SIR ISSAC

This latter objection was sanctioned by Newton, who was not a strict Newtonian.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter II
(p. 14)


Reference #: 9327

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: QUESTION

Clearly our first problem must be to define the issue, since nothing is more prolific of fruitless controversy than an ambiguous question.


Proceeding of the University of Durham Philosophical Society
Determinism and Physics, 1936


Reference #: 15418

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PROBLEM

I am sorry that I have had to leave so many problems unsolved. I always have to make this apology, but the world really is rather puzzling and I cannot help it.


The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Lecture V


Reference #: 15155

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: ETHICS

Science, by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved.


The New York Times Magazine
The Science to Save Us from Science, March 19, 1950


Reference #: 11994

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: MATHEMATICS

There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.


The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
(p. 50)


Reference #: 14191

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: SYMBOL

...symbolism is useful because it makes things difficult...Now, in the beginnings, everything is selfevident; and it is very hard to see whether one selfevident proposition follows from another or not. Obviousness is always the enemy to correctness. Hence we invent a new and difficult symbolism, in which nothing is obvious.


The International Monthly
Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics, Vol. 4, July-December 1901
(p. 85)


Reference #: 12680

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: NUMBER

We are the finite numbers.
We are the stuff of the world.
Whatever confusion cumbers
The earth is by us unfurled.
We revere our master Pythagoras
And deeply despise every hag or ass.
Not Endor's witch nor Balaam's mount
We recognize as wisdom's fount.
But round and round in endless baller
We move like comets seen by Halley.
And honored by the immortal Plato
We think no later mortal great-o.
We follow the laws
Without a pause,
For we are the finite numbers.


The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell
Nightmares of Eminent Persons, The Mathematician's Nightmare
(p. 43)


Reference #: 11922

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics must be interpreted in a way which tends toward idealism, and perception in a way which tends toward materialism.


The Analysis of Matter
Chapter I
(p. 7)


Reference #: 8314

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Born: 18 May, 1872 in Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died: 2 February, 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales
General Category: TIME

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.


Our Knowledge of the External World
(p. 226)
Allan & Unwin, London, England; 1921


Reference #: 9948

Russell, Cheryl
General Category: ERROR

Always expect to find at least one error when you proofread your own statistics. If you don't, you are probably making the same mistake twice.


In Tom Parker
Rules of Thumb
(p. 124)


Reference #: 5698

Russell, E.J.
General Category: DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS

A committee or an investigator considering a scheme of experiments should first ...ask whether each experiment or question is framed in such a way that a definite answer can be given. The chief requirement is simplicity; only one question should be asked at a time.


Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture of Great Britain
Field Experiments: How They are Made and What They Are, Vol. 32, 1926
(p. 989)


Reference #: 16549

Russell, Henry Norris
General Category: PROBLEMS

The unsolved problems of Nature have a distinctive fascination, though they still far outnumber those which have even approximately been resolved.


The Solar System and Its Origin
Chapter I
(p. 1)
The Macmillan Company, New York, New York, United States of America 1935


Reference #: 1339

Russell, Henry Norris
General Category: STAR

In the grandeur of its sweep in space and time, and the beauty and simplicity of the relations which it discloses between the greatest and the smallest things of which we know, it reveals as perhaps nothing else does, the majesty of the order about us which we call nature, and, as I believe, of that Power behind the order, of which it is but a passing shadow.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1923
Constitution of the Stars
(p. 158)


Reference #: 1336

Russell, Henry Norris
General Category: PHYSICIST

If a first-rate physicist, well versed in all the knowledge acquired in the laboratory during the last quarter century on the structure and properties of the atom, should have lived his life on a planet so enshrouded by clouds that neither he nor others had ever glimpsed the starry heavens, yet if he had the imagination to conceive that immense quantities of matter might lie beyond the clouds, he would be able to picture the heavens much as they are, tell the probable maximum masses of the stars, their minimum distances, the range of their diameters and temperatures, the differences of their spectra, and in short to duplicate by prediction, not only in general features but in many of the finest details the actual appearance of the universe forever hidden from him.


Quoted in C.G. Abbot
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1922
The Architecture of Atoms and a Universe Built of Atoms
(p. 157)


Reference #: 10400

Russell, Henry Norris
General Category: OBSERVATORY

The good spectroscopist - to parody the old jest - might perhaps be permitted to go, when he
Died, instruments and all, and set up an observatory on the moon.


Scientific American
Where Astronomers Go When They Die, Vol. 149, No. 3, September 1933
(p. 112)


Reference #: 6103

Russell, L.K.
General Category: X-RAY

She is so tall, so slender, and her bones—
Those frail phosphates, those carbonates of lime—
Are well produced by cathode rays sublime,
By oscillations, amperes and by ohms.
Her dorsal vertebrae are not concealed
By epidermis, but are well revealed.


Life
Line on an X-ray Portrait of a Lady, March 12, 1896


Reference #: 310

Russell, Peter
General Category: STARS

...The fixed stars
Are moving really, and the whole Galaxy turning
Round and round on its own axis agitatedly...


All for the Wolves
Elegiac


Reference #: 1296

Russell, Richard Joel
General Category: GEOMORPHOLOGY

The distinction between geological and geographical geomorphology lies chiefly in a contrast between conclusions of vertical and horizontal significance.


Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Geographical Geomorphology Vol. 39, 1949
(p. 4)


Reference #: 10203

Russell, Sir E. John
General Category: SOUL

Those young people of today, who will be the leaders of thought and of action tomorrow, are faced with the problem of enduring that, in gaining control over Nature, man does not lose his own soul.


Science and Modern Life
(p. 101)
Philosophical Library, New York, New York, United States of America 1955


Reference #: 1863

Russell, W. Richie
General Category: BRAIN

There is no clear evidence on which we can separate the mind from the brain; they appear to develop together and to disintegrate together.


Brain Memory Learning: A Neurologist's View


Reference #: 11583

Russo, Richard
General Category: MONKEYS TYPEWRITERS

In a novel, two characters discuss the glitch in a computer which causes it to scroll an endless series of meaningless symbols: He sighs. ``It casts serious doubt on the old theory that an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually write the Great American Novel, doesn't it?'


Straight Man
(p. 129)
Random House, 1996


Reference #: 7004

Rutherford, D.
General Category: ILLNESS

Amiga-Ga : Brain failure, characterized by regression of speech to a high-speed beeping noise.
Atari-Kiri : Extreme reaction to repeatedly poor video scores.
Nitendo-itis: Painful bruising of the thumbs from frantic button pressing.
Segalepsy : Epileptic fits triggered by flickering video images.
See-3DO : Retinal burnout from viewing monitor screens too closely.


Newsweek
Letter, October 18, 1993


Reference #: 8751

Rutherford, E.
Soddy, F.
General Category: ELEMENT

If elements heavier than uranium exist it is proble that they will be radioactive. The extreme delicacy of radioactivity as a means of chemical analysis would enable such elements to be recognized even if present in infinitesimal quantity. It is therefore to be expected that the number of radio-elements will be augmented in the future, and that considerably more than three at present recognized exist in minute quantity.


Philosophical Magazine
Vol. 6, 1903
(p. 5:576)


Reference #: 18149

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: DISCOVERIES

The march of discovery has been so rapid that it has been difficult even for those directly engaged in the investigations to grasp at once the full significance of the facts that have been brought to light.


Radioactive Transformations
Chapter I
(p. 1)
Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, England; 1906


Reference #: 17026

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: DISCOVERY

It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden, violent discovery; science goes step by step and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery - a bolt from the blue, as it were - you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man or another, and it is the mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected.


In Robert B. Heywood
The Works of the Mind
The Scientist
(p. 178)


Reference #: 1612

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: SCATTERING

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center carrying a charge.


In Joseph Needham and W. Pagel (ed.)
Background to Modern Science from Aristotle to Galileo
The Development of the Theory of Atomic Structure
(p. 68)


Reference #: 7702

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: ATOM

My work on the atom goes on in fine style. Several atoms succumb each week.


In Ruth Moore
Niels Bohr: The Man, His Science, & The World They Changed
(p. 114)


Reference #: 4480

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: ATOM

[Atom] a nice, hard fellow, red or grey in color according to taste.


In Robert G. Colodny (ed.)
From Quarks to Quasars
(p. 57)


Reference #: 7937

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: ENERGY

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.


NY Herald Tribune
Atom Powered World Absurd, Scientists Told, September 12, 1933


Reference #: 3130

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

It is essential for men of science to take an interest in the administration of their own affairs or else the professional civil servant will step in - and then the Lord help you.


Bulletin of the Institute of Physics
1950, 1, no. 1, cover


Reference #: 9953

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: ELECTRON

It seems to me that you would have to assume that the electron knows beforehand where it is going to stop.


Rutherford at Manchester
Letter to Niels Bohr, March 20, 1913
(p. 127)


Reference #: 14625

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: EXPERIMENT

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.


In N.T. Bailey
The Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine
Chapter 2
(p. 23)


Reference #: 10063

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Experiment without imagination or imagination without recourse to experiment, can accomplish little, but for effective progress, a happy blend of these two powers is necessary.


Science
The Electrical Structure of Matter, Vol. 58, 1923
(p. 221)


Reference #: 9952

Rutherford, Ernest
General Category: PHYSICS

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.


In J.B. Birks
Rutherford at Manchester
Memories of Rutherford
(p. 108)


Reference #: 3891

Rutherford, Lord
General Category: NUCLEUS

It is my personal conviction that if we knew more about the nucleus, we should find it much simpler than we suppose. I am always a believer in simplicity, being a simple fellow.


Guttingen Lecture
December 14, 1931


Reference #: 7183

Rutherford, Mark (William Hale White)
General Category: SUN

The sun, we say, is the cause of heat, but the heat is the sun, hence on this window-ledge.


More Pages from a Journal


Reference #: 16397

Ryder-Smith, Roland
General Category: TELESCOPE

All night he watches roving worlds go by
Through tempered glass, his window on the sky
Feels in his own beat
Of some far mightier heart, and hears
The mystic concert of the spheres.


The Scientific Monthly
Astronomer, Vol. 67, No. 4, October 1948
(p. 253)


Reference #: 13116

Ryle, Gilbert
General Category: MACHINE

...the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.


The Concept of Mind
(pp. 15-16)


Reference #: 9355

Ryle, Martin
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy differs from most sciences in that we cannot do experiments; the astronomer must build up from his existing observations a picture or "model" of the Universe, and then look for further effects which should be observable if his model is correct.


Proceedings of the Royal Institution
Radio Astronomy and Cosmology, Vol. 38, No. 173, 1961
(p. 439)


Reference #: 7116

Saaty, Thomas L.
General Category: EQUATION

Equations are the lifeblood of applied mathematics and science.


Modern Nonlinear Equations
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 7822

Sabatier, Paul
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Chemistry)
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1912


Reference #: 1652

Sabbagh, K.
General Category: ZETA

In 1859, a German mathematician called Bernhard Riemann, a 'timid diffident soul with a horror of attracting attention to himself,' published a paper that drew more attention to him than to almost any other mathematician in the 19th century,. In it he made an important statement: the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function all have real part equal to 1/2. That is the Riemann Hypothesis: 15 words encapsulating a mystery at the heart of our number system.


Beautiful Mathematics
Prospect, January 2002.


Reference #: 9406

Sabbagh, K.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

For many mathematicians working on it, $1m is less important than the satisfaction that would come from finding a proof. Throughout my researches among the mathematicians' tribe (I have interviewed 30 in the past year), Riemann's Hypotheis was often described to me in awed terms. Hugh Montgomery of the University of Michigan said this was the proof for which a mathematician might sell his soul. Henryk Iwaniec, a Polish-American mathematician, sounded as if he were already discussing terms with Lucifer"
'I would trade everything I know in mathematics for the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. It's gorgeous stuff. I'm only worried that I'll be unable to understand it. That would be the worst...'


Prospect
Beautiful Mathematics, January 2002


Reference #: 7573

Sabin, Albert
General Category: SCIENTIST

No matter how good you are, you cannot be a scientist unless you learn to live with frustration.


New Scientist
I Only Ask for a Place to Work, Vol. 57, 1973
(p. 490)


Reference #: 17604

Sacks, Oliver
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Thinking of all the malodorous sulfur compounds and the atrocious smell of selenium and tellurium compounds, I decided that these three elements formed an olfactory as well as a chemical category, and thought of them thereafter as the 'stinkogens.'


Uncle Tungsten, Memories of a Chemical Boyhood


Reference #: 17605

Sacks, Oliver
General Category: ELEMENTS

Thinking of all the malodorous sulfur compounds and the atrocious smell of selenium and tellurium compounds, I decided that these three elements formed an olfactory as well as a chemical category, and thought of them thereafter as the "stinkogens."


Uncle Tungsten, Memories of a Chemical Boyhood


Reference #: 17603

Sacks, Oliver
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Now I longed to have a lab of my own-not Uncle Dave's bench, not the family kitchen, but a place where I could do chemical experiments undisturbed, by myself. As a start, I wanted to lay hands on cobaltite and niccolite, and compounds or minerals of manganese and molybdenum, of uranium and chromium-all those wonderful elements which were discovered in the eighteenth century. I wanted to pulverise them, treat them with acid, roast them, reduce them-whatever was necessary-so I could extract the metals myself. I knew, from looking through a chemical catalog at the factory, that one could buy these metals already purified, but it would be far more exciting, I reckoned, to make them myself. This way, I would enter chemistry, start to discover it for myself, in much the same way as its first practitioners did-I would live the history of chemistry in myself.


Uncle Tungsten, Memories of a Chemical Boyhood


Reference #: 1600

Sacks, Oliver
General Category: HEALTH

Health is infinite and expansive in mode, and reaches out to be filled with the fullness of the world; whereas disease is finite and reductive in mode, and endeavors to reduce the world to itself.


Awakenings
Perspectives
(p. 234)
Vintage Books, New York, New York, United States of America 1990


Reference #: 7684

Sacks, Oliver
General Category: PATIENTS

There is only one cardinal rule: one must always listen to the patient.


Newsweek
Listening to the Lost, August 20, 1984
(p. 70)


Reference #: 1599

Sacks, Oliver
General Category: DISEASE

Diseases have a character of their own, but they also partake of our character; we have a character of our own, but we also partake of the world's character...


Awakenings
Perspectives
(p. 229)
Vintage Books, New York, New York, United States of America 1990


Reference #: 1598

Sacks, Oliver W.
General Category: MEDICINE

We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic and myth.


Awakenings
Prologue
(p. 28)
Vintage Books, New York, New York, United States of America 1990


Reference #: 906

Sackville-West, V.
General Category: MAN

...one might reply that man himself was but a collection of atoms, even as a house was but a collection of bricks, yet man laid claim to a soul, to a spirit, to a power of recording and or perception, which had not more to do with his restless atoms than had the house with its stationary bricks.


All Passion Spent
Part I
(p. 82)


Reference #: 4822

Sa'di
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science is for the cultivation of religion, not for worldly enjoyment.


Gulistan
Chapter VIII, Maxim IV
(p. 206)


Reference #: 2633

Safonov, V.
General Category: DISCOVERY

There are scientists who make their chief discovery at the threshold of their scientific career, and spend the rest of their lives substantiating and elaborating it, mapping out the details of their discovery, as it were. There are other scientists who have to tred a long, difficult and often tortuous path to its end before they succeed in crowning their efforts with a discovery.


Courage
Chapter 10
(p. 40)


Reference #: 16922

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: IDEA

Someone has to propose ideas at the boundaries of the plausible, in order to so annoy the experimentalists or observationalists that they'll be motivated to disprove the idea.


In J. Achenbach
The Washington Post
The Final Frontier?, C1-C2May 30, 1996


Reference #: 2570

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

After centuries of muddy surmise, unfettered speculation, stodgy conservatism, and unimaginative disinterest, the subject of extraterrestrial life has finally come of age.


Cosmic Connections
Preface
(p. viii)


Reference #: 2606

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: COSMOS

…we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.


Cosmos
Chapter XIII
(p. 345)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 1968

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Let us approach a much more modest question: not whether we can know the universe or the Milky Way Galaxy or a star or a world. Can we know, ultimately and in detail, a grain of salt? Consider one microgram of table salt, a speck just barely large enough for someone with keen eyesight to make out without a microscope. In that grain of salt there are about 1016 sodium and chlorine atoms. This is a 1 followed by 16 zeros, 10 million billion atoms. If we wish to know a grain of salt, we must know at least the three-dimensional positions of each of these atoms. (In fact, there is much more to be known—for example, the nature of the forces between the atoms—but we are making only a modest calculation.) Now, is this number more or less than the number of things which the brain can know?
How much can the brain know? There are perhaps 1011 neurons in the brain, the circuit elements and switches that are responsible in their electrical and chemical activity for the functioning of our minds. A typical brain neuron has perhaps a thousand little wires, called dendrites, which connect it with its fellows. If, as seems likely, every bit of information in the brain corresponds to one of these connections, the total number of things knowable by the brain is no more than 1014, one hundred trillion. But this number is only one percent of the number of atoms in our speck of salt.
So in this sense the universe is intractable, astonishingly immune to any human attempt at full knowledge. We cannot on this level understand a grain of salt, much less the universe.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Can We Know The Universe? Reflections On A Grain Of Salt


Reference #: 2571

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

Life form developed that were finely attuned to their specific environments, exquisitely adapted to the conditions. But the conditions changed. The organisms were too specialized. They
Died. Other organisms were less well adapted, but they were more generalized. The conditions changed, the climate varied, but the organisms were able to continue. Many more species of organisms have
Died during the history of the Earth than are alive today. The secret of evolution is time and death.


Cosmic Connections
Chapter 1
(p. 5)


Reference #: 1967

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know, thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And as you come to practice this habit of thought more and more you will get better and better at it. To penetrate into the heart of the thing - even a little thing, a blade of grass, as Walt Whitman said - is to experience a kind of exhilaration that, it may be, only human beings of all the beings on this planet can feel. We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Can We Know The Universe? Reflections On A Grain Of Salt


Reference #: 1966

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things—from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Can We Know The Universe? Reflections On A Grain Of Salt


Reference #: 2610

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: GALAXY

The study of the galaxies reveals a universal order and beauty. It also shows us chaotic violence on a scale hitherto undreamed of. That we live in a universe which permits life is remarkable. That we live in one which destroys galaxies and stars and worlds is also remarkable. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we.


Cosmos
Chapter X
(p. 250)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 1965

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

There is a lurking fear, made explicit in the Faust legend, that some things are not 'meant' to be known, that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make. ...All inquiries carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions. But I do not see how we can deal with the universe - both the outside and the inside universe - without studying it. The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Broca's Brain


Reference #: 2604

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.


Cosmos
Chapter XIII
(pp. 332-333)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2607

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.


Cosmos
Chapter I
(p. 4)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2609

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: INVESTIGATION

Hidden within every astronomical investigation, sometimes so deeply buried that the researcher himself is unaware of its presence, lies a kernal of awe.


Cosmos
Chapter IX
(p. 243)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 165

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ENGINEER

God may be thought of as the cosmic watchmaker, the engineer who constructed the initial state and lit the fuse.


In Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Introduction
(p. x)
Bantam Books, Toronto, 1988


Reference #: 2376

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: COMET

These are the snows of yesteryear, the pristine remnants of the origin of the solar system, waiting frozen in the interstellar dark.


Comet
Chapter I
(p. 4)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America ;1985


Reference #: 1964

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

As we learn more and more about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do....When Newton explained the motion of the planets by the universal theory of gravitation, it no longer was necessary for angels to push and pummel the planets about. When Pierre Simon, the Marquis de Laplace, proposed to explain the origin of the solar system—although not the origin of matter—in terms of physical laws as well, even the necessity for a god involved in the origins of things seemed profoundly challenged.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
(pp. 335-336)


Reference #: 2608

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

What do you do when you are faced with several different gods each claiming the same territory? The Babylonian Marduk and the Greek Zeus was each considered master of the sky and king of the gods. You might decide that Marduk and Zeus were really the same. You might also decide, since they had quite different attributes, that one of them was merely invented by the priests. But if one, why not both?And so it was that the great idea arose, the realization that there might be a way to know the world without the god hypothesis....


Cosmos
Chapter VII
(pp. 175-176)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 1970

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SALT

But let us look a little more deeply at our microgram of salt. Salt happens to be a crystal in which, except for defects in the structure of the crystal lattice, the position of every sodium and chlorine atom is predetermined If we could shrink ourselves into this crystalline world, we would see rank upon rank of atoms in an ordered array, a regularly alternating structure—sodium, chlorine, sodium, chlorine, specifying the sheet of atoms we are standing on and all the sheets above us and below us. An absolutely pure crystal of salt could have the position of every atom specified by something like 10 bits of information. [Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed in European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry, which requires more than 10 bits of information to understand.] This would not strain the information-carrying capacity of the brain.
If the universe had natural laws that governed its behavior to the same degree of regularity that determines a crystal of salt, then, of course, the universe would be knowable. Even if there were many such laws, each of considerable complexity, human beings might have the capability to understand them all. Even if such knowledge exceeded the information-carrying capacity of the brain, we might store the additional information outside our bodies—in books, for example, or in computer memories—and still, in some sense, know the universe.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Can We Know The Universe? Reflections On A Grain Of Salt


Reference #: 1971

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTRAORDINARY

I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursured. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science


Reference #: 2603

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.


Cosmos
(p. 333)


Reference #: 2174

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Except for the two simplest, hydrogen and helium, atoms are made in stars. A cascade of thermonuclear reactions builds hydrogen and helium up into ever larger and more complex atoms which are then spewed out into interstellar space as the star ages and dies. There they drift for ages, occasionally coming close enough to one another to make a bond. Then two or more atoms make a commitment to go through life together. These bonds are the business of chemistry. In an eon or two a maelstrom of self-gravitating interstellar matter gathers up solitary atoms, and those bonded with thier fellows, and plunges them into a forming planetary system. Four and a half billion years ago, that is what happened in our neck of the galactic woods. Our warm and well-illuminated little world is one result. All the atoms on Earth (hydrogen and helium still excepted) derive from these distant and ancient interstellar events-the silicon in the rocks, the nitrogen in the air, the oxygen atoms in a mountain stream; the calcium in our bones, the potassium in our nerves, and the carbon and other atoms that in exquisite detail encode our genetic instructions and job orders for making a human being. We too are made of starstuff.


In Roald Hoffmann and Vivian Torrence
Chemistry Imagined, Reflections on Science
Foreword
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993


Reference #: 1368

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTRATERRESTRIALS

To seek the beings of other worlds is the rarest of adventures—an adventure we will all be fortunate enough to share.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1964
The Quest for Life Beyond the Earth
(p. 306)


Reference #: 2627

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTRATERRESTIAL

On some [planets], intelligent life may have evolved, reworking the planetary surface in some massive engineering enterprise. These are our brothers and sisters in the Cosmos. Are they very different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science, technology, art, music, religion, philosophy? Perhaps one day we will know them.


Cosmos
Chapter I
(p. 11)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2616

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EARTH

Our loyalities are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.


Cosmos
Chapter XIII
(p. 345)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2611

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ANSWER

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.


Cosmos
Chapter VII
(p. 193)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 1720

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNDERSTAND

If you know something only qualitatively, you know it no more than vaguely. If you know it quantitatively-grasping some numerical measure that distinguishes it from an infinite number of other possibilities-you are beginning to know it deeply.


Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
The Persian Chessboard
(p. 21)


Reference #: 3245

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PATTERNS

Modern physics and chemistry have reduced the complexity of the sensible world to an astonishing simplicity: three units put together in various patterns make, essentially, everything.


Cosmos
Chapter IX
(p. 221)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2617

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: INFORMATION

If there were no books, no written records, think how prodigious a time twenty-three centuries would be. With four generations per century, twenty-three centuries occupies almost a hundred generations of human beings. If information could be passed on merely by word of mouth, how little we should know of our past, how slow would be our progress! Everything would depend on what ancient findings we had accidentally been told about, and how accurate the account was. Past information might be revered, but in successive retellings it would become progressively more muddled and eventually lost. Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.


Cosmos
Chapter XI
(pp. 281-282)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2625

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
We have heard so far the voice of life on one small world only. But we have at last begun to listen for other voices in the cosmic fugue."


Cosmos
Chapter II
(p. 31)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2624

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ASTEROID

The asteroid belt may be a place where a planet was once prevented from forming because of the gravitational tides of the giant nearby planet Jupiter; or it may be the shattered remains of a planet that blew itself up. This seems improbable because no scientist on Earth knows how a planet might blow itself up, which is probably just as well.


Cosmos
Chapter IV
(p. 87)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2615

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EARTH

There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average a hundred billion stars. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets as stars,1011 X 1011 = 1022, ten billion trillion. In the face of such overpowering numbers, what is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is brimming over with life. But we humans do not yet know. We are just beginning our explorations. The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost.


Cosmos
Chapter I
(p. 5, 7)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2618

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HUMANS

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.


Cosmos
Chapter II
(p. 30)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2626

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it in vented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic evolution as revealed by the science of our time. We are difficult to come by and a danger to ourselves. But any account of cosmic evolution makes it clear that all the creatures of our Earth, the latest manufactures of the galactic hydrogen industry, are beings to be cherished.


Cosmos
Chapter XIII
(pp. 338-339)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 85

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.


1987 Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Keynote Address


Reference #: 2619

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The scientific world view works so well, explains so much and resonates so harmoniously with the most advanced parts of our brains that in time, I think, virtually every culture on the Earth, left to its own devices, would have discovered science.


Cosmos
Chapter VII
(p. 176)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2620

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives.


Cosmos
Chapter III
(p. 46)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 4048

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: GENES

...organisms die but their genes pass on - often mutated and redistributed, it is true, but genes nevertheless; and it is difficult, therefore, to escape the conclusion that the design of the organism is merely to provide for gene multiplication and survival…


Evolution
Radiation and the Origin of the Gene, January 1957


Reference #: 492

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: DREAMS

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.


A Pale Blue Dot
(p. 81)


Reference #: 6116

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

...there are a million other civilizations, all fabulously ugly, and all a lot smarter than us. Knowing this seems to me to be a useful and character-building experience for mankind.


In Richard Berendzen (ed)
Life Beyond Earth & the Mind of Man
Sagan
(p. 64)


Reference #: 2621

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EARTH

Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.


Cosmos
Chapter I
(p. 4)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2622

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question. Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?


Cosmos
Chapter X
(p. 257)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 157

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: GOD

God" may be thought of as the cosmic watchmaker, the engineer who constructed the initial state and lit the fuse.


In Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Introduction
(p. x)


Reference #: 2623

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: COSMOS

THE COSMOS IS ALL THERE IS OR EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE.


Cosmos
Chapter I, Vol. I, Chapter I
(p. 1)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2502

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: TRANSCENDENTAL NUMBERS

Hiding between all the ordinary numbers was an infinity of transcendental numbers whose presence you would never have guessed until you looked deeply into mathematics.


Contact: A Novel
(p. 21)


Reference #: 3246

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: BIG BANG

Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened—the Big Bang, the event that began our universe. Why it happened is the greatest mystery we know. That it happened is reasonably clear. All the matter and energy now in the universe was concentrated at extremely high density—a kind of cosmic egg, reminiscent of the creation myths of many cultures—perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the matter and energy were squeezed into a minor corner of the present universe; rather, the universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume. There was not much room for events to happen in.
In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased. It is misleading to describe the expansion of the universe as a sort of descending bubble viewed from the outside. By definition, nothing we can ever know about was outside. It is better to think of it from the inside, perhaps with grid-lines—imagined to adhere to the moving fabric of space—expanding uniformly in all directions. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it rapidly and cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then is now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum—from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated. As time passed, the fabric of space continued to expand, the radiation cooled and, in ordinary visible light, for the first time space became dark, as it is today.


Cosmos
Chapter X
(p. 246)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 3247

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: COSMOS

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.


Cosmos
Chapter I
(p. 4)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 1721

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: QUANTUM

How can light simultaneously be a wave and a particle? It might be better to think of it as something else, neither a wave nor a particle, something with no ready counterpart in the everyday world of the palpable, that under some circumstances partakes of the properties of a wave, and, under others, of a particle. This wave-particle dualism is another reminder of a central humbling fact: Nature does not always conform to our predispositions and preferences, to what we deem comfortable and easy to understand.


Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium


Reference #: 2628

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ALCHEMY

The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.


Cosmos
Chapter XII
(p. 338)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2501

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PHYSICIST

Physicists had to invent words and phrases for concepts far removed from everyday experience. It was their fashion to avoid pure neologisms and instead to evoke, even if feebly, some analogous commonplace. The alternative was to name discoveries and equations after one another. This they did also. But if you didn't know it was physics they were talking, you might very well worry about them.


Contact


Reference #: 3248

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PLANET EARTH

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be.


Cosmos
Chapter I
(p. 5)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 170

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNDERSTANDING

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.'


In Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Introduction


Reference #: 2629

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EARTH

Occasionally someone remarks on what a lucky coincidence it is that the Earth is perfectly suitable for life—-moderate enough temperatures, liquid water, oxygen atmosphere, and so on. But this is, at least in part, a confusion of cause and effect. We earthlings are supremely well adapted to the environment of the Earth because we grew up here. Those earlier forms of life that were not well adapted
Died. We are descended from the organisms that did well. Organisms that evolve on a quite different world will doubtless sing its praises too.


Cosmos
Chapter II
(p. 24)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2500

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PRIME NUMBER

Do we know what the sequence of numbers is? Okay, here, we can do it in our heads…fifty-nine, sixty-one, sixty-seven…seventy-one…Aren't these all prime numbers? A little buzz of excitement circulated through the control room. Ellie's own face momentarily revealed a flutter of something deeply felt, but this was quickly replaced by a sobriety, a fear of being carried away, an apprehension about appearing foolish, unscientific.


Contact


Reference #: 1969

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: BRAIN

We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.


Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science


Reference #: 2612

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: COSMOS

…in the last tenth of a percent of the lifetime of our species, in the instant between Aristarchus and ourselves, we reluctantly noticed that we were not the center and purpose of the Universe, but rather lived on a tiny and fragile world lost in immensity and eternity, drifting in a great cosmic ocean dotted here and there with a hundred billion galaxies and a billion trillion stars. We have bravely tested the waters and have found the ocean to our liking, resonant with our nature. Something in us recognizes the Cosmos as home. We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the Cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery. As the ancient mythmakers knew, we are the children equally of the sky and the Earth.


Cosmos
Chapter XIII
(p. 318)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2613

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: DIETY

We are, almost all of us, descended from people who responded to the dangers of existence by inventing stories about unpredictable or disgruntled deities.


Cosmos
Chapter VII
(p. 173)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 2630

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ENERGY

The total amount of energy from outside the solar system ever received by all the radio telescopes on the planet Earth is less than the energy of a singly snowflake striking the ground.


Cosmos
Chapter X
(p. 261)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1980


Reference #: 164

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: BOOK

This is also a book about God...or perhaps the absence of God..., about the never-ending universe without a beginning or an end, where there is nothing to do for its Creator. In this never-ending universe there is no God because everything is God!


In Stephen W. Hawking
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Preface
(p. x)


Reference #: 10379

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ASTROGEOLOGY

Apart from an understanding of the solar system as a whole, it is becoming clear that information about any planet or satellite illuminates our knowledge of the others. In particular, if we are to understand the Earth, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets.


Scientific American
The Solar System, Vol. 233, No. 3, September 1975
(p. 27)


Reference #: 8228

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CHANGE

Our epoch is unpredictable because it is simultaneously complex and changing rapidly. This seems also to be the reason for the madness of our times. There is in no moment in the history of mankind when so many changes in so many different areas—social, political, economic, scientific, technological, sexual, and educational—have occurred. They are happening too fast for too many people. Madness is one way of coping.


Other Worlds
(p. 139)


Reference #: 12488

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all.


The Burden of Skepticism
Pasadena lecture, 1987


Reference #: 8231

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UFO

UFOs: The reliable case are uninteresting and the interesting cases are unreliable.


Other Worlds
(p. 114)


Reference #: 10413

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PLANET EARTH

If we are to understand the Earth, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets.


Scientific American
The Solar System, Vol. 233, No. 3, 1975


Reference #: 11425

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ORIGIN

Every human community has somehow or other tried to understand ...deep questions of origins. Origin of our group, whatever it is, origin of our species, origin of life, origin of Earth, origin of the universe. I think you have to be made out of wood not to be interested in these questions. And there's no way to understand even the questions, much less the answers, without understanding science.


Speech
National meeting of the American Astronomical Society (January 5, 1993)


Reference #: 11422

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science ...looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but vigorous debate, and in many respects that's the secret of its success.


Speech
National meeting of the American Astronomical Society (January 5, 1993)


Reference #: 13459

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives.


The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Lovers and Madmen
(p. 184)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 8465

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 2
(p. 23)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 13269

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in "contact" with extraterrestrials. I am invited to "ask them anything." And over the year's I've prepared a little list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, "Please provide a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.".I write out the simple equation with the exponents..It's a stimulating exercise to think of questions to which no human today knows the answers, but where a correct answer would immediately be recognized as such. It's even more challenging to formulate such questions in fields other than mathematics. Perhaps we should hold a contest and collect the best responses in "Ten Questions to Ask an Alien.


The Demon-Haunted World
Chapter 6
(p. 100, fn)


Reference #: 13268

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multipleworking hypotheses," has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.


The Demon-Haunted World
(p. 210)


Reference #: 8466

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs—in time, in space, and in potential—the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter. We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star. We read the genetic language in which is written the diverse skills and propensities of every being on Earth. We uncover hidden chapters in the record of our origins, and with some anguish better understand our nature and prospects. We invent and refine agriculture, without which almost all of us would starve to death. We create medicines and vaccines that save the lives of billions. We communicate at the speed of light, and whip around the Earth in an hour and a half. We have sent dozens of ships to more than seventy worlds, and four spacecraft to the stars. We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 4
(pp. 53-54)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 13175

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CONSTELLATION

In the night sky, when the air is clear, there is a cosmic Rorschach test awaiting us. Thousands of stars, bright and faint, near and far, in a glittering variety of colors, are peppered across the canopy of night. The eye, irritated by randomness, seeking order, tends to organize into patterns these separate and distinct points of light.


The Cosmic Connection
Chapter 2
(p. 9)


Reference #: 13174

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

We are like the inhabitants of an isolated valley in New Guinea who communicate with societies in neighboring valleys (quite different societies, I might add) by runner and by drum. When asked how a very advanced society will communicate, they might guess by an extremely rapid runner or by an improbably large drum. They might not guess a technology beyond their ken. And yet, all the while, a vast international cable and radio traffic passes over them, around them, and through them...We will listen for the interstellar drums, but we will miss the interstellar cables. We arelikely to receive our first messages from the drummers of the neighboring galactic valleys-from civilizations only somewhat in our future. The civilizations vastly more advanced than we, will be, for a long time, remote both in distance and in accessibility. At a future time of vigorous interstellar radio traffic, the very advanced civilizations may be, for us, still insubstantial legends.


The Cosmic Connection
Chapter 31
(pp. 224, 224-5)


Reference #: 13173

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

There is a place with four suns in the sky-red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them.
I know of a world with a million moons.
I know of a sun the size of the Earth-and made of diamond....
The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming part of it.'


The Cosmic Connection


Reference #: 13172

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXPERIMENT

When theory is not adequate in science, the only realistic approach is experimental. Experiment is the touchstone of science on which the theories are framed. It is the court of last resort.


The Cosmic Connection
Chapter 5
(p. 37)


Reference #: 13171

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

There is a place with four suns in the sky-red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun the size of the Earth-and made of diamond....The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming part of it.


The Cosmic Connection


Reference #: 13170

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: NUCLEIC ACID

In a very real sense human beings are machines constructed by the nucleic acids to arrange for the efficient replication of more nucleic acids. ... We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids.


The Cosmic Connection


Reference #: 13271

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

It is a surpeme challenge for the popularizer of science to make clear the actual, tortuous history of its great discoveries and the misapprehensions and occasional stubborn refusal by its practitioners to change course.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Chapter 1
(p. 22)


Reference #: 10564

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SURVIVAL

If we survive these perilous times, it is clear that even an identification with all of mankind is not the ultimate desirable identification. If we have a profound respect for other human beings as co-equal recipients of this precious patrimony of 4.5 billion years of evolution, why should the identification not apply also to all the other organisms on Earth which are equally the product of 4.5 billion years of evolution? We care for a small fraction of the organisms on Earth—dogs, cats, and cows, for example—because they are useful or because they flatter us. But spiders and salamanders, salmon and sunflowers are equally our brothers and sisters.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 7)


Reference #: 13272

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

…at the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Chapter 17
(p. 304)


Reference #: 10563

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: COSMOS

It is too late to be shy and hesitant. We have announced our presence to the cosmos—in a backward and groping and unrepresentative manner, to be sure—but here we are!


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(pp. 215-216)


Reference #: 8475

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity. Where we are ignorant, we withhold belief. Whatever annoyance the uncertainty engenders serves a higher purpose: It drives us to accumulate better data. This attitude is the difference between science and so much else. Science offers little in the way of cheap thrills. The standards of evidence are strict. But when followed they allow us to see far, illuminating even a great darkness.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 20
(p. 365)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8474

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SPEECH

What a beautiful sunset, we say, or I'm up before sunrise. No matter what the scientists allege, in everyday speech we often ignore their findings. We don't talk about the Earth turning, but about the Sun rising and setting. Try formulating it in Copernican language. Would you say, Billy, be home by the time the Earth has rotated enough so as to occult the Sun below the local horizon? Billy would be long gone before you're finished. We haven't been able even to find a graceful locution that accurately conveys the heliocentric insight. We at the center and everything else circling us is built into our languages; we teach it to our children. We are unreconstructed geocentrists hiding behind a Copernican veneer. [One of the few quasi-Copernican expressions in English is The Universe doesn't revolve around you - an astronomical truth intended to bring fledgling narcissists down to Earth.]


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 4
(pp. 41-42)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8473

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 4
(p. 52)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8472

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: STAR

It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very much like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, a species returned to circumstances more like those for which it was originally evolved, more confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent - the sorts of beings we would want to represent us in a Universe that, for all we know, is filled with species much older, much more powerful, and very different.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 19
(p. 329)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8471

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: LAWS

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 3
(p. 38)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8470

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EARTH

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 1
(p. 9)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8469

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SOLAR SYSTEM

The emerging picture of the early Solar System does not resemble a stately progression of events designed to form the Earth. Instead, it looks as if our planet was made, and survived, by mere lucky chance, amid unbelievable violence. Our world does not seem to have been sculpted by a master craftsman. Here too, there is no hint of a Universe made for us.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 17
(p. 295)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 10562

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTERRESTIAL

After years of muddy surmise, unfettered speculations, stodgy conservatism, and unimaginative disinterest, the subject of extraterrestrial life has finally come of age.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. viii)


Reference #: 8468

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SURVIVAL

Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology—but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 22
(p. 384)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 8467

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

Religions contradict one another—on small matters, such as whether we should put on a hat or take one off on entering a house of worship, or whether we should eat beef and eschew pork or the other way around, all the way to the most central issues, such as whether there are no gods, one God, or many gods.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 4
(p. 51)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 10695

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PREDATOR

The warfare between predator and prey extends to the plant kingdom as well. Plants load themselves with poisons to discourage animals from eating them. The animals evolve detoxification chemistry and special organs - the liver, most prominently - to keep pace with the plants. What we like about coffee, for example are the toxins that have evolved to deter insects and small mammals from consuming coffee beans. But we have sophisticated livers.


Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors:A Search for Who We Are


Reference #: 13283

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CERTAINTY

Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error bars apply.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 28)


Reference #: 13458

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts - a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the 'humanities.' Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human.


The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
The Brain and the Chariot
(p. 77)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 13457

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: BRAIN

My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings - what we sometimes call 'mind' - are a consequence of its anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.


The Dragons of Eden


Reference #: 13460

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: BRAIN

The human brain seems to be in a state of uneasy truce, with occasional skirmishes and rare battles. The existence of brain components with predispositions to certain behavior is not an invitation to fatalism or despair: we have substantial control over the relative importance of each component. Anatomy is not destiny, but it is not irrelevant either.


The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence


Reference #: 13461

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CREATIVE

I think the most significant creative activities of our or any other human culture - legal and ethical systems, art and music, science and technology - were made possible only through the collaborative work of the left and right celebral hemispheres...We might say that human culture is the function of corpus callosum.


The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Lovers and Madmen
(p. 185)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 13462

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CREATIVE

I know of no significant advance in science that did not require major inputs from both cerebral hemispheres. This is no true for art, where apparently there are no experiments by which capable, dedicated and unbiased observers can determine to their mutual satisfaction which works are great. As one of hundreds of examples, I might note that the principal French art critics, journals and museums of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rejected French Impressionism in toto; today the same artists are widely held by the same institutions to have produced masterpieces. Perhaps a century hence the pendulum will reverse direction again.


The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Lovers and Madmen
(p. 184)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 13290

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among 'multipleworking hypotheses,' has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 12
(p. 210)


Reference #: 13289

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UFO

After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, 'Do you believe in UFOs?'. I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, 'How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?'


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 3
(p. 82)


Reference #: 13288

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science - pure science, science not for any practical application but for its own sake - is a deeply emotional matter for those who practice it, as well as for those nonscientists who every now and then dip in to see what's been discovered lately.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 19
(p. 330)


Reference #: 13287

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 26)


Reference #: 13286

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: CRITICISM

Valid criticism does you a favor.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 32)


Reference #: 13270

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

Heroes who try to explain the world in terms of matter and energy may have arisen many times in many cultures, only to be obliterated by the priests and philosophers in charge of the conventional wisdom...


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
(p. 310)


Reference #: 13284

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: QUESTIONS

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 31)


Reference #: 8476

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ASTRONOMY

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 1
(p. 9)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 13282

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SKEPTICISM

...science requires the most vigorous and uncompromising skepticism, because the vast majority of ideas are simply wrong, and the only way to winnow the wheat from the chaff is by critical experiment and analysis.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 17
(p. 305)


Reference #: 13281

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: QUANTIFY

Quantify. If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 12
(p. 211)


Reference #: 13280

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: STARS

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice by deflating our conceits?


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 1
(p. 12)


Reference #: 13279

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: THINKING

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 27)


Reference #: 13278

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: WONDER

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 10
(p. 171)


Reference #: 13277

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Scientists do not seek to impose their needs and wants on Nature, but instead humbly interrogate Nature and take seriously what they find.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 32)


Reference #: 13463

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to Nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data.


The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Chapter VII
(p. 183)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1977


Reference #: 13276

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter, but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?


The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Chapter 23
(p. 400)


Reference #: 13275

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

If you want to know when the next eclipse of the Sun will be, you might try magicians or mystics, but you'll do much better with scientists.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
(p. 30)


Reference #: 13274

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 28)


Reference #: 13273

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 317)


Reference #: 13285

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Wherever possible, scientists experiment. Which experiments suggest themselves often depends on which theories currently prevail. Scientists are intent of testing those theories to the breaking point. They do not trust what is intuitively obvious. That the Earth is flat was once obvious. That heavy bodies fall faster than light ones was once obvious. That bloodsucking leeches cure most diseases was once obvious. That some people are naturally and by divine decree slaves was once obvious. That there is such a place as the center of the Universe, and that the Earth sits in that exalted spot was once obvious. That there is an absolute standard of rest was once obvious. The truth may be puzzling or counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held beliefs. Experiment is how we get a handle on it.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 36)


Reference #: 10561

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: FLATULENCE

...bovine flatulence—the intimate intestinal activities of cows, reindeer, elephants, and elk—is detectable over interplanetary distances, while the bulk of the activities of mankind are invisible. We would not ordinarily consider the flatulence of cattle as a dominant manifestation of life on Earth, but there it is.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 150)


Reference #: 10864

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: JUDGMENT

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English—up to fifty words used in correct context—no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.


Skeptical EnquirerVolume
The Burden of Skepticism, 12
(p. 46)


Reference #: 8460

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

If you lived two or three millennia ago, there was no shame in holding that the Universe was made for us. It was an appealing thesis consistent with everything we knew; it was what the most learned among us taught without qualification. But we have found out much since then. Defending such a position today amounts to willful disregard of the evidence, and a flight from self-knowledge.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 4
(p. 52)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 10865

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

The predictive powers of some areas, at least, of science are phenomenal. They are the clearest counterargument I can imagine to those who say, 'Oh, science is situational; science is just the current fashion; science is the promotion of the self-interests of those in power.' Sure there is some of that. Surely if there's any powerful tool, those in power will try to use it, or even monopolize it. Surely scientists, being people, grow up in a society and reflect the prejudices of that society. How could it be otherwise? Some scientists have been nationalists; some have been racists; some have been sexists. But that doesn't undermine the validity of science. It's just a consequence of being human.


Skeptical Inquirer
Wonder and Skepticism, Jan/Feb 1995
(p. 24)


Reference #: 8464

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE CIVILIZATION

The very method of mathematical reasoning that Isaac Newton introduced to explain the motion of the planets around the Sun has led to most of the technology of our modern world. The Industrial Revolution, for all its shortcomings, is still the global model of how an agricultural nation can emerge from poverty. These debates have bread-and-butter consequences.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 4
(p. 56)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 10553

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SPECULATION

As with all ongoing work and especially all speculative subjects, some of the statements in these pages will elicit vigorous demurrers.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. ix)


Reference #: 10554

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow, biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 5)


Reference #: 10869

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science involves a seemingly self-contradictory mix of attitudes: On the one hand, it requires an almost complete openness to all ideas, no matter how bizarre and weird they sound, a propensity to wonder. ...But at the same time, science requires the most vigorous and uncompromising skepticism, because the vast majority of ideas are simply wrong, and the only way you can distinguish the right from the wrong, the wheat from the chaff, is by critical experiment and analysis.


Skeptical Inquirer
Wonder and Skepticism, Jan/Feb 1995
(p. 24)


Reference #: 10551

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: MANKIND

In all the history of mankind, there will be only one generation that will be first to explore the Solar System, one generation for which, in childhood, the planets are distant and indistinct discs moving through the night sky, and for which, in old age, the planets are places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 69)


Reference #: 10555

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Many visionary leaders have imagined a time when the allegiance of an individual human being is not to his particular nation-state, religion, race, or economic group, but to mankind as a whole; when the benefit to a human being of another sex, race, religion, or political persuasion ten thousand miles away is as precious to us as to our neighbor or our brother. The trend is in this direction, but is agonizingly slow. There is a serious question whether such a global self-identification of mankind can be achieved before we destroy ourselves with the technological forces our intelligence has unleashed.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 6)


Reference #: 10871

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: RESULTS

Every scientist feels an affection for his or her ideas and scientific results. You feel protective of them. But you don't reply to critics: 'Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it.' That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.


Skeptical Inquirer
Wonder and Skepticism, Jan/Feb 1995
(p. 24)


Reference #: 10556

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

A being quite like us, but with a small physiological difference—a third eye, say or blue hair covering the nose and forehead—somehow evokes feelings of revulsion. Such feelings may have had adaptive value at one time in defending our small tribe against the beasts and neighbors. But in our time such feelings are obsolete and dangerous.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 7)


Reference #: 10560

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: ANSWER

I find it more difficult, but also much more fun, to get the right answer by indirect reasoning and before all the evidence is in. It's what a theoretician does in science. But the conclusions drawn in this way are obviously more risky than those drawn by direct measurement, and most scientists withhold judgment until there is more direct evidence available. The principal function of such detective work—apart from entertaining the theoretician—is probably to so annoy and enrage the observationalists that they are forced, in a fury of disbelief, to perform the critical measurements.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 121)


Reference #: 10866

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. ...Now think of what other areas of human society have such a reward structure, in which we revere those who prove that the fundamental doctrines that we have adopted are wrong. Think of it in politics, or in economics, or in religion; think of it in how we organize our society. Often, it's exactly the opposite: There we reward those who reassure us that what we've been told is right, that we need not concern ourselves about it. This difference, I believe, is at least a basic reason why we've made so much progress in science, and so little in some other areas.


Skeptical Inquirer
Wonder and Skepticism, Jan/Feb 1995
(p. 24)


Reference #: 10557

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

The so-called generation gap is a consequence of the rate of social and technological change.
Even within a human lifetime, the change is so great that many people are alienated from their own society. Margaret Mead had described older people as involuntary immigrants from the past to the present.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 36)


Reference #: 10558

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

Changing climate and competition among what was now a wide diversity of organisms produced greater and greater specialization, a sophistication of function, and an elaboration of form. A rich array of plants and animals began to cover the Earth. Out of the initial oceans in which life arose, new environments, such as the land and the air, were colonized. Organisms now live from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest portions of the abyssal depths. Organisms live in hot, concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid and in dry Antarctic valleys. Organisms live on the water adsorbed on a single crystal of salt.
Life form developed that were finely attuned to their specific environments, exquisitely adapted to the conditions. But the conditions changed. The organisms were too specialized. They
Died. Other organisms were less well adapted, but they were more generalized. The conditions changed, the climate varied, but the organisms were able to continue. Many more species of organisms have
Died during the history of the Earth than are alive today. The secret of evolution is time and death.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 4)


Reference #: 8491

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along.


Parade
The Fine Art of Baloney Detection, February 1, 1987


Reference #: 10559

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SPACE

There is a place with four suns in the sky—red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them so close together that they touch and star-stuff flows between them.
I know of a world with a million moons.
I know of a sun the size of the Earth—and made of diamond.
There are atomic nuclei a mile across that rotate thirty times a second.
There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and composition of bacteria.
There are stars leaving the Milky Way.
There are immense gas clouds falling into the Milky Way.
There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions.
There are, perhaps, places outside our universe.
The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. 51)


Reference #: 10867

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

The inadvertent side effects of technology can challenge the environment on which our very lives depend. That means that we must understand science and technology; we must anticipate longterm consequences in a very clever way - not just the bottom line on the profit-and-loss column for the corporation for this year, but the consequences for the nation and the species 10, 20, 50, 100 years in the future.


Skeptical Inquirer
Wonder and Skepticism, Jan/Feb 1995
(p. 24)


Reference #: 8461

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE SURVIVAL

Who discovered that CFCs [chlorofluorocarbons] posed a threat to the ozone layer? Was it the principal manufacturer, the DuPont Corporation, exercising corporate responsibility? Was it the Environmental Protection Agency protecting us? Was it the Department of Defense defending us? No, it was two ivory-tower, white-coated university scientists working on something else—Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the University of California, Irvine. Not even an Ivy League university. No one instructed them to look for dangers to the environment. They were pursuing fundamental research. They were scientists following their own interests. Their names should be known to every schoolchild.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 14
(pp. 221-222)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 13683

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: the collective enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the field on track.


The Fine Art of Baloney Detection


Reference #: 10550

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Reasoned disputation is the lifeblood of science—as is, sadly, infrequently the case in the intellectually more anemic arena of politics.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. ix)


Reference #: 10530

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PLANET EARTH

...if we are to understand the Earth, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets.


Scientific American
The Solar System, Vol. 233, No. 3, 1975
(p. 27)


Reference #: 12844

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: PSEUDOSCIENCE

Pseudoscience is embraced, it might be argued, in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 1
(p. 15)


Reference #: 12843

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

We might have lived in a Universe in which nothing could be understood by a few simple laws, in which Nature was complex beyond our abilities to understand, in which laws that apply on Earth are invalid on Mars, or in a distant quasar. But the evidence - not the preconceptions, the evidence - proves otherwise. Luckily for us, we live in a Universe in which much can be 'reduced' to a small number of comparatively simple laws of Nature. Otherwise we might have lacked the intellectual capacity and grasp to comprehend the world.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 15
(pp. 273-274)


Reference #: 8463

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SPACE TRAVEL

Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring—not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive...If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.'


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 21
(p. 371)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 12842

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide buildup of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a transnational, transgenerational meta-mind.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 29)


Reference #: 12841

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 27)


Reference #: 10549

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: HUMAN

A human being is seriously inconvenienced if his body temperature is raised or lowered by a mere 20 degrees. Is this because we happen to live by accident on the one planet in the Solar System that has a surface at the right temperature for biology? Or is it that our chemistry is delicately attuned to the temperature of the planet on which we have evolved? The latter is almost surely the case. Other temperatures, other biochemistries.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(pp. 45-46)


Reference #: 12840

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: METHOD

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 1
(p. 22)


Reference #: 12839

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

Popularizing science - trying to make its methods and findings accessible to non-scientists - then follows naturally and immediately. Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world. This book is a personal statement, reflecting my lifelong love affair with science.


The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark
Chapter 2
(p. 25)


Reference #: 8462

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE BEAUTY

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works—that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.


Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Chapter 10
(pp. 159-160)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1994


Reference #: 10552

Sagan, Carl
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: NATURE

Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know. There are even children, and I have met some of them, who want to know what a black hole looks like; what is the smallest piece of matter; why we remember the past and not the future; how it is, if there was chaos early, that there is, apparently, order today; and why there is a universe.
In our society it is still customary for parents and teachers to answer most of these questions with a shrug, or with an appeal to vaguely recalled religious precepts. Some are uncomfortable with issues like these, because they so vividly expose the limitations of human understanding.


Scientific Cosmic Connections
(p. ix)


Reference #: 10693

Sagan, Carl
Druyan, Ann
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: STAR

Nothing lives forever, in Heaven as it is on Earth. Even the stars grow old, decay, and die. They die, and they are
Born. There was once a time before the Sun and Earth existed, a time before there was day or night, long, long before there was anyone to record the Beginning for those who might come after.


Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Chapter 1
(p. 11)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1992


Reference #: 10694

Sagan, Carl
Druyan, Ann
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: UNIVERSE

The Universe is lavish beyond imagining.


Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Chapter 1
(p. 13)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1992


Reference #: 10692

Sagan, Carl
Druyan, Ann
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: SUN

The immense, overpowering blackness is relieved here and there by a faint point of light—which, upon closer approach, is revealed to be a mighty sun, blazing with thermonucleat fire and warming a small surrounding volume of space.


Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Prologue
(p. 3)
Random House, New York, New York, United States of America; 1992


Reference #: 9461

Sagan, Carl
Newman, William I.
Born: 9 November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Died: 20 December, 1996 in Seattle, Washington, United States of America
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

We think it possible that the Milky Way Galaxy is teeming with civilizations as far beyond our level of advance as we are beyond the ants, and paying us about as much attention as we pay to the ants.


Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
The Solipsist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Vol. 24, No. 3, June 1983
(p. 120)


Reference #: 7238

Sage, M.
General Category: FIGURE

...battalions of figures are like battalions of men, not always as strong as is supposed.


Mrs. Piper and the Society for Psychical Research
Chapter XV
(p. 151)


Reference #: 3196

Saint Augustine
General Category: TIME

How can the past and future be when the past no longer is and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time but eternity.


Confessions
(p. 253)


Reference #: 3197

Saint Augustine
General Category: TIME

For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.


Confessions
Book XI, XIV, 17


Reference #: 3198

Saint Augustine
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

And aught else besides Thee was there not, whereof Thou mightest create them, O God, One Trinity, and Trine Unity; and therefore out of nothing didst Thou create heaven and earth; a great thing, and a small thing; for Thou art Almighty and Good, to make all things good, even the greatest heaven and the petty earth. Thou wert, and nothing was there besides, out of which Thou createdst heaven and earth; things of two sorts: one near Thee, the other near to nothing; one to which Thou alone shouldest be superior, the other to which nothing should be inferior.


Confessions
XII. 7


Reference #: 8229

Saint Augustine
General Category: TIME

Time is like a river made up of events which happen, and its current is strong; no sooner does anything appear than it is swept away.


In Paul Davies
Other Worlds
(p. 186)


Reference #: 1271

Saint Avvaiyar
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

What we have learnt, is like a handful of Earth,
While what we have yet to learn is like the whole World.


In an article by M. Blumer
Angewandte Chemie [International Edition]
Engl.1975, 14, 507


Reference #: 5244

Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy
General Category: EXTERNAL WORLD

The external world is all-powerful in alteration of the form of organized bodies.. . these [modifications] are inherited, and they influence all the rest of the organization of the animal, because if these modifications lead to injurious effects, the animals which exhibit them perish and are replaced by others of a somewhat different form, a form changed so as to be adapted to the new environment.


Influence du monde ambiant pour modifier les formes animales


Reference #: 1875

Sakaki, Nanao
General Category: DEATH

At a department store in Kyoto
One of my friends bought a beetle
For his son, seven years old.

A few hours later
The boy brought his dead bug
To a hardware store, asking
"Change battery please."


Break the Mirror
Future Knows
(p. 27)


Reference #: 7839

Sakharov, Andrei
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

In infinite space many civilizations are bound to exist, among them societies that may be wiser and more "successful" than ours. I support the cosmological hypothesis which states that the development of the universe is repeated in its basic characteristics an infinite number of times..Yet this should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world of ours, where, like faint glimmers in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of dark unconscious into material existence.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lectures (Peace)
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1975


Reference #: 4638

Salisbury, J. Kenneth
General Category: PERSPECTIVES

Perspective is the quality that permits an engineer to assign correct relative importance to all things within his scope...An engineer without perspective is a ship without a rudder.


General Electric Review
Qualities Industry Wants in Its Engineers, May 1952


Reference #: 4637

Salisbury, J. Kenneth
General Category: ENGINEER

One normally tends to catalog engineers either as analyzers or as synthesizers - the analyzers are the appraisers and evaluators; the synthesizers are those who are creative and ingenious in devising new ways of doing things. This sharp division is somewhat fallacious, however, because there is considerable overlapping.


General Electric Review
Qualities Industry Wants in Its Engineers, May 1952
(p. 17)


Reference #: 11641

Salk, Jonas
General Category: METAPHOR

Man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to the Cosmos, in terms that reflect "reality." By using the processes of Nature as metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing "reality" as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity for such understanding, which naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphor and myth to provide "comprhensible" guides to living. In this way, Man's imagination and intellect play vital roles in his survival and evolution.


Survival of the Wisest
(p. 82)
Harper & Row, New York, New York, United States of America 1973


Reference #: 8785

Salmon, Merrilee H.
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGIST

Surely skill in doubting the familiar and imagining the unfamiliar are every bit as important to the archaeologist as to the philosopher.


Philosophy and Archaeology
Concluding Remarks
(p. 182)


Reference #: 1053

Salsburg, D.S.
General Category: STATISTICAL TESTS

Most readers of this journal will recognize the limited value of hypothesis testing in the science of statistics. I am not sure that they all realize the extent to which it has become the primary tool in the religion of Statistics. Since the practitioners of that faith seem unable to cure their own folly, it is time we priests of the faith brought them around to realizing that there are more appropriate ways to get useful answers.


American Statistician
The religion of statistics as practiced in medical journals, Vol. 39, 1985


Reference #: 11910

Salsburg, David S.
General Category: STATISTICS

After 17 years of interacting with physicians, I have come to realize that many of them are adherents of a religion they call Statistics. Statistics refers to the seeking out and interpretation of p values. Like any good religion, it involves vague mysteries capable of contradictory and irrational interpretation. It has a priesthood and a class of mendicant friars. And it provides Salvation: Proper invocation of the religious dogmas of Statistics will result in publication in prestigious journals.


The American Statistician
The Religion of Statistics as Practiced in Medical Journals, Vol. 39, No. 3, August 1985
(p. 220)


Reference #: 4109

Salthe, Stanley N.
General Category: BIOLOGIST

...we are, as evolutionary biologists, indirectly working on nothing less than an important part of our culture's very own creation myth. Is the combination of the pointlessness of chance with the tyranny of necessity, competitive exclusion, expedience, and obedience to material forces what we really want to think of as the sources of our origins.


In Max K. Hecht (ed.)
Evolutionary Biology at the Crossroads
Commentaries
(p. 175)


Reference #: 4444

Salzberg, Hugh W.
General Category: MINERAL EMERALD

Take white lead, one part, and of any glass you choose, two parts, fuse together in a crucible and then pour the mixture. To this crystal, add the urine of an ass and after forty days you will find emeralds.


From Caveman to Chemist
(p. 36)


Reference #: 17273

Salzberg, Paul
General Category: CREATIVITY

There is no magic formula for achieving creativity-it is simply a way of life in a laboratory dedicated to discovery and invention.


Think
November-December, 1962


Reference #: 10106

Samuel Arthur L.
General Category: MACHINE

A machine is not a genie, it does not work by magic, it does not possess a will, and Wiener to the contrary, nothing comes out which has not been put in, barring of course, an infrequent case of malfunctioning....The 'intentions' which the machine seems to manifest are the intentions of the human programmer, as specified in advance, or they are subsidiary intentions derived from these, following rules specified by the programmer....the machine will not and cannot do any of these things until it has been instructed as to how to proceed....To believe otherwise is either to believe in magic or to believe that the existence of man's will is an illusion and that man's actions are as mechanical as the machine's.


Science
Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation—A Refutation, Vol. 132, No. 3429, September 16, 1960
(p. 741)


Reference #: 7756

Samuelson, Bengt, I.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

We are just in the beginning of gathering knowledge about man and his environment. We can hardly comprehend the enormous possibilities that are inherent in discovering the structure and function of nature from the inner space of particles and atoms to the cells of the human body as well as the outer space of stars and galaxies. To use the new knowledge in technical and medical developments to combat poverty and disease throughout the world is indeed a challenge.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1982


Reference #: 7755

Samuelson, Bengt, I.
General Category: DISCOVERY

There are almost unlimited possibilities for making discoveries and to uncover the unknown. It is in the nature of the discovery that it can not be planned or programmed. On the contrary it consists of surprises and appears many times in the most unexpected places. However, the basis of the discovery is imagination, careful reasoning and experimentation where the use of knowledge created by those who came before is an important component.


Nobel Banquet Speech (Medicine)
December 10, 1982


Reference #: 6998

Samuelson, Paul A.
General Category: PREDICTION

Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!


Newsweek
Science and Stocks, September 19, 1966
(p. 92)


Reference #: 3100

Sanborn, Kate
General Category: ANIMAL

...if Darwin's theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as far in advance as he is at present.


Atlantic Monthly
Studies of Animal Nature, February, 1877
(p. 135)


Reference #: 14035

Sand, George
General Category: ENGINEER

Another places upon his nose a pair of paper or wooden spectacles; he performs the duty of engineer,—comes, goes, makes a plan, looks at the workmen, draws lines, plays the pedant, cries that everything is being ruined, causes the work to be abandoned and resumed at his will, and directs it at great length and as absurdly as possible.


The Haunted Pool
Chapter IV, The Cabbage


Reference #: 7256

Sand, Ole
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not the be-all and end-all of life. We must keep our debt to it in clear perspective. Its penicillin has saved us, its wash-and-wear has clothed us; its air-conditioning has cooled us. One day, its promises of moon-living may even give us the universe. But the test tube has yet to come up with an easy formula for increasing man's ability to think, to feel, to appreciate. It is the task of the humanities to help us understand ourselves, as well as our fellow men, and to help us live in this brave new world that science has fashioned for the Seventies.


Music Educators Journal
Schools for the Seventies, July 17, 1966


Reference #: 4735

Sandage, Allan
General Category: PHYSICS

It is such a strange conclusion....it cannot really be true.


In Robert Jastrow
God and the Astronomers
(p. 113)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1978


Reference #: 13480

Sandage, Allan
General Category: UNIVERSE

The present universe is something like the old professor nearing retirement with his brilliant future behind him.


In G.
Borner
The Early Universe
(p. 90)


Reference #: 8552

Sandage, Allan
General Category: ATOM

Every single atom in your body was once inside a star.


PBS Special
The Creation of the Universe


Reference #: 14124

Sandage, Allan
General Category: ASTRONOMER

What are galaxies? No one knew before 1900. Very few people knew in 1920. All astronomers knew after 1924.


The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies
Galaxies
(p. 1)


Reference #: 8191

Sandage, Allan
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is the only self-correcting human institution, but it also is a process that progresses only by showing itself to be wrong.


In Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer
Origins
Allan Sandage
(p. 82)


Reference #: 4853

Sandburg, Carl
Born: 6 January, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois
Died: 22 July, 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina
General Category: ARITHMETIC

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.


Harvest of Poems 1910-1960
Arithmetic


Reference #: 4854

Sandburg, Carl
Born: 6 January, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois
Died: 22 July, 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina
General Category: ARITHMETIC

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.


Harvest of Poems 1910-1960
Arithmetic


Reference #: 4855

Sandburg, Carl
Born: 6 January, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois
Died: 22 July, 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina
General Category: NUMBER

He was
Born to wonder about numbers.


Harvest Poems 1910-1960
No. Man


Reference #: 9846

Sandburg, Carl
Born: 6 January, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois
Died: 22 July, 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina
General Category: SEA

The sea folds away from you like a mystery.
You can look and look at it and mystery never leaves it.


Remembrance Rock


Reference #: 5618

Sanderson, R.T.
General Category: PERIODIC TABLE

Students may readily be bewildered by the apparently fundamental lack of agreement among various periodic tables, and some may even acquire reasonable doubt as to whether chemists actually know what they are doing.


Journal of Chemical Education
Vol. 31, 481 , 1954


Reference #: 7266

Sanger, Margaret
General Category: BIRTH CONTROL

The menace of another pregnancy hung like a sword over the head of every poor woman...


My Fight for Birth Control
Awaking and Revolt
(p. 49)


Reference #: 7267

Sanger, Margaret
General Category: BIRTH CONTROL

Yes, yes - I know, Doctor, said the patient with trembling voice, but, and she hesitated as if it took all of her courage to say it, what can I do to prevent getting that way again?'Oh, ho! laughed the doctor good naturedly. You want your cake while you eat it too, do you? Well, it can't be done...I'll tell you the only sure thing to do. Tell Jake to sleep on the roof!


My Fight for Birth Control
Awaking and Revolt
(pp. 52-53)


Reference #: 8492

Sanger, Margaret
General Category: BIRTH CONTROL

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.


Parade
December 1, 1963


Reference #: 16120

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: MATTER

...and the animate world must needs concern the physicist, since it is the crown of nature, the focus where matter concentrates its fires and best shows what it is capable of doing.


The Realm of Matter
(p. 141)


Reference #: 16484

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: SCIENCE AND ART

Science is the response to the demand for information....Art is the response to the demand for entertainment.


The Sense of Beauty
(p. 15)


Reference #: 16485

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: THEORY

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.


The Sense of Beauty
The Average Modified in the Direction of Pleasure
(p. 125)


Reference #: 16119

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: GOD

God then becomes a poetic symbol for the material tenderness and the paternal strictness of this wonderful world; the ways of God become the subject-matter of physics.


The Realm of Matter
(p. 205)


Reference #: 3410

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: CHAOS

Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything: which would explain why perfect order is so rare and precarious.


Dominations and Powers
Book First, Part One, Chapter 1
(p. 33)


Reference #: 3281

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: CHAOS

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.


Dominations and Powers
Book First, Part One, Chapter 1
(p. 33)


Reference #: 6210

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: COSMOS

...the cosmos has its own way of doing things, not wholly rational nor ideally best, but patient, fatal, and fruitful. Great is this organism of mud and fire, terrible this vast, painful glorious experiment.


In Logan Pearsall Smith
Little Essays
Piety
(p. 86)


Reference #: 6209

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, make it alike impressive. If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror, and amusement, so magnificent is that spirit, so prolific, inexorable, grammatical and dull.


In Logan Pearsall Smith
Little Essays
Piety
(p. 85)


Reference #: 14353

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is a half-way house between private sensation and universal vision.


The Life of Reason
Part V, 5, Chapter I
(p. 385)


Reference #: 10941

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: MATHEMATICS

If all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.


Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
Chapter III
(p. 80)


Reference #: 9715

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics is like music, freely exploring the possibilities of form. And yet, notoriously, mathematics holds true of things; hugs and permeates them far more closely than does confused and inconstant human perception; so that the dream of many exasperated critics of human error has been to assimilate all science to mathematics, so as to make knowledge safe by making it, as Locke wished, direct perception of the relations between ideas. ..


Realm of Truth
Chapter I
(pp. 2-3)


Reference #: 14354

Santayana, George (Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santillana)
Born: 16 December, 1863 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 26 September, 1952 in Rome, Italy
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Science, then is the alternative consideration of common experience; it is common knowledge extended and refined.


The Life of Reason
Part V, Chapter I
(p. 393)


Reference #: 10362

Sapolsky, Robert M.
General Category: BRAIN

Perhaps most excitingly, we are uncovering the brain basis of our behaviors—normal, abnormal and in-between. We are mapping a neurobiology of what makes us us.


Scientific American
MindYour Personal Pathology, Vol. 14, no. 1, 2004


Reference #: 4399

Sappho
General Category: PLANET

Stars near the lovely moon cover their own bright faces when she is roundest and lights up the earth with her silver.


Fragment
4, Part I, 24


Reference #: 9017

Sappho
General Category: BIRD NIGHTINGAL

The nightingal is the harbinger of Spring and her voice is desire.


Poems and Fragments
Fragment 114


Reference #: 4511

Sarewitz, Daniel
General Category: RESEARCH

A lone scientist, frizzy-haired and bespectacled-the absent-minded, benevolent genius lost in thought; or perhaps the dedicated experimentalist clad in a white coat and laboring madly among the condensers, Van de Graaf generators, computers, and even electrode-covered cadavers: These are typical public images of scientific research.


Frontiers of Illusion
Chapter 3
(p. 31)


Reference #: 4609

Sargent, Epes
General Category: OCEAN

A life on the ocean wave!
A home on the rolling deep;
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!


Life on the Ocean Wave


Reference #: 7578

Sarnak, P.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

Right now, when we tackle problems without knowing the truth of the Riemann hypothesis, it's as if we have a screwdriver. But when we have it, it'll be more like a bulldozer.


In E. Klarreich
New Scientist
Prime Time, 11/11/00


Reference #: 86

Sarnak, P.
General Category: ZETA FUNCTION

[It has been] said that the zeros [of the Riemann zeta function] weren't real, nobody measured them. They are as real as anything you will measure in a laboratory - this has to be the way we look at the world.


1999 Mathematical Science Research Institute lecture
Random matrix theory and zeroes of zeta functions - a survey


Reference #: 3446

Sarnak, P.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

If [the Riemann Hypothesis is] not true, then the world is a very different place. The whole structure of integers and prime numbers would be very different to what we could imagine. In a way, it would be more interesting if it were false, but it would be a disaster because we've built so much round assuming its truth.


In K. Sabbagh
Dr. Riemann's Zeros
(p. 30)


Reference #: 3442

Sarnak, P.
General Category: RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

The Riemann Hypothesis is the central problem and it implies many, many things. One thing that makes it rather unusual in mathematics today is that there must be over five hundred papers - somebody should go and count - which start Assume the Riemann Hypothesis, and the conclusion is fantastic. And those [conclusions] would then become theorems...With this one solution you would have proven five hundred theorems or more at once.


In K. Sabbagh
Dr. Riemann's Zeros
(p. 188)


Reference #: 3564

Sarnoff, David
General Category: SCIENCE

Freedom is the oxygen without which science cannot breathe.


Electronics-Today and Tomorrow


Reference #: 6619

Sarpi, Fra Paolo
General Category: MOTION

To give us the science of motion God and Nature have joined hands and created the intellect of Galileo.


In Morris Kline
Mathematics and the Physical World
(p. 181)


Reference #: 15033

Sarte, Jean-Paul
General Category: PROBABILITY

When we want something, we always have to reckon with probabilities.


The Philosophy of Existentialism
(p. 46)


Reference #: 15032

Sarte, Jean-Paul
General Category: PROBABLE

All views are only probable, and a doctrine of probability which is not bound to a truth dissolves into thin air. In order to describe the probable, you must have a firm hold on the true. Therefore, before there can by any truth whatsoever, there must be absolute truth.


The Philosophy of Existentialism
(p. 51)


Reference #: 16651

Sarton, George
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics gives to science its innermost unity and cohesion, which can never be entirely replaced with props and buttresses or with roundabout connections, no matter how many of these may be introduced.


The Study of the History of Mathematics
(p. 4)


Reference #: 16649

Sarton, George
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The main source of mathematical invention seem to be within man rather than outside of him: his own inveterate and insatiable curiosity, his constant itching for intellectual adventure; and likewise the main obstacles to mathematical progress seem to be also within himself; his scandalous inertia and laziness, his fear of adventure, his need of conformity to old standards, and his obsession by mathematical ghosts.


The Study of the History of Mathematics
(p. 16)


Reference #: 16650

Sarton, George
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

The concatenations of mathematical ideas are not divorced from life, far from it, but they are less influenced than other scientific ideas by accidents, and it is perhaps more possible, and more permissible, for a mathematician than for any other man to secrete himself in a tower of ivory.


The Study of the History of Mathematics
(pp. 19-20)


Reference #: 16654

Sarton, George
General Category: CHEMISTRY

...any branch of science may be completely revolutionized at any time by a discovery necessitating a radically new approach to the subject. Chemistry today is essentially different from chemistry in the eithteenth century. The fundamental notions are different, the methods are different, the scope is indescribably larger, and the contents are infinitely more varied. We may safely assume that the chemistry of the twenty-fifth century will be as unlike that of the present as that, in turn, is unlike that of the fifteenth century.


The Study of the History of Science
(pp. 7-8)


Reference #: 16653

Sarton, George
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Mathematicians and other scientists, however great they may be, do not know the future. Their genius may enable them to project their purpose ahead of them; it is as if they had a special lamp, unavailable to lesser men, illuminating their path; but even in the most favorable cases the lamp sends only a very small cone of light into the infinite darkness.


The Study of the History of Mathematics
(pp. 17-18)


Reference #: 16652

Sarton, George
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

A mathematical congress of to-day reminds one of the Tower of Babel, for few men can follow profitably the discussions of sections other than their own, and even there they are sometimes made to feel like strangers.


The Study of the History of Mathematics
(p. 14)


Reference #: 4966

Sarton, George
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

The only way of humanizing scientific labour is to inject into it a little of the historical spirit, the spirit of reverence for the past - the spirit of reverence for every witness of good-will through the ages. However abstract science may become, it is essentially human in its origin and growth. Wach scientific result is a fruit of humanity, a proof of its virtue. The almost unconceivable immensity or the universe revealed by his own efforts does not dwarf man except in a purely physical way; it gives a deeper meaning to his life and thought. Each time that we understand the world a little better, we are also able to appreciate more keenly our relationship to it. There are no natural sciences as opposed to humanities; every branch of science or learning is just as natural or as humane as you make it. Show the deep human interest of science and the study of it becomes the best vehicle of humanism one could devise; exclude that interest, teach scientific knowledge only for the sake of information and professional instruction, and the study of it, however valuable from a purely technical point of view, loses all educational value. Without history, scientific knowledge may become culturally dangerous; combined with history, tempered with reverence, it will nourish the highest culture.


History of Science and the New Humanism
(pp. 68-69)


Reference #: 5486

Sarton, George
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

From the point of view of the history of science, transmission is as essential as discovery.


Introduction to the History of Science
Vol. II, Introductory Chapter
(p. 15)


Reference #: 9988

Sarton, George
General Category: STATISTICIAN

I like to think of the constant presence in any sound Republic of two guardian angels: the Statistician and the Historian of Science. The former keeps his finger on the pulse of Humanity...


Sarton on the History of Science
Quetelet
(p. 241)


Reference #: 14076

Sarton, George
Alfred Leon
General Category: SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY

Scientific activity is the only one which is obviously and undoubtedly cumulative and progressive.


The History of Science and the History of Civilization


Reference #: 1500

Sarton, May
General Category: ORDER

I see a certain order in the universe and math is one way of making it visible.


As We Are Now


Reference #: 12334

Sartre, Jean-Paul
Born: 21 June, 1905 in Paris, France
Died: 15 April, 1980 in Paris, France
General Category: BEAUTY

The real is never beautiful. Beauty is a value which applies only to the imaginary and which entails the negation of the world in its essential structure.


In T. Dobzhansky
The Biology of Ultimate Concern
Chapter 5
(p. 102)


Reference #: 324

Sattler, R.
General Category: TRUTH

Modern philosophy of science has gone far beyond the nanve belief that science reveals the truth. Even if it could, we would have no means of proving it. Certainty seems unattainable. All scientific statements remain open to doubt....We cannot reach the absolute at least as far as science is concerned; we have to content ourselves with the relative.


Biophilosophy
(p. 41)


Reference #: 17172

Saunders, W.E.
General Category: NATURE

Lovers of nature feel so confidently that their hobby is an enormous asset in life that there is no feeling of hesitancy in advocating that every person should become acquainted with new species of birds, trees, insects, etc., just as often as opportunity offers. And the time to do so is always NOW!


In R.J. Rutter (ed.)
W.E. Saunders-Naturalist
Saunderisms
(p. 50)


Reference #: 17171

Saunders, W.E.
General Category: EXTINCTION

What good reason is there for the extermination of any form of life because it sometimes kills what we are pleased to call "game"? Are we so narrow-minded that we can undure the existence of nothing but ourselves and the things we wish to kill?


In R.J. Rutter (ed.)
W.E. Saunders-Naturalist
Saunderisms
(p. 50)


Reference #: 2437

Savage, D.E.
General Category: STRATIGRAPHY

The fossil-mammal worker accepts that many mammals, marine or nonmarine, contributed fossils which are admirable tools for paleontologic stratigraphy and geochronology, and especially for age-magnitude correlations from continent to continent.


In E. Kauffman and J.E. Hazel (eds.)
Concepts and Methods of Biostratigraphy
Aspects of Vertebrate Paleontological Stratigraphy and Geochronology
Dowden, Hutchinson, & Ross, Stroudsburg; 1977


Reference #: 4054

Savage, Jay M.
General Category: EVOLUTION

No serious biologist today doubts the fact of evolution...the fact of evolution is amply clear....We do not need a listing of evidences to demonstrate the fact of evolution any more than we need to demonstrate the existence of mountain ranges.


Evolution
Preface
(p. v, vi)


Reference #: 13672

Savage, L.J.
General Category: STATISTICS

[Statistics] the art of dealing with vagueness and with interpersonal difference in decision situations.


The Foundation of Statistics
(p. 154)


Reference #: 7330

Savory, T.
General Category: NAME

...words are in themselves among the most interesting objects of study, and the names of animals and plants are worthy of more consideration than Biologists are inclined to give them.


Naming the Living World
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 143

Sawyer, P.H.
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGIST

Archaeologists should concentrate on being archaeologists and resist the temptation to draw heavily on other types of evidence, historical or linguistic.


In Hinton, D.A.(ed.)
25 Years of Medieval Archaeology
English Archaeology before the Conquest: A Historian's View
(p. 46)


Reference #: 212

Sawyer, W.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Any part of modern mathematics is the end-product of a long history. It has drawn on many other branches of earlier mathematics, it has extracted various essences from them and has been reformulated again and again in increasingly general and abstract forms. Thus a student may not be able to see what it is all about, in much the same way that a caveman confronted with a vitamin pill would not easily recognize it as food.


A First Look at Numerical Functional Analysis
(p. 1)


Reference #: 9210

Sawyer, W.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

A point that should be
Borne in mind is that, generally speaking, higher mathematics is simpler than elementary mathematics. To explore a thicket on foot is a troublesome business; from an aeroplane the task is easier.


Prelude to Mathematics
(p. 11)


Reference #: 9211

Sawyer, W.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

In other arts, if we see a pattern we can admire its beauty; we may feel that it has significant form, but we cannot say what the significance is. And it is much better not to try...But in mathematics it is not so. In mathematics, if a pattern occurs, we can go on to ask, Why does it occur? What does it signify? And we can find answers to these questions. In fact, for every pattern that appears, a mathematician feels he ought to know why it appears.


Prelude to Mathematics
(p. 23)


Reference #: 9213

Sawyer, W.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

If it were possible to weld together the whole of knowledge into two general laws, a mathematician would not be satisfied. He would not be happy until he had shown that these two laws were rooted in a single principle. Nor would he be happy then; indeed he would be miserable, for there would be nothing more for him to do. But there is not the least likelihood of this state of stagnation arising. It is a property of life, a property without which life would be unendurable, that the solution of one problem always creates another. There always is, there always will be something to learn, something to conquer.


Prelude to mathematics
(p. 29)
Penguin Books, Baltimore 1957


Reference #: 9212

Sawyer, W.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The history of mathematics therefore consists of alternate expansions and contractions. A problem occupies the attention of mathematicians; hundreds of papers are written, each clarifying one facet of the truth; the subject is growing. Then, helped perhaps by the information so painfully gathered together, some exceptional genius will say, 'All that we know can be seen as almost obvious if you look at it from this viewpoint, and bear this principle in mind'. It then ceases to be necessary to read the hundreds of separate contributions, except for the mathematical historian. The variegated results are welded together into a simple doctrine, the significant facts are separated from the chaff, the straight road to the desired conclusion is open to all. The bulk of what needs to be learnt has contracted. But this is not the end. The new methods having become common property, new problems are found which they are insufficient to solve, new gropings after solutions are made, new papers are published; expansion begins again.


Prelude to mathematics
(p. 28)
Penguin Books, Baltimore 1957


Reference #: 10355

Sawyer, W.W.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The scientist who uses mathematics should be aware that much new mathematical knowledge is being discovered; nearly all of it will be irrelevant to his research, but he should keep his eyes open for the small piece that may be of great value to him.


Scientific American
Algebra, Vol. 211, No. 3, September 1964
(p. 78)


Reference #: 15938

Saxe, John Godfrey
General Category: OBSERVATION

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.


The Poetical Works of John Godfrey Saxe
The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant


Reference #: 14298

Saxe, John Godfrey
General Category: BORROWER

'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;'Tis wise to learn; 'tis God-like to create!


The Library


Reference #: 5669

Sayer, Lewis L.
General Category: CIRCUMSION

Hip trouble is from falling down, an accident that children with tight foreskins are specially liable to, owing to the weakening of the muscles produced by the condition of the genitals.


Journal of the American Medical Association
Circumcision for the Cure of Enuresis, Vol. 7, 1887
(pp. 631-633)


Reference #: 3869

Sayers, D.L.
General Category: FACT

...a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit..


Gaudy Night
Chapter XVII
(p. 340)


Reference #: 2242

Sayers, Dorothy
General Category: FACTS

Yes, my lord. My old mother..../always says...that facts are like cows. If you look them in the face hard enough they generally run away. She is a very courageous woman, my lord.


Clouds of Witness
(pp. 63-64)


Reference #: 2241

Sayers, Dorothy
General Category: FACTS

Must have facts, said Lord Peter, facts. When I was a small boy I always hated facts. Thought of 'em as nasty, hard things, all knobs. Uncompromisin'.


Clouds of Witness
(p. 63)


Reference #: 16858

Sayers, Dorothy L.
General Category: THEORY

Very dangerous things, theories.


The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
Chapter 4


Reference #: 13449

Sayers, Dorothy L.
Eustace, R.
General Category: NATURE

Nature never worked by rule and compass.


The Documents in the Case
Letter 16, Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother
(p. 56)


Reference #: 13448

Sayers, Dorothy L.
Eustace, R.
General Category: ASTRONOMER

The biologist can push it back to the original protist, and the chemist can push it back to the crystal, but none of them touch the real question of why or how the thing began at all. The astronomer goes back untold million of years and ends in gas and emptiness, and then the mathematician sweeps the whole cosmos into unreality and leaves one with mind as the only thing of which we have any immediate apprehension. Cogito ergo sum, ergo omnia esse videntur. All this bother, and we are no further than Descartes. Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.


The Documents in the Case
Letter 22, John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
(p. 70)


Reference #: 2150

Scalera, Mario
General Category: RESEARCH

There is no practical purpose here. There is simply man's insatiable curiosity, his abhorrence of the unknown-the desire to see, in the confusing phenomena of nature, the law, the order, that underlies them. This kind of urge has its own reward...the reward that comes to a man who suddenly sees order shaping out of chaos-this is what we call fundamental research.


Chemical and Engineering News
An Industrial Research Director Views Fundamental Research, April 21, 1958
(p. 85)


Reference #: 3468

Scaliger, Joseph
General Category: GEOMETER

A dull and patient intellect such should be your geometers. A great genius cannot be a great mathematician.


Edinburgh Review
Vol. 52, January 1836
(p. 229)


Reference #: 5195

Scarlett, Earle P.
General Category: MEDICAL STUDENT

Their lot has always been much the same. Hard work, long hours, poor accommodation for the majority, a sharp meeting with reality at a relatively young age, a long grind of years—these have prevailed in every generation.


In C.G. Roland
In Sickness and in Health: Reflections on the Medical Profession
(p. 3)
McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; 1972


Reference #: 5196

Scarlett, Earle P.
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The essential loneliness of the conscientious physician, working in what is of necessity a highly individual role, burdened with the secrets of his patients, unable to share his thoughts and problems with anyone; above all finding little or no understanding of his particular role or his essential work among his circle of friends or even in his own family, except in some happy instances on the part of his wife.


In G.G. Roland (ed.)
In Sickness and in Health: Reflections on the Medical Profession
(pp. 12-13)
McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; 1972


Reference #: 5197

Scarlett, Earle P.
General Category: DOCTOR

The average doctor is something of a scientist, something of an artist, something of a priest, but nothing at all of a civil servant or dull bureaucrat. He is living in a tumultuous world…. He is trying to keep his balance as a human being in a civilization that conducts its worship in automobile showrooms, does its singing in commercials, lives on catchwords, gathers various impedimenta about him and calls it "gracious living."


In C.G. Roland (ed.)
In Sickness and in Health: Reflections on the Medical Profession
(p. xvii)
McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; 1972


Reference #: 16591

Schaaf, Fred
General Category: SUPERNOVA

...a star gone to seed-a star spectacularly sowing space with heavy elements and the promise of new stars, worlds, life, and eyes.


The Starry Room: Naked Eye Astronomy in the Intimate Universe
Chapter 11
(p. 194)


Reference #: 5324

Schachtel, Ernest
General Category: NATURE

...nature is to man whatever name he wants to give her. He will perceive nature according to the names he gives to her, according to the relation and perspective he chooses.


Metamorphosis
Chapter 8
(p. 202)


Reference #: 11796

Schaefer, A.
Gershenson, A.
Allersma, M.
General Category: PHYSICS

A is for ATOM which is really small
B is for BUBBLE CHAMBER where you can see them all
C is for CHARGE which can be quite shocking
D is for DIPOLE gives radiation by oscillating
E is for EINSTEIN who said E=mc2
F is for FEYNMAN whose diagrams make me scared
G is for GRAVITY pulling things down
H is for HYPERFINE STRUCTURE in hydrogen found
I is for INERTIA explaining lethargy
J is for JOULE a unit of energy
K is for KIRCHOFF'S LAWS to get the current right
L is for LASER a really bright light
M is for MAXWELL and his cool equations
N is for NEWTON and his integrations
O is for OPTICS and all that light biz...
P is for PHYSICIST which is what daddy (mommy) iz
Q is for QUANTUM and fun with Prof. Yao
R is for RELATIVITY what time is it now?
S is for SEMICONDUCTORS which are really cool
T is for TRANSISTOR a useful tool
U is for UNIFIED FIELD THEORY which remains to be found
V is for VOLTAGE (don't forget to ground!)
W is for WAVE with its myriad effects
X is for X-RAY what else did you expect?
Y is for YOUNG'S DOUBLE SLIT EXPERIMENT (what a mouthful)
Z is for ZEEMAN EFFECT and that is all!


The ABC's of Physics


Reference #: 10884

Schaefer, Bradley E.
General Category: SKY

The sky is beautiful and vast and harbors many secrets.


Sky & Telescope
Inventory of Cosmic Mysteries, Vol. 94, No. 4, October 1994
(p. 68)


Reference #: 1571

Schaefer, Jack
General Category: ANIMAL SHREW

Shrews are not mutual murders. We'll just square off and touch whiskers, assessing each other. Then we'll try to out-squeak each other.


Audubon
Interview with a Shrew, Vol. 77, No. 6, November 1975
(p. 2)


Reference #: 15270

Schaffer, E.A.
General Category: EVOLUTION

...setting aside as devoid of scientific foundation the idea of immediate supernatural intervention in the first production of life, we are not only justified in believing, but compelled to believe, that living matter must have owed its origin to causes similar in character to those which have been instrumental in producing all other forms of matter in the universe, in other words, to a process of gradual evolution.


In J. Keosian
The Origin of Life
Chapter Two
(p. 12)


Reference #: 13865

Schaller, George B.
Jinchu, Hu
Wenshi, Pan
Jing, Zhu
General Category: ANIMAL PANDA

There are two giant pandas, the one that exists in our mind and the one that lives in its wilderness home. Soft, furry, and strangely patterned in black and white, with a large, round head and a clumsy, cuddly body, a panda seems like something to play with and hug. No other animal has so entranced the public..The real panda, however, the panda as it lives in the wild, has remained essentially a mystery.


The Giant Pandas of Wolong
Introduction
(p. xiii)


Reference #: 4679

Schawlow, Arthur
General Category: ASTRONOMER

Astronomers are very brave and bold, and make vast assumptions based on very little data. Very clever, though.


In Dennis Brian
Genius Talk:Conversation with Noble Scientists and Other Luminaries
Chapter 11
(p. 249)
Genius Talk:Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries
Arthur Schawlow (p. 249)
Plenum Press, New Yorl 1995
New York: Plenum Press, 1995


Reference #: 13401

Scheele, Carl Wilhelm
General Category: CHEMISTRY

It is the object and chief business of chemistry to skillfully separate substances into their constituents, to discover their properties, and to compound them in different ways.
How difficult it is, however, to carry out such operations with the greatest accuracy, can only be unknown to one who either has never undertaken this occupation, or at least has not done so with sufficient attention.


The Discovery of Oxygen
Part II, Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire, Section 1


Reference #: 2418

Schegel, Richard
General Category: THEORY

We must accept, I think, that there is an inherent limitation in the structure of science that prevents a scientific theory from ever giving us an adequate total explanation of the universe. Always, there is a base in nature (or, correspondingly, a set of assumptions in theory) which cannot be explained by reference to some yet more fundamental property. This feature of science has been commented on by many writers in the philosophy of science; and, certainly the limitation is a point of difference between science and those religious or metaphysical systems in which there is an attempt to present a doctrine that gives answers for all ultimate questions.


Completeness in Science
(p. 252)


Reference #: 8778

Schelling, Friedrich
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is frozen music.


Philosophie der Kunst
(p. 576)


Reference #: 14587

Schenck, Hilbert Jr.
General Category: MOEBIUS STRIP

The topologis4 s mind came unguided
When his theories, some colleagues derided.
Out of Moebius strips
Paper dolls he now snips,
Non-Euclidean, closed, and one-sided.


The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Snip, Snip, Vol. 17, No. 3, September 1959
(p. 86)


Reference #: 14588

Schenck, Hilbert Jr.
General Category: INTEGRATION

'Oh, hast thou solved the integral?
Here is a raise, my brainish boy!'
He threw his time cards in the air
And clapped his hands with joy.


The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Wockyjabber, May 1960


Reference #: 9326

Schenk, E.T.
McMasters, J.H.
General Category: SYMMETRY

Clarity and brevity are among the essential attributes of a good syNouymy; clarity should not, however, be sacrificed for the sake of brevity.


Procedures in Taxonomy
Chapter VI
(p. 17)


Reference #: 9325

Schenk, E.T.
McMasters, J.H.
General Category: TAXONOMY

With the vast increase in numbers of known forms of animals and with the change in concepts of classification brought about by acceptance of the theory of evolution, the mechanics of modern taxonomy have become so complex as to discourage the beginning student.


Procedure in Taxonomy
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 5872

Schiaparelli, Giovanni
General Category: PLANET MARS

There are on this planet, traversing the continents, long dark lines which may be designated as canali, although we do not know what they are....Their arrangement appears to be invariable and permanent; at least as far as I can judge from four-and-a-half years of observation.


L'Astronomie


Reference #: 7503

Schiebinger, Londa
General Category: SCIENCE

Only recently have we begun to appreciate that who does science affects the kind of science that gets done. How, then, has our knowledge of nature been influenced by struggles determining who is included in science and who is excluded, which projects are pursued and which ignored, whose experiences are validated and whose are not, and who stands to gain in terms of wealth or well-being and who does not?


Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science
(p. 3)


Reference #: 7504

Schiebinger, Londa
General Category: OBJECTIVETY

Objectivity in science cannot be proclaimed, it must be built.


Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science
(p. 114)


Reference #: 13925

Schiefelbein, Susan
General Category: ELEMENT

Within our bodies course the same elements that flame in the stars.


The Incredible Machine


Reference #: 2051

Schild, A.
General Category: RESEARCH

If one can tell ahead of time what one's research is going to be, the research problem cannot be very deep and may be said to be almost nonexistent.


Canadian Association of University Teachers
On the Matter of Freedom: The University and the Physical Sciences Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1963


Reference #: 998

Schild, Alfred
General Category: PARADOX

Consider a pair of twins. Immediately after birth they are separated. One of them, the first one, remains on earth, the second on is put in a rocket ship and flown to Alpha Centauri at a pretty high speed, 99' that of light. Alpha Centauri is the nearest star; it is about four light-years away from us. As soon as the second twin gets to Alpha Centauri, he turns around and flies back to earth at the same high speed. When the two twins meet again, the first one, the one who stayed behind on earth, will be eight years old...he will be able to talk quite well and read a little bit. He may have finished second grade and be about to enter third. The second twin, the one who took the journey, on his return will be approximately one year old....He will still need diapers, he will be barely able to walk, and he won't be able to talk much.


American Mathematics Monthly
The Clock Paradox in Relativity Theory, Vol. 66, No. 1, January 1959
(p. 1)


Reference #: 5791

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science:
To one, she is the exhalted and heavenly Goddess; to another she is a capable cow which keeps him supplied with butter.


In Folke Dovring
Knowledge and Ignorance
(p. 141)


Reference #: 10027

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: SCIENCE

To Archimedes once came a youth, who for knowledge was thirsting,
Saying, "Initiate me into the science divine,
Which for my country has
Borne forth fruit of such wonderful value,
And which the wall of the town 'gainst the Sambuca protects.
"Calls't thou the science divine? It is so," the wise man responded;
"But it was so, my son, ere it avail'd for the town.
Wouldst thou have fruit from her only, e'en mortals wit that can provide thee;
Wouldst thou the goddess obtain, seek not the woman in Her!"


Schiller's Poems
Archimedes and the Student


Reference #: 11589

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: THEORY

It is the business of theories to forecast 'facts', and of facts to porm points of departure for theories, which again, when verified by the new facts to which they have successfully led, will extend the borders of knowledge.


In Charles Singer (ed.)
Studies in the History and Method of Science
Vol. I, Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof
(p. 275)


Reference #: 11591

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: DISCOVERY

One curious result of this inertia, which deserves to rank among the fundamental 'laws' of nature, is that when a discovery has finally won tardy recognition it is usually found to have been anticipated, often with cogent reason and in great detail.


In Charles Singer (ed.)
Studies in the History and Method of Science
Vol. I, Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof
(pp. 256-257)


Reference #: 11593

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: LOGIC

...it is not too much to say that the more deference men of science have paid to Logic, the worse it has been for the scientific value of their reasoning....Fortunately for the world, however, the great men of science have usually been kept in salutary ignorance of the logical tradition...


In Charles Singer (ed.)
Studies in the History and Method of Science
Vol. I, Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof
(p. 236)


Reference #: 11590

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: LOGIC

Among the obstacles to scientific progress a high place must certainly be assigned to the analysis of scientific procedure which Logic has provided....It has not tried to describe the methods by which the sciences have actually advanced, and to extract...rules which might be used to regulate scientific progress, but has freely rearranged the actual procedure in accordance with its prejudices. For the order of discovery there has been substituted an order of 'proof'...


In Charles Singer (ed.)
Studies in the History and Method of Science
Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof
(p. 235)


Reference #: 11592

Schiller, F.C.S.
General Category: PROBABILITY

...it is better to be satisfied with probabilities than to demand impossibilities and starve.


In Charles Singer (ed.)
Studies in the History and Method of Science
Vol. I, Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof
(p. 272)


Reference #: 3293

Schiller, Friedrich
General Category: CHANCE

There's no such thing as chance;
And what to us seems merest accident
Springs from the deepest source of destiny.


Early Dramas
The Death of Wallenstein
Act II, scene III


Reference #: 8273

Schlegel, Friedrich
General Category: SCIENCE AND POETRY

Strictly understood, the concept of a scientific poem is quite as absurd as that of a poetical science.


Philosophical Fragments
Critical Fragments, 61
(p. 8)


Reference #: 13329

Schlesinger
General Category: ASTRONOMER

The astronomer has borrowed almost all his tools from the physicist; the prism, the grating, the photoelectric cell, the interferometer, the photographic plate, even the telescope itself, were all used in the laboratory before they were applied to the sky.


In Lorande Woodruff
The Development of the Sciences
Chapter IV
(p. 166)


Reference #: 14681

Schlicter, Dean
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics.


In Margaret Joseph
The Mathematics Teacher
The Future of Geometry, January 1936, Vol. XXIX, No. 1
(p. 29)


Reference #: 8604

Schmidt, F.L.
General Category: STATISTICAL TESTS

I believe that these false beliefs are a major cause of the addiction of researchers to significance tests. Many researchers believe that statistical significance testing confers important benefits that are in fact completely imaginary.


Psychological Methods
Statistical significance testing and cumulative knowledge in psychology: implications for training of researchers, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996


Reference #: 8603

Schmidt, F.L.
General Category: STATISTICAL TESTS

If the null hypothesis is not rejected, Fisher's position was that nothing could be concluded. But researchers find it hard to go to all the trouble of conducting a study only to conclude that nothing can be concluded.


Psychological Methods
Statistical significance testing and cumulative knowledge in psychology: implications for training of researchers, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996


Reference #: 8602

Schmidt, Frank L.
General Category: STATISTICAL

If we were clairvoyant and could enter the mind of a typical researcher we might eavesdrop on the following thoughts:

Significance tests have been repeatedly criticized by methodological specialists, but I find them very useful in interpreting my research data, and I have no intention of giving them up. If my findings are not significant, then I know that they probably just occurred by chance and that the true difference is probably zero. If the result is significant, then I know I have a reliable finding. The p values from the significance tests tell me whether the relationships in my data are large enough to be important or not. I can also determine from the p value what the chances are that these findings would replicate if I conducted a new study. These are very valuable things for a researcher to know. I wish the critics of significance testing would recognize this fact.

Every one of these thoughts about the benefits of significance testing is false. I ask the reader to ponder this question: does this describe your thoughts about the significance test?


Psychological Methods
Statistical Significance Testing and Cumulative Knowledge in Psychology: Implications for Training of Researchers, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996
(p. 126)


Reference #: 18066

Schmidt, O.Y.
General Category: PROGRESS

There can be no progress in science and education in the absence of political progress.


Compiled by V.V. Vorontsov
Words of the Wise: A Book of Russian Quotations
Translated by Vic Schneierson
Moscow, 1979


Reference #: 5653

Schmitz, Jacqueline T.
General Category: NURSE

Compressing an hour into a half,
Busy, yet heedful
Rushes the nurse
Bringing earnest solace to the
Sick and the needful.
Who must come first? How can she know?
Inverted scope, focused by Death,
Grants new perspective as He robs breath.


Journal of Nursing
Point of View, November 1968
(p. 2492)


Reference #: 13000

Schneer, C. J.
General Category: SCIENCE

The primary importance of science and the characteristic that distinguished it from other philosophies and arts is its usefulness. The remarkable thing about science is the extent to which nature and the world appear to adhere to the rules and constructions of science.


The Evolution of Physical Science
New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1960


Reference #: 6973

Schneer, Cecil J.
General Category: FACT

...science crossed the divide from the tidy, cultivated garden of classical thought to a new thicket of stubborn, irreducible fact.


Mind and Matter
Chapter 13
(p. 220)


Reference #: 9908

Schneider, Herman Schneider, Nina
General Category: EARTH

The story of the earth is in a leaf and in a stone; in a cloud and in the sea. The leaf was once a stone; the cloud was once the sea. The earth tells its story over and over again-the leaf will become a stone, the cloud will become the sea again.


Rocks, Rivers & the Changing Earth
Part One, A Leaf and A Stone
(p. 3)


Reference #: 17505

Schoedler, Friedrich Karl Ludwig
General Category: SCIENCE

To the natural philosopher, to whom the whole extent of nature belongs, all the individual branches of science constitute the links of an endless chain, from which not one can be detached without destroying the harmony of the whole.


Treasury of Science-Astronomy


Reference #: 17807

Scholzer, Ludwig
General Category: STATISTICS

History is statistics in a state of progression; statistics is history at a stand.


Westminster Review
Transactions of the Statistical Society of London
Art. II, Footnote on page 72, Volume I, Part IApril-August 1838


Reference #: 4990

Scholzer, Ludwig
General Category: STATISTICS

History is for him continuous statistics, statistics stationary history.


In August Meitzen
History, Theory and Techniques of Statistics
(p. 37)


Reference #: 16188

Schön, D.A
General Category: THEORY

...there is a high, hard ground where practitioners can make effective use of research-based theory and technique, and there is a swampy lowland where situations are confusing 'messes' incapable of technical solution ...in the swamp are the problems of greatest human concern.


The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
(p. 42)
Aldershot: Avebury; 1983


Reference #: 16187

Schön, D.A
General Category: RESEARCH

He emphasises the key issue of the starting point of research. In real-world practice, problems do not present themselves to the practitioner as givens. They must be constructed from the materials of problematic situations which are puzzling, troubling and uncertain. In order to convert a problematic situation to a problem, a practitioner must do a certain kind of work.


The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
(p. 40)
Aldershot: Avebury; 1983


Reference #: 8528

Schopenhauer, Arthur
General Category: CHANCE

Consider that chance, which, with error, its brother, and folly, its aunt, and malice, its grandmother, rules in this world; which every year and every day, by blows great and small, embitters the life of every son of earth, and yours too.


Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays
Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms


Reference #: 8527

Schopenhauer, Arthur
General Category: IMAGINATION

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.


Parerga and Paralipomena


Reference #: 3691

Schopenhaure, Arthur
General Category: ARITHMETIC

That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by means of a machine.


Essays of Schopenhauer
Psychological Observations


Reference #: 17668

Schrieber, Hermann Schrieber, Georg
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

The earth bears us unwillingly upon her back. We carve into her in order to sink the foundations for our houses and now and again she shakes herself and with a brief shudder tumbles these houses about as if they were children's blocks.


Vanished Cities
Part One, Force of Nature
(p. 3)


Reference #: 11861

Schröder, E.
General Category: CONSEQUENCE

...getting a handle on the consequences of any premisses, or at least the fastest methods for obtaining these consequences, seems to me to be the noblest, if not the ultimate goal of mathematics and logic.


The Algebra of Logic
Vol. III
(p. 241)


Reference #: 17177

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: CHROMOSONE

But the term code-script is, of course, too narrow. The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power - or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder's craft - in one.


What is Life ?


Reference #: 17178

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: ATOM

Why must our bodies be so large compared with the atom?


What Is Life?


Reference #: 17179

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: CHROSOME

The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power - or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder's craft - in one.


What Is Life?
Chapter II, section 12
(p. 21)


Reference #: 17839

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: PHYSICS

Research in physics has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that in the overwhelming majority or phenomena whose regularity and invariability have led to the formulation of the postulate of causality, the common element underlying the consistency observed is chance.


What is Natural Law
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 1899

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: EXPERIMENT

We never experiment with just one electron or atom...any more than we can raise Ichthyosauria in the zoo.


British Journal of Philosophical Science
Vol. III, No. 11, November 1952


Reference #: 1900

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: ELECTRON

...this is the obvious way of registering the fact, that we never experiment with just one electron or atom or (small) molecule. In thought-experiments we sometimes assume that we do; this invariably entails ridiculous consequences ...In the first place it is fair to state that we are not experimenting with single particles, any more than we can raise Ichthyosauria in the zoo. We are scrutinizing records of events long after they have happened.


British Journal of the Philosophy of Science
Are There Quantum Jumps?, Vol. 3, 1952
(p. 109)


Reference #: 2319

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: PHYSICIST

To-day there are not a few physicists who, like Kirchoff and Mach, regard the task of physical theory as being merely a mathematical description (as economical as possible of the empirical connections between observable quantities, i.e., a description which reproduces the connection, as far as possible, without the intervention of unobservable elements.


Collected Papers on Wave Mechanics


Reference #: 5192

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: QUANTUM THEORY

I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.


In John Gribbin
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat


Reference #: 7415

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: PHYSICS

More drastically than any other science, physics has promoted the statistical aspect from an ancillary service to the domineering role of indicating the goals and pointing out the pathways. It was a revolutionary step, affecting virtually the whole house of science, inasmuch as it is ultimately based on physics...It involved a new outlook on the nature of the laws of Nature; namely, that they are not rigorous laws at all, but 'only' statistical regularities, based on the law of great numbers, just as Darwin's theory is...Among the laws of physics one has quite a unique standing, the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics. By enunciating...the perpetual increase of entropy, it safeguards a one-way traffic of physical events. Nothing could ever happen in exactly the opposite way it does happen, because that would involve a decrease of entropy. no substantial part of the world can ever be made to run backwards...It would scarcely be satisfactory to account for this remarkable fact by inventing some special device, to be attributed as a common feature to all the multifarious 'mechanisms' in Nature. According to Boltzmann, this is not necessary. The Second Law rests on—nay, it is—statistics; it is the pure embodiment of the statistical law itself, nothing else. Events move in the direction in which they are most likely to move. Heat flows in the direction of temperature fall, because it is billions of billions of times less likely to do anything else...That the probability is, as a rule, next to certainty—in other words, that the laws of Nature are next to infallible—is due to the enormous number of single atoms or single miscropic events that co-operate.


Nature
The Statistical Law In Nature, June 10, 1944
(p. 704)


Reference #: 8304

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: LAWS

The exact laws which we observe are 'statistical laws.' In each mass phenomenon these laws appear all the more clearly, the greater the number of individuals that cooperate in the phenomenon.


Science Theory and Man
(p. 42)


Reference #: 9696

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Our age is possessed by a strong surge towards the criticism of traditional customs and opinions. A new spirit is arising which is unwilling to accept anything on authority, which does not so much permit as deman independent, rational thought on every subject, and which refrains from hampering any attack based upon such thought, even though it be directed against things which formerly were considered to be as sacrosanct as you please. In my opinion this spirit is the common cause underlying the crisis in every science today. Its results can only be advantageous: no scientific structure falls entirely into ruin: what is worth preserving preserves itself and requires no protection.


Science and the Human Temperament
Chapter I
(p. 38)


Reference #: 10182

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Who are we? The answer to this question is not only one of the tasks, but the task of science.


Science and Humanism


Reference #: 10183

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: SCIENCE

-who are we?...I consider this not only one of the tasks, but the task, of science, the only one that really counts.


Science and Humanism
The Alleged Break-Down of the Barrier between Subject and Object
(p. 51)


Reference #: 10184

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: SEISMOGRAPHY

...there are natural sciences which have obviously no practical bearing at all on the life of the human society: astrophysics, cosmology, and some branches of geophysics. Take, for instance, seismology. We know enough about earthquakes to know that there is very little chance of foretelling them, in the way of warning people to leave their houses, as we warn trawlers to return when a storm is drawing near.


Science and Humanism
Physics in out Time
(pp. 2-3)


Reference #: 10185

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: COMMUNICATION

If you cannot-in the long run-tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.


Science and Humanism
(pp. 8-9)


Reference #: 9340

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: PARADOX

Attention had recently (A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, Phys. Rev. 47 (1935) 777) been called to the obvious but very disentangling measurement to one system, the representative obtained for the other system is by no means independent of the particular choice of observations which we select for that purpose and which by the way are entirely arbitrary. It is rather discomforting that the theory should allow a system to be steered or piloted into one or the other type of state at the experimenter's mercy in spite of his having no access to it.


Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society
Vol. 11, 1935
(p. 555)


Reference #: 8305

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: LAW

The laws of physics are generally looked upon as a paradigm of exactitude.


Science Theory and Man
Chapter VI
(p. 133)


Reference #: 8851

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: PHYSICS

Erwin Schrödinger: 'Surely you realize the whole idea of quantum jumps is bound to end in nonsense...if the jump is sudden, Einstein's idea of light quanta will admittedly lead us to the right wave number, but them we must ask ourselves how precisely the electron behaves during the jump. Why does it not emit a continuous spectrum, as electromagnetic theory demands? And what law governs its motion during the jump? In other words, the whole idea of quantum jumps is sheer fantasy.'Neils Bohr: 'What you say is absolutely correct. But it does not prove that there are no quantum jumps. It only proves that we cannot describe them, that the representational concepts with which we describe events in daily life and experiments in classical physics are inadequate when it comes to describing quantum jumps.


In Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Beyond
(pp. 73-74)


Reference #: 12481

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: SCIENCE

...there is a tendency to forget that all science is bound up with human culture in general, and that scientific findings, even those which at the moment appear the most advanced and esoteric and difficult to grasp, are meaningless outside their cultural context. A theoretical science unaware that those of its constructs considered relevant and momentous are destined eventually to be framed in concepts and words that have a grip on the educated community and become part and parcel of the general world picture - a theoretical science, I say, where this is forgotten, and where the initiated continue musing to each other in terms that are, at best, understood by a small group of close fellow travelers, will necessarily be cut off from the rest of cultural mankind; in the long run it is bound to atrophy and ossify however virulently esoteric chat may continue within its joyfully isolated groups of experts.


The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Vol. III, Are there Quantum Jumps?, 1952
(pp. 109-10)


Reference #: 12233

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.


The Bible
1 Thessalonians 5:21


Reference #: 9972

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: LAW OF NATURE

The laws of physics are generally looked upon as a paradigm of exactitude. Therefore one would naturally take it for granted that probably no other science would be able to give such a clear and definite answer when asked what is meant when we speak of the law of nature.


Science and the Human Temperment
Chapter VI
(p. 133)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1935


Reference #: 9971

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: SCIENTIFIC STRUCTURE

…no scientific structure falls entirely into ruin: what is worth preserving preserves itself and requires no protection.


Science and the Human Temperment
Chapter I
(p. 38)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America 1935


Reference #: 9970

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...I do not refer to the mathematical difficulties, which eventually are always trivial, but rather to the conceptual difficulties.


Science and the Human Temperament
(p. 189)


Reference #: 8856

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: QUANTUM THEORY

If all this damned quantum jumping were really here to stay, I should be sorry I ever got involved with quantum theory.


In Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations
(p. 75)
Harper and Row, New York, New York, United States of America New York, New York, United States of America 1971


Reference #: 9440

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: INFORMATION

The scientific picture of the real worl around me is very deficient. It gives me a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really dear to our heart, that really matters to us.


In Ken Wilbur (ed.)
Quantum Questions
(p. 81)
New Science Library, Boulder; 1984


Reference #: 17181

Schrodinger, Erwin
General Category: LIFE

Life seems to be orderly and lawful behavior of matter, not based exclusively on its tendency to go over from order to disorder, but based partly on existing order that is kept up.


What is Life? Mind and Matter


Reference #: 9336

Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Born: 12 August, 1887 in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 January, 1961 in Vienna, Austria
General Category: MEASUREMENT

The rejection of realism has logical consequences. In general, a variable has no definite value before I measure it; then measuring it does not mean ascertaining the value that it has. But then what does it mean? There must still be some criterion as to whether a measurement is true or false, a method is good or bad, accurate, or inaccurate - whether it deserves the name of measurement process at all.


Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, Vol. 124


Reference #: 17098

Schrödinger's Cat
General Category: PARADOX

Suppose a cat is confined in a sealed room along with a geiger counter sitting beside an occasional source of radioactivity. If the geiger counter records one of these (for all practical purposes) random decays within an hour, then it triggers the release of poisonous gas into the room which quickly kills the cat. If no atom decays in the allowed time then the cat survives. The experiment ends when we look into the room after an hour to see if the cat is alive or dead. Schrödinger claims that, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, before we look inside the room the cat possesses a wave function which describes it as existing in some mixture of the definite states 'dead' and 'alive' in which it can be found after the act of looking at the cat determines what state it is in. When and where does the mixed-up, half-dead cat state change from being neither dead not alive into one or the other? Who collapses the cat's wave function; is it the cat, the geiger counter, or the physicist? Or does quantum theory simply not apply to 'large' complicated objects, even if they are composed of smaller ones to which it does apply.


In John D. Barrow
The World within the World
(p. 152)
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 6557

Schubert, Hermann
Born: 22 May, 1848 in Potsdam, Germany
Died: 20 July, 1911 in Hamburg, Germany
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Whenever, therefore, a controversy arises in mathematics, the issue is not whether a thing is true or not, but whether the proof might not be conducted more simply in some other way, or whether the proposition demonstrated is sufficiently important for the advancement of the science as to deserve especial enunciation and emphasis, or finally, whether the proposition is not a special case of some other and more general truth which is just as easily discovered.


Mathematical Essays and Recreations
(p. 28)


Reference #: 6558

Schubert, Hermann
Born: 22 May, 1848 in Potsdam, Germany
Died: 20 July, 1911 in Hamburg, Germany
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

The intrinsic character of mathematical research and knowledge is based essentially on three properties: first, on its conservative attitude towards old truths and discoveries of mathematics; secondly, on its progressive mode of development, due to the incessant acquisition of new knowledge on the basis of the old; and thirdly, on its self-sufficiency and its consequencent absolute independence.


Mathematical Essays and Recreations
(p. 27)


Reference #: 6559

Schubert, Hermann
Born: 22 May, 1848 in Potsdam, Germany
Died: 20 July, 1911 in Hamburg, Germany
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

...the three positive characteristics that distinguish mathematical knowledge from other knowledge...may be briefly expressed as follows; first, mathematical knowledge bears more distinctly the imprint of truth on all its results than any other kind of knowledge; secondly, it is always a sure preliminary step to the attainment of other correct knowledge; thirdly, it has no need of other knowledge.


Mathematical Essays and Recreations
(p. 35)


Reference #: 17245

Schuchert, C.
General Category: FACT

Facts are facts and it is from facts that we make our generalizations, from the little to the great, and it is wrong for a stranger to the facts he handles to generalize from them to other generalizations.


In W.A.J.M. Waterschoot van der Gracht, et. al.(eds.)
Theory of Continental Drift
The Hypothesis of Continental Displacement
(p. 139)


Reference #: 16733

Schufle, J.A.
General Category: TEACHING

The teaching of chemistry has for too long been a process in which facts are transmitted from the notebook of the professor into the notebook of the student without going through the heads of either.


The Texas Journal of Science
The Use of Case Histories in the Teaching of History of Science, Vol. 21, 1969
(p. 101)


Reference #: 4758

Schumacher, E.F.
General Category: OBSERVATION

I will tell you a moment in my life when I almost missed learning something. It was during the war and I was a farm laborer and my task was before breakfast to go to yonder hill and to a field there and count the cattle. I went and I counted the cattle - there were always thirty-two - and then I went back to the bailiff, touched my cap, and said,


Good Work
Education for Good Work
(p. 145)


Reference #: 10429

Schumacher, E.F.
General Category: MACHINE

Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.


Small is Beautiful
Part I, Chapter II
(p. 31)


Reference #: 10428

Schumacher, E.F.
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

...the system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology...The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources, and stultifying for the human person.


Small is Beautiful
Part II, Chapter V


Reference #: 10427

Schumacher, E.F.
General Category: SIMPLICITY

...it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity. Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again.


Small is Beautiful
Part II, Chapter 5
(p. 146)


Reference #: 14705

Schuster, A.
General Category: WORDS

Scientific controversies constantly resolve themselves into differences about the meaning of words.


In C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards
The Meaning of Meaning
(p. xxiv)


Reference #: 7433

Schuster, Arthur
General Category: ANTI-MATTER

Astronomy, the oldest and most juvenile of the sciences, may still have some surprises in store. May anti-matter be commended to its care!


Nature
Letter to the Editor, Potential Matter - A Holiday Dream, Vol. 58, August 18, 1898
(p. 367)


Reference #: 4911

Schuttzenberger, P.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Ere long mathematics will be as useful to the chemist as the balance.


In J.W. Mellor
Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics
(p. xvii)


Reference #: 4844

Schuyler, Montgomery
General Category: BRIDGE

It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace but a bridge.


Harper's Weekly
The Bridge as a Monument, Vol. XXVII, No. 137927 May 1883
(p. 326)


Reference #: 17767

Schwarts, John
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is a long movie, nad the news media generally take snapshots.


Washington Post
21 February, 1999


Reference #: 7340

Schwartz, David
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

They aren't little puppies. They are big, biting dogs and they each get unleased every few hundred years.


National Geographic
April 1995


Reference #: 14765

Schwartz, Jeffrey M. Begley, Sharon 2002
General Category: BRAIN

The brain, to be sure, is indeed the physical embodiment of the mind, the organ through which the mind finds expression and through which it acts in the world.


The Mind and the Brain


Reference #: 11518

Schwarzschild, Martin
General Category: LAW

If simple perfect laws uniquely rule the universe, should not pure thought be capable of uncovering this perfect set of laws without having to lean on the crutches of tenuously assembled observations? True, the laws to be discovered may be perfect, but the human brain is not. Left on its own, it is prone to stray, as many past examples sadly prove. In fact, we have missed few chances to err until new data freshly gleaned from nature set us right again for the next steps. Thus pillars rather than crutches are the observations on which we base our theories; and for the theory of stellar evolution these pillars must be there before we can get far on the right track.


Structure and Evolution of the Stars
Chapter 1
(p. 1)


Reference #: 8796

Schweitzer, Albert
General Category: ETHICS

A man is truly ethical only when...he tears no leaf from a tree, plucks no flower, and takes care to crush no insects.


Philosophy of Civilization: Civilization and Ethics
Chapter XXI
(p. 243)


Reference #: 9726

Schweitzer, Albert
General Category: PAIN

Whosoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others.


Recalled on his death
September 4, 1965


Reference #: 4884

Schweizer, Karl W.
General Category: HISTORY SCIENCE

One of the obstructions to a genuine appreciation of history is the existence of a vague unformulated assumption that historical research merely seeks to disinter a fossilized past-merely digs into the memory to recover things which the human race once knew before. On the basis of such an assumption it is possible for people to have the feeling that history can never produce anything which is fundamentally novel, but merely fills our minds with the lumber of bygone ages.


Herbert Butterfield: Essays on the History of Science
Chapter II
(p. 19)


Reference #: 17088

Sciama, Dennis
General Category: RELATIVITY

General relativity contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.


In J.D. Barrow
The World Within the World
(p. 306)
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 7350

Sciama, Dennis
General Category: MODEL

Since we find it difficult to make a suitable model of a certain type, Nature must find it difficult too. This argument neglects the possibility that Nature may be cleverer than we are. It even neglects the possibility that we may be cleverer tomorrow than we are today.


In Neil de Grasse Tyson
Natural History
Galactic Engines, May 1997


Reference #: 3683

Scott, Chas F.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering is a mode of thinking.


Engineering Education
The Aims of the Society, Vol. 12, No. 3, November 1921
(p. 103)


Reference #: 3063

Scott, Dave
General Category: ASTRONAUT

Man must explore. And this is exploration at its greatest.


Apollo 15


Reference #: 10614

Scott, Robert F.
General Category: AURORA BOREALIS

The eastern sky was massed with swaying auroral light, the most vivid and beautiful display that I have ever seen-fold on fold the arches and curtains of vibrating luminosity rose and spread across the sky, to slowly fade and yet again spring to glowing life...It is impossible to witness such a beautiful phenomenon without a sense of awe, and yet this sentiment is not inspired by its brilliancy but rather by its delicacy of light and colour, its transparency, and above all by its tremulous evanescence of form. There is no glittering splendour to dazzle the eye...rather the appeal is to the imagination by the suggestion of something wholly spiritual, something instinct with a fluttering ethereal life, serenely confident yet restlessly mobile...To the little silent group which stood at gaze before such enchantment it seemed profane to return to the mental and physical atmosphere of our house.


Scott's Last Expedition
Chapter XI
(p. 227)


Reference #: 16691

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...the sick chamber of the patient is the kingdom of the physician.


The Talisman
Chapter VII
(p. 99)


Reference #: 16692

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The praise of the physician...is the recovery of the patient.


The Talisman
Chapter VIII
(p. 112)


Reference #: 16661

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...a slight touch of the cynic in manner and habits, gives the physician, to the common eye, an air of authority which greatly tends to enlarge his reputation.


The Surgeon's Daughter
Chapter I
(p. 23)


Reference #: 4359

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: CHANCE

Chance will not do the work—Chance sends the breeze;
But if the pilot slumbers at the helm,
The very wind that wafts us toward the port
May dash us on the Shelves—The steersman's part is vigilance,
Blow it or rough or smooth.


Fortunes of Nigel
Chapter XXII


Reference #: 9955

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: GEOLOGIST

[geologists]...rin uphill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers, like sae mony road-makers run daft, to see how the world was made.


Saint Ronan's Well


Reference #: 13669

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: PREDICTION

'Hold your peace, old soothsayer,' said Heriot, who at that instant entered the room with a calm and steady countenance. 'Your calculations are true and undeniable when they regard brass and wire and mechanical force; but future events are at the pleasure of Him who bears the hearts of kings in His hands.'


The Fortunes of Nigel
Chapter VI
(p. 75)


Reference #: 12936

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: AURORA BOREALIS

He knew, by streamers that shot so bright,
That spirits were riding the northern light.


The Complete Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto Second, VIII
l. 91-2


Reference #: 14039

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: MOON

Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee;
I prithee, dear moon, now show to me
The form and the features, the speech and degree,
Of the man that true lover of mine shall be.


The Heart of Midlothianch
XVII


Reference #: 14283

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: MOON

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.


The Lay of the Last Minstrel
canto II, st. 1


Reference #: 13952

Scott, Sir Walter
General Category: NATURE

Some touch of Nature's genial glow.


The Lord of the Isles
canto III, st. 14


Reference #: 17405

Scotty
General Category: PHYSICS

But I canna change the laws of physics, Captain!


To Captain Kirk on Star Trek


Reference #: 10667

Scripps, Edwin W.
General Category: GOD

[Scientists are] so blamed wise and so packed full of knowledge...that they cannot comprehend why God has made nearly all the rest of mankind so infernally stupid.


In Dorothy Nelkin
Selling Science
Chapter 6
(p. 81)


Reference #: 1922

Scriven, Michael
General Category: LAWS OF NATURE

The most interesting fact about laws of nature is that they are virtually all known to be in error.


In H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.)
Current Issues in the Philosophy of Science–Proceedings of Section L of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences
The Key Property of Physical Laws – Inaccuracy
(p. 91)
Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, New York, New York, United States of America; 1961


Reference #: 7060

Scriven, Michael
General Category: EXPLAIN

...whatever an explanation actually does, in order to be called an explanation at all it must be capable of making clear something not preciously clear, i.e. of increasing or producing understanding of something. The difference between explaining and "merely" informing.does not, I shall argue, consist in explaining being something "more than" or even something intrinsically different from informing or describing, but in its being the appropriate piece of informing or describing, the appropriateness being a matter of its relation to a particular context.


In H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.)
Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science
Vol. III, Scientific Explanation, Space and Time, Explanations, Predictions, and Laws
(pp. 175-176)


Reference #: 60

Scrope, George P.
General Category: TIME

The leading idea which is present in all our researches, and which accompanies every fresh observation, the sound to which the ear of the student of Nature seems continually echoed from every part of her works is — Time! Time! Time!


Reference #: 17739

Scrope, George Poulett
General Category: GEOLOGY

If the business of Geology is the study of the structure of the accessible portion of the Earth, and of the changes it has undergone, there can be no more important branch of the science than that which examines the nature and mode of operation of the subterranean forces which have everywhere more or less broken up, disturbed, and altered the level of the superficial rocks, modified their internal texture and composition, and brought fresh material upon or towards the exterior of the globe.


Volcanos (2nd edition)
Chapter I
(p. 1)
Longman, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, London, England; 1862


Reference #: 6806

Scrope, George Poulett
General Category: EARTH

Towards the end of the last century, men of science became convinced of the futility of those crude and fanciful speculations on the original state of the earth, in which cabinet geologists had for some time indulged; and justly perceived that the only sure road to the true history of our planet lies in a minute and practical study of those portions of its surface which are open to our examination, and in their comparison with the results of those changes and operations which the ever-active hand of Nature is still carrying on upon that surface.


Memoir on the Geology of Central France
Preface
(p. v)
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London, England; 1827


Reference #: 2489

Scrope, George Poulett
General Category: VOLCANO

The action of a Volcano, in its simplest and most general form, may be described as, the rise of earthly substances in a liquefied state and at a high temperature, from beneath the outer crust of the earth; accompanied by prodigious volumes of elastic fluids, which, appearing to be evolved from the interior of the mass, burst upwards with violent successive detonations, scattering into the air, to a considerable height, numerous fragments, still in a liquid state, of the lava, through which they tear their way, together with shattered blocks of the solid pre-existing rocks, which obstructed their expansion.


Considerations on Volcanos
Chapter I
(pp. 1-2)
W. Phillips and George Yarp, London, England; 1825


Reference #: 2488

Scrope, George Poulett
General Category: GEOLOGY

Geology has for its business a knowledge of the processes which are in continual or occasional operation within the limits of our planet, and the application of these laws to explain the appearances discovered by our Geognostical researches, so as from these materials to deduce conclusions as to the past history of the globe.


Considerations on Volcanos
Preface
(p. iv)
W. Phillips and George Yarp, London, England; 1825


Reference #: 2490

Scrope, George Poulett
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

…in the process of argument from effects up to causes, no chain of reasoning can be stronger, no conclusion can be more imperative, than when…we are possessed of a considerable number of facts, all, without one exception, going to support a certain origin, and that not an imaginary species of phenomenon invented for the occasion, but the same which is observed in its continual operation on other spots to produce the same results, and the only one amongst all known natural processes that is capable of producing them.


Considerations on Volcanos
Appendix, No. 2
(pp. 269-270)
W. Phillips and George Yarp, London, England; 1825


Reference #: 3286

Seab, C.G.
General Category: GRAIN

Once the newly formed grains are injected into the interstellar medium, they are subject to a variety of indignities...


In M.E. Bailey and D.A. Williams (eds.)
Dust in the Universe
Chapter 32, section 32.1
(p. 304)


Reference #: 564

Seaborg, Glenn T.
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

If it seems we are being told from all sides today that man is a failure, it is, ironically enough, because we are being judged in terms of a whole new set of standards in a world where almost everything seems possible, and now almost every want, every injustice and every wrong seems unbearable.


A Scientist Speaks Out: A Personal Perspective on Science, Society and Change


Reference #: 1355

Seares, Frederick H.
General Category: COUNT

Counting the stars is not unlike counting people or sheep or pebbles on the seashore. The astronomer's difficulties are not in the counting, but rather in knowing when the counting must start and stop.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1929
Counting the Stars and Some Conclusions`
(p. 183)


Reference #: 9283

Sears, Francis Weston
General Category: ENTROPY

There is no concept in the whole field of physics which is more difficult to understand than is the concept of entropy, nor is there one which is more fundamental.


Principles of Physics I: Mechanics, Heat, and Sound (2nd Edition)
(p. 459)


Reference #: 2905

Sears, Paul
General Category: NATURE

Nature is not to be conquered save on her own terms. She is not conciliated by cleverness or industry in devising means to defeat the operation of one of her laws through the workings of another.


Deserts on the March
Chapter I
(p. 3)


Reference #: 11899

Seaton, G.L.
General Category: STATISTICIAN

...as the job of finding the truth and explaining it continues to become more complex and more difficult, management again casts a doubtful eye at the statistician, for a different reason. Management's big question is no longer "What can the statistician do for us that we can't do just as well ourselves?"; the question now is, "Do our statisticians have the tools and the capacity and the experience and the persistence and the breadth of vision to seek the truth and to know it when they have found it?


The American Statistician
The Statistician and Modern Management, Vol. 2, No. 6, December 1948
(p. 10)


Reference #: 1972

Seattle, Chief of the Duwamish, Suquamish and allied Indian tribes
General Category: EARTH ATTRIBUTED

You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.


Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: A Message from Chief Seattle


Reference #: 11148

Second World War Health Slogan
General Category: COUGH

Coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Trap the germs in your handkerchief.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 4768

Sedgwick
General Category: QUATERNION

A quaternion of maladies! Do send me some formula by help of which I may so doctor them that they may all become imaginary or positively equal to nothing.


Graves' Life of Hamilton
Vol. 3
(p. 2)
New York, New York, United States of America 1882-1889


Reference #: 17578

Sedgwick, Adam
General Category: GEOLOGY

I cannot promise to teach you all geology, I can only fire your imaginations.


Two undated fragments of his public lecture notes


Reference #: 3323

Sedgwick, Adam
General Category: GEOLOGY RELIGION

Geology, like every other science when well interpreted, lends its aid to natural religion. It tells us, out of its own records, that man has been but a few years a dweller on the earth; for traces of himself and his works are confined to the last monuments of its history. Independently of every written testimony, we therefore believe that man with all his powers and appertencies, his marvellous structure and fitness for the world was called into being a few thousand years of the days in which we live.


Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge
(pp. 22-223)


Reference #: 3324

Sedgwick, Adam
General Category: GEOLOGY RELIGION

But let us for a moment, suppose that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of Geology. How are we then to solve them? Not by making a world after a pattern of our own-not by shifting and shuffling the solid strata of the earth, or dealing them them out in shuch a was as to play the game of an ignorant and hishonest hypothesis-not by shutting our eyes to the facts, or denying the evidence of our senses: but by patient investigation carried on in the sincere love of truth and by learning to reject every consequence not warranted by direct physical evidence.


Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge
Appendix
(p. 105)


Reference #: 5558

Sedgwick, Adam
General Category: MOUNTAIN

My present objective is to convey some notion of the structure of the great mountain masses, and to show how the several parts are fitted one to another. This can only be done after great labour. The cliffs where the rocks are laid bare by the sea, the clefts and fissures in the hills and valleys, the deep grooves through which the water flows-all must in turn be examined; and out of such seeming confusion order will at length appear. We must, in imagination, sweep off the drifted matter that clogs the surface of the ground; we must suppose all the covering of moss and heath and wood to be torn away from the sides of the mountains, and the green mantle that lies near their feet to be lifted up; we may see the muscular integuments and sinews and bones of our mother Earth, and so judge of the parts played by each of them during those old convulsive movements whereby her limbs were contorted and drawn up into their present positions.


John Hudson
Complete Guide to the Lakes, Second Letter


Reference #: 484

Sedwizoj, Michal
General Category: DISTILLING

Such therefore is the Distiller, the Maker of all things, in whose hands is this Distillatory, according to the example of which all Distillations have been invented by Philosophers; which thing the most High God himself out of pity, without doubt, hath inspired into the Sons of Men: and he can, when it is his Holy Will, either extinguish the Central Fire, or break the Vessel, and then there will be an end of all.


A New Light of Alchymy
(pp. 94-95)


Reference #: 5619

Seegal, David
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The young physician today is so generously provided with a kit of diagnostic and therapeutic tools, his attention might be wisely directed to the question of 'what not to do' as well as 'what to do.'


Journal of Chronic Diseases
Vol. 17, 299, 1964


Reference #: 9740

Seeger, Peggy
General Category: ENGINEER

When I was a little girl I wished I was a boy
I tagged along behind the gang and wore my corduroys.
Everybody said I only did it to annoy
But I was gonna be an engineer.


Recorded by Frankie Armstrong


Reference #: 5733

Seeger, Raymond J.
General Category: THEORY

It is noteworthy that the etymological root of the word theatre is the same as that of the word theory, namely a view. A theory offers us a better view.


Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences
Vol. 36, 1946
(p. 286)


Reference #: 11738

Seely, Bruce E.
General Category: ENGINEER

We have the man who fires the boiler and pulls the throttle dubbed a locomotive or stationary engineer; we have the woman who fires the stove and cooks the dinner dubbed the domestic engineer, and it will not be long before the barefooted African, who pounds the mud into the brick molds, will be calling himself a ceramic engineer.


Technology and Culture
SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education, Vol. 36, No. 4, October 1995
(p. 744)


Reference #: 6369

Segal, Erich
General Category: STATISTICS

'I mean, here you are a professor of statistics.'
'So?'
'So you have one lousy affair in your whole life. For a few lousy days. And you get a kid as evidence. Christ, what are the odds of that happening to anybody?'
'Oh,' said Bob bitterly, 'about a billion to one.'


Man, Woman and Child
Chapter 13
(p. 109)


Reference #: 6368

Segal, Erich
General Category: STATISTICS

'How are you, Mrs. Coleman?'
'Not too bad. How's yer statistics?'


Man, Woman and Child
Chapter 1
(p. 8)


Reference #: 6370

Segal, Erich
General Category: STATISTICS

'I am Professor Beckworth,' he pronounced in a kind of soprano-baritone. 'Would you like to ask me some statistics, sir?'
'Yes,' replied Bob. 'What are the chances of this damn rain stopping today, Professor?'
'Mmm,' said Jean-Claude, pondering earnestly, 'You'll have to see me tomorrow about that.'


Man, Woman and Child
(p. 178)


Reference #: 6367

Segal, Erich
General Category: STATISTICAL

The emergency room was a madhouse. The stormy holiday roads had yielded more than the statistical expectation of traffic accidents.


Man, Woman and Child
Chapter 26
(p. 191)


Reference #: 6366

Segal, Erich
General Category: STATISTICS

He turned over on his side and picked up the American Journal of Statistics. Better than a sleeping pill. He idly leafed through a particularly unoriginal piece on stochastic processes, and thought, Christ, I've said this stuff a million times. And then he realized that he himself was the author.


Man, Woman and Child
Chapter 5
(p. 42)


Reference #: 6371

Segal, Erich
General Category: STATISTICS

'My husband's a professor at M.I.T.'
'Really? What's his field?'
'Statistics.'
'Oh, a real brain. I'm always self-conscious when I meet that sort of mind. I can barely add a column of figures.'
'Neither can Bob.' Shelia smiled. 'That's my job every month.'


Man, Woman and Child
Chapter 17
(p. 132)


Reference #: 2865

Segerstrale, Ullica
General Category: COMBINATORICS

While [Maynard Smith] believed that a Marxist in science could take a lot of different positions, he saw the need for 'some kind of substitute for Hegelian dialectics ...some kind of concept that in dynamical systems there are going to be sudden breaks and thresholds and transformations, and so on'. He added that, in his opinion, 'today we really do have a mathematics for thinking about complex systems and things which undergo transformations from quantity into quality'. Here he saw Hopf bifurcations and catastrophe theory as really nothing other than a change of quantity into quality in a dialectical sense.


Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond
Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000


Reference #: 1031

Seifert, H.S.
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

The first and second laws of thermodynamics are of course known to us as well as the Ten Commandments, and probably obeyed more consistently.


American Scientist
Can We Decrease our Entropy?, Summer-June 1961
(p. 124A)


Reference #: 10089

Seifriz, W.
General Category: COMMUNICATION

Our scientific conferences are a hodgepodge of trivia. The conversation is that of men on the defensive.


Science
A New University, Vol. 120, No. 3106, July 9,1954
(p. 89)


Reference #: 9681

Seifriz, William
General Category: SCIENTIST

It is no matter of chance that the greatest scientists of all time, Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, Linnaeus, Faraday, Darwin, and Maxwell, were men of noble character, modest, straightforward, and full of human sympathy. The great French mathematician, Henri Poincaré, stated that the chief end of life is contemplation, not action.


Science
A New University, Vol. 120, No. 3107, 16 July 1954
(pp. 88-89)


Reference #: 10102

Seifriz, William
General Category: COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE

Our scientific congresses are a hodgepodge of trivia. The conversation is that of men on the defensive.


Science
A New University, Vol. 120, No. 3107, 16 July 1954
(p. 89)


Reference #: 10033

Seifriz, William
General Category: SCIENCE

Let me give full credit to the young and enthusiastic research workers, full of high-energy phosphate bonds. What I deplore is their attitude of mind. Science has become tough and students learn to accept it that way.


Science
120 (1954)
(p. 88)


Reference #: 14051

Seignobos, Charles
General Category: QUESTION

It is useful to ask oneself questions, but very dangerous to answer them.


In Marc Bloch
The Historian's Craft
Introduction
(p. 17)


Reference #: 10638

Seinfeld, Jerry
General Category: BRAIN

Maybe if we lie down our brains will work.


Seinfeld TV show
Last episode 5/14/98


Reference #: 11698

Selden, John
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do. But if the physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me to do one thing, and he do quite another, could I believe him?


Table Talk of John Selden
Preaching #13
(p. 145)


Reference #: 4455

Selye, Hans
General Category: CURIOSITY

The true scientist thrives on curiosity...


From Dream to Discovery
Chapter 1
(p. 10)


Reference #: 4456

Selye, Hans
General Category: LOGIC

...logic is to Nature as a guide is to a zoo. The guide knows exactly where to locate the African lion, the Indian elephant or the Australian kangaroo, once they have been captured, brought together and labeled for inspection. But this kind of knowledge would be valueless to the hunter who seeks them in their natural habitat. Similarly, logic is not the key to Nature's order but only the catalogue of the picture gallery in man's brain where his impressions of natural phenomena are stored.


From Dream to Discovery
How to Think
(p. 266)


Reference #: 4451

Selye, Hans
General Category: OBSERVATION

If a scientist makes no important observation he deserves no credit. But if a significant fact comes his way and he still does not see its importance, he can only blame himself.


From Dream to Discovery


Reference #: 4450

Selye, Hans
General Category: CHANCE

Chance is a lady who smiles only upon those who know how to appreciate her artful charms; those connoisseurs she rarely neglects-the secret of the game is art appreciation.


From Dream to Discovery
Chapter 3
(p. 92)


Reference #: 4457

Selye, Hans
General Category: DISCOVERY

It is not to see something first, but to establish solid connections between the previously known and the hitherto unknown that constitutes the essence of scientific discovery.


From Dream to Discovery
What Should Be Done
(p. 89)


Reference #: 4448

Selye, Hans
General Category: UNEXPECTED

...'peripheral vision': the ability not only to look straight at what you want to see, but also to watch continually, through the corner of your eye, for the unexpected. I believe this to be one of the greatest gifts a scientist can have. Usually we concentrate so much upon what we intend to examine that other things cannot reach our consciousness, even if they are far more important. This is particularly true of things so different from the commonplace that they seem improbable. Yet, only the improbable is really worth of attention! If the unexpected is nevertheless found to be true, the observation usually represents a great step forward.


From Dream to Discovery


Reference #: 4453

Selye, Hans
General Category: CURIOSITY

Scientific curiosity can be satisfied much more easily by reading the publications of others than by working in the lab. It may take years to prove by experimentation what we can learn in the few minutes needed to read the published end result. So let us not fool ourselves; the driving force is hardly sheer curiosity.


From Dream to Discovery
Chapter 1
(p. 15)


Reference #: 4447

Selye, Hans
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists are probably the most individualistic bunch of people in the world. All of us are and should be essentially different; there would be no purpose in trying to fit us into a common mold.


From Dream to Discovery
Introduction


Reference #: 4678

Selye, Hans
General Category: NATURE

To me nature created man, and nature is superior.


In Denis Brian
Genius Talk: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries
Chapter 13
(p. 267)
New York: Plenum Press, 1995


Reference #: 4452

Selye, Hans
General Category: MICROSCOPE

The microscope can see things the naked eye cannot, but the reverse is equally true.


From Dream to Discovery


Reference #: 6999

Selye, Hans
General Category: SCIENTIST

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it not, and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. We all had this priceless talent when we were young. But as time goes by, many of us lose it. The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement. It is the essence of his being.


Newsweek
March 31, 1958


Reference #: 4449

Selye, Hans
General Category: CREATIVITY

It is often cited as an argument against teamwork that every great new concept originates in one brain. This is true, but tossing an idea around in a group discussion helps to formulate it clearly in the brain of one participant or the other. Some of my best ideas came when I was trying to explain to my students and associates something that I myself only sensed but did not yet fully understand.


From Dream to Discovery


Reference #: 11411

Selzer, R.
General Category: SURGEON

In the operating room the patient must be anaesthetized in order that he or she feel no pain. The surgeon too must be anaesthetized, insulated against the emotional heat of the event so that he can perform this act of laying open the body of a fellow human being, which, take away the purpose for which it is being done, is no more than an act of assault and battery. A barbaric act. So the surgeon dons a carapace which keeps him from feeling. It is what gives many surgeons the appearance of insensitivity.


Speech
Humanities Symposium, Dalhousie University, 1991


Reference #: 7192

Selzer, Richard
General Category: SURGERY

One enters the body in surgery, as in love, as though one were an exile returning at least to his hearth, daring uncharted darkness in order to reach home.


Mortal Lessons
The Surgeon as Priest
(p. 25)


Reference #: 6065

Selzer, Richard
General Category: SURGERY

Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.


Letters to a Young Doctor


Reference #: 7191

Selzer, Richard
General Category: LIVER

The liver,…that great maroon snail…. No wave of emotion sweeps it. Neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks.


Mortal Lessons
(p. 64)
Simon & Schuster, New York, New York, United States of America 1976


Reference #: 4885

Seneca
General Category: STARS

There is no easy way to the stars from the earth.


Hercules Furens
Act II


Reference #: 718

Seneca
General Category: MEDICINE

...not even medicine can master incurable diseases.


Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Vol. III, Epistle xciv, section 24


Reference #: 7384

Seneca
General Category: INVESTIGATE

Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come...Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate…


Natural Questions, Book 7
Book 7


Reference #: 7383

Seneca
General Category: COMET

If a rare [comet] and one of unusual shape appears, everyone wants to know what it is and, ignoring the other celestial phenomena, asks about the newcomer, uncertain whether he ought to admire or fear it. For there is no lack of people who create terror and predict dire meanings.


Natural Questions
Book 7, Comets


Reference #: 2235

Seneca
General Category: MEDICINE

No good physitian who dispares to cure.


Clemency
Book I
(p. 30)


Reference #: 2830

Seneca
General Category: NATURE

It is difficult to change nature.


De IraII


Reference #: 7392

Seneca
General Category: LIGHT

The red of the Dog star is brighter, that of Mars weaker; while Jupiter has no red, with its gleam extended into pure light.


Naturales Questiones
Vol. III
(p. 19)


Reference #: 721

Seneca
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The physician cannot prescribe by letter...he must feel the pulse.


Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Vol. I, Epistle xxii, section 1


Reference #: 2824

Seneca
General Category: WORLD

The world is a poor affair if it does not contain matter for investigation for the whole world in every age. Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.


De Aurmentis Scientiarum
De Cometis


Reference #: 7382

Seneca
General Category: COMET

Often, when the Sun has set, scattered fires are seen not far from it.


Natural Questions
Book 7, Comets


Reference #: 719

Seneca
General Category: MEDICINE

It is medicine, not scenery, for which a sick man must go a-searching.


Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Vol. III, Epistle civ, section 18


Reference #: 7381

Seneca
General Category: COMET

How many other bodies besides these comets move in secret, never rising before the eyes of men! Fo god has not made all things for man.


Natural Questions
Book 7, Comets


Reference #: 720

Seneca
General Category: MEDICINE

What physician can heal his patient on a flying visit?.


Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Vol. I, Epistle xl, section 4


Reference #: 3466

Seneca
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

The mathematical is, so to speak, a superficial science; it builds on a borrowed site, and the principles by aid of which it proceeds, are not its own...


Edinburgh Review
Vol. 52, January 1836
(p. 221)


Reference #: 722

Seneca
General Category: DISEASE

...a disease also is farther on the road to being cured when it breaks forth from concealment and manifests its power.


Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Vol. I, Epistle lvi, section 10
(p. 379)


Reference #: 7391

Seneca
General Category: NATURE

A day will come in which zealous research over long periods of time will bring to light things that now still lie hidden. The life of a single man, even if he devotes it entirely to the heavens, is insufficient to fathom so broad a field. Knowledge will thus unfold only over the course of generations. But there will come a time when our descendants will marvel that we did not know the things that seem so simple to them. Many discoveries are reserved for future centuries, however, when we are long forgotten. Our universe would be deplorably insignificant had it not offered every generation new problems. Nature does not surrender her secrets once and for all.


Naturales Quaestiones
Book 7


Reference #: 8838

Seneca
General Category: HEAVENS

No man is so utterly dull and obtuse, with head so bent on Earth, as never to lift himself up and rise with all his soul to the contemplation of the starry heavens, especially when some fresh wonder shows a beacon-light in the sky. As long as the ordinary course of heaven runs on, custom robs it of its real size. Such is our constitution that objects of daily occurrence pass us unnoticed even when most worthy of our admiration. On the other hand, the sight even of trifling things is attractive if their appearance is unusual. So this concourse of stars, which paints with beauty the spacious firmament on high, gathers no concourse of the nation. But when there is any change in the wonted order, than all eyes are turned to the sky....So natural is it to admire what is strange rather than what is great.


Physical Science in the Time of Nero
Book VII, Chapter I
(p. 271, 272)


Reference #: 13583

Seneca
General Category: BUILDER

Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders!


The Epistles of Seneca
Epis. xc, sec. 9


Reference #: 8837

Seneca
General Category: NATURE

Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.


Physical Science in the Time of Nero
Book VII, Chapter XXXI
(p. 306)


Reference #: 8839

Seneca
General Category: NATURE

Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation....


Physical Science in the Time of Nero
Book VII, Chapter XXVII
(p. 301)


Reference #: 8840

Seneca
General Category: COMET

...how many other bodies besides [these comets] move in secret, never dawning upon human eyes? Nor is it for man that God has made all things.


Physical Science in the Time of Nero
Book VII, Chapter XXX
(p. 305)


Reference #: 8841

Seneca
General Category: COMET

If one of these fires of unusual shape hae made it s appearance, everybody is eager to know what it is. Blind to all other celestial bodies, each asks about the newcomer; one is not quite sure whether to admire or to fear it. Persons there are who seek to inspire terror by forecasting its grave import.


Physical Science in the Time of Nero
Book VII, Chapter I
(p. 272)


Reference #: 8390

Seneca
General Category: COMET

One day there will arise a man who will demonstrate in what region of the heavens comets take their way.


In Michael Rowan-Robinson
Our Universe: An Armchair Guide
(p. 1)


Reference #: 4886

Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
General Category: STAR

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.
There is no easy way to the stars from the earth.


Hercules Furens
Act II, 437


Reference #: 1906

Serge, Corrado
General Category: METHOD

Many times a scientific truth is placed as it were on a lofty peak, and to reach it we have at our disposal at first only dark paths along perilous slopes whence it is easy to fall into the abysses where dwells error; only after we have reached the peak by these paths is it possible to lay out safe roads which lead there without peril. Thus it has frequently happened that the first way of obtaining a result has not been quite satisfactory, and that only afterwards did the science succeed in completing the demonstration. Certainly also a mathematician can not be really content with a result which he has obtained by non-rigorous methods; he will not feel sure of it until he has rigorously proved it. But he will not reject summarily these imperfect methods in the case of difficult problems when he is unable to substitute better ones, since the history of the science precisely shows what service such methods have always rendered.


Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society2nd Series
On Some Tendencies in Geometric Investigations, Vol. 10, June 1904
(pp. 453-454)


Reference #: 12184

Serge, Lang
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I think rather that one does mathematics because one likes to do this sort of thing, and also, much more naturally, because when you have a talent for something, usually you don't have any talent for something else, and you do whatever you have talent for, if you are lucky enough to have it. I must also add that I do mathematics also because it is difficult, and it is a very beautiful challenge for the mind. I do mathematics to prove to myself that I am capable of meeting this challenge, and win it.


The Beauty of Doing Mathematics
(p. 5)


Reference #: 15141

Series, Carolyn
General Category: CHAOS

Chaos is beautiful. This is no accident. It is visible evidence of the beauty of mathematics, a beauty normally confined within the inner eye of the mathematician but which here spills over into the everyday world of human senses.


The New Scientist Guide to Chaos


Reference #: 15142

Series, Carolyn
General Category: PREDICTION

We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now.


The New Scientist Guide to Chaos


Reference #: 17568

Serling, Rod
General Category: IMAGINATION

There is a fifth dimension beyond those known to man. It is a dimension vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between the pit of his fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area called the Twilight Zone.


Twilight Zone
television series, Preamble


Reference #: 2201

Servetus, Michael
General Category: LUNGS

It is in the lungs, consequently, that the mixture (of the inspired air with the blood) takes place, and it is in the lungs also, not in the heart, that the crimson colour of the blood is acquired.


Christianismi Restitutio, 5th ed
1553


Reference #: 2344

Service, R.W.
General Category: AURORA BOREALIS

Some say that the Norther Lights are the glare of the Arctic ice and snow;
And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems to know.


Collected Poems of Robert Service
The Ballad of the Northern Lights


Reference #: 2343

Service, R.W.
General Category: AURORA BOREALIS

And the Northern Lights in the crystal nights came forth with a mystic gleam.
They danced and they danced the devil-dance over the naked snow;
And soft they rolled like a tide upshoaled with a ceaseless ebb and flow.
They rippled green with a wondrous sheen, they fluttered out like a fan;
They spread with a blaze of rose-pink rays never yet seen of man.


Collected Poems of Robert Service
The Ballad of the Northern Lights


Reference #: 2342

Service, Robert
General Category: STAR

The waves have a story to tell me,
As I lie on the lonely beach;
Chanting aloft in the pine-tops,
The wind has a lesson to teach;
But the stars sing an anthem of glory
I cannot put into speech.


Collected Poems of Robert Service
The Three Voices


Reference #: 12425

Service, Robert
General Category: UNKNOWN

Let us probe the silent places,
let us seek what luck betides us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind,
there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling.let us go.


The Complete Poems of Robert Frost
The Call of the Wild, Stanza 5


Reference #: 1532

Serviss, Garrett P.
General Category: STARS

Regarded in their broader relations and constrants, the stars as a whole possess a marvellous harmony of effect. It is the true music of the spheres, for who shall say that the universally felt influence of the star-bedight heavens does not arise from our instinctive, but as yet uneducated, perception of a concord which is not of "sweet sounds," but of light and color, whose range of vibrations in the ether infinitely exceeds that of sonnant oscillations in the atmosphere?


Astronomy with the Naked Eye
Chapter I
(p. 13)
Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1908


Reference #: 1531

Serviss, Garrett P.
General Category: STARS

As long as men have eyes to see and minds to think, it needs but a word, a hint, a glance, to turn them with rapt and ever increasing attention to the wonders overhead.


Astronomy with the Naked Eye
Chapter I
(p. 15)
Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1908


Reference #: 1530

Serviss, Garrett P.
General Category: STARS

It was the friendly stars that first led men round the globe. As long as those well-known sentinels shone, tranquil and steadfast overhead, they had courage to go on and on. If the stars had deserted, even Columbus would have lost heart.


Astronomy with the Naked Eye
Chapter I
(p. 1)
Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1908


Reference #: 1528

Serviss, Garrett P.
General Category: STARS

The stars are the true landmarks which are never changed.


Astronomy with the Naked Eye
Chapter I
(p. 1)
Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America 1908


Reference #: 12518

Seuss, Dr.
General Category: OBSERVATION

You will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.


The Cat in the Hat
(p. 33)


Reference #: 13798

Severinus, Peter
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...sell your lands, your house, your clothes and your jewelry; burn up your books. On the other hand, buy yourselves stout shoes, travel to the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the shores of the sea, and the deepest depressions of the earth; note with care the distinctions between animals, the differences of plants, the various kinds of minerals, the properties and mode of origin of everything that exists. Be not ashamed to study diligently the astronomy and terrestrial philosophy of the peasantry. Lastly, purchase coal, build furnaces, watch and operate with the fire without wearying. In this way and no other, you will arrive at a knowledge of things and their properties.


In Allen G. Debus
The French Paracelsians
Chapter 1
(p. 8)


Reference #: 12342

Severinus, Petrus
General Category: EXPLORE

Go, my sons, buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the seas shores, and the deep recesses of the earth. Mark well the various kinds of minerals, note their properties and their mode of origin.


In Frank Dawson Adams
The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences
Chapter VII
(p. 210)


Reference #: 8963

Seward, A.C.
General Category: ROCKS

Rocks are the source-books of geological history...


Plant Life Through the Ages
Chapter II
(p. 5)


Reference #: 16915

Sexton, Anne
General Category: CHANGE

Rocks crumble, make new forms,
oceans move the continents,
mountains rise up and down like ghosts
yet all is natural, all is change.


The Wall


Reference #: 12170

Sexton, Anne
General Category: EARTH

God owns heaven, but He craves the earth.


The Awful Rowing Toward God
The Earth


Reference #: 15894

Sexton, Anne
General Category: SEA

The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.


In Howard Moss (ed.)
The Poet’s Story
A Small Journal
19 November, 1971


Reference #: 16903

Shadwell, Thomas
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

LONGVIL: But to what end do you weigh this Air, Sir?
SIR NICHOLAS GIMCRACK: To what end shou'd I' To know what it weighs.
O knowledge is a fine thing.


The Virtuoso


Reference #: 13094

Shadwell, Thomas
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Wood to La. Vaine. 'Tis true, Madame, Sir Positive and Poet Ninny are excellent men, and brave Bully-Rocks; but they must grant, that neither of e'm understand Mathematicks but myself.


The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell
The Sullen Lovers
Act IV


Reference #: 13095

Shadwell, Thomas
General Category: CURE

RAYMUND: Well a desperate disease must have a desperate Cure....


The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell
Vol. I, The Humorists, Act IV
(p. 237)


Reference #: 13093

Shadwell, Thomas
General Category: SURGEON

Oh this Surgeon! this damn'd Surgeon, will this Villanous Quack never come to me? Oh this Plaster on my Neck! It gnaws more than Aqua-Fortis: this abominable Rascle has mistaken sure, and given me the same Caustick he appli'd to my Shins, when they were open'd last.


The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell
The Humorists, The First Act


Reference #: 13096

Shadwell, Thomas
General Category: DISEASE

Physicians tell us, that in every Age
Some one particular Disease does rage,
The Scurvy once, and what you call the Gout,
But Heaven be prais'd their Reign is almost out...


The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell
The Sullen Lovers, Epilogue


Reference #: 17577

Shaffer, Peter
General Category: AVERAGE

The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills - like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made lethal.


Two Plays by Shaffer
Equus
Act I, scene 19


Reference #: 2132

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper
General Category: BEAUTY

There is no one who, by the least progress of science or learning, has come to know barely the principles of mathematics, but has found, that in the exercise of his mind on the discoveries he there makes, though merely of speculative truths, he receives a pleasure and delight superior to that of sense. When we have thoroughly searched into the nature of this contemplative delight, we shall find it of a kind which relates not in the least to any private interest of the creature, nor has for its object any self-good or advantage of the private system.


Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc.
of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., Vol. I, Treatise IV, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Mercy, Book II, Part II, Section I
(p. 296)


Reference #: 17561

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: WORLD

A great while ago the world began.


Twelfth Night
(p. 65)


Reference #: 17943

Shakespeare, William
General Category: SUN

The glorious sun,
Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,
Turning with splendour of his precious eye
The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold.


The Twelfth Night
Act v, scene I, l. 278


Reference #: 15566

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: OCEAN

This royal throne of kings, this scept'red isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out (I die pronouncing it)
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, Gaunt at II, I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15590

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FLOWER THYME

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act II, scene i, l. 249
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15591

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROBABLE

'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
As You Like It
Act III, scene v, l. 11
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15592

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
Act I, scene ii, l. 120
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15570

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

Portia. In terms of choice I am not solely led
By nice direction of a maiden's eyes;
Besides, the lottery of my destiny
Bars me the right of voluntary choosing.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act II, scene i, l. 13
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15593

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DICE

King Richard. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
Catesby. Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse.
King Richard. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast And I will stand the hazard of the die: I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain to-day instead of him. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
Act V, scene iv, l. 7
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15569

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call them?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act III, scene i, L. 53-55
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15567

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: AVERAGE

Nerissa. They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act I, scene ii, l. 5
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15573

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOON

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon; but O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a stepdame or a dowager,
Long withering our a young man's revenue.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15565

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ANIMAL HORSE

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Traged of King Richard the Third
Act V, scene iv, l. 7
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15594

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

ARMANDO: How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH: By my penny of observation.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Love's Labour's Lost
Act III, scene i, L. 23
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15564

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOON

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Romeo and Juliet
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15563

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD DOVE

The dove and very blessed spirit of peace...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act IV, scene i, l. 46
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15562

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BUILD

When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model.
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection,
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or at least desist
To build at all?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act I, scene iii, l. 41


Reference #: 15595

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Life of King Henry the Fifth
Act V, scene i, l. 3


Reference #: 15568

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FEVER

He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake;.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Julius Caesar
Act I, scene ii, l. 119-121
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15587

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DINOSAUR

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15584

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PARASITE

Unbidden guests
Are often welcomest when they are gone.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
Act II, scene ii, l. 55-56
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15583

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BLOOD

With purple fountains issuing from your veins.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Romeo and Juliet
Act I, scene i, L. 92
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15582

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTROLOGY

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Julius Caesar
Act I, scene ii, l. 134
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15581

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PLANT

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15580

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTRONOMER

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk, and wot not what they are.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Love's Labor's Lost
Act I, scene i, L. 86-89
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15579

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TREE ASPEN

Do I? Yea, in truth, do I, an 'twere an aspen leaf. I cannot abide swaggerers.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act II, scene iv
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15571

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD FALCON

My falcon now is sharp and passing empty;
And till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,
for then she never looks upon her lure.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Taming of the Shrew
Act IV, scene i, l. 193-195
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15586

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: LEARN

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
As You Like It
Act II, scene i, 1:125
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15572

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOON

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania at II, I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15588

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

...and in his brain, ...he hath strange places cramm'd with observations...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
As You Like It
Act II, scene vii, l. 38
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15561

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BRAIN

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Romeo and Juliet
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15589

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TOOTHACHE

For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Much Ado About Nothing
Act V, scene i, L. 35-36
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15577

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD JAY

What is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Taming of the Shrew
Act IV, scene iii, l. 177-178
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15575

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: APOTHECARY

I do remember an apothecary—
And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meager were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An Alligator stuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Romeo and Juliet
Act V, scene i, L. 37-48
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15046

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: LEARN

What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is
Born, I am to learn...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act I, scene I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15585

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EARTH

This earth of majesty...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
Act II, scene I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15578

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOTION

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry IV
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14467

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROBABLE

It may be probable she lost it...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline
Act II, scene iv, l. 115
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15541

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I do present you with a man of mine,
Cunning in music and mathematics,
To instruct her fully in those sciences,
Whereof, I know, she is not ignorant.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Taming of the Shrew
Act 2, scene i, l. 55
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15540

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TIME

Oh call back yesterday; bid time return.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15539

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Music and poesy used to quicken you;
The mathematics and metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you;
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Taming of the Shrew
Act I, scene i, l. 36
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15538

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: STAR

...these blessed candles of the night...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act V, scene i, L. 220
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15537

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PILL

When I was sick, you gave me bitter pills.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Act II, scene iv, L. 149
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15536

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SICK

What, is Brutus sick,
And will he steal out of his wholesome bed,
To dare the vile contagion of the night?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Julius Caesar
Act II, scene i, l. 263-265
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15535

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

Out, loathed medicine! hated potion, hence!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act III, scene ii, l. 264
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15557

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EXPLORE

Thus far into the bowels of the land have we marched on without impediment.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14468

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: KING'S EVIL

MACD: What's the disease he means?
MAL: 'Tis call'd the evil;
A most miraculous work in this good king;
Which often, since my here-remain in England,
I have seen him do.
How he solicits Heaven,
Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers.
And 'tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act IV, scene iii, L. 147-156
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15544

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SICKNESS

Sickness is catching.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act I, scene i, l. 186
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14459

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD GOOSE

As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act III, scene ii, l. 20-23
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14460

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DEATH

PRINCE HENRY: It is too late: the life of all his blood
Is touch'd corruptibly, and his pure brain,
Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house,
Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.
...
O vanity of sickness! Fierce extremes
In their continuance will not feel themselves.
Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now
Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds
With many legions of strange fantasies,
Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,
Confound themselves. 'Tis strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
...
KING JOHN: Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room;
It would not out at windows or at doors.
There is so hot a summer in my bosom
That all my bowels crumble up to dust.
I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment, and against this fire
Do I shrink up.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Life and Death of King John
Act V, scene vi, L. 1-5, 14-24, 28-34
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14461

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PLANT

Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
Act III, scene iv
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14462

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CONTAGIOUS

Will he steal out of his wholesome bed,
To dare the vile contagion of the night?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Julius Caesar
Act II, scene i, l. 264-265
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14463

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSIC

'Tis time to give 'em physic, their diseases
Are grown so catching.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Henry the Eighth
Act I, scene iii, L. 36-37
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14464

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul - Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars! - It is the cause.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act V, scene ii, l. 1
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14465

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: INSECT BEETLE

The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Measure for Measure
Act III, scene i, l. 78-81
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14469

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROBABLE

How probable, I do not know...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Coriolanus
Act IV, scene ii, l. 178
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15596

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TEETH

Bid them wash their faces,
And keep their teeth clean.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Coriolanus
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15559

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: OCEAN

A league from Epidamnum had we sailed
Before the always wind-obeying deep
Gave any tragic instance of our harm.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Comedy of Errors
Act I, scene I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15558

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD MARTLET

...the martlet
Builds in the weather on the outward wall,
Even in the force and road of casuality.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act II, scene ix, l. 28-30
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15551

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

Come, bring me unto my chance.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act II, scene i, l. 43
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15556

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TREE ASPEN

O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble like aspen leafs upon a lute
And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,
He would not then have touched them for his life.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Titus Andronicus
Marcus at II, iv


Reference #: 14466

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROBABLE

Most probable
That so she
Died...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Anthony and Cleopatra
Act V, scene ii, l. 76
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15555

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD SEA GULL

And being fed by us you used us so
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo's bird,
Useth the sparrow.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act V, scene i, l. 59-61
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15554

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FLOWERS

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Romeo and Juliet
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15542

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SKY

My soul is in the sky.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act V, scene I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15552

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

'Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling and a rich.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act V, scene iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15543

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: REASON

His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act I, scene i, l. 115
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15605

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DEATH

By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline
Act V, scene v, L. 29-30
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15550

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: REASON

Good reason must, of force, give place to better.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Julius Caesar
Act iv, scene iii, l. s03
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15549

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: WORLD

The poor world is almost six thousand years old.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
As You Like It
Act IV, scene i
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15548

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: GRAPH

Dost thou love pictures?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Taming of the Shrew
Introduction, scene ii, l. 51
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15547

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: METEOR

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act II, scene i, l. 153
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15546

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SICKNESS

This sickness doth infect
The very life-blood of our enterprise.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act IV, scene i, L. 28-29
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15545

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TIME

Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colour'd taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to inquire the nature of time.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act I, scene ii, L. 7-10
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15560

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD OWL

The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
Act II, scene ii, l. 6-7
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15553

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FLOWER CAMOMILE

...for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
Act II, scene iv, l. 438-439
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15673

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TOOTHACHE

Being troubled with a raging tooth,
I could not sleep.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act III, scene iii, L. 414-415
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15663

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PLANT

The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun,
And with him rising weeping.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15681

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: OBSERVATION

The observed of all observers...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act III, scene i, l. 162
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15680

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: INFINITE

...I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act II, scene ii, l. 263
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 13097

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: VOLCANO

Diseased nature often times breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinched and vex'd
By the imprisioning of unruly winds
Within her womb: which for enlargment striving
Shakes the old bedlam earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers.


The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Henry IV


Reference #: 15679

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws
My services are bound.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act I, scene ii, l. 1-2
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15678

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSIC

Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act III, scene ii, l. 33-34
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15677

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROOF

And this may help to thicken other proofs
That do demonstrate thinly.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act III, scene iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15676

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DISEASE

Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkt
Act IV, scene iii, L. 9-11
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15683

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Trust not the physician;
His antidotes are poison, and he slays
More than you rob.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Timon of Athens
Act IV, scene III, L. 434-436
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15674

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard,
From firm security.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Anthony and Cleopatra
Act III, scene vi, l. 48
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15684

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSIC

In this point
All his tricks founder, and he brings his physic
After his patient's death.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Henry the Eighth
Act III, scene ii, L. 39-41
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15672

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CERTAINTY

Not a resemblance, but a certainty.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Measure for Measure
Act IV, scene ii, l. 203
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15671

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FLOWER HAREBELL

Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline
Act IV, scene ii, l. 220-222
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15670

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHAOS

Chaos is come, again.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, Moor of Venice
Act III, scene iii, l. 92
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15669

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NUMBER

This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers ....There is a divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance or death.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Act V, scene i, l. 2
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15668

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act V, scene iii, L. 50
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15667

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSICS

The labour we delight in physics pain.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act II, scene iii, l. 56
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15666

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PATIENTS

How does your patient, doctor?Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act V, scene iii, L. 37-39
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15665

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15603

Shakespeare, William
General Category: X-RAY

Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the innermost part of you.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 27
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet
Act III, scene iv, l. 23-25
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15675

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NUMBER

...I am ill at these numbers.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act II, scene ii, l. 120
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15690

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TIME

What seekest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Tempest
Act VI, scene ii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15730

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: LIVER

If he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of the anatomy.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Twelfth Night
Act III, scene ii, L. 68-69
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15729

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

Some say the Earth was feverous and did shake.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act II, scene iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15728

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Anthony and Cleopatra
Act I, scene ii, l. 9-10
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15727

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROBABLE

'Tis probable and palpable to thinking.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act I, scene ii, l. 76
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15696

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROBABLE

Which to you shall seem probable...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Tempest
Act V, scene i, l. 249
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15695

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CAUSE AND EFFECT

...and now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act II, scene ii, l. 100
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15694

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DEATH

He had rather
Groan so in perpetuity, than be cured
By the sure physician, death.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline
Act V, scene iv, L. 4-6
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15693

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TOOTHACHE

He that sleeps feels not the toothache.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline
Act V, scene iv, L. 177
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15682

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSIC

Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act V, scene iii, L. 47
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15691

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ORDER

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilius and Cressida
Act I, scene iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15662

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PLANT

For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15689

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow
Upon thy foul disease.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act I, scene i, l. 164-165
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15688

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DISEASE

I'll sweat and seek about for eases,
And at that time bequeath you my diseases.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida
Act V, scene x, L. 56-57
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15687

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PROOF

Be sure of it: give me the ocular proof...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act III, scene iii, l. 360
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15686

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FLOWER GILLYFLOWER

The fairest flowers o'the season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale
Act IV, scene iii, l. 81-83
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 12973

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PLANT

Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time.


The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis


Reference #: 12974

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DEATH

The patient dies while the physician sleeps.


The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The Rape of Lucrece
l. 909


Reference #: 12975

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MEASURE

Measure for Measure


The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Title of play


Reference #: 12976

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOLLUSC SNAIL

...the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain,
And there, all smother'd in shade, doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again.


The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
l. 1033-1036


Reference #: 15685

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act I, scene iii, l. 143
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15692

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DICE

And by the hazard of the spotted die
Let die the spotted.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Timon of Athens
Act V, scene iv, l. 34
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15607

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: HEALING

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act II, scene iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15664

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DISEASE

O, he's a limb, that has but a disease;
Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it easy.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Coriolanus
Act III, scene i, L. 296-297
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15616

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale, Leontes at I, ii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15615

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Sir,
For holy offices I have a time; a time
To think upon the part of business which
I bear i' th' state; and nature does require
Her times of preservation, which perforce
I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal,
Must give my tendance to.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Henry the Eighth
Act III, scene ii


Reference #: 15614

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTROLOGY

Astrology: This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune-often the surfeits of our own behaviour-we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence....An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act I, scene ii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15613

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EXTRATERRESTIAL LIFE

Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act I, scene v, l. 164-167
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15612

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-
Born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses at III, iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15611

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTRONOMY

There's some ill planet reigns.
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale, Hermione at II, I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15610

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD SPARROW

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That it had its head bit off by it young.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act I, scene iv, l, 235-236
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15640

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

He that has a house to put 's head in has a good headpiece.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear, Fool at III, ii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15608

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOON

The noble sister of Publicola,
The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle
That's curded by the frost from purest snow
And hangs on Dian's temple—dear Valeria!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Coriolanus
Coriolanus at V, iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15641

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline, Belarius at III, iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15606

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTRONOMER

...but when he performs astronomers foretell it.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida
Act V, scene I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15574

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Romeo and Juliet
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15604

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ENVIRONMENT

One Touch of nature makes the whole world kin.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 14470

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DEATH

It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is ourphysician.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act I, scene iii, L. 307-309
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15602

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: POLLUTION

...this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkt
Act II, scene ii, l. 311-315
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15601

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

Great griefs, I see medicine the less.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Cymbeline
Act IV, scene ii, L. 220
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15600

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: FISH

3rd Fisherman: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
1st Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones.


In Great Books of the Western World, Volume 27
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Act II, scene I


Reference #: 15599

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE AND POLITICS

I have done the state some service, and they know it.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, the Moor of Venice
Act V, secne ii, L. 338
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15598

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: SICKNESS

My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Timon of Athens
Act V, scene i, L. 189-191
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15609

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: DEATH

No cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkt
Act IV, scene viiI, L. 144-146
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15651

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ANIMAL ELEPHANT

The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy. His legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida
Act II, scene iii, l. 113
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15661

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Sonnets
XIV


Reference #: 15660

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BRAIN

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15659

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ENGINEER

For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkt
Act III, scene iv, l. 206
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15658

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BRAIN

Within the book and volume of thy brain...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15657

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ERROR

The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida
Act V, scene ii, l. 110-111
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15656

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: STAR

Look, th' unfolding star calls up the shepherd.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Measure for Measure, Vincentio, the Duke at IV, iii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15655

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

Florizel...
But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
To what we wildly do, so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies
Of every wind that blows.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale
Act IV, scene iv, l. 548
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15654

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

As things but done by chance.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Anthony and Cleopatra
Act V, scene ii, l. 120
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15617

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: NATURE

Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean.
So, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale, Polixenes at IV, iv
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15652

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTROLOGY

It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our condition.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act IV, scene iii, l. 34-35
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15597

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PRIMORDIAL

In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Act IV, scene i, l. 13-17
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15650

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act II, scene ii, l. 116-117
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15649

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOON

Nine changes of the wat'ry star hath been
The shepherd's note since we have left our throne
Without a burthen.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
The Winter's Tale, Polixenes at I, ii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15648

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BRAIN

Memory, the warder of the brain.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15647

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: ALCHEMY

You are an alchemist; make gold of that.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Timon of Athens
Act V, scene i, l. 117
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15646

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD PEACOCK

Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock, - a stride and a stand...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Troilus and Cressida
Act III, scene iii, l. 251
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15645

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: LINE

What? Will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Macbeth
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15644

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: PLANT

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkt
Act IV, scene v
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15643

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MOON

It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And drives men mad.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act V, scene ii
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15642

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD CUCKOO

...the cuckoo builds not for himself...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Anthony and Cleopatra
Act II, scene vi, l. 28
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15653

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act I, scene iii, l. 134
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15055

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry IV
Act III, scene I
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15576

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: BIRD HAWK

When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Life of King Henry the Fifth
Act III, scene vii, l. 14


Reference #: 15049

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: COMET

When beggars die, there are no comets seen:
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Julius Caesar
Act II, scene ii, l. 30-31
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15052

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: INSECT BEE

...so work the honey-bees,
Creatures, that by a rule in nature, teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Life of King Henry the Fifth
Act I, scene ii, l. 187-189


Reference #: 15060

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: REASON

Fool: 'The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.'
Lear: 'Because they are not eight?'
Fool: 'Yes, indeed.: Thou wouldst make a good fool.'


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
King Lear
Act I, scene v, L. 38-40
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15059

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: MEDICINE

Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moore of Venice
Act III, scene iii, L. 331-334
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15045

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: IMPOSSIBLE

Well, I'll have her: and if it be a match, as nothing is impossible - .


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Act III, scene ii, l. 379
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15047

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EDUCATION

BIRON: What is the end of study? let me know?
KING: Why, that to know, which else we should not know.
BIRON: Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?
KING: Ay, that is study's godlike recompense.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Love's Labor's Lost
Act I, scene i, l. 55-58
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15050

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TEETH

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
As You Like It
Act II, scene vii, L. 163-166
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15054

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CURE

Care is no cure, but rather corrosive
For things that are not to be remedied.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry VI
Act III, scene iii, L. 3
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15057

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: LOGIC

He dreweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Love's Labour's Lost
Act V, scene i, l. 18
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15056

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TOOTHACHE

What! sigh for the toothache?


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Much Ado About Nothing
Act V, scene i, L. 21
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15048

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: COMET

Hung by the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of time and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
Act I, scene i, L. 1-3
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15058

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: TIME

There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 27)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume Two)
Othello, The Moor of Venice
Act I, scene iii, L. 376
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15051

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: CHANCE

Portia. You must take your chance,
And either not attempt to choose at all
Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong...


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
The Merchant of Venice
Act II, scene i, l. 38
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 15053

Shakespeare, William
Born: 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 April, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

DON PEDRO: Thou wilt quake for this shortly.
BENEDICT: I look for an earthquake then.


In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 26)
The Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Volume One)
Much Ado About Nothing
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; 1952


Reference #: 1990

Shaler, N.S.
General Category: EARTH

...earth-lore is not a discrete science at all, but is that way of looking at the operations of energy in the physical, chemical and organic series which introduces the elements of space and time into the considerations and which furthermore endeavors to trace the combination of the various trends of action in the stages of the developments of the earth. It is in these peculiarities of geology that we find the basis of its value in education and in the general culture of society.


Bulletin of the American Geological Society
Relations of Geologic Science to Education, Vol. 7, No. x, 1896
(p. 319)


Reference #: 1510

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

Human society is organized for a stable earth: its whole machinery supposes that while the other familiar elements of air and water are fluctuating and trustworthy, the earth affords a foundation which is firm. Now and then this implied compact with nature is broken, and the ground trembles beneath our feet. At such times we feel a fainful sense of shipwrecked confidence: we learn how very precious to us was that trust in the earth which we gave without question. If the disturbance be of a momentary and unimportant kind, we may soon forget it, as we forget the rash word of a friend; if it be violent, we lose one of the substantial goods of life, our instinctive confidnece in the earth beneath our feet.


Aspects of the Earth
The Stability of the Earth
(pp. 1-2)


Reference #: 1509

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate
General Category: LANGUAGE

The greater part of the facts which geologists have to deal possess for the general public a recondite character. They concern things which are not within the limits of familiar experience. In treating of them, the science uses a language of its own, an argot as special as that of the anatomist or the metaphysician.


Aspects of the Earth
Rivers and Valleys
(p. 143)


Reference #: 1508

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate
General Category: CAVE

It is the unseen which most attracts us. Therefore, in all times men have speculated as to the contents of the nether earth. Its crevices and caverns afford in their dark recesses a world which the imagination can people at its will.


Aspects of the Earth
Caverns and Cavern Life
(p. 98)


Reference #: 9659

Shamos, Morris H.
General Category: FACT

Perhaps the greatest injustice that can be done to science is to regard it merely as a collection of facts, and the practice of science as little more than the routine accumulation of minutiae. It is true that science deals with hard, inflexible facts, but it has also to do with very general ideas and abstract principles; and it is the co-ordination of these ideas and observed facts that is the essence of modern science. Facts alone do not constitute a science. Nature Study is not the same as the study of nature.


Rethinking Science Education
Science and the Humanities
(p. 5)


Reference #: 8754

Shapere, D.
General Category: PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

...philosophy of science.is immune to the vicissitudes of science—the coming and going of particular theories; for those changes have to do with content of science, whereas the philosopher is concerned with its structure—not with specific theories, but with the meaning of "theory" itself.


Philosophical Problems of Natural Science
Introduction
(p. 9)


Reference #: 8753

Shapere, Dudly
General Category: FACT

One of the chief motivations behind the attempt to defend a distinction between theoretical and observational terms has been the desire to explain how a theory can be tested against the data of experience, and how one theory can be said to "account for the facts" better than another; that is, to give a precise characterization of the idea, almost universally accepted in modern times, that the sciences are "based on experience," that they are "empirical".


Philosophical Problems of Natural Science
Introduction
(p. 15)


Reference #: 937

Shapiro, Harry L.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, like organic life, has ramified by expanding into unoccupied areas and then adapting itself to the special requirements encountered there. And just as the diversified forms of animals, plants, and insects make evident by their morphology and their function the characteristics of ecological niches whose very existence might otherwise escape notice, so the diversity of techniques and concepts of scientific specialties by their very formulation reveal aspects of nature we would not have suspected. Anthropology, like other branches of science, has also embodied in its structure whole new worlds rich in insights into the development and nature of man.


American Anthropologist
Symposium on the History of Anthropology, The History and Development of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 61, No.3, 1959
(p. 371)


Reference #: 2334

Shapiro, Karl
General Category: STATISTICS

We ask for no statistics of the killed,
For nothing political impinges on
This single Casualty, or all those gone,
Missing or healing, sinking or dispersed,
Hundreds of thousands counted, millions lost.


Collected Poems 1940-1978
Elegy for a Dead Soldier
l. 49-53


Reference #: 8195

Shapiro, Robert
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not a given set of answers but a system for obtaining answers. The method by which the search is conducted is more important than the nature of the solution. Questions need not be answered at all, or answers may be provided and then changed. It does not matter how often or how profoundly our view of the universe alters, as long as these changes take place in a way appropriate to science. For the practice of science, like the game of baseball, is covered by definite rules.


Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth


Reference #: 8196

Shapiro, Robert
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not the place for those who want certainty, who wish the truths they learned in childhood to reassure them in their old age. Surprises occur, and alter our perception of reality - for example, the discovery of radioactivity or the genetic role of DNA. ...When we treat each new observation and theory with skepticism, retaining our doubt until it has passed the test of experience, and then place it alongside our other acquisitions with the care of a collector who has acquired a valued object after a long search, then we can experience the joy of science. It is this joy, rather than an insistence on an immediate answer, that is likely to be our reward as we continue to search for the origin of life. But even in this conclusion, let us exercise some caution. We may be closer to the answer than we think.


Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth


Reference #: 17309

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: MATHEMATICS

A hypothesis or theory is clear, decisive, and positive, but it is believed by no one but the man who created it. Experimental findings, on the other hand, are messy, inexact things, which are believed by everyone except the man who did the work.'


Through Rugged Ways to the Stars


Reference #: 16892

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: MAN

Mankind is made of star stuff, ruled by universal laws. The thread of cosmic evolution runs through his history, as through all phases of the universe—the microcosmos of atomic structures, molecular forms, and microscopic organisms, and the macrocosmos of higher organisms, of planets, stars, and galaxies. Evolution is still proceeding in galaxies and man—to what end, we can only vaguely surmise.


The View from a Distant Star
Preface
(p. 5)


Reference #: 664

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Perhaps the greatest satisfaction in reading of scientific exploits and participating, with active imagination, in the dull chores, the brave syntheses, the hard-won triumphs of scientific work, lies in the realization that ours is not an unrepeatable experience. Tomorrow night we can go out again among the distant stars. Again we can drop cautiously below the ocean surface to observe the unbelievable forms that inhabit those salty regions of high pressure and dim illumination. Again we can assemble the myriad of molecules into new combinations, weave them into magic carpets that take us into strange lands of beneficent drugs and of new fabrics and utensils designed to enrich to process of everyday living....We can return another day to these shores, and once more embark for travels over ancient or modern seas in quest of half-known lands - go forth as dauntless conquistadors, outfitted with maps and gear provided through the work of centuries of scientific adventures. But we have done enough for this day. We have much to dream about. Our appetites may have betrayed our ability to assimilate. The fare has been irresistibly palatable. It is time to disconnect the magic threads; time to wind up the spiral galaxies, roll up the Milky Way and lay it aside until tomorrow.


In Harlow Shapley, Samuel Rapport and Helen Wright (eds.)
A Treasury of Science
On Sharing in the Conquests of Science
(p. 4)


Reference #: 2572

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: MAN

We are brothers of the boulders, cousins of the clouds.


In Eric Chaisson
Cosmic Dawn: The Origins of Matter and Life
Epilogue
(p. 299)
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, massachusetts, United States of America 1981


Reference #: 8002

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: COSMOS

Cosmography is to the Cosmos what geography is to the earth.


Of Stars and Men
Introduction
(fn, p. 4)


Reference #: 1366

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: SIZE

The atomically small leads directly to the size really immense.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1946
On the Astronomical Dating of the Earth's Crust
(p. 140)


Reference #: 8003

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: PLANET

Millions of planetary systems must exist, and billions is the better word. Whatever the methods of origin, and doubtless more than one type of genesis has operated, planets may be the common heritage of all stars except those so situated that planetary materials would be swallowed up by greater masses or cast off through gravitational action.


Of Stars and Men: The Human Response to the Expanding Universe
Chapter 8, The Fourth Adjustment
(p. 90)


Reference #: 1026

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: ATOM

Splitting the atom has been going on for billions of years in the universe. It is an old, old story so far as the suns and stars are concerned. They do it easily, whereas an has toiled to accomplish it, and when he did he caused a world-wide headache and a crisis for humanity.


In S.J. Woolf
American Scientist
Dr. Harlow Shapley, Vol. 34, No. 3, July 1946
(p. 468)


Reference #: 10369

Shapley, Harlow
General Category: ASTRONOMY

...the most interesting feature of this science astronomy (and of all science) is our eager ignorance.


Scientific American
Astronomy, Vol. 183, No. 3, September 1950
(pp. 25-26)


Reference #: 9136

Shapley, Harlow Upton, Winslow
General Category: ASTRONOMER

His knees should bend and his neck should curl,
His back should twist and his face should scowl,
One eye should squint and the other protrude,
And this should be his customary attitude.


Popular Astronomy
Harvard Observatory Pinafore, Vol. 38, No. 3, March 1930
(pp. 125-127)


Reference #: 17345

Shapp, Paul
General Category: ANATOMY

The human body comes in only two shapes and three colors. I don't expect there will be any changes, so what we learn about it now will serve us for a long time to come.


Time
The Fastest Man on Earth, Vol. LXVI, No. 11, September 12, 1955
(p. 88)


Reference #: 9179

Sharpe, Tom
General Category: CONTRACEPTIVE

Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times. Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social category of things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow-ties. Not the sort of attire for a gentleman.


Porterhouse Blue
Chapter 9
(p. 96)


Reference #: 17125

Shaw, Alan
General Category: INDEX FOSSIL

It would be difficult to estimate how many nascent geologists have been turned aside from paleontology by being forced during the course of some dismal semester to learn hundreds of index fossils and the formations of which they are the index. Many geologists' sole memory of the whole discipline of paleontology is the unerasable fact that "Spirifer frimesi is the index fossil of the Burlington Limestone" or some such tidbit.


Time in Stratigraphy


Reference #: 17358

Shaw, Alan
General Category: SPECIES

The paleontologist has to deal with many types of discrete and objectively recognizable organic remains whose homology with living species is in doubt…In order to deal with these fossils the paleontologist must perforce call them something. In this discussion I shall call them "species" for want of another name. I shall use the word to cover any of that large class of objects of organic origin that are of sufficiently distinctive and consistent morphology so that a competent paleontologist could define them so that another competent paleontologist could recognize them. For purposes of communication he would apply a Linnean name to them. This definition is intended to be sufficiently flexible to cover any sort of fossil that would normally be named. The only essentially biologic part of this "species concept" is that follisls are necessarily derived from organisms.


Time and Stratigraphy


Reference #: 17128

Shaw, Alan
General Category: STRATIGRAPHIC

Preoccupation with the unattainable is a stultifying approach to any problem. Practical paleontology cannot be concerned with any of the fossils we cannot find. Geologically, we can only be interested in finding the total stratigraphic range through which a species is preserved. While the life and death of millions of unrepresented individuals is of theoretical interest, we cannot gain practically useful information from them.


Time in Stratigraphy


Reference #: 17126

Shaw, Alan
General Category: BIOSTRATIGRAPHY

Each objectively definable extinct fossil taxon divides geologic time into three segments—the time before it appeared, the time during which it existed, and the time since its disappearance.


Time in Stratigraphy


Reference #: 17127

Shaw, Alan
General Category: FOSSIL

The fossil record can normally be made as "adequate" as desired, and "adequacy" can be tested by standard quantitative analysis.


Time in Stratigraphy


Reference #: 17055

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CALCULATION

And nobody can get far without at least an acquaintance with the mathematics of probability, not to the extent of making its calculations and filling examination papers with typical equations, but enough to know when they can be trusted, and when they are cooked. For when their imaginary numbers correspond to exact quantities of hard coins unalterably stamped with heads and tails, they are safe within certain limits; for here we have solid certainty...but when the calculation is one of no constant and several very capricious variables, guesswork, personal bias, and pecuniary interests, come in so strong that those who began by ignorantly imagining that statistics cannot lie end by imagining, equally ignorantly, that they never do anything else.


In James R. Newman
The World of Mathematics
Vol. III, The Vice of Gambling and the Virtue of Insurance
(p. 1531)


Reference #: 17084

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: UNIVERSE

As an Englishman [Newton] postulated a rectangular universe because the English always use the word 'square' to denote honesty, truthfulness, in short: rectitude. Newton knew that the universe consisted of bodies in motion, and that none of them moved in straight lines, nor ever could. But an Englishman was not daunted by the facts. To explain why all the lines in his rectilinear universe were bent, he invented a force called gravitation and then erected a complex British universe and established it as a religion which was devoutly believed for 300 years. The book of this Newtonian religion was not that oriental magic thing, the Bible. It was that British and matter-of-fact thing, a Bradshaw [English railway timetable]. It gives the stations of all the heavenly bodies, their distances, the rates at which they are traveling, and the hour at which they reach eclipsing points or crash into the earth. Every item is precise, ascertained, absolute and English. Three hundred years after its establishment a young professor rises calmly in the middle of Europe and says to our astronomers: 'gentlemen: if you will observe the next eclipse of the sun carefully, you will be able to explain what is wrong with the perihelion of Mercury.'...The young professor smiles and says that gravitation is a very useful hypothesis and gives fairly close results in most cases, but that personally he can do without it. He is asked to explain how, if there is no gravitation, the heavenly bodies do not move in straight lines and run clear out of the universe. He replies that no explanation is necessary because the universe is not rectilinear and exclusively British; it is curvilinear. The Newtonian universe thereupon drops dead and is supplanted by the Einstein Universe. Einstein has not challenged the facts of science but the axioms of science, and science has surrendered to the challenge.


In John D. Barrow
The World within the World
(p. 109)
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988


Reference #: 16227

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: TOOTHACHE

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.


The Revolutionist's Handbook & Pocket Companion
Maxims for Revolutionists, Greatness
(p. 56)


Reference #: 17922

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Not love: we know better than that. Let's call it chemistry...Well, you're attracting me irresistibly - chemically.


You Never Can Tell
Act II
(p. 70)


Reference #: 16226

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

Those whom we called brutes had their revenge when Darwin showed us that they were our cousins.


The Revolutionist's Handbook & Pocket Companion
Maxims for Revolutionists, Time's Revenges
(p. 58)


Reference #: 1607

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CREATE

You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and you create what you will.


Back to Methuselah
Part I, Act I
(p. 8)


Reference #: 1606

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CONVALESENCE

LUBIN: I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.


Back to Methuselah
Part II
(pp. 66-67)


Reference #: 1605

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk of our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that pursuit and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from a microbe only in being further on the path.


Back to Methuselah
The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas


Reference #: 1604

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Let the Churches ask themselves why there is no revolt against the dogmas of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas of religions. It is not that the mathematical dogmas are more comprehensible...It is not that science is free from legends, witchcraft, miracles, biographic boostings of quacks as heroes and saints, and of barren scoundrels as explorers and discoverers...But no student of science has yet been taught that specific gravity consists in the belief that Archimedes jumped out of the bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of inverse squares must be discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was never in an orchard in his life.


Back to Methuselah
Preface, lxxxix


Reference #: 6342

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: ENGINEER

Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that sort of place. They teach you to be a gentleman there. In the Polytechnic they teach you to be an engineer or such like.


Man and Superman
Act II
(p. 50)


Reference #: 1608

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DARWINISM

...as compared with the open-eyed intelligent wanting and trying of Lamarck, the Darwinian process may be described as a chapter of accidents. As such, it seems simple, because you do not at first realise all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honour and aspirations, to such casually picturesque changes as an avalanche may make in a mountain landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure.


Back to Methuselah
Preface, The Moment and the Man
(p. xl)


Reference #: 1609

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CERTAINTY

I must have certainty. Give it to me; or I will kill you when next I catch you asleep.


Back to Methuselah
Act I, In the Beginning


Reference #: 6345

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: FOSSIL

You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been tried. Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but brains have existed and perished. The megatherium, the ichthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud vast wings. Where are they now? Fossils in museums, and so few and imperfect at that, that a knuckle bone or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the lives of a thousand soldiers.


Man And Superman
Act Three
(p. 83)


Reference #: 2170

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: EXTERRESTRIAL LIFE

Drier: Mr. Shaw, do you believe in life on other planets?
Shaw: Indeed I do.
Drier: But, Mr. Shaw, what proof do you have?
Shaw: The proof is that they're using us for an insane asylum.


Chemistry
Vol. 42, No. 4, April 1969
(p. 2)


Reference #: 1611

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CRYSTAL

Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness found by mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality.


Back to Methuselah
Preface


Reference #: 6344

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: IMAGINATION

Stupidity has all the knowledge, and Imagination all the intelligence.


Man and Superman
Act III
(p. 83)


Reference #: 6343

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine.


Man and Superman
Act III
(pp. 83-84)


Reference #: 6346

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: ELECTRON

...why the men who believe in electrons should regard themselves as less credulous than the men who believed in angels is not apparent to me.


In homer D. Swander
Man and the Gods: Thre Tragedies
Saint Joan, Preface
(p. 133)


Reference #: 1916

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: FACT

Patiokim: In Russia we face facts.
Edstaston: In England, sir, a gentleman never faces any fact if they are unpleasant facts.
Patiokim: In real life, all facts are unpleasant.


Complete Plays with Prefaces
Vol. IV, Great Catherine, scene I


Reference #: 1668

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: VIVISECTION

Animals dislike being vivisected, but they also dislike being forced to bear burdens and draw loads. The difference is not in the pain endured by the animals, but in the fact that whereas there is no doubt than an intelligent horse would consent to do a reasonable quantity of work for its living if it were capable of economic reasoning, just as men do, it is equally certain that no horse would on any terms submit to vivisection. On this ground the vivisector violates the moral law.


In Brian Tyson
Bernard Shaw's Book Reviews
Vol. I, Two Novels of Modern Society
(p. 28)


Reference #: 5183

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: GOD

KNELLER: To you the universe is nothing but a clock that an almighty clockmaker has wound up and set going for all eternity.
NEWTON: Shall I tell you a secret, Mr. Beautymonger? The clock does not keep time. If it did there would be no further need for the Clockmaker....Can you, who know everything because you and God are both artists, tell me what is amiss with the perihelion of Mercury?
KNELLER: The what?
NEWTON: The perihelion of Mercury.

KNELLER: I do not know what it is.
NEWTON: I do. But I do not know what is amiss with it. Not until the world finds this out can it do without the Clockmaker in the heavens.


In Good King Charles's Golden Days
Act I


Reference #: 6086

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: THEORY

The weakness of the man who, when his theory works out into a flagrant contradiction of the facts, concludes 'So much the worse for the facts: let them be altered,' instead of 'So much the worse for my theory.'


Liberty
New York, A Degenerate's View of Nordau, July 27, 1895


Reference #: 6341

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: TREE

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.


Man and Superman
Maxims for Revolutionists, The Unconscious Self


Reference #: 7076

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DEATH

Do away with death and you do away with the need for birth.


Misalliance
Parents and Children(ix)


Reference #: 7077

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: PARADOX

Paradoxes are the only truths.


Misalliance


Reference #: 131

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: MATHEMATICS

You propound a complicated mathematical problem: give me a slate and half an hour's time, and I can produce a wrong answer.


In Evan Esar
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Doubleday, Garden City. 1968


Reference #: 1610

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DISCOVERY

...any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.


Back to Methuselah
Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, Part IV, Act I, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman
(p. 160)


Reference #: 10009

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: QUESTION

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.


Saturday Review
January 26, 1895


Reference #: 13427

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

Treat persons who profess to be able to cure disease as you treat fortune tellers.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface


Reference #: 13435

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous.


The Doctor's Dilemma


Reference #: 13434

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: ENGINEER

Now there is no calculation that an engineer can make as to the behavior of a girder under a strain, of an astronomer as to the recurrence of a comet, more certain than the calculation that under such circumstances we shall be dismembered unnecessarily in all directions by surgeons who believe the operations to be necessary solely because they want to perform them.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface On Doctors
(p. vi)


Reference #: 15144

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: PROBLEM

My business tonight will be very largely to raise difficulties. That is all the use I am really in this world.


The New York Times
Shaw Expounds Socialism as World Panacea, December 12, 1926


Reference #: 13433

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

Even the fact that doctors themselves die of the very diseases they profess to cure passes unnoticed.


The Doctor's Dilemma
(p. 14)


Reference #: 9954

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they at least had the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one percent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.


Saint Joan
Preface


Reference #: 13425

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

If the medical profession were to outdo the Anti-Vivisection Societies in a general professional protest against the practice and principles of the vivisectors, every doctor in the kingdom would gain substantially by the immense relief and reconciliation which would follow such a reassurance of the humanity of the doctor.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface
(p. 36)


Reference #: 11823

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

A person may be supremely able as a mathematician, engineer, parliamentary tactician or racing bookmaker; but if that person has contemplated the universe all through life without ever asking "What the devil does it all mean?" he (or she) is one of those people for whom Calvin accounted by placing them in his category of the predestinately damned.


The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God


Reference #: 13430

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

Nothing is more dangerous than a poor doctor: not even a poor employer or a poor landlord.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface


Reference #: 10418

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: EVOLUTION

No doubt it is natural to a snail to think that any evolution which threatens to do away with shells will result in general death from exposure.


In Dan H. Laurence (ed.)
Shaw's Music
Vol. 3, The Perfect Wagnerite, Not Love, But Life


Reference #: 13431

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: TRUTH

The buried truth germinates and breaks through to the light.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Act 5


Reference #: 13426

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: SURGERY

We do not go to the operating table as we go to the theatre, to the picture gallery, to the concert room, to be entertained and delighted; we go to be tormented and maimed, lest a worse thing should befall us…. The experts on whose assurance we face this horror and suffer this mutilation should have no interests but our own to think of; should judge our cases scientifically; and should feel about them kindly.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface
(p. 24)


Reference #: 12604

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

Beyond a modest competency the sensible doctor does not aspire, but in the profession of every State there is a third group, composed of a few men who, dry-nursed by us, sometimes by the public, have become prosperous, perhaps wealthy. Freely they have received, freely they should give.


The Collected Essays of Sir William Osler
Volume II
Address
99th Annual Session, Baltimore, April 27, 1897


Reference #: 13432

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: MEDICAL PRACTICE

Doctoring is not even the art of keeping people in health (no doctor seems able to advise you what to eat any better than his grandmother or the nearest quack): it is the art of curing illnesses.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface
(p. 25)


Reference #: 12734

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: ADDITION

Mrs. Bashom: At school I got as far as addition and subtraction; but I never could do multiplication or division.
Newton: Why, neither could I: I was too lazy. But they are quite unnecessary: addition and subtraction are quite sufficient. You ask the logarithms of the numbers; and the antilogarithm of the sum of the two is the answer. Let me see: three time seven?


The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw
In Good King Charles's Golden Days, Act I
(p. 1335)


Reference #: 15618

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: PROBLEM

Religion is always right. Religion solves every problem and thereby abolishes problems from the Universe. Religion gives us certainty, stability, peace and the absolute. It protects us against progress which we all dread. Science is the very opposite. Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without raising ten more problems.


In B. Patch
Thirty Years with G.B.S.
Chapter Twelve
(p. 235)


Reference #: 13428

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: EXPERIENCE

Mind you, that you have a sound scientific theory to correlate your observations at the bedside. Mere experience by itself is nothing. If I take my dog to the bedside with me, he sees what I see. But he learns nothing from it. Why? Because he's not a scientific dog.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Act I


Reference #: 13442

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his qualifications, the words, 'Remember that I too am mortal.'


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface on Doctors, The Latest Theories
(p. xci)


Reference #: 13441

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

Just as the object of a trade union under existing conditions must finally be, not to improve the technical quality of the work done by its members, but to secure a living wage for them, so the object of the medical profession today is to secure an income for the private doctor; and to this consideration all concern for science and public health must give way when the two come into conflict. Fortunately they are always in conflict. Up to a certain point doctors, like carpenters and masons, must earn their living by doing the work that the public wants for them.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface on Doctors, Trade Unionism and Science
(p. xxxv)


Reference #: 13440

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: PROBLEM

All problems are finally scientific problems.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface, The Technical Problem


Reference #: 15753

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: FACT

But an Englishman was not daunted by facts. To explain why all the lines in his rectilinear universe were bent, he invented a force called gravitation and thus erected a complete British universe and established it as a religion which was devoutly believed in for 300 years. The book of this Newtonian religion was not that oriental magic thing, the Bible. It was that British and matter-of-fact thing, a Bradshaw[a British railway timetable]. It gives the stations of all the heavenly bodies, their distances, the rates at which they are traveling, and the hour at which they reach eclipsing points or crash into the earth like Sirius. Every time is precise, ascertained, absolute and English.


In B. Patch
Thirty Years with G.B.S.
Chapter Twelve
(p. 235)


Reference #: 10641

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: FACT

Facts mean nothing by themselves. All the people at present crowding the Strand are facts. Nobody can possibly know the facts. Naturalists collect a few. Men of genius select a fewer few, and lo! a drama or a hypothesis. Genius is a sense of values and significances (the same thing). Without this sense facts are useless mentally. With it a Goethe can do more with ten facts than an encyclopedia compiler with ten thousand.


In J. Percy Smith (ed.)
Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw: Bernard Shaw to H.G. Wells
Letter to H. G. Wells, 2 August 1929
(pp. 152-153)


Reference #: 11436

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: FACT

A mere fact will never stop an Englishman.


Speech, October 28, 1930


Reference #: 13439

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

And let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employer and employee.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface on Doctors, The Future of Private Practice
(p. lxxxi)


Reference #: 12736

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: CIRCLE

Kneller: Just what such blockheads would believe. The circle is a dead thing like a straight line: no living hand can draw it: you make it by twirling a pair of dividers.


The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw
In Good King Charles's Golden Days, Act I
(p. 1358)


Reference #: 12735

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: PARABOLA

Kneller:...take a sugar loaf and cut it slantwise, and you will get hyperbolas and parabolas, ellipses and ovals...


The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw
In Good King Charles's Golden Days, Act I
(p. 1358)


Reference #: 13423

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: QUACKERY

Did I hear from the fireside armchair the bow-wow of the old school defending its drugs? Ah, believe me, Paddy, the world would be healthier if every chemist's shop in England were demolished. Look at the papers! full of scandalous advertisements of patent medicines! a huge commercial system of quackery and poison. Well, whose fault is it? Ours. I say, ours. We set the example. We spread the superstition. We taught the people to believe in bottles of doctor's stuff; and now they buy it at the stores instead of consulting a medical man.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Act I
(p. 111)


Reference #: 13429

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: MALPRACTICE

No doctor dare accuse another of malpractice. He is not sure enough of his own opinion to ruin another man by it. He knows that if such conduct were tolerated in his profession no doctor's livelihood or reputation would be worth a year's purchase. I do not blame him: I should do the same myself. But the effect of this state of things is to make the medical profession a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface
(p. 15)


Reference #: 13417

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: BELIEF

There is no harder scientific fact in the world than the fact that belief can be produced in practically unlimited quantity and intensity, without observation or reasoning, and even in defiance of both, by the simple desire to believe founded on a strong interest in believing.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface
(p. 18)


Reference #: 13418

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: STATISTICS

Even trained statisticians often fail to appreciate the extent to which statistics are vitiated by the unrecorded assumptions of their interpreters.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface, Statistical Illusions


Reference #: 13419

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface, The Latest Theories
(p. xc)


Reference #: 13420

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: MEDICAL

It is not the fault of our doctors that the medical service of the community, as at present provided for, is a murderous absurdity. That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on and give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface on Doctors
(p. v)


Reference #: 13438

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: HEALTH

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface on Doctors, The Latest Theories
(p. xcii)


Reference #: 9425

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: FLOWERS

I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.'


Pygmalion


Reference #: 13424

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

Doctors, if no better than other men, are certainly no worse.


The Doctor's Dilemma
(p. 68)


Reference #: 13437

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DISEASE

There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Act I
(p. 28)


Reference #: 13421

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: SURGERY

The notion that therapeutics or hygiene or surgery is any more or less scientific than making or cleaning boots is entertained only by people to whom a man of science is still a magician who can cure diseases, transmute metals, and enable us to live forever.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface
(p. 78)


Reference #: 13436

Shaw, George Bernard
Born: 26 July, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England
General Category: DOCTOR

Thus, everything is on the side of the doctor. When men die of disease they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and they mostly do) the doctor gets the credit of curing them.


The Doctor's Dilemma
Preface on Doctors, The Craze for Operations
(p. xv)


Reference #: 13422

Shaw, George Bernard
General Category: DOCTOR

Doctors are just like other Englishmen: most of them have no honor and no conscience: what they commonly mistake for these is sentimentality and an intense dread of doing anything that everybody else does not do, or omitting to do anything that everybody else does.


The Doctor's Dilemma
(pp. 9-10)


Reference #: 5945

Shaw, James B.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...because mathematics contains truth, it extends its validity to the whole domain of art and the creatures of the constructive imagination. Because it contains freedom, it guarantees freedom to the whole realm of art. Because it is not primarily utilitarian, it validates the joy of imagination for the pure pleasure of imagination.


Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics
(pp. 194-195)


Reference #: 6457

Shaw, James B.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is, on the artistic side, a creation of new rhythms, orders, designs and harmonies, and on the knowledge side, is a systematic study of the various rhythms, orders, designs and harmonies. We may condense this into the statement that mathematics is, on the one side, the qualitative study of the structure of beauty, and on the other side is the creator of new artistic forms of beauty. The mathematician is at once creator and critic.


In W.L. Schaaf (ed.)
Mathematics: Our Great Heritage
Mathematics - the Subtle Fine Art
(p. 50)


Reference #: 13470

Shaw, Robert Stetson
General Category: CHAOS

It's a simple example of a system that goes from predictable behavior to unpredictable behavior. If you turn it up a little bit, you can see a regime where the pitter-patter is irregular. As it turns out, it's not a predictable pattern beyond a short time.


The Dripping Faucet as a Model Dynamical System


Reference #: 7308

Shchatunovski, Samuil
General Category: MATHEMATICS

It is not the job of mathematicians...to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants.


In George Gamow
My World Lines
(p. 24)


Reference #: 6518

Sheeham, William O'Meara, Stephen James
General Category: NARS

Who is to say that [Mars] will not - like a hardy seed lying dormant beneath the snow of a long winter - come once more to life, and in so doing once more quicken our fondest hopes of life beyond Earth?


Mars: The Lure of the Red Planet
Prometheus Books, 2001


Reference #: 6519

Sheehan, William
O'meara, Stephen James
General Category: MARS

Mars is but a tiny pinprick in the vast fabric of space-time, a mere mote in the solar beam.


Mars: The Lure of the Red Planet
Chapter 2
(p. 27)
Prometheus Books, Amherst. 2001


Reference #: 16788

Sheldrick, Daphne
General Category: CONSERVATION

With amazing arrogance we presume omniscience and an understanding of the complexities of Nature, and with amazing impertinence we firmly believe that we can better it....[W]e have forgotten that we, ourselves, are just a part of nature, an animal which seems to have taken the wrong turning bent on total destruction.


The Tsavo Story
Chapter 15
(p. 190)


Reference #: 818

Shelley
General Category: VOLCANO

Natur? s most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke.


Alastor


Reference #: 9467

Shelley
General Category: PYRAMIDS

Nile shall pursue his changeless way:
Those Pyramids shall fall;
Yea! Not a stone shall stand to tell
The spot where on they stood.
Their very site shall be forgotten,
As is their builder's name.


Queen Mab


Reference #: 9873

Shelley
General Category: EARTHQUAKE

With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.


Revolt of Islam
Canto V, Stanza 23


Reference #: 4426

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.


Frankenstein


Reference #: 4421

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

The modern masters of chemistry promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmutted and that the elixier of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscipe or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mime the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.


Frankenstein
III


Reference #: 4419

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: SCIENTIST

[Scientists] penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe.


Frankenstein
Professor Waldman


Reference #: 4422

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.


Frankenstein


Reference #: 4423

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.


Frankenstein


Reference #: 4425

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: SCIENCE

Man,' I cried, 'how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!


Frankenstein


Reference #: 4427

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: MOON

...the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.


Frankenstein


Reference #: 4424

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: TREE

But I am a blasted tree;
the bolt has entered my soul;
and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be—
a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.


Frankenstein


Reference #: 15203

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been made and may be mad - but I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimenter, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.


The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelly
Vol. 1Frankenstein, Vol. I, Chapter II
(p. 33)


Reference #: 15204

Shelley, Mary
Born: 30 August, 1797 in 29 The Polygon, Somers Town, London, England
Died: 1 February, 1851 in Chester Square in London, England
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Oh what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock.


The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelly
Vol. 1Frankenstein, Vol. II, Chapter V
(p. 90)


Reference #: 4420

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
General Category: CHEMISTRY

He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: 'The ancient teachers of this science,' said he, 'promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.


Frankenstein


Reference #: 16218

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: OCEAN

There the sea I found
Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.


The Revolt of Islam
canto I, st. 15


Reference #: 7157

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: GLACIER

The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains.


Mont Blanc


Reference #: 2401

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: ASTRONOMER

Heave? s utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on.


Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
Prometheus Unbound
Act IV, l. 418-420


Reference #: 4871

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: MOON

The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn
With the sunset's fire.


Hellas
Semi-Chorus II


Reference #: 611

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: SCIENCE

The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.


In Fanny Delisle
A Study of Shelley's A Defence of Poetry
Vol. I, Line 1223
(p. 138)


Reference #: 12929

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: WORLD

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay
Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting,
Borne away.


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
Worlds on Worlds


Reference #: 9466

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: OTHER WORLDS

Earth's distant orb appeared
The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;
Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.
.............
Below lay stretched the universe!
There, far as the remotest line
That bounds imagination's flight,
Countless and unending orbs
In mazy motion intermingled,
Yet still fulfilled immutably
Eternal Nature's law.
Above, below, around,
The circling systems formed
A wilderness of harmony;
Each with undeviating aim,
In eloquent silence, through the depths of space
Pursued its wondrous way.
.............
Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay.


Queen Mab


Reference #: 12934

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: COMET

Thou too, O Comet, beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray, and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our Azure heaven again!


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
Epipsychidion
l. 367-372


Reference #: 10423

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: FLOWER MIMOSA

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And clothed them beneath the kisses of night.


Shelley: Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters
The Sensitive Plant, Part I, Stanza 1


Reference #: 12928

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: UNIVERSE

Its easier to suppose thatthe universe has existed fromall eternity than to conceive a Being beyond its limits capable of creating it.


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
Queen Mab


Reference #: 10424

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: FLOWER FLAG

And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple
prankt with white;
And starry river buds among the sedge;
And floating water-lilies broad and bright.


Shelley: Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters
The Question, Stanza IV


Reference #: 12930

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: HEAVENS

Heave? s ebon vault
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
Queen Mab, IV


Reference #: 15874

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: CHANCE

Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old...


The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prometheus Unbound, Act II, scene III
l. 92


Reference #: 15875

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: CHANCE

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change-to these all things are subject.


The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prometheus Unbound, Act II, scene IV
l. 119


Reference #: 12931

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: PLANET

That orbed maiden
With white fire laden
Whom mortals call the Moon.


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
The Cloud
l. 45-47


Reference #: 12932

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: INFINITE

...infinity within,
Infinity without…


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
Queen Mab
l. 22-23


Reference #: 12933

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: MATTER

I change but I cannot die.


The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley
The Cloud
l. 76


Reference #: 10422

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Born: 4 August, 1792 in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England
Died: 8 July, 1822 at sea off Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
General Category: FLOWER HYACINTH

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense.


Shelley: Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters
The Sensitive Plant, Part I, Stanza 7


Reference #: 6797

Shenstone, W.A.
General Category: VOLUME

Avagadro's hypothesis affords a bridge by which we can pass from large volumes of gases, which we can handle, to the minuter molecules, which individually are invisible and intangible.


In Joseph William Mellor
Mellor's Modern Inorganic Chemistry
Chapter 5
(p. 73)


Reference #: 3062

Shepherd, Alan
General Category: ASTRONAUT

It's been a long way, but we're here.


Apollo 14


Reference #: 6164

Shepherd, Linda Jean
General Category: TRUTH

...the 'truth' has many faces, depending upon the perspective of the observer.


Lifting the Veil
Chapter 6
(p. 153)


Reference #: 5840

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The art of the physician consists, in a great measure, in exciting hope, and other friendly passions and feelings.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 330)


Reference #: 11450

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...I had rather follow you to your grave, than see you owe your life to any but a regular bred physician.


St. Patrick's Day
Act II, scene Justice Hoofe
(p. 24)


Reference #: 17962

Shermer, Michael
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.


Why People Believe Weird Things
Part 2, Pseudoscience and Superstition
(p. 124)


Reference #: 17963

Shermer, Michael
General Category: SCIENCE

What separates science from all other human activities (and morality has never been successfully placed on a scientific basis) is its commitment to the tentative nature of all its conclusions. There are no final answers in science, only varying degrees of probability. Even scientific 'facts' are just conclusions confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement, but that assent is never final. Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.


Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time


Reference #: 6355

Sherrington, Sir Charles
General Category: CELL

Essential for any conception of the cell is that it is no static system. It is dynamic. It is energy-cycles, suites of oxidation and reduction, concatenated ferment-actions. It is like a magic hive the walls of whose chambered spongework are shifting veils of ordered molecules, and rend and renew as operations rise and cease. A world of surfaces and streams. We seem to watch battalions of specific catalysts, like Maxwell's 'demons,' lined up, each waiting, stop-watch in hand, for its moment to play the part assigned to it. Yet each step is understandable chemistry.


Man on his Nature
Chapter III
(p. 80)


Reference #: 6351

Sherrington, Sir Charles
General Category: EVOLUTION

...Nature, often as she hugs the old, seems seldom or never to revert to a past once abandoned....Evolution can scrap but not revive.


Man on His Nature
Chapter V
(p. 135)


Reference #: 6354

Sherrington, Sir Charles
General Category: BRAIN

If it is mind that we are searching the brain, then we are supposing the brain to be much more than a telephone-exchange. We are supposing it to be a telephone-exchange along with subscribers as well.


Man on his Nature


Reference #: 6352

Sherrington, Sir Charles
General Category: LIFE

A grey rock, said Ruskin, is a good sitter. That is one type of behavior. A darting dragon-fly is another type of behavior. We call the one alive, the other not. But both are fundamentally balances of give and take of motion with their surround. To make 'life' a distinction between them is at root to treat them both artificially.


Man on His Nature
Chapter III
(p. 88)


Reference #: 7801

Sherrington, Sir Charles
General Category: NEURONS

More than one way for doing the same thing is provided by the natural constitution of the nervous system. This luxury of means of compassing a given combination seems to offer the means of restitution of an act after its impairment or loss in one of its several forms.


In the Nobel Foundation
Nobel Lecture (Medicine)
December 12, 1932


Reference #: 5942

Sherrington, Sir Charles
General Category: LIFE

The microscope reveals that plants and animals are literally commonwealths of individually living units...Thus the corporeal house of life is built of living stones. In that house each stone is a self-centered microcosm, individually
Born, breathing for itself, feeding itself, consuming its own substance in its living, renewing its substance to meet that consumption, harmonizing with its own inner life some special function for the benefit of the whole, and destined ultimately for an individual death.


In T.B. Strong (ed.)
Lectures on the Method of Science
Chapter III
(p. 67)


Reference #: 351

Sherrod, P. Clay
General Category: STARS

Astronomy is a unique science in that as we learn more and more, the universe becomes even less known and more mysterious. In the theoretical end of things, astronomy allows the average person to think as far away as the mind will allow.
Above us, the sparkling stars of the night skies stretch out like thousands of diamonds suspended on the curtain of space. Unfolding through the beauty and the mysteries of this seemingly endless expanse are patterns and answers familiar to those willing to study them...
'There is an affinity for the eternity of space experienced by all mankind, a kind of motherhood in the stars to those who study space.


A Complete Manual of Amateur Astronomy


Reference #: 350

Sherrod, P. Clay
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Above us, the sparkling stars of the night skies stretch out like thousands of diamonds suspended on the curtain of space. Unfolding through the beauty and the mysteries of this seemingly endless expanse are patterns and answers familiar to those willing to study them...There is an affinity for the eternity of space experienced by all mankind, a kind of motherhood in the stars to those who study space.


A Complete Manual of Amateur Astronomy
Introduction
(p. 1)


Reference #: 5844

Sherwood, Thomas
General Category: PROBABLE

It is a nice idea, of course, that numbers must prove something true: after all, one patient is a case-report, two are a series. But all that numbers can do is tell us what is probable, and probability can lead us into terrible mistakes—like Bertrand Russell's chicken. Day in, day out, throughout its life, the chicken got breakfast as the farmer arrived in the morning. Thus it had clearly discovered a highly probable natural law: farmer = food—until, that is, the morning when the farmer very naturally arrived to wring its neck instead.


Lancet
Science in Radiology, Vol. 1, 1978
(p. 594)


Reference #: 17640

Shewhart, W.A.
General Category: ENGINEERING

The fundamental difference between engineering with and without statistics boils down to the difference between the use of a scientific method based upon the concept of laws of nature that do not allow for chance or uncertainty and a scientific method based upon the concepts of laws of probability as an attribute of nature.


University of Pennsylvania Bicentennial Conference


Reference #: 3437

Shewhart, W.A.
General Category: APPLIED SCIENCE

Applied science, particularly in the mass production of interchangeable parts, is even more exacting than pure science in certain matters of accuracy and precision. For example, a pure scientist makes a series of measurements and upon the basis of these makes what he considers to be the best estimates of accuracy and precision, regardless of how few measurements he may have. He will readily admit that future studies may prove such estimates to be in error. Perhaps all he will claim for them is that they are as good as any reasonable scientist could make upon the basis of the data available at the time the estimates were made. But now let us look at the applied scientist. He knows that if he were to act upon the meager evidence sometimes available to the pure scientist, he would make the same mistakes as the pure scientist makes in estimates of accuracy and precision. He also knows that through his mistakes someone may lose a lot of money or suffer physical injury, or both.


In Rafael Aguayo
Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality


Reference #: 11502

Shewhart, W.A.
Demming, W. Edwards
General Category: INFERENCE

An inference, if it is to have scientific value, must constitute a prediction concerning future data. If the inference is to be made purely with the help of the distribution theory of statistics, the experiments that constitute evidence for the inference must arise from a state of statistical control; until that state is reached, there is no universe, normal or otherwise, and the statistician's calculations by themselves are an illusion if not a delusion. The fact is that when distribution theory is not applicable for lack of control, any inference, statistical or otherwise, is little better than a conjecture. The state of statistical control is therefore the goal of all experimentation.


Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control
(p. iii)
Washington: Dept. of Agriculture


Reference #: 1468

Sheynin, O.B.
General Category: IMPOSSIBLE

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.


Archive for History of Exact Science
(p. 101)


Reference #: 11772

Sheynin, O.B.
General Category: IMPOSSIBLE

The fact is certain because it is impossible.


Tertullian
De Carne Christi, Chapter V, Part II


Reference #: 9438

Shimony, A.
General Category: PARADOX

I hope that the rigor and beauty of the argument of EPR is apparent. If one does not recognize how good an argument it is—proceeding rigorously from premises which are thoroughly reasonable—then one does not experience an adequate intellectual shock when one finds out that the experimental evidence contradicts their conclusions. This shock should be as great as the one experienced by Frege when he read Russel's theoretical paradox and said, "Alas, arithmetic totters!


Quoted by Franco Seller
Quantum Mechanics versus Local Realism
(p. 19)


Reference #: 13866

Shindler, Tom
General Category: VOLCANO

Those lovely white snow peaks, those rulers of mountains,
Who knows what secrets they keep?
But when they look like foreverr, just stop and remember
The Giants are only asleep.


The Giants Are Only Asleep


Reference #: 3142

Shipman, T.
General Category: ARCHITECT

An Architect should chiefly try
To please the Owner's Mind and Eye...


Carolina: or Loyal Poems
To the Reader of the following Poem
(p. 234)


Reference #: 16237

Shirer, W.L.
General Category: PHYSICS

Modern physics is an instrument of Jewry for the destruction of Nordic Science....True physics is the Creation of the German spirit.


The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Chapter 8


Reference #: 3839

Shockley, William B.
General Category: IDEA

If you have a bright idea and you do the right kind of experiment, you may get pretty decisive results pretty soon.


Esquire
1973


Reference #: 2485

Shoemaker, Sydney
General Category: CHEMICAL

If what I want when I drink fine wine is information about its chemical properties, why don't I just read the label?


In Daniel C. Dennett
Consciousness Explained
Chapter 12
(p. 383)
Boston, massachusetts, United States of America: Little, Brown, and Company, 1991


Reference #: 6665

Sholander, Marlow
General Category: DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION

If the finding is essential
Of a singular solution
For equations differential,
Let me sketch its execution.
First obtain some ordinary
Members of the family
Of solutions—oh, not very
Many, maybe twenty three.
Find their curves by carefully plotting.
Ink them quickly and you ought,
From the points requiring blotting,
To obtain the locus sought.


Mathematics Magazine
Envelopes and Nodes, Vol. 34, No. 2, Nov-Dec 1960
(p. 108)


Reference #: 6658

Sholander, Marlow
General Category: MAP

Within your lifetime will, perhaps,
As souvenirs from distant suns
Be carried back to earth some maps
Of planets and you'll find that one's
So hard to color that you've got
To use five crayons. Maybe, not.


Mathematics Magazine
Maybe, Vol. 35, No. 1, January 1962
(p. 20)


Reference #: 4479

Shonkoff, Jack P.Phillips, Deborah A. 2000
General Category: BRAIN

The brain is the ultimate organ of adaptation. It takes in information and orchestrates complex behavioral repetoires that allow human beings to act in sometimes marvelous, sometimes terrible ways.


From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development


Reference #: 4159

Shore, Jane
General Category: SKY

Each night the sky splits open like a melonits starry filamentsthe astronomer examines with great intensity.


Eye Level
An Astronomer's Journal
(p. 31)


Reference #: 6780

Shrady, George
General Category: PUBLISH

The time is already past when any man can hope to rise to be an authority in any department of medical science through any royal road of social influence, political manipulations, or even personal charms. Those who are to be the leaders and guides of medical science for the coming generation must earn their position by persistent, original investigation, and by faithfully recording their experience in the permanent literature of the day.


Medical Record
Medical Authorship, Vol. 2, 1867


Reference #: 14452

Shu, Frank H.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science has a beauty and uplifting spirit which rivals any of the other cultural attainments of humanity. This aesthetic response arose in a recent congressional hearing. When asked how particle physics contributes to the defense of our country, Robert Wilson replied that it makes the country worth defending.


The Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy
(p. 101)


Reference #: 129

Shulman, Max
General Category: INORGANIC

Organic chemistry is the study of organs; inorganic chemistry is the study of the insides of organs.


In Evan Esar
20,000 Quips & Quotes
(p. 127)
Doubleday, Garden City. 1968


Reference #: 11575

Shulman, Milton
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

I knew a mathematician who said 'I do not know as much as God. But I know as much as God knew at my age.'


Stop the Week
BBC Radio 4


Reference #: 13689

Shute, John
General Category: ARCHITECT

It belongeth also to an Architect, to have sight in Philosophie, which teaching to be of a noble courage as Virtuuius saith, and also gentil, curtious, faithfull and modest, not geuen to auarice and filthy lucre, as not to be troubled or corrupted with rewardes or giftes, but with grauity and Sagenes to coceiue al honor and dignity in all things conseruinge his good name and estimation. Let him also take a charge of workes in hand, being desired and not desirous of workers.


The First and Chief Groundes of Architecturefolio
iii


Reference #: 13688

Shute, John
General Category: ARCHITECT

...an Architecte must be sharpe of understandinge and both quicke and apte to conceiue the trewe Instructions and meaninges of them that have written thereof: and must also be a perfect distributor of the great misteries that he hath perceued and experymented, that playnlye and briefly he may discusse and open demonstrations of that which shallbe done....


The First and Chief Groundes of Architecturefolio
iii


Reference #: 10900

Shute, Nevil
General Category: ENGINEER

It has been said that an engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound...


Slide Rule
Chapter 3
(p. 64)


Reference #: 5005

Sidgwick, N.V.
General Category: CHEMIST

The chemist...must resist the temptation to make his own physics; if he does it will be bad physics - just as the physicist has sometimes been tempted to make his own chemistry, and then it was bad chemistry.


In Joseph Needham and Ernest Baldwin
Hopkins & Biochemistry
(p. 204)


Reference #: 1543

Sidney, Sir Philip (Sydney)
General Category: MOON

With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!


Astrophel and Stella
Sonnet XXXI


Reference #: 2745

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

Soup, used rightly by a mathematician, help him do better.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part II, #373
(p. 148)


Reference #: 2761

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: MISTAKE

If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part I, #139
(p. 39)


Reference #: 2744

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe is Why, How, and What, in any order, and all at once.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part One, #69
(p. 28)


Reference #: 2746

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: UNIVERSE

The universe, being clever, has given scientists trouble.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part One, #71
(p. 28)


Reference #: 2747

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: SCIENCE

Science comes from the knowing that you want to know.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part I, #298
(p. 68)


Reference #: 2748

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: PIMPLE

A pimple has atoms to it; and mucus has electrons.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part II, #234
(p. 121)


Reference #: 2749

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: UNIVERSE

The weight of the universe is at one with all its space.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part One, #70
(p. 28)


Reference #: 2750

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: SPACE

Space won't keep still, and it won't budge either: so give up trying.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part Two, #396
(p. 153)


Reference #: 2751

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: ERROR

When truth is divided, errors multiply.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part II, #360
(p. 147)


Reference #: 2752

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: IDEA

An idea is an eddy, an island of the mind, connected with a vast mainland.


Damned Welcome
(p. 157)


Reference #: 2753

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: GEOMETRY

A layer cake is geometry and layer cake.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part II, #374
(p. 148)


Reference #: 2755

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: ASSUMPTION

An assumption, as such, is really not more daring than the facts.


Damned Welcome
(p. 21)


Reference #: 2757

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

Within all conflagrations mathematical things are related.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part I, #356
(p. 78)


Reference #: 2758

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: FACT

Facts are always whispering, uttering, and shouting advice.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part Two, #387
(p. 152)


Reference #: 2760

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: LAW

Biological laws, seen subtly, can make a girl proud.


Damned Welcome
Part II, 316


Reference #: 2754

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: ENERGY

Energy, like grammar, should be used correctly; the unjust expenditure of energy or its unjust withholding should cease immediately.


Damned Welcome
(p. 38)


Reference #: 2762

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: NAUSEA

Nausea can be unclearly accepted self-condemnation.


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part I, #124
(p. 37)


Reference #: 2759

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: FACT

The facts never give up.


Damned Welcome
(p. 156)


Reference #: 2756

Siegel, Eli
Born: 1902
Died: 1978
General Category: PLANET

The planets show grandeur and nicety in their operations; the question is, how did they learn this?


Damned Welcome
Aesthetic Realism, Maxims, Part One, #50
(p. 26)


Reference #: 404

Sigerist, Henry E.
General Category: DISCOVERY

We must also keep in mind that discoveries are usually not made by one man alone, but that many brains and many hands are needed before a discovery is made for which one man receives the credit.


A History of Medicine
Vol. II, Introduction
(p. 13)


Reference #: 5003

Sigma Xi
General Category: ETHICS

Whether or not you agree that trimming and cooking are likely to lead on to downright forgery, there is little to support the argument that trimming and cooking are less reprehensible and more forgivable. Whatever the rationalization is, in the last analysis one can no more be a little bit dishonest than one can be a little bit pregnant. Commit any of these three sins and your scientific research career is in jeopardy and deserves to be.


Honor in Science
Chapter 3
(p. 14)


Reference #: 13149

Sigourney, Lydia
General Category: MINERAL CORAL

Toil on! Toil on! Ye ephemeral train,
Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on! For the wisdom of man ye mock
With your sand-based structures and domes of rock.
Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,
And your arches spring to the crested wave;
Ye're a puny race thus boldly to rear
A fabric so vast in a realm so drear!


The Coral Insect


Reference #: 6805

Sigurdsson, Haraldur
General Category: SCIENTIST

The scientist or scholar is the keeper of the flame of knowledge and he or she also advances our knowledge in a chosen field of research, but should also be responsible for linking the present with the past and maintaining a record of the history of knowledge in that field.


Melting the Earth
Preface
(p. viii)
Oxford University Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1999


Reference #: 15510

Silberling, N.J.
General Category: ANALYSIS

The following discussion is based largely on speculation, preconception, supposition, and other subjective thinking processes fundamental to megathinking and therefore it must be considered as a preliminary statement or working hypothesis to be tested by further field work and other lines of objective endeavor.


The Pick and Hammer Club
May 2, 1958
(p. 19)


Reference #: 12376

Silesius, Angelus
General Category: TIME

Do not compute eternity
as light-year after year
One step across
that line called Time
Eternity is here.


The Book of Angelus Silesius
Of Time and Eternity
(p. 42)


Reference #: 2576

Silk, Joseph
General Category: UNIVERSE

The development of human awareness of the Universe evolved from the geocentric cosmology of the ancient world via the heliocentric cosmology of the Renaissance and the egocentric cosmology of the nineteenth century, to the ultimate destination of the Big-Bang theory of the expanding Universe.


Cosmic Enigmas
(p. 3)


Reference #: 2578

Silk, Joseph
General Category: ASTRONOMER

To many astronomers, the search for intergalactic matter resembles the quest for the holy grail.


Cosmic Enigmas
(p. 177)


Reference #: 12315

Silk, Joseph
General Category: BIG BANG

It's impossible that the Big Bang is wrong.


In Eric J. Lerner
The Big Bang Never Happened
Chapter 1
(p. 11)


Reference #: 8103

Silliman, G.S.
General Category: METEOR

It seems not in accordance with ascertained science to ascribe mysterious appearances on the earth, or in its atmosphere, to causes preceeding from the planets, or spheres, moving in space, independent of the earth and its system..Is it not more in harmony with the integrity and perfection of His work that this phenomenon [meteorites] should originate in a meteorological process, than that the symmetry of the creation.should be violated by a visit to the earth of a lone, foreign intruder from the depths of space?


On the Origin of Aerolites
W.C. Bryant, New York, New York, United States of America 1859


Reference #: 3585

Sillman, Benjamin
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is nothing but the just and full comprehension of the real nature of things, physical, intellectual, and moral; it is co-existence with the universe of being; reaching back to the dawn of time, and forward to its consummation.


Elements of Chemistry
Vol. II, Intorduction
(p. 23)


Reference #: 3584

Sillman, Benjamin
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Astronomy is, not without reason. Regarded, by mankind, as the sublimest of the natural sciences. Its objects, so frequently visible, and therefore familiar, being always remote and inaccessible, do not lose their dignity.


Elements of Chemistry
Vol. II, Introduction
(p. 11)


Reference #: 12097

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE

...the history of science may be a trail littered with broken theories and discarded concepts, science is also a triumph of reason, luck, and above all imagination. There are few more successful, exciting, or strange journeys.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xiv)
Soloman Press Book, New York 1998


Reference #: 12100

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...at the borders of our knowledge we run into real complexity, into questions that challenge our ability to define the nature of reality.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xiv)
Soloman Press Book, New York 1998


Reference #: 12099

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE

One point is incontestable: the 'truth' of science must always remain open to critical scrutiny and will sometimes have the status of a beauty queen: looks good today, but next year she'll be dethroned. That is because the real test of a scientific theory is not whether it is 'true.' The real test is whether it works.


The Ascent of Science


Reference #: 12102

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: ANALOGY

Professors have a weakness for analogies. So here's one: A gas, any gas, is similar to a crowd of flies. The analogy is dangerous, but we can learn from the dangers. First of all, flies can see; they don't normally bump into each other. Molecules are 'blind'; in a gas they are continually blundering into each other. Every collision changes the speed and direction of both molecules involved, so that a molecule in a gas resembles a flying dodgem car, continually getting jolted. Another difference between flies and molecules is that the molecules in our box are presumed to fly in straight lines unless they hit something. Flies practice their aeronautical skills. An improved fly analogy is a crowd of straight-flying, blind, deaf flies, but this is still misleading. Flies get tired. They often relax, and in the end they die and lie on the floor with their legs up. Molecules don't do this; the molecules in an oxygen cylinder never stop moving - until the end of time, as they say at MGM. Again improving our analogy, we liken the molecules in a gas to a collection of straight-flying, blind, deaf, radarless, tireless, immortal flies. We're getting there, but the problem, as we will soon see, is that flies have a sense of smell and molecules don't. First, however, let's look at the speeds of molecules.


The Ascent of Science
Part I, Chapter 1
(p. 6)


Reference #: 12103

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: QUESTION

The Big Questions may be beyond the capabilities of the human computer, just as dogs will never understand jokes. We understand a very great deal about what forces do but are far from finalizing the discussion about what forces are. Maybe we never will. Newton very specifically refused to commit himself as to what gravitational force was, but he nevertheless accounted for the movements of Earth and Moon and deduced the masses of the Earth and the Sun by knowing only what gravity does. We have discovered forces that Newton never knew, but basically we still only define force by what it does.


The Ascent of Science
Part II, Chapter 3
(p. 30)


Reference #: 12104

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Chemistry handles the visible cloth from which the universe is made.


The Ascent of Science
Part Four, Chapter 13
(p. 166)
Soloman Press Book, New York 1998


Reference #: 12105

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE RELIGION

A final thought. The two most self-confident activities of mankind are religion and politics. No one is surer of himself than a believer. This self-confidence is based on a fundamental rigidity, a stubborn refusal to really hear the other side, to admit for one moment that there might be something basically wrong with the accepted dogma. A believer may be prepared to say that we are all the children of one God, but he doesn't usually switch from Islam to Catholicism. Science, on the other hand, is completely open-minded - despite the history of inertia. Any monument can be demolished, any belief forsaken. It is exactly this liberating acceptance of the possibility that our minds can mislead us that underlies the magnificent successes of science. Scientists are not invariably ecstatic when their scientific beliefs are undercut by better theories or new facts. But in the end, the scientific community gives in to change because, on the average, we refuse to be irrational - or to be seen to be irrational by our colleagues. It is the (reluctant!) willingness to be shown to be wrong that has so often led us in the direction of being partially right. Science, like art, is continually seeing the world anew. This is part of the joy of science.


The Ascent of Science
Part X, Chapter 38
(pp. 510-511)


Reference #: 12095

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: MATTER

Matter is the flesh of the universe; chemical and nuclear change is its soul.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xvii)
Soloman Press Book, New York 1998


Reference #: 12107

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: GAS

In general, chemical experience suggests that each gas is unique, which is true, and has very little, if anything, in common with most other gases, which is not true. That which is common to all gases is the way in which their molecules move.


The Ascent of Science
Part I, Chapter 1
(p. 5)


Reference #: 12101

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENTIST

Scientists come in many colors, of which the green of jealousy and the purple of rage are fashionable shades. The essence of scientific history has been conflict.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xiii)
Soloman Press Book, New York 1998


Reference #: 12098

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, man's greatest intellectual adventure, has rocked his faith and engendered dreams of a material Utopia. At its most abstract, science shades into philosophy; at its most practical, it cures disease. It has eased our lives and threatened our existence. It aspires, but in some very basic ways fails, to understand the ant and the Creation, the infinitesimal atom and the mind-bludgeoning immensity of the cosmos. It has laid its hand on the shoulders of poets and politicians, philosophers and charlatans. Its beauty is often apparent only to the initiated, its perils are generally misunderstood, its importance has been both over- and underestimated, and its fallibility, and that of those who create it, is often glossed over or malevolently exaggerated.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xiii)


Reference #: 12106

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: THEORY

Some see the fragility of scientific theory as an indication of a basic inability of science to explain the universe. But scientific change is almost always accompanied by an increase in our ability to rationalize and predict the course of nature. Newton could explain far more than Aristotle, Einstein far more than Newton. Science frequently stumbles, but it gets up and carries on. The road is long.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xiii)


Reference #: 12096

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is not a harmless intellectual pastime. In the last two centuries we have moved from being simply observers of nature to being, in a modest but growing way, its controller. Concomitantly, we have occasionally disturbed the balance of nature in ways that we did not always understand. Science has to be watched. The layman can no longer afford to stand to one side, ignorant of the meaning of advances that will determine the kind of world that his children will inhabit-and the kind of children that he will have. Science has become part of the human race's way of conceiving of and manipulating its future. The manipulation of the future is not a question to be left to philosophers. The answers can affect the national budget, the health of your next child, and the long-term prospects for life on this planet.


The Ascent of Science
Preface
(p. xiv)
Soloman Press Book, New York 1998


Reference #: 12094

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: THEORY

Facts may be regarded as indisputable; theories are not.


The Ascent of Science
Part I, Chapter 2
(p. 19)


Reference #: 12093

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: ATOM

In solids, atoms or molecules generally occupy permanent sites from which they rarely stray, but they can be crudely envisaged as a gospel choir, each singer swaying, wobbling, and bobbing up and down, but remaining tethered to their places as a consequence of the close proximity of their neighbours.


The Ascent of Science


Reference #: 12092

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Whatever the Sun may be, said D. H. Lawrence, it is certainly not a ball of flaming gas. Helios, the sun god, has more sex appeal than a cloud of gas, however hot. Lawrence spoke for my friend Jill, and for many others who see science systematically chipping away at the mysterious, but generally benign, unknown and arrogantly replacing it with the dull, prosaic, down-to-earth known. The mechanical universe, the ice-cold clock, is not something you want to curl up with on a winter's night. Genesis 9:13 reads: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. The scientist's rainbow is the result of the different refractive indices of the various frequencies of light that make up solar radiation. But man evidently prefers mystery to math, and the intrusion of science into the movements of the planets and the stars, into the living cell and into that final sanctuary of the spirit, the mind, has undoubtedly cast a chill over that warm, blurred garden, the theocentric universe. The scientist, ruthlessly buying up desirable property, appears to many people to be building an automated factory in the middle of the garden. For this reason, science has, for some, become an unwanted neighbor.


The Ascent of Science
Part IX, Chapter 36
(p. 485)


Reference #: 12091

Silver, Brian L.
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Scientific ideas have affected the relationship of man to society, his ideas of God, and his image of himself. Science has influenced the way people write poetry and the way they paint pictures. In the hands of bigots, it has provided a theoretical justification for the sterilization of some human beings and the enslavement of others. Science, as a source of ideas, is a major character in the human drama.


The Ascent of Science


Reference #: 6837

Silverberg, Robert
General Category: ARCHAEOLOGIST

Salvage archaeologists are men against time, seizing the shreds of the past from the jaws of destruction.


Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Men Against Time, Chapter 11
(p. 190)


Reference #: 17982

Simes, James
General Category: HEAVENS

The prose of the heavens surpasses the brightest poetry of earth.


William Herschel and His Work
Star-Dust, Chapter V, Ocean of Ether
(p. 153)


Reference #: 5841

Simmons, Charles
General Category: DISEASE

The diseases and 'evils which flesh is heir to,' are all the messengers of God, to rebuke us for our sins, and ought so to be regarded.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 148)


Reference #: 5837

Simmons, Charles
General Category: HEALTH

He that wants health wants everything.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 234)


Reference #: 5836

Simmons, Charles
General Category: DIET

When I behold a fashionable table, set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal, but man, keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or mushroom can escape him.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 486)


Reference #: 5835

Simmons, Charles
General Category: COLDS

Zealously nurse a cold with warm weather, and light and scanty food, till well cured, or repentance will be upon you.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 87)


Reference #: 5839

Simmons, Charles
General Category: HEALTH

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 234)


Reference #: 5834

Simmons, Charles
General Category: COLDS

The best way to cure a cold is, not to catch another.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 87)


Reference #: 5838

Simmons, Charles
General Category: DIET

He who eats of but one dish, never wants a physician.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 234)


Reference #: 5833

Simmons, Charles
General Category: REMEDY COLDS

Starve a fever, and cram a cold.


Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker
(p. 87)


Reference #: 14656

Simmons, G. F.
General Category: MATHEMATICAL

Mathematical rigor is like clothing; in its style it ought to suit the occasion, and it diminishes comfort and restricts freedom of movement if it is either too loose or too tight.


The Mathematical Intelligencer
Filler, Vol. 13, No. 1, Winter 1991
(p. 69)


Reference #: 16751

Simon, Anne W.
General Category: SAND

The end product, rock's irreducible minimum, is sand. Hold it in your hands and you are in touch with the planet's essence. Each grain has been part of the Earth's solid crust at one time or another, eventually to be freed from rock to exist as a grain again, its particular structure intact.


The Thin Edge
Chapter 2
(pp. 17-18)


Reference #: 16364

Simon, Herbert
General Category: PROBLEM

The more difficult and novel the problem, the greater is likely to be the amount of trial and error required to find a solution. At the same time, the trial and error is not completely random or blind; it is, in fact, rather highly selective. The new expressions that are obtained by transforming given ones are examined to see whether they represent progress toward the goal. Indications of progress spur further search in the same direction; lack of progress signals the abandonment of a line of search. Problem solving requires selective trial and error.


The Sciences of the Artificial
Chapter 4
(pp. 95-96)


Reference #: 16362

Simon, Herbert
General Category: PROBLEM

...human problem solving, from the most blundering to the most insightful, involves nothing more than varying mixtures of trial and error and selectivity.


The Sciences of the Artificial
Chapter 4
(p. 97)


Reference #: 6971

Simon, Herbert
General Category: DISCOVERY

...scientific discovery, when viewed in detail, is an excruciatingly slow and painful process.


In Robert G. Colodny
Mind and Cosmos
Scientific Discovery and the Psychology of Problem Solving
(p. 24)


Reference #: 7108

Simon, Herbert
General Category: PROBLEM

The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world - or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.


Models of Man: Social and Rational
Part IV
(p. 198)


Reference #: 758

Simon, Herbert
General Category: DECISION

Decisions are something more than factual propositions. To be sure, they are descriptive of a future state of affairs, and this description can be true or false in a strictly empirical sense; but they possess, in addition, an imperative quality—they select one future state of affairs in preference to another and direct behavior toward the chosen alternative. In short, they have an ethical as well as factual content.


Administrative Behavior
Chapter III
(p. 46)


Reference #: 10071

Simon, Herbert
General Category: UNIQUE

The definition of man's uniqueness has always formed the kernel of his cosmological and ethical systems. With Copernicus and Galileo, he ceased to be the species located at the centre of the universe, attended by sun and stars. With Darwin, he ceased to be the species created and specially endowed by God with soul and reason. With Freud he ceased to be the species whose behavior was—potentially - governable by rational mind. As we begin to produce mechanisms that think and learn, he has ceased to be the species uniquely capable of complex, intelligent manipulation of his environment.


Science
What Computers Mean for Man and Society, March 18, 1977


Reference #: 16363

Simon, Herbert A.
General Category: PROGRESS SCIENCE

We watch an ant making his laborious way across a wind-and-wave-moulded beach. He moves ahead, angles to the right to ease his climb up a steep dunelet, detours around a pebbl?&Thus he makes his weaving, halting wa?&I sketch the path on a piece of paper. It is a sequence of irregular, angular segments—not quite a random walk, for it has an underlying sense of direction, of aiming toward a goal.

I show the unlabeled sketch to a friend. Whose path is it? An expert skier, perhaps, slaloming down a steep and somewhat rocky slope. Or a sloop, beating upwind in a channel dotted with islands or shoals. Perhaps it is a path in a more abstract space: the course of search of a student seeking the proof of a theorem in geometry.

Whoever made the path, and in whatever space, why is it not straight;why does it not aim directly from its starting point to its goal?


The Sciences of the Artificial
Chapter 2
(pp. 23-24)


Reference #: 16361

Simon, Herbert A.
General Category: SCIENCE

The central task of a natural science is to make the wonderful commonplace: to show that complexity, correctly viewed, is only a mask for simplicity; to find pattern hidden in apparent chaos.


The Sciences of the Artificial
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 17661

Simonson, Roy
General Category: SOIL

Be it deep or shallow, red or black, sand or clay, the soil is the link between the rock core of the earth and the living things on its surface. It is the foothold for the plants we grow. Therein lies the main reason for our interest in soils.


USDA Yearbook of Agriculture
1957


Reference #: 17285

Simpson, G.G.
General Category: BIOLOGY

Biology, then, is the science that stands at the centre of all science. It is the science most directly aimed at science's major goal and most definitive of that goal. And it is here, in the field where all the principles of all the sciences are embodied, that science can truly become unified.


This View of Life
(p. 107)
New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press


Reference #: 17287

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

Until comparatively recently, many - probably most - biologists agreed with Darwin that the problem of the origin of life was not yet amenable to scientific study. Now, however, almost all biologists agree that the problem can be attacked scientifically. The consensus is that life did arise naturally from the nonliving and that even the first living things were not specially created.


This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist


Reference #: 17286

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

Organic evolution is one of the basic facts and characteristics of the objective world. From one point of view it is the basic thing about that world, because it is the process by which the universe's greatest complexities arise and systematic organization culminates. Being the process by which we ourselves came to be, it is crucial for comprehension of our place in and relationship to the objective world.


This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 17288

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

Suppose that the most fundamental and general principle of a science had been known for over a century and had long since become a main basis for understanding and research by scientists in that field. You would surely assume that the principle would be taken as a matter of course by everyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the science. It would obviously be taught everywhere as basic to the science at any level of education. If you think that about biology, however, you are wrong. Evolution is such a principle in biology. Although almost everyone has heard of it, most Americans have only the scantest and most distorted idea of its real nature and significance.


This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist
Chapter Two
(p. 26)


Reference #: 17289

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: ORGANIZATION

The point about explanation in biology that I would particularly like to stress is this: to understand organisms one must explain their organization. It is elementary that one must know what is organized and how it is organized, but that does not explain the fact or the nature of the organization itself. Such explanation requires knowledge of how an organism came to be organized and what function the organization serves. Ultimate explanation in biology is therefore necessarily evolutionary.


This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist
Chapter Six
(p. 113)


Reference #: 17290

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: MAN

It is obvious that the great majority of humans throughout history have had grossly, even ridiculously, unrealistic concepts of the world. Man is, among many other things, the mistaken animal, the foolish animal. Other species doubtless have much more limited ideas about the world, but what ideas they do have are much less likely to be wrong and are never foolish. White cats do not denigrate black, and dogs do not ask Baal, Jehovah, or other Semitic gods to perform miracles for them.


This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist
Preface
(p. viii)


Reference #: 3189

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: ANIMAL GUANACO

The guanaco is a camel but
He hasn't got a hump.
He's about three-quarters mountain goat
And seven-eighths a chump.


Concession to the Improbable
Chapter 8
(p. 72)


Reference #: 7881

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

As for the scope of science, it includes everything known to exist or to happen in the material universe. Since the arts, philosophy, and theology do exist in the material universe, they too are within the scope of science and can properly be studied as psychological, anthropological, and biological phenomena.


Notes on the Nature of Science
Notes on the Nature of Science by a Biologist
(pp. 11-12)
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1962


Reference #: 6479

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: SCIENCE

The important distinction between science and those other systematizations [i.e., art, philosophy, and theology] is that science is self-testing and self-correcting. Here the essential point of science is respect for objective fact. What is correctly observed must be believed....the competent scientist does quite the opposite of the popular stereotype of setting out to prove a theory; he seeks to disprove it.


Notes on the Nature of Science
Notes on the Nature of Science by a Biologist
(p. 9)
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1962


Reference #: 3108

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: FOSSIL

Fossil hunting is by far the most fascinating of all sports. It has some danger, enough to give it zest and probably about as much as in the average modern engineered big-game hunt, and danger is wholly to the hunter. It has uncertainty and excitement and all the thrill of gambling with not of its vivious features. The hunter never knows what his bag may be, perhaps nothing, perhaps a creature never before seen by human eyes. It requires knowledge, skill, and some degree of hardihood. And its results are so much more important, more worthwhile than those of any other sport! The fossil hunter does not kill, he resurrects. And the result of this sport is to add to the sum of human pleasure and to the treasure of human knowledge.


Attending Marvels
Chapter IV
(p. 82)
1934


Reference #: 6153

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: FOSSIL

The history of life ceases to be hypothesis and inference and becomes direct knowledge when fossils are available.


Life: An Introduction to Biology
Chapter 29
(p. 756)


Reference #: 4617

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

The fact that theories are not subject to absolute and final proof has led to a serious vulgar misapprehension. Theory is contrasted with fact as if the two had no relationship or were antitheses: 'Evolution is only a theory, not a fact.' Of course, theories are not facts. They are generalizations about facts and explanations of facts, based on and tested by facts. As such they may be just as certain - merit just as much confidence - as what are popularly termed 'facts.' Belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is the confident application of a generalization. The theory that life has evolved is founded on much more evidence than supports the generalization that the sun rises every day. In the vernacular, we are justified in calling both 'facts.'


Life: An Introduction to Biology
(p. 16)


Reference #: 1739

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: BIOLOGIST

When bright young biologists speak of genetics without genes and wise old biologists of life without organisms it is evident that something peculiar is going on in the science of biology, so peculiar that "crisis" is not too strong a word. I would diagnose this as combining monomania and schizophrenia.


Biology and Man
Chapter One
(p. 3)


Reference #: 9255

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: TAXONOMY

Taxonomy is a science, but its application to classification involves a great deal of human contrivance and ingenuity, in short, of art. In this art there is leeway for personal taste, even foibles, but there are also canons that help to make some classifications better, more meaningful, more useful than others.


Principles of Animal Taxonomy
From Taxonomy to Classification
(p. 107)


Reference #: 10101

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: OBSERVATION

It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really about anything...or at the very best, they are not science.


Science
The Non-prevalence of Humanoids, Vol. 143, 1964
(p. 769)


Reference #: 14686

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: LIFE

The historian of life takes not only knowledge of fossils but also a tremendous array of pertinent facts from other fields of earth sciences and of life sciences and weaves them all into an integral interpretation of what the world of life is like and how it came to be so. Finally, he is bound to reflect still more deeply and to face the riddles of the meaning and nature of life and of man as well as problems of human values and conduct. The history of life certainly bears directly on all these riddles and problems, and realization of its won value demands investigation of this bearing.


The Meaning of Evolution


Reference #: 9684

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

...the fossil record shows very clearly that there is no central line leading steadily, in a goal-directed way, from a protozoan to man. Instead there has been continual and extremely intricate branching, and whatever course we follow through the branches there are repeated changes both in the rate and in the direction of evolution. Man is the end of one ultimate twig....Even slight changes in earlier parts of the history would have profound cumulative effects on all descendent organisms through the succeeding millions of generations....The existing species would surely have been different if the start had been different, and if any stage of the histories of organisms and their environments had been different. Thus the existence of our present species depends on a very precise sequence of causative events through some two billion years or more. Man cannot be an exception to this rule. If the causal chain had been different, homo sapiens would not exist.


Science
The Nonprevalence of Humanoids, Vol. 143, 1964


Reference #: 13243

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

It has been said by some theorists that cases like that of the crocodile, virtually unchanged for 100 million years and more, represent a failure of the evolutionary force, a blind alley, a long senescence. As I gazed at my antagonist, it occurred to me how false this is. Here was no failure but an adaptation so successful that once developed it has never needed to change. Is it, perhaps, not the success but the failure of adaptation that has forced evolving life onward to what we, at least, consider higher levels?


The Dechronization of Sam Magruder
(p. 55)


Reference #: 9253

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: SYSTEM

Systematics is the scientific study of the kinds and diversity of organisms and of any and all relationships among them.


Principles of Animal Taxonomy
Systematics, Taxonomy, Classification, Nomenclature
(p. 7)


Reference #: 11758

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: BIOLOGY

Experimental biology…may reveal what happens to a hundred rats in the course of ten years under fixed and simple conditions, but not what happened to a billion rats in the course of ten million years under the fluctuating conditions of earth history. Obviously, the latter problem is more important.


Tempo and Mode in Evolution
Introduction
(p. xvii)
Columbia University Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1944


Reference #: 11757

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: PUSILLANIMOUS

It is however, pusillanimous to avoid making our best efforts today because they may appear inadequate tomorrow. Indeed, therre would be no tomorrow for science if this common attitude were universal. Facts are useless to science unless they are understood. They are to be understood only by theoretical interpretation. The data will never be complete, and their useful, systematic acquisition is dependent upon the interpretation of the incomplete data already at hand.


Tempo and Mode in Evolution
Introduction
(p. xviii)


Reference #: 11759

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: EVOLUTION

The basic problems of evolution are so broad that they cannot hopefully be attacked from the point of view of a single scientific discipline.


Tempo and Mode in Evolution
Introduction
(p. xv)


Reference #: 11760

Simpson, George Gaylord
Born: 16 June, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Died: 6 October, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
General Category: PALEONTOLOGISTS

Not long ago paleontologists felt that a geneticist was a person who shut himself in a room, pulled down the shades, watched small flies disporting themselves in milk bottles, and thought that he was studying nature. A pursuit so removed from the realities of life, they said, had no significance for the true biologist. On the other hand, the geneticists said that paleontology had no further contributions to make to biology, that its only point has been the completed demonstration of the truth of evolution, and that it was a subject too purely descriptive to merit the name "science." The paleontologist, they believed, is like a man who undertakes to study the principles of the internal combustion engine by standing on a street corner and watching the motor cars whizz by.


Tempo and Mode in Evolution
Introduction
(p. xv)


Reference #: 5847

Simpson, Michael A.
General Category: PUBLISH

We still consistently overvalue poor research and semi-literate publication; again, partly, because quantity, in number of publications, is easier to measure than quality.


Lancet
A Mythology of Medical Education, Vol. 3, 1974


Reference #: 7540

Simpson, N. F.
General Category: PROBLEM

And suppose we solve all the problems it presents? What happens? We end up with more problems than we started with. Because that's the way problems propagate their species. A problem left to itself dries up or goes rotten. But fertilize a problem with a solution - you'll hatch out dozens.


New English Dramatists 2
A Resounding Tinkle, Act I, scene 1
(pp. 80-81)


Reference #: 583

Singer, C.
General Category: LIFE

We are always looking for metaphors in which to express our ideas of life, for our language is inadequate for all its complexities. Life is a labyrinth ...Life is a machine ...Life is a laboratory ...It is but a metaphor. When we speak of ultimate things we can, maybe, speak only in metaphors. Life is a dance, a very elaborate and complex dance...


A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900
Chapter IX, Section 6
(p. 498)


Reference #: 578

Singer, Charles
General Category: MEASURE

Galileo showed men of science that weighing and measuring are worthwhile. Newton convinced a large proportion of them that weighing and measuring are the only investigations that are worthwhile.


A Short History of Medicine
Chapter V, Section 1
(p. 138)


Reference #: 4804

Singh, Jagjit
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

In the beginning there was neither heaven nor earth,
And there was neither space nor time.
And the Earth, the Sun, the Stars, the Galaxies and the whole universe were
confined within a small volume like the bottled genie of the Arabian Nights.
And then God said, 'Go!'
And straight way the Galaxies rushed out of their prison, scattering in all
directions, and they have continued to run away from one another ever since,
afraid lest some cosmic Hand should gather them again and put them back in
the bottle (which is not bigger than a pin-point).
And they shall continue to scatter thus till they fade from each other's ken -
and thus, for each other, cease to exist at all.


Great Ideas of Modern Mathematics
Space and Time
(pp. 209-210)


Reference #: 2095

Sinnott, E.W.
General Category: LIFE

Life can be studied fruitfully in its highest as well as its lowest manifestations. The biochemist can tell us much about protoplasmic organisation, but so can the artist. Life is the business of the poet as well as of the physiologist.


Cell and Psyche
Chapter III
(p. 107)


Reference #: 16618

Sinsheimer, Robert L.
General Category: SCIENTIST

I am a scientist, a member of a most fortunate species. The lives of most people are filled with ephemera. All too soon, much of humanity becomes mired in the tepid tracks of their short lives. But a happy few of us have the privilege to live with and explore the eternal.


The Strands of a Life: The Science of DNA and the Art of Education


Reference #: 10501

Sirach 38:4
General Category: MEDICINE

The Lord Hath created medicines out of the earth: and he that is wise will not abhor them.


The Bible


Reference #: 18165

Sizzi, Francisco
General Category: PLANET JUPITER

The satellites [Jupiter's moons] are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist.


In Joseph Jastrow
The Story of Human Error
Error in Astronomy
(p. 51) (1610)
D. Appleton-Century Company, Incorporated, New York, New York, United States of America; 1936


Reference #: 12727

Skelton, John
General Category: TEETH

In the spyght of his tethe...


The Complete English Poems
Why Come Ye Nat to Courte
l. 942


Reference #: 17748

Skinner, B.F.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

We give them an excellent survey of the methods and techniques of thinking, taken from logic, statistics, scientific method, psychology, and mathematics.


Walden
Two
(p. 111)


Reference #: 2726

Skinner, B.F.
General Category: STUDY

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.


Cumulative Record
A Case History in Scientific Method
(p. 81)


Reference #: 11885

Skinner, B.F.
General Category: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Here was a first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.


The American Psychologist
A Case History in Scientific Method, Vol. 11, 1956
(p. 223)


Reference #: 11973

Skinner, Cornelia Otis
General Category: EVOLUTION

It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.


The Ape in Me
The Ape In Me
(p. 3)


Reference #: 11596

Skolimowski, Henryk
General Category: THEORY

Theories, like old soldiers, fade away rather than being killed on the scientific battlefield.


In A.J. Ayala, ed.
Studies in the Philosophy of Biology
Problems of Rationality in Biology
(p. 217)


Reference #: 11595

Skolimowski, Henryk
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

We are the proud inheritors and perpetuators of the scientific tradition. But perhaps also the slaves of certain modes of thinking; subjects to a conceptual tyranny which we glorify, thus being perfect slaves - slaves who enjoy their imprisonment.


In A.J. Ayala (ed.)
Studies in the Philosophy of Biology
Problems of Rationality in Biology
(p. 213)


Reference #: 8014

Skwara, T.
General Category: FOSSIL

Fossils in isolation are antiquarian objects; in the absence of context and concepts they are mute. But with concpetual models and technical tools at our disposal, a rich and luxuriant tapestry-the history of life on earth-emerges. Fossils, time, and change are the foundations of that history.


Old Bones and Serpent Stones
Section I
(p. 9)


Reference #: 5693

Slater, John C.
General Category: THEORY

A theoretical physicist in these days asks just one thing of his theories: if he uses them to calculate the outcome of an experiment, the theoretical prediction must agree, within limits, with the result of the experiment. He does not ordinarily argue about philosophical implications of his theory. Almost his only recent contribution to philosophy has been the operational idea, which is essentially only a different way of phrasing the statement I have just made, that the one and only thing to be done with a theory is to predict the outcome of an experiment. As a physicist, I find myself very well satisfied with this attitude. Questions about a theory which do not affect its ability to predict experimental results correctly seem to me quibbles about words, rather than anything more substantial, and I am quite content to leave such questions to those who derive some satisfaction from them.


Journal of the Franklin Institute
Electrodynamics of Ponderable Bodies, Vol. 225, Number. 3, March 1938
(pp. 277-287)


Reference #: 10756

Slobodkin, Lawrence B.
General Category: SIMPLICITY

The awkward richness of possibilities seems to shatter any possible coherent theory of simplicity...


Simplicity and Complexity in Games of the Intellect
Chapter 10
(p. 204)


Reference #: 9962

Slonim, Morris James
General Category: AVERAGE

It is a well-known statistical paradox that the average age of women over forty is under forty...


Sampling
(p. 26)


Reference #: 7609

Slossen, E.E.
General Category: ELEMENT NITROGEN

For nitrogen plays a double role in human economy. It appears like Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Destroyer.


In Bernard Jaffe
New World of Chemistry
(p. 225)


Reference #: 5784

Slosson, E.E.
General Category: BOOK

The Book of Nature is issued only in uncut editions, and the scientist has to open its pages one by one as he reads.


Keeping Up with Science
Introduction
(p. vi)


Reference #: 3204

Slosson, E.E.
General Category: BOOK

One obstacle in the way of spreading science, that is of inculcating the scientific habit of mind, is that people have learned to read too well. Books may become an impediment to learning. Our students are taught how to learn to read but not always how to read to learn.


Digest of the Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the American Association for Adult Education
Adult Education in Science, 1927
(p. 53)


Reference #: 2146

Slosson, Edwin E.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Translating mathematics into ordinary language is like translating music. It cannot be done. One could describe in detail a sheet of music and tell the shape of each note and where it is placed on the staff, but that would ot convey any idea of how it would sound when played. So, too, I suppose that even the most complicated equation could be described in common words, but it would be so verbose and involved that nobody could get the sense of it.


Chats on Science
Chapter LXXIV
(pp. 226-227)
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., London, England; 1924


Reference #: 2145

Slosson, Edwin E.
General Category: SCIENCE

Most people think of science as a serious and solemn thing, a strain upon the strongest intellect.
So it is for the pioneers of scientific progress, but not for those who merely follow along behind.


Chats on Science
Introduction
(p. 1)
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., London, England; 1924


Reference #: 2147

Slosson, Edwin E.
General Category: LAWS

Therre are no laws in nature. What we call the "laws of nature" are the memory schemes we invent to aid us in grasping a lot of facts at one time. When our knowledge is growing rapidly, as it is now, we have to shift to new and larger formulas very suddenly. But this requires stretching the mind to take in bigger ideas, which is as painful a process as stretching an unused muscle. No wonder we tend to dodge it.


Chats on Science
Chapter LXXX
(pp. 248-249)
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., London, England; 1924


Reference #: 15700

Smart, C.
General Category: ARCHITECTURE

Ma'm, architecture you're not skill'd in,
I don't approve your way of building;
In this there's nothing like design,
Pray learn the use of Gunter's line.


The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart
The Blockhead And Beehive, Fable X
l. 59-62


Reference #: 9018

Smart, Christopher
General Category: SUN

Glorious the sun in mid-career;
Glorious th' assembled fires appear.


Poems by Christopher Smart
A Song to David, LXXXIV


Reference #: 4412

Smedley, F.E.
General Category: FACT

...the facts, the stubborn, immovable facts.


Frank Fairlegh or Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil
Chapter 49


Reference #: 7370

Smellie, William
General Category: NATURAL HISTORY

Natural History is the most extensive, and perhaps the most instructive and entertaining of all the sciences. It is the chief source from which human knowledge is derived. To recommend the study of it from motives of utility, were to affront the understanding of mankind. Its importance, accordingly, in the arts of life, and in storing the mind with just ideas of external objects, as well as of their relations to the human race, was early perceived by all nations in their progress from rudeness to refinement.


In Buffon, Comte de Georges, Louis Leclerc
Natural History, General and Particular
Vol. I, Preface by the Translator
(p. ix)


Reference #: 17308

Smiles, Samuel
General Category: CLASSIFICATION

A place for everything and everything in its place.


Thrift
Chapter 5
(p. 66)


Reference #: 16944

Smith, Adam
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.


The Wealth of Nations
Book V, Chapter I, part III, section III
(p. 748)


Reference #: 16945

Smith, Adam
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.


The Wealth of Nations
Book V, Chapter I, Of the Expences of the Sovereign or Commonwealth, PART iii, Of the Expence of public Works and public Institutions


Reference #: 14802

'Smith, Adam' pseud. Gooeman, George J. W.
General Category: NUMBER

...those who live by numbers can also perish by them and it is a terrifying thing to have an adding machine write an epitaph, either way.


The Money Game
Chapter 7
(p. 84)


Reference #: 3462

Smith, Alexander
General Category: BOOK

Books are a finer world within the world...When I go to my long sleep, on a book will my head be pillowed.


Dreamthorp
Men of Letters


Reference #: 17045

Smith, B. Webster
General Category: OBSERVE

It is extreaordinary how unobservant human beings are, as a rule, or things by which they are continually surrounded, but which do not form the subject of their immediate attention.


The World in the Past
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 7484

Smith, Bertha Wilcox
General Category: ARACHNID SPIDER

Throughout the night he spun a thread
With which he wove medallioned lace
That stretched between two milkweed pods
Beside a dusty, traveled place;
The pattern was a scalloped round—
Each radius exactly drawn
With trellised filaments between,
And over all bright diamonds shone;
In meshed and tenuous design
It was a fragile, wayside sonnet—
The maker, heedless of acclaim,
Had left no signature upon it.


Nature Magazine
ANouymous, Vol. 50, No. 5, May 1957
(p. 234)


Reference #: 683

Smith, Betty
General Category: CHEMISTRY

Francie came away from her first chemistry lecture in a glow. In one hour she found out that everything was made up of atoms which were in continual motion. She grasped the idea that nothing was ever lost or destroyed. Even if something was burned up or rot away, it did not disappear from the face of the earth; it changed into something else - gases, liquids, and powders. Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion.


A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Chapter XLIX
(p. 389)


Reference #: 16707

Smith, D. E.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Geometry is a mountain. Vigor is needed for its ascent. The views all along the paths are magnificent. The effort of climbing is stimulating. A guide who points out the beauties, the grandeur, and the special places of interest commands the admiration of his group of pilgrims.
One who fails to do this, who does not know the paths, who puts unnecessary burdens upon the pilgrim, or who blindfolds him in his progress, is unworthy of his position. The pretended guide who says that the painted panorama, seen from the rubber-tired car, is as good as the view from the summit is simply a fakir and is generally recognized as such. The mountain will stand; it will not be used as a mere commercial quarry for building stone; it will not be affected by pellets thrown from the little hillocks about; but its paths will be freed from unnecessary flints, they will be straightened where this can advantageously be done, and new paths on entirely novel plans will be made as time goes on, but these paths will be hewed out of rock, not made out of the dreams of a day. Every worthy guide will assist in all these efforts at betterment, and will urge the pilgrim at least to ascend a little way because of the fact that the same view cannot be obtained from other peaks; but he will not take seriously the efforts of the fakir, nor will he listen with more than passing interest to him who proclaims the sand heap to be a Matterhorn.


The Teaching of Geometry
(p. 333).
Boston, massachusetts, United States of America: Ginn, 1911


Reference #: 17730

Smith, David
General Category: REALITY

Everything imagined is reality. The mind cannot conceive unreal things.


Vogue
The Private Thoughts of David Smith, November 15, 1968
(p. 198)


Reference #: 15986

Smith, David Eugene
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...I would rather be a dreamer without mathematics, than a mathematician without dreams.


The Poetry of Mathematics and Other Essays
(p. 30)


Reference #: 15985

Smith, David Eugene
General Category: MATHEMATICS

I know of nothing which acts as such a powerful antidote that which I ventured to call "opinionatedness," as a study of mathematics.


The Poetry of Mathematics and Other Essays
(p. 35)


Reference #: 15984

Smith, David Eugene
General Category: MATHEMATICS

One thing that mathematics early implants, unless hindered from so doing, is the idea that here, at last, is an immortality that is seemingly tangible - the immortality of a mathematical law.


The Poetry of Mathematics and Other Essays
(pp. 31-32)


Reference #: 6538

Smith, E.E.
General Category: PARADOX

With sufficient knowledge, any possible so-called paradox can be resolved.


Masters of the Vortex
(p. 110)


Reference #: 3402

Smith, George O.
General Category: SIMPLICITY

I am convinced that, at its best, science is simple-that the simplest arrangement of facts that sets forth the truth best deserves the term scientific. So the geology I plead for is that which states facts in plain words-in language understood by the may rather than only by the few. Plain geology need little defining, and I may state my case best by trying to set forth the reasons why we have strayed so far away from the simple type.


Economic Geology
Plain Geology, Vol. 17, No. 1 1922
(p. 34)


Reference #: 2224

Smith, George Otis
General Category: FACT

In this partnership of engineer and economist, it will be the engineer's part to furnish most of the facts. The engineer calls them 'plain' facts, because they do not lend themselves to display as readily as theoretical phrases. He uses facts, not pieces on a chessboard to be moved back and forth in a contest of wits, but rather as foundation stones to be assembled in orderly fashion to hold up the superstructure of conclusions.


Civil Engineering
What are the Facts?, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 1932
(p. 155)


Reference #: 2225

Smith, George Otis
General Category: FACT

...statistics need to be much more than the output of a battery of adding machines. The ideal collection of facts is the man who has spent years as a specialist in the work and in this way knows the reality behind the words and figures. Only the personal touch that comes from intimate familiarity with facts at their source can give life to statistics.


Civil Engineering
What are the Facts?, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 1932
(p. 154)


Reference #: 2226

Smith, George Otis
General Category: FACT

Facts that have aged in the course of their collection and preparation for consumption are likely to be too stale for practical use. Dating an egg doesn't keep it good. .


Civil Engineering
What are the Facts?, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 1932
(p. 155)


Reference #: 2057

Smith, Goldwin
General Category: GEOLOGY

In my youth, geology was nervously striving to accomodate itself to Genesis. Now it is Genesis that is striving to accomodate itself to geology.


In Robert M. Hamilton
Canadian Quotations and Phrases
Lines of Religious Inquiry, Address, Toronto
(p. 5)


Reference #: 10014

Smith, H. Allen
General Category: TEMPERATURE

The radiation falling on heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation. In other words, heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the earth by radiation. Using the well-known Stefan-Boltzmann fourth-power law for radiation where H is the absolute temperature of heaven and E is the absolute temperature of the earth—300° C. (273 plus 27). This gives H as 798° absolute or 525° C. The exact temperature cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6° C., the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas....If it were above this point it would be a vapor and not a lake. We have then the following: Temperature of heaven, 525° C. or 977° F. Temperature of hell, less than 445° C. or less than 833° F. Therefore, heaven is hotter than hell.


Saturday Review
from Martin Levin's, Phoenix Nest, May 1960


Reference #: 9519

Smith, H. Allen
General Category: DENTIST

Barbers were the original dentists, and barbers have traditionally been gabby. So it is that dentists, by retrogression, are usually quite articulate while they work. But there is an important difference between the garrulous dentist and the verbose barber: a customer in the barber's chair can answer back.


Quote, The Weekly Digest
February 19, 1967
(p. 144)


Reference #: 7460

Smith, H.J.S.
General Category: PHYSICS

So intimate is the union between mathematics and physics that probably by far the larger part of the accessions to our mathematical knowledge have been obtained by the efforts of mathematicians to solve the problems set to them by experiment, and to create "for each successive class of phenomena, a new calculus or a new geometry, as the case might be, which might prove not wholly inadequate to the subtlety of nature." Sometimes, indeed, the mathematician has been before the physicists, and it has happened that when some great and new question has occurred to the experimentalist or the observer, he has found in the armory of the mathematician the weapons which he has needed ready made to his hand. But, much oftener, the questions proposed by the physicist have transcended the utmost powers of the mathematics of the time, and a fresh mathematical creation has been needed to supply the logical instrument requisite to interpret the new enigma.


Nature
Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A, Vol. 8, No. 204, September 25, 1873
(p. 450)


Reference #: 6855

Smith, H.J.S.
General Category: ARITHMETIC

[Arithmetic] is one of the oldest branches, perhaps the very oldest branch, of human knowledge; and yet some of its most abstruse secrets lie close to its tritest truths.


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


Reference #: 7420

Smith, Henry J.S.
General Category: GEOMETRY

One thing at least they have not forgotten that, geometry is nothing if it be not rigorous, and that the whole educational value of the study is lost, if strictness of demonstration be trifled with. The methods of Euclid are, by almost universal consent, unexceptionable in point of rigour.


Nature
Opening Address by the President, Section A, Vol. 8, September 25, 1873
(p. 450)


Reference #: 4466

Smith, Homer
General Category: KIDNEY

There are those who say that the human kidney was created to keep the blood pure, or more precisely, to keep our internal environment in an ideal balanced state. This I must deny. I grant that the human kidney is a marvelous organ, but I cannot grant that it was purposefully designed to excrete urine or to regulate the composition of the blood or to subserve the physiological welfare of Homo sapiens in any sense. Rather I contend that the human kidney manufactures the kind of urine that it does, and it maintains the blood in the composition which that fluid has, because the kidney has a certain functional architecture; and it owes that architecture not to design or foresight or to any plan, but to the fact that the earth is an unstable sphere with a fragile crust, to the geologic revolutions that for six hundred million years have raised and lowered continents and seas, to the predacious enemies, and heat and cold, and storms and droughts; to the unending succession of vicissitudes that have driven the mutant verterbrates from sea into fresh water, into desiccated swamps, out upon the dry land, from one habitation to another, perpetually in search of the free and independent life, perpetually failing, for one reason or another, to find.


From Fish to Philosopher
Chapter 13
(pp. 210-211)


Reference #: 4464

Smith, Homer W.
General Category: RESEARCH

On every scientist's desk there is a drawer labeled UNKNOWN in which he files what are at the moment unsolved questions, lest through guess-work or impatient speculation he come upon incorrect answers that will do him more harm than good. Man's worst fault is opening the drawer too soon. His task is not to discover final answers but to win the best partial answers that he can, from which others may move confidently against the unknown, to win better ones.


From Fish to Philosopher
Chapter 13
(p. 231)


Reference #: 4465

Smith, Homer W.
General Category: SCIENTIST

A scientist is one who, when he does not know the answer, is rigorously disciplined to speak up and say so unashamedly; which is the essential feature by which modern science is distinguished from primitive superstition, which knew all the answers except how to say, 'I do not know.'


From Fish to Philosopher
Chapter 13
(p. 210)


Reference #: 8016

Smith, J.B.L.
General Category: FISH COELACANTH

Coelacanth—yes, God! Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was a true Coecalcanth. It could have been one of those creatures of 200 million years ago come alive again. I forgot everything else and just looked and looked, and then almost fearfully went close up and touched and stroked.


Old Fourlegs: The Story of the Coelacanth
Longman, Green Publishers, London, England; 1956


Reference #: 16735

Smith, John Maynard
General Category: EVOLUTION

Evolution is merely a reflection of changed sequences of bases in nuclleic acid molecules.


The Theory of Evolution


Reference #: 10204

Smith, John Maynard
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.


Science and Myth


Reference #: 16189

Smith, John Pye
General Category: GEOLOGY RELIGION

If from the discoveries of Astronomy and Geology we infer that the created universe, including our own globe, has existed through an unknown but unspeakably long period of time past; and IF, from the records of revelation, we draw the conclusion that the work of creation, or at least so far as respects our planet, took place not quite six thousand years ago; it is evident that the two positions cannot stand: one destroys the other. One of them must be an error; both may be wrong; only one can be right.


The Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science
(p. 15)


Reference #: 4052

Smith, Langdon
General Category: AMPHIBIAN

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease `neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.


Evolution


Reference #: 9033

Smith, Langdon
General Category: EVOLUTION

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish,
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide,
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,…
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.


In E. Halderman-Julius
Poems of Evolution
Evolution


Reference #: 14214

Smith, Lillian
General Category: BELIEVE

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts permitting himself no surprise no intuitive flash no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.


The Journey


Reference #: 17530

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

I know too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave dwellers, chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me.


Trivia
Book II, The Burden
(p. 156)


Reference #: 17155

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: EVOLUTION

I am proud of those bright-eyed, furry, four footed or feathered progenitors, and not at all ashamed of my cousins, the Tigers and Apes and Peacocks.


Trivia
Desires


Reference #: 17154

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: STARS

But what are they really? What do they say they are?" the young lady asked me. We were looking up at the Stars.


Trivia
The Starry Heaven
(p. 51)


Reference #: 17153

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: UNIVERSE

I woke this morning...into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.


Trivia
To-Day
(p. 4)


Reference #: 17152

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: VOID

...I cool my thoughts with a vision of the giddy, infinite, meaningless waste of Creation, the blazing Suns, the Planets and frozen Moons, all crashing blindly forever across the void of space.


Trivia
Mental Vice
(p. 97)


Reference #: 17151

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: SPACE

I think of Space, and the unimportance in its unmeasured vastness, of our toy solar system; I lose myself in speculations of the lapse of Time, reflecting how at the best our human life on this minute and perishing planet is as brief as a dream.


Trivia
Self-Analysis
(p. 121)


Reference #: 17150

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: SPACE

So gazing up on hot summer nights at the London stars, I cool my thoughts with a vision of the giddy, infinite, meaningless waste of Creation, the blazing Suns, the Planets and frozen Moons, all crashing blindly forever across the void of space.


Trivia
Book II, Mental Vice
(p. 97)


Reference #: 17149

Smith, Logan Pearsall
Born: 18 October, 1865 in Millville, New Jersey, United States of America
Died: 2 March, 1946
General Category: STATISTICS

For I am one of the unpraised, unrewarded millions without whom Statistics would be a bankrupt science. It is we who are
Born, who marry, who die, in constant ratios.


Trivia
Book II, Where Do I Come In?


Reference #: 6736

Smith, R. B.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering is a method and a philosophy for coping with that which is uncertain at the earliest possible moment and to the ultimate service to mankind. It is not a science struggling for a place in the sun. Engineering is extrapolation from existing knowledge rather than interpolation between known points. Because engineering is science in action—the practice of decision making at the earliest moment—it has been defined as the art of skillful approximation. No situation in engineering is simple enough to be solved precisely, and none worth evaluating is solved exactly. Never are there sufficient facts, sufficient time, or sufficient money for an exact solution, for if by chance there were, the answer would be of academic and not economic interest to society. These are the circumstances that make engineering so vital and so creative.


Mechanical Engineering
Engineering is..., Vol. 86, No. 5, May 1964


Reference #: 6735

Smith, R. B.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering is the art of skillful approximation; the practice of gamesmanship in the highest form. In the end it is a method broad enough to tame the unknown, a means of combing disciplined judgment with intuition, courage with responsibility, and scientific competence within the practical aspects of time, of cost, and of talent. This is the exciting view of modern-day engineering that a vigorous profession can insist be the theme for education and training of its youth. It is an outlook that generates its strength and its grandeur not in the discovery of facts but in their application; not in receiving, but in giving. It is an outlook that requires many tools of science and the ability to manipulate them intelligently In the end, it is a welding of theory and practice to build an early, strong, and useful result. Except as a valuable discipline of the mind, a formal education in technology is sterile until it is applied.


Mechanical Engineering
Professional Responsibility of Engineering, Vol. 86, No. 1, January 1964


Reference #: 3670

Smith, Ralph J.
General Category: REPORTS

The word 'report' means to 'carry back', to bring back information about something seen or investigated.


Engineering as a Career
(p. 212)


Reference #: 944

Smith, Reginald H.
General Category: STATISTICS

Lawyers like words and dislike statistics.


American Bar Association Journal
A Sequel: The Bar is Not Overcrowded, Vol. 45, September 1959
(p. 945)


Reference #: 17010

Smith, Sydney
General Category: ATOM

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl...


The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith
Recipe for a Salad
(p. 429)


Reference #: 17984

Smith, Sydney
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.


In Isaac Todhunter
William Whewell
Vol. I, Conclusion
(p. 410)


Reference #: 14292

Smith, Sydney
General Category: ARITHMETIC

What would life be like without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors.


The Letters of Sydney Smith
Letter 692, To Miss Lucie Austin, 22 July 1835
(p. 622)


Reference #: 975

Smith, Theobald
General Category: RESEARCH

Research is fundamentally a state of mind involving continual re-examination of the doctrines and axioms upon which current thought and action are based. It is therefore critical of existing practices. Research is not necessarily confined to the laboratory although it is usually associated with an elaborate technique and complex instruments and apparatuses which require a laboratory housing. This is controlled research which endeavors to pick out of the web of nature's activities some single strand and trace it towards its origin and its terminus and determine its relation to other strands. The older type of research involving observation and study of the entire fabric...largely with the help of the unaided senses...has had its day, but backed by the experience and keen observant mind it even now occasionally triumphs over the narrow controlled research of the laboratory. It is the kind used by Darwin and other early biologists in establishing on a broad, comparative basis, the evolution of plant and animal life.


American Journal of the Medical Sciences
The Influence of Research in Bringing into Closer Relationship the Practice of Medicine and Public Health Activities, December 1929
(p. 19)


Reference #: 7618

Smith, Theobald
General Category: RESEARCH

...it is the care we bestow on apparently trifling, unattractive and very troublesome minutiae which determines the results.


New York Medical Journal
Vol. lii, 1890
(p. 485)


Reference #: 5605

Smith, Theobald
General Category: RESEARCH

The joy of research must be found in doing, since every other harvest is uncertain.


Journal of Bacteriology
Letter from Dr. Theobald Smith, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, January 1934
(p. 20)


Reference #: 1848

Smith, Theobald
General Category: DISCOVERY

Great discoveries which give a new direction to currents of thoughts and research are not, as a rule, gained by the accumulation of vast quantities of figures and statistics. These are apt to stifle and asphyxiate and they usually follow rather than precede discovery. The great discoveries are due to the eruption of genius into a closely related field, and the transfer of the precious knowledge there found to his own domain.


Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
Vol. 172, 1915
(p. 121)


Reference #: 5654

Smith, Theobald
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

It is incumbent upon us to keep training and pruning the tree of knowledge without looking to the right or the left.


Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology
Obituary Notice of Deceased Member, Vol. 40, No. 3, May 1935
(p. 630)


Reference #: 10827

Smith, Theobald
General Category: DISCOVERY

Discovery should come as an adventure rather than as the result of a logical process of thought. Sharp, prolonged thinking is necessary that we may keep on the chosen road, but it does not necessarily lead to discovery.


In W.I.B. Beveridge
The Art of Scientific Investigation
Chapter Seven
(p. 81)
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America; 1957


Reference #: 5933

Smith, W.B.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the universal art apodictic.


In Columbia University
Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art 1907-1908
(p. 13)


Reference #: 8029

Smith, Walter Chalmers
General Category: CHEMISTRY

But women who have lost their Faith
Are angels who have lost their wings,
And always have a nasty breath
Of chemistry, and horrid things
That go off when a lecturer rings
His bell.


Olrig Grange
Book Third, Editorial, Loquitur Mater Domina
l. 185-190


Reference #: 3679

Smith, Willard A.
General Category: ENGINEERING

Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving the energy, kinetic and potential, provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business of engineering to utilize this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste.


In Ralph J. Smith
Engineering as a Career
(pp. 6-7)


Reference #: 941

Smith, William
General Category: FOSSIL

Fossils have long been studied as great Curiosities collected with great pains treasured up with great Care and at great Expense and shown and admired with as much pleasure as a Child's rattle or his Hobbyhorse is shown and admired by himself and his playfellows-because it is pretty. And this has been done by Thousands who have never paid the least regard to that wonderful order & regularity with which Nature has disposed of these singular productions and assigned to each Class its peculiar Stratum.


In John G.C.M. Fuller
American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin
The Industrial Basis of Stratigraphy: John Strachey and William Smith, Vol. 53, 1968


Reference #: 11587

Smith, William
General Category: FOSSIL

Rural amusements to those who can enjoy them, are the most healthful; and the search for a fossil may be considered at least as rational as the pursuit of a hare.


Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils
Preface
(p. vi)


Reference #: 7233

Smith, William Jay
General Category: ANIMAL YAK

The long-haired Yak has long black hair,
He lets it grow—he doesn't care.
He lets it grow and grow and grow,
He lets it trail along the stair.
Does he ever go to the barbershop? NO!
How wild and woolly and devil-may-care
A long-haired Yak with long black hair
Would look when perched in a barber chair!


Mr. Smith and Other Nonsense
Yak


Reference #: 10049

Smithells, Arthur
General Category: SCIENCE

Science has its roots and has gained its greatest impulse in the avocations of men.


In D.W. Hill
Science
Chapter 2
(p. 10)


Reference #: 12499

Smithers, Sir David
General Category: CANCER

Cancer is no more a disease of cells than a traffic jam is a disease of cars. A lifetime of study of the internal combustion engine would not help anyone to understand our traffic problems. A traffic jam is due to a failure in normal relationships between driven cars and their environment.


In Gothard Booth
The Cancer Epidemic: Shadow of the Conquest of Nature
(p. 20)


Reference #: 14378

Smolin, Lee
General Category: SCIENCE

Science is, above everything else, a search for an understanding of our relationship with the rest of the universe.


The Life of the Cosmos
Part One, Chapter One
(p. 23)


Reference #: 10764

Smollett, Tobias
General Category: MEDICINE

...Sir the practice of medicine is one of the most honourable professions exercised among the sons of men; a profession which hath been revered at all periods and in all nations, and even held sacred in the most polished ages of antiguity.


Sir Launcelot Greaves
Chapter XXIV
(p. 192)


Reference #: 10765

Smollett, Tobias
General Category: PHYSICIAN

The character of a physician, therefore, not only presupposes natural sagacity, and acquired erudition, but it also implies every delicacy of sentiment, every tenderness of nature, and every virtue of humanity.


Sir Launcelot Greaves
Chapter XXIV
(p. 192)


Reference #: 14302

Smollett, Tobias
General Category: FACT

Facts are facts, as the saying is.


The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves
Chapter III


Reference #: 8665

Smollett, Tobias George
General Category: SCIENCE

A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail.


Peregrine Pickle
Chapter XLIII


Reference #: 13636

Smollett, Tobias George
General Category: MIND

I find my spirits and my health affect each other reciprocally—that is to say, everything that decomposes my mind produces a correspondent disorder in my body; and my bodily complaints are remarkably mitigated by those considerations that dissipate the clouds of mental chagrin.


The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
1771


Reference #: 18105

Smoot, George
General Category: SKY

There is something about looking at the night sky that makes a person wonder.


Wrinkles in Time
Chapter 1
(p. 1)


Reference #: 6254

Smoot, George
General Category: BIG BANG

What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe...It's like looking at God.


In T.H. Maugh
Los Angeles Times
Relics of 'Big Bang' Seen for First Time, April 24, 1992:A1


Reference #: 12316

Smoot, George
General Category: FORCE

Using the forces we now know, you can't make the universe we know now.


In Eric J. Lerner
The Big Bang Never Happened
Chapter 1
(p. 32)


Reference #: 18108

Smoot, George
Davidson, Keay
General Category: BIG BANG

[Fred Hoyle devoted] his life to fighting the notion that the cosmos began at a certain point in time, with a big bang. He preferred the view Aristotle held millennia earlier: The universe has always existed, and always will. A turning point in Hoyle's young life came at age thirteen, when his parents gave him the gift that has changed so many other young lives: a small telescope. They allowed him to stay up all night looking at the stars and planets. As fate would show, Hoyle and Gamow had more in common than the fact that each had received a telescope in his thirteenth year. Each was a father, intellectually speaking, and each exploded with far more ideas than could ever be true. After working on radar in England during the Second World War, Hoyle became an astronomy Professor at Cambridge University. He also began developing talks about astronomy on BBC radio and writing popular articles and books. Like Gamow, Hoyle was becoming a highly visible interpreter of science to laypeople. During one of his popular radio broadcasts in 1950 Hoyle coined the phrase big bang as a description of Gamow's repugnant (to Hoyle) theory. Hoyle had meant the term to be derogatory, but it was so compelling, so stirring of the imagination, that it stuck, but without the negative overtones. Hoyle became the most visible proponent of an alternative theory to big bang, known as the steady state theory. The struggle for intellectual supremacy between these two theories dominated cosmology for almost two decades.


Wrinkles in Time
Chapter 4
(pp. 67-68)
New York: William Morrow & Company, 1993


Reference #: 18151

Smullyan, Raymond
General Category: ASTROLOGY

Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason that I don't is because I'm a Gemini.


5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Chapter 3
(p. 23)
St. Martin's Press, New York, New York, Ubuted States of America; 1983


Reference #: 18150

Smullyan, Raymond
General Category: ALGEBRA

I am a firm believer that in studying mathematics one should never forget one's common sense. Many years ago, I was teaching an elementary algebra course. On one exam, I had a standard-type question that involved finding the ages of the mother, father, and child. After the students read the question, I said, "On this problem, I'll give you one hint." Alleyes eagerly turned to me. I continued, :If the child should turn out to be older than either of the parents, then you've done something wrong."


5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Chapter 3
(p. 21)
St. Martin's Press, New York, New York, Ubuted States of America; 1983


Reference #: 18152

Smullyan, Raymond
General Category: GOD

It has always puzzled me that so many religious people have taken it for granted that God favors those who believe in him. Isn't it possible tha the actual God is a scientific God who has little patience with beliefs founded on faith rather than evidence?


5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Chapter 3
(p. 25)
St. Martin's Press, New York, New York, Ubuted States of America; 1983


Reference #: 149

Smullyan, Raymond
General Category: MYSTERY

...I certainly believe that some things may in principle be mysteries, but of what use is a hypothesis for explaining a mystery when the very hypothesis raises another mystery just as baffling as the one it explains?


5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Chapter 13
(p. 165)
ess, New York, New York, Ubuted States of America; 1983


Reference #: 6990

Smuts, J.C.
General Category: TRUTH

Truth is a whole, and the truth of nphysics will be found to link on and to be but part of that larger truth truth which is the nature and the character of the universe.


Nature
Supplement to 'Nature' October 24, 1931
(p. 718)


Reference #: 7407

Smuts, J.C.
General Category: LIFE

According to quantum doctrine, the roots of life and mind lie imbedded deep down in the ultimate structure of this universe, and they are not mere singular apparitions of an unaccountable character, arising accidentally in the later phases of evolution.


Nature
Supplement to 'Nature' October 24, 1931
(p. 719)


Reference #: 6471

Smuts, J.C.
General Category: UNIVERSE

Truth, beauty, goodness, and love are as much structures of the evolutionary universe as the sun and the earth and the moon.


Nature
Supplement to 'Nature' October 24, 1931
(p. 718)


Reference #: 1024

Smyth, H.D.
General Category: SCIENCE AND ART

We have a paradox in the method of science. The research man may often think and work like an artist, but he has to talk like a bookkeeper in terms of facts, figures and logical sequence of thought.


Quoted by Gerald Nolton
American Scientist
Vol. 41, 1953
(p. 93)


Reference #: 7482

Smythe, Daniel
General Category: STAR

The years of sky are now galactic,
So deep that we have little trace.
Our spectrographs, cool and emphatic,
Betray the depths of stars and space.

What do we seek on dizzying borders
Or groups of systems we have classified?
We cannot search in these huge orders
And find the answers they have passed.


Nature Magazine
Strange Horizons, February 1958
(p. 101)


Reference #: 7486

Smythe, Daniel
General Category: INSECT BEE

The bees, those intergarden missiles,
Now make their thin propellers hum
To landing fields of flowers and thistles
More certain of their goal than some.


Nature Magazine
Small Flyers, Vol. 50, No. 6, June-July 1957
(p. 292)


Reference #: 7481

Smythe, Daniel
General Category: METEOR

A curve of fire traces the dark
And warns us of a visitor.
It makes an unfamiliar mark
And then is seen no more.


Nature Magazine
The Meteor, Vol. 50, No. 9, November 1957
(p. 493)


Reference #: 5677

Snedecor, G.W.
General Category: STATISTICIAN

The characteristic which distinguishes the present-day professional statistician, is his interest and skill in the measurement of the fallibility of conclusions.


Journal of the American Statistical Association
On a Unique Feature of Statistics, (presidential Address to the American Statistical Association, December 1948) Vol. 44, No. 245, March 1949


Reference #: 5785

Snelson, Kenneth
General Category: ATOM

It seems clear that the mind hungers for pictures of everything - atoms, no less than trees, flowers and creatures.


Kenneth Snelson Exhibition
The Nature of Structure The New York Academy of Sciences, January - April 1989, Portraying the Atom


Reference #: 10902

Snood, Grover
General Category: AVERAGE

'You can't fight the law of averages,' Grover said, 'you can't fight the curve.'


In Thomas Pynchon
Slow Learner
The Secret Integration
(p. 142)


Reference #: 16805

Snow, Baron C. P. [Charles Percy]
General Category: SCIENCE SOCIETY

Literary intellectuals at one pole - at the other scientists. - ...Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.


The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution


Reference #: 15124

Snow, C P
General Category: MINERAL URANIUM

...Bevill showed us his private dossier of the uranium project. We must not refer to it again by that name, he said: as with other projects of high secrecy, he copied out the 'appreciations' in his own hand, keeping no copies: the documents were then mounted in a loose-leaf cover, on which he printed a pet name.

'I'm going to show you my name for this new stunt,' he said, with a smile that was frank, shy and eager. And into that smile there crept the most salacious pleasure that many men show as they talk of secrets.

He turned over the cover, and we saw, painted in bold capitals, the words:

MR TOAD

'That's what we'll call it here, if you don't mind,' he added.


The New Men


Reference #: 15125

Snow, C. P.
General Category: PHYSICS

He then gave me an explanation which I could not understand, although I had heard plenty of the jargon of nuclear physics from him and Luke. 'Fission.' 'Neutrons.' 'Chain reaction.' I could not follow. But I could gather that at last the sources of nuclear energy were in principle open to be set loose; and that it might be possible to make an explosive such as no one had realistically imagined.


The New Men


Reference #: 17571

Snow, C.P.
General Category: ENGINEER

...engineers have to live their lives in an organized community, and however odd they are underneath they manage to present a disciplined face to the world.


Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
(p. 33)


Reference #: 16802

Snow, C.P.
General Category: LAW

Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?


The Two Cultures
(p. 16)


Reference #: 16803

Snow, C.P.
General Category: SCIENTIST

I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups....Literary intellectuals at one pole-at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension-sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.


The Two Cultures and a Second Look
Chapter I
(pp. 11-12)


Reference #: 16804

Snow, C.P.
General Category: ENGINEER

Pure scientists have by and large been dim-witted about engineers and applied science. They couldn't get interested. They wouldn't recognize that many of the problems were as intellectually exacting as pure problems, and that many of the solutions were as satisfying and beautiful. Their instinct-perhaps sharpened in this country by the passion to find a new snobbism wherever possible, and to invent one if it doesn't exist-was to take it for granted that applied science was an occupation for second rate minds. I say this more sharply because thirty years ago I took precisely that line myself.


The Two Cultures and A Second Look
(p. 32)


Reference #: 16801

Snow, C.P.
General Category: PHYSICS

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question - such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? - not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithin ancestors would have had.


The Two Cultures
(p. 16)


Reference #: 16806

Snow, C.P.
General Category: SCIENCE AND MORALS

...there is a moral component right in the grain of science itself...


The Two Cultures: and a Second Look
Chapter I
(p. 19)


Reference #: 16807

Snow, C.P.
General Category: SCIENTIST

Literary intellectuals at one pole - at the other scientists....Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.


The Two Cultures: and a Second Look
Chapter I
(pp. 11-12)


Reference #: 16808

Snow, C.P.
General Category: FACT

A fact is a fact is a fact.


The Two Cultures: And a Second Look
Chapter 4
(p. 45)


Reference #: 7638

Snow, C.P.
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Technology...is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.


New York Times
15 March 1971


Reference #: 15143

Snow, C.P.
General Category: SCIENCE

But after the idyllic years of science, we passed into a tempest of history; and by an unfortunate coincidence, we passed into a technological tempest, too.


In Paul C. Obler and Herman A. Estrin (eds.)
The New Scientist: Essays on the Methods and Value of Modern Science
The Moral Un-Neutrality of Science
(p. 135)


Reference #: 11003

Snow, Carrie
General Category: GYNECOLOGIST

A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car.


Source undetermined


Reference #: 8681

Snskind, Patrick
General Category: CHEMICAL

...There's jasmine! Alcohol there! Bergamont there! Grenouille went on crowing, and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room, although it was so dark that at best you could only sumise the shadows of the cupboards filled with bottles.


Perfume: The Story of a Murder
Chapter 14
(p. 75)


Reference #: 13639

Snyder, Carl H.
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...the difference between "magic" and "science" is knowledge.


The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things
Preface
(p. vii)


Reference #: 16038

Snyder, Gary
General Category: ENVIRONMENT

A properly radical environmentalist position is in no way antihuman. We grasp the pain of the human condition in its full complexity, and add the awareness of how desperately endangered certain key species and habitats have become....The critical argument now within environmental circles is between those who operate from a human-centered resource management mentality and those whose values reflect an awareness of the whole of nature.


The Practice of the Wild
Survival and Sacrament
(p. 181)


Reference #: 16118

Snyder, Gary
General Category: BIOLOGICAL

We're so impressed by our civilization and what it's done, with our machines, that we have a difficult time recognizing that the biological world is infinitely more complex.


The Real Work
Tracking Down the Natural Man
(p. 87)


Reference #: 1865

Snyder, Solomon
General Category: EXPERIMENT

Of course, if you can predict the consequences of your own experiments before they commence, your research is very likely to be boring.


Brainstorming
Chapter 10
(p. 195)


Reference #: 6113

Soane, Sir John
General Category: ARCHITECT

The business of the architect is to make the designs and estimates, to direct the works, and to measure and value the different parts, he is the intermediary agent between the employer, whose honour and interests he is to study, and the mechanic whose rights he is to defend. His situation implies great trust; he is responsible for the mistakes, negligencies and ignorancies of those he employes, and, above all, he is to take care that the workman's bills do not exceed his own estimate. If these are the duties of an architect, with what propriety can his situation and that of the builder or contractor be united?


In Arthur T. Bolton
Life and Work a Century Ago: an outline of the career of Sir John Soane
(p. 5)


Reference #: 9645

Sockman, Ralph
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.


Quoted in
Reader's Digest
March, 1998


Reference #: 7443

Soddy, Frederick
General Category: CIRCLES

Four circles to the kissing come,
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the centre.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There's now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend's a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.


Nature
Vol. 137, 1936


Reference #: 7614

Soddy, Frederick
General Category: LABORATORY

Laboratories are necessary, and though an artist without a studio or an evangelist without a church might conceivably find under the blue dome of heaven a substitute, a scientific man without a laboratory is a misnomer.


In Bernard Jaffe
New World of Chemistry
(p. 44)


Reference #: 10191

Soddy, Frederick
General Category: SCIENCE

As science advances and most of the more accessible fields of knowledge have been gleaned of their harvest, the need for more and more powerful and elaborate appliances and more and more costly materials ever grows.


Science and Life
Science and the State
(p. 60)


Reference #: 10193

Soddy, Frederick
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...before you can apply knowledge you must discover it...


Science and Life
Science and the State
(p. 55)


Reference #: 10192

Soddy, Frederick
General Category: ENERGY

Energy, someone may say, is a mere abstraction, a mere term, not a real thing. As you will. In this, as in many another respects, it is like an abstraction no one would deny reality to, and that abstraction is wealth. Wealth is the power of purchasing, as energy is the power of working. I cannot show you energy, only its effects.Abstraction or not, energy is as real as wealth—I am not sure that they are not two aspects of the same thing.


Science and Life
Physical Force-Man's Servant or His Master
(p. 27)


Reference #: 17786

Södergran, Edith
General Category: ILLNESS

I lie all day and wait for night,
I lie all night and wait for day.


We Women
Days of Sickness


Reference #: 18218

Sollas, W.J.
General Category: GEOLOGIST

A physicist studying geology is by definition a geologist.


The Age of the Earth and Other Studies
Chapter I
(p. 4)
T. Fisher Unwin, London, England; 1905


Reference #: 18258

Sollas, W.J.
General Category: GEOLOGY

The close of one month, the dawn of another, may naturally suggest some brief retrospective glance over the path along which our science has advanced, and some general survey of its present position from which we may gather hope of its future progress; but other connexion with geology the beginnings and endings of centuries have none.


The Age of the Earth
Chapter I
(p. 2)
T. Fisher Unwin, London, England; 1905


Reference #: 11838

Sollas, W.J.
General Category: GEOLOGY

The close of one century, the dawn of another, may naturally suggest some brief retrospective glance over the path along which our science has advanced, and some general survey of its present position from which we may gather hope of its future progress; but other connexion with geology the beginnings and endings of centuries have none. The great periods of movement have hitherto begun, as it were, in the early twilight hours, long before the dawn.


The Age of the Earth and Other Geological Studies
Chapter I
(p. 2)


Reference #: 11839

Sollas, W.J.
General Category: GEOLOGY

Our science [geology] has become evolutional, and in the transformation has grown more comprehensive: her petty parochial days are done, she is drawing her provinces closer around her, and is fusing them together into a united and single commonwealth-the science of the earth.


The Age of the Earth and Other Geological Studies
Chapter I
(p. 4)


Reference #: 11478

Solo, Hans
General Category: HYPERSPACE

Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy.


Star Wars


Reference #: 18119

Solomon, Ben
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics like chloroform, lull many people to sleep in blissful ignorance. Commenting upon this human frailty to rely too much upon the logic of statistics, Dr. Jay B. Nash of New York University gives us the following story. An inebriate lay at night in a hotel which had a sprinkler system in the room as a fire safety device, and under the glass on the dresser were the statistics on how many people had slept with peace in the room, the hours of sleep and all the other details. After reading this several times he sauntered off to bed saying,

Now, I lay me down to sleep,
statistics make my slumber sweet
If I die, I am not concerned,
I may get wet, but I won't get burned.

Look behind statistics! Find out how they're made up and on what definitions they are based. Don't take them at face value.


In M. Dale Baughman
Youth Leader Digest
Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion


Reference #: 13691

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
General Category: ENGINEERING

There are all kinds of engineers. Some of them here have built successful careers selling soda water.


The First Circle
Chapter 4
(p. 15)


Reference #: 13690

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

All my life I have thought of mathematicians as Rosicrucians of some kind, and I always regretted that I never had the opportunity of being initiated into their secrets.


The First Circle
Chapter 9
(p. 39)


Reference #: 42

Somerville, Mary
General Category: MATHEMATICS

There is a wide distinction between the degree of mathematical acquirement necessary formaking discoveries, and that which is requisite for understanding what other have done.


The Connection of the Physical Sciences (9th Edition)
Introduction
(pp. 2-3)


Reference #: 43

Somerville, Mary
General Category: ASTRONOMY

Physical astronomy is the science which compares and identifies the laws of motion observed on earth with the motions that take place in the heavens: and which traces, by an uninterrupted chain of deduction from the great principle that governs the universe, the revolutions and rotations of the planets, and the oscillations of the fluids at their surfaces; and which estimates the changes the system has hiterto undergone, or may hereafter experience—changes which require millions of years for their accomplishment.


The Connection of the Physical Sciences (9th Edition)
Introduction
(p. 3)


Reference #: 29

Somerville, Mary
General Category: MATHEMATICS

That the study of mathematics and their application to astronomy are full of interest will be allowed by all who have devoted their time and attention to these pursuits; and they only can estimate the delight of
arriving at truth, whether it be in the discovery of a world, or of a new property of numbers.


Mechanism of the Heavens
Preliminary Dissertation
(p. 7)


Reference #: 28

Somerville, Mary
General Category: ASTRONOMY

A complete acquaintance with Physical Astronomy can only be attained by those who are
well versed in the higher branches of mathematical and mechanical science: such alone can appreciate
the extreme beauty of the results, and of the means by which these results are obtained.


Mechanism of the Heavens
Preliminary Dissertation
(p. 7)


Reference #: 15725

Somerville, Mary
General Category: HEAVENS

The heavens afford the most sublime subject of study which can be derived from science:
the magnitude and splendour of the objects, the inconceivable rapidity with which they move, and
the enormous distances between them, impress the mind with some notion of the energy that
maintains them in their motions with a durability to which we can see no limits.


Mechanism of the Heavens
Preliminary Dissertation
(p. 7)


Reference #: 15726

Somerville, Mary
General Category: HEAVENS

...however profoundly we may penetrate the depths of
space, there still remain innumerable systems, compared with which those which seem so mighty
to us must dwindle into insignificance, or even become invisible;…


Mechanism of the Heavens
Preliminary Dissertation
(p. 7)


Reference #: 15724

Somerville, Mary
General Category: SCIENCE

Science, regarded as the pursuit of truth, which can only be attained by patient and
unprejudiced investigation, wherein nothing is too great to be attempted, nothing so minute as to be justly disrega rded, must ever afford occupation of consummate interest and of elevated
meditation.


Mechanism of the Heavens
Preliminary Dissertation
(p. 6)


Reference #: 17778

Sommerfeld, Arnold
General Category: LIGHT

The twofold nature of light as a light-wave and as a light-quantum is thus extended to electrons and, further, to atoms: their wave-nature is asserting itself more and more, theoretically and experimentally, as concurrent with their corpuscular nature.


Wave Mechanics
(p. 7)


Reference #: 17269

Sommerfield, Arnold
General Category: THERMODYNAMICS

The science of thermodynamics introduces a new concept, that of temperature.


Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Lectures on Theoretical Physics
Vol. I, Translated by J. Kestin
(p. 1)
Academic Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1956


Reference #: 17270

Sommerfield, Arnold
General Category: EQUILIBRIUM

Reversible processes are not, in fact, processes at all, they are sequences of states of equilibrium. The processes which we encounter in real life are always irreversible processes.


Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Lectures on Theoretical Physics
Vol. V, Translated by J. Kestin
(p. 19)
Academic Press, New York, New York, United States of America 1956


Reference #: 6229

Sommerhoff, Gerd
General Category: BRAIN

The peculiar fascination of the brain lies in the fact that there is probably no other object of scientific enquiry about which we know at once so much and yet understand so little.


Logic of the Living Brain


Reference #: 12267

Song of Solomon 4:2
General Category: TEETH

Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing.


The Bible


Reference #: 10494

Song of Solomon 5:14
General Category: MINERAL BERYL

His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl...


The Bible


Reference #: 5162

Sontag, Susan
General Category: ILLNESS

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is
Born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obligated, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.


Illness as Metaphor
Chapter 1
(p. 3)


Reference #: 5161

Sontag, Susan
General Category: DISEASE

Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.


Illness as Metaphor
(p. 55)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, New York, United States of America; 1978


Reference #: 5163

Sontag, Susan
General Category: ILLNESS

Fatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test.


Illness as Metaphor
Chapter 5
(p. 41)


Reference #: 5164

Sontag, Susan
General Category: ILLNESS

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is
Born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.


Illness as metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
(p. 3)
Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, New York, United States of America 1990


Reference #: 8068

Sontag, Susan
General Category: ECOLOGY

Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it had always been - what people needed protection from. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.


On Photography
In Plato's Cave
(p. 15)


Reference #: 6823

Sophie, Germain
General Category: ALGEBRA

Algebra is but written geometry and geometry is but figured algebra.


Mémorie sur la surfaces élastiques


Reference #: 7969

Sophocles
Born: 496 BC in Colonus, Greece
Died: 406 B.C. in Athens, Greece
General Category: BLINDNESS

Oedipus: As they say of the blind,
Sounds are the things I see.


Oedipus at Colonus
Choral Dialogue
(p. 13)


Reference #: 3548

Sophocles
Born: 496 BC in Colonus, Greece
Died: 406 B.C. in Athens, Greece
General Category: IMPOSSIBLE

The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything.
There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light,
Nothing once known that may not become unknown.
Nothing is impossible.


Electra


Reference #: 1412

Sophocles
Born: 496 BC in Colonus, Greece
Died: 406 B.C. in Athens, Greece
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him;...turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year....And speech, and windswift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all...


Antigone
l. 333-340, 349-354


Reference #: 15761

Sophocles
Born: 496 BC in Colonus, Greece
Died: 406 B.C. in Athens, Greece
General Category: MEASURE

Nay, if these measures give any ground of confidence, we think that thy design is not amiss.


The Plays of Sophocles
Trachiniae
l. 587


Reference #: 15760

Sophocles
Born: 496 BC in Colonus, Greece
Died: 406 B.C. in Athens, Greece
General Category: MODEL

Nay, Knowledge must come through action; thou canst have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.


The Plays of Sophocles
Trachiniae
l. 589


Reference #: 15759

Sophocles
Born: 496 BC in Colonus, Greece
Died: 406 B.C. in Athens, Greece
General Category: RANDOMN

Iocasta. Nay, what should mortal fear, for whom the degree of fortune are supreme, and who hath clear foresight of nothing? 'Tis best to live at random, as one may.


The Plays of Sophocles
Oedipus the King
l. 997


Reference #: 2486

Soule, Michael
General Category: TECHNOLOGY

Since we have no choice but to be swept along by this vast technological surge, we might as well learn to surf.


In David Western and Mary C. Pearl
Conservation for the Twenty-first Century
Conservation Biology in the Twenty-first Century: Summary and Outlook
(p. 303)


Reference #: 2124

Source undetermined
General Category: MOTION

The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.


In James Gleick
Chaos: Making A New Science
The Butterfly Effect
(p. 15)
Viking, New York, New York, United States of America; 1987


Reference #: 9403

South, Robert
General Category: PROBABLE

That is accounted probable which has better arguments producible for it than can be brought against it.


In S. Austin Alibone
Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay
Probability


Reference #: 14578

Southerne, Thomas
General Category: HOSPITAL

...when, wee'r worn,
Hack'd, hewn with constant service, thrown aside
To rust in peace; or rot in Hospitals.


The Loyal Brother
Act 1, scene I
(p. 8)


Reference #: 6318

Southey, Robert
General Category: MOON

The moon arose: she shone upon the lake,
Which lay one smooth expanse of silver light;
She shone upon the hills and rocks, and cast
Upon their hollows and their hidden glens
A blacker depth of shade.


Madoc
pt. II, The Close of the Century


Reference #: 15771

Spallanzani, Lazzaro
General Category: SCIENTIST

If I set out to prove something, I am no real scientist—I have to learn to follow where the facts lead me—I have to learn to whip my prejudices.


In R. Coope
The Quiet Art
(p. 4)


Reference #: 16048

Spark, Muriel
General Category: SCIENCE

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.


The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Chapter 2
(p. 39)


Reference #: 8606

Spearman, Charles
General Category: MEASURE

...great as may be the potency of this [the experimental method], or of the preceding methods, there is yet another one so vital that, if lacking it, any study is thought by many authorities not to be scientific in the full sense of the word. This further and crucial method is that of measurement,...


Psychology Down the Ages
Vol. I
(p. 89)


Reference #: 17991

Speech London, May 7, 1946de Saint Exupery, Antoine
General Category: CALCULATION

The sailing vessel itself was once a machine
Born of the calculations of engineers, yet it does not disturb our philosophers. The sloop took its place in the speech of men. There is a poetry of sailing as old as the world. There have always been seamen in recorded time. The man who assumes that there is an essential difference between the sloop and the airplane lacks historic perspective.


Wind, Sand and Stars
The Tool
(p. 72)


Reference #: 8812

Speiser, A.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics has liberated itself from language; and one who knows the tremendous labor put into this process and its ever-recurring surprising success, cannot help feeling that mathematics nowadays is more efficient in it particular sphere of the intellectual world than, say, the modern languages in their deplorable condition of decay or even music are on their fronts.


In Hermann Weyl
Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science
Chapter II
(p. 65)
Princeton University Press, Princeton; 1949


Reference #: 16155

Spence, Sir James Calvert
General Category: DOCTOR

...the doctor needs to know the individual with basic, expert, and specialized understanding if he is to work with success. He sees men of all ages from childhood to senility. He is present at birth and at death. He observes man in his confidence of full health and in his fear of sickness. He observes him near the noon of day when courage is at its height, and in the small hours of morning when it so often ebbs away. Not only must he understand the individual but he must understand him in many of these variations from the norm.


The Purpose and Practice of Medicine
Chapter 18
(p. 273)


Reference #: 9310

Spencer Brown , G.
General Category: REASON

The concept of randomness arises partly from games of chance. The word 'chance' derives from the Latin cadentia signifying the fall of a die. The word 'random' itself comes from the French randir meaning to run fast or gallop.


Probability and Scientific Inference
Chapter VII
(p. 35)


Reference #: 16056

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: EVOLUTION

The survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.


The Principles of Biology
Part III, Chapter 12, Section 165


Reference #: 4270

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: EVOLUTION

Evolution...is a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.


First Principles
Chapter 16, Section 138


Reference #: 3480

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

Science is organized knowledge...


Education
Chapter II
(p. 119)


Reference #: 3478

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: SCIENCE

Thus to the question with which we set out - What knowledge is of most worth? - the uniform reply is - Science. This is the verdict on all counts. For direct self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and health, the all-important knowledge is - Science. For the indirect self-preservation which we call gaining a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest value is - Science. For that interpretation of national life, past and present, without which the citizen cannot rightly regulate his conduct, the indispensable key is - Science. Alike for the most perfect production and highest enjoyment of art in all its forms, the needful preparation is still - Science. And for the purposes of discipline - intellectual, moral, religious - the most efficient study is, once more - Science.


Education
Chapter I
(pp. 84-85)


Reference #: 3477

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.


Education
Chapter I
(p. 72)


Reference #: 3475

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: SCIENCE

Only when Genius is married to Science, can the highest results be produced.


Education
Chapter I
(p. 70)


Reference #: 4269

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: EVOLUTION

Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes parallel transformation.


First Principles
Chapter XVIII


Reference #: 3479

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: MAN OF SCIENCE

Only the sincere man of science (and by this title we do not mean the mere calculator of distances, or analyser of compounds, or labeller of species; but him who through lower truths seeks higher, and eventually the highest) - only the genuine man of science, we say, can truly know how utterly beyond, not only human knowledge, but human conception, is the Universal Power of which Nature, and Life, and Thought are manifestations.


Education
Chapter I
(p. 85)


Reference #: 10781

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: NATURE

Nature's rules...have no exceptions.


Social Statics
Introduction, Lemma II
(p. 39)


Reference #: 9262

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: BRAIN

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.


Principles of Ethics


Reference #: 13230

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: OBSERVATION

Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently generalize these empirically; but only when it reaches the stage at which its empirical generalizations are included in a rational generalization does it become developed science.


The Data of Ethics
Chapter IV
(p. 71)


Reference #: 13228

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: SCIENTIFIC

Scientific truths, of whatever order, are reached by eliminating perturbing or conflicting factors, and recognizing only fundamental factors.


The Data of Ethics
Chapter XV, Section 104
(p. 268)


Reference #: 13229

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: CONCEPT

...for only by varied iteration can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds.


The Data of Ethics
Preface


Reference #: 9256

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: IDEA

Early ideas are not usually true ideas.


Principles of Biology
Part ii, Chapter 2, section 110


Reference #: 9257

Spencer, Herbert
General Category: EVOLUTION

If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years give origin to the human race.


Principles of Biology
Part III, Chapter 3, Section 118


Reference #: 4577

Spencer, Theodore
General Category: MATTER

Matter whose movement moves us all
Moves to its random funeral,
And Gresham's law that fits the purse
Seems to fit the universe.


In Helen Plotz
Imagination's Other Place
Entropy


Reference #: 5888

Spencer-Brown, George
General Category: TRUTH

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.


Laws of Form
Appendix I
(p. 110)


Reference #: 5890

Spencer-Brown, George
General Category: MATHEMATICS

That mathematics, in common with other art forms, can lead us beyond ordinary existence, and can show us something of the structure in which all creation hangs together, is no new idea. But mathematical texts generally begin the story somewhere in the middle, leaving the reader to pick up the thread as best he can.


Laws of Form
A Note on the mathematical Approach
(p. v)


Reference #: 9311

Spencer-Brown, George
General Category: SCIENCE

Left to itself, the world of science slowly diminishes as each result classed as scientific has to be reclassed as anecdotal or historical...Science is a continuous living process; it is made up of activities rather than records; and if the activities cease it dies.


Probability and Scientific Inference
(p. 107)


Reference #: 13261

Spengler, Oswald
General Category: MATHEMATICS

And so the development of the new mathematic consists of a long, secret, and finally victorious battle against the notion of magnitude.


The Decline of the West
Vol. I, Chapter II, section ix
(p. 76)


Reference #: 13262

Spengler, Oswald
General Category: MATHEMATICS

...mathematics, accessible in its full depth only to the very few, holds a quite peculiar position amongst the creation of the mind. It is a science of the most rigorous kind, like logic but more comprehensive and very much fuller; it is a true art, along with sculpture and music, as needing the guidance of inspiration and as developing under great conventions of form...


The Decline of the West
Vol. I, Chapter II, section ii
(p. 56)


Reference #: 13263

Spengler, Oswald
General Category: STATISTICS

Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident, and not to the world of laws and timeless causality.


The Decline of the West
Chapter X
(p. 218)


Reference #: 13264

Spengler, Oswald
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Gothic cathedrals and Doric temples are mathematics in stone.


The Decline of the West
Vol. I, Chapter II, section ii
(p. 58)


Reference #: 13259

Spengler, Oswald
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics.


The Decline of the West


Reference #: 10080

Spengler, Sylvia J.
General Category: BIOLOGY

Perhaps bioinformatics—the shotgun marriage between biology and mathematics, computer science, and engineering—is like an elephant that occupies a large chair in the scientific living room ...There are probably many biologists who feel that a major product of this bioinformatics elephant is large piles of waste material.


Science
Feb. 18, 2000


Reference #: 13656

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: NATURE

What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.


The Fate of the Butterfly
l. 209


Reference #: 12788

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: PLANET

From hence wee mount aloft into the skie,
And looke into the christall firmament,
There we behold the heavens great hierarchie,
The starres pure light, the spheres swift movement...


The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
The Teares of the Muses
l. 505-508


Reference #: 12786

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: BIRD PARTRIDGE

Like as a feareful partridge, that is fled
From the sharpe hauke which her attacked neare,
And falls to ground to seeke for succor theare,
Whereas the hungry spaniells she does spye,
With greedy jaws her ready for to teare.


The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto VIII, Stanza 33


Reference #: 12873

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: TREE ALMOND

Like to an almond tree ymounted hye
On top of greene Selinis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily;
Whose tender locks do tremble every one,
At everie little breath, that under heaven is blowne.


The Faerie Queene
bk. I, canto VII, st. 32


Reference #: 12784

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: TREE PALM

First the high palme-tree, with braunches faire,
Out of the lowly vallies did arise,
And high shoote up their heads into the skyes.


The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
Virgils Gnat
l. 190-92


Reference #: 12787

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: OCEAN

For all, that here on earth we dreadfull hold,
Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall,
Compared to the creatures in the seas entrall.


The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
The Faeri Queene, Book II, Canto XII, stanza XXV


Reference #: 12875

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: NATURE

For all that Nature by her mother-wit
Could frame in earth.


The Faerie Queene
bk. IV, canto X, st. 21


Reference #: 12874

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: NATURE

Yet neither spinnes, nor cards, ne cares nor fretts,
But to her mother Nature all her care she letts.


The Faerie Queene
Bk. II, canto VI


Reference #: 12785

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: STAR

He that strives to touch the stars
Oft stumbles at a straw.


The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
The Shepherdess Calendar


Reference #: 13048

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: ASTROPHYSICS

For who so list into the heavens looke,
And search the courses of the rowling spheares,
Shall find that from the point, where first they tooke
Their setting forth, in these few thousand yeares
They all are wandred much; that plaine appears.


The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser
Vol. 8, The Faerie Queene, The Fifth Book, Introduction


Reference #: 12783

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: UNIVERSE COSMOGENESIS

Through knowledge we behold the world's creation,
How in his cradle first he fostered was;
And judge of Natures cunning operation,
How things she formed of a formless mass.


The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
The Tears of the Muses
l. 499-502


Reference #: 13047

Spenser, Edmund
General Category: UNIVERSE

Why then should witless man so much misween,
That nothing is, but that which he hath seene?What if in the Moones faire shining speheare?What if in every other starre unseene,
Of other worldes he happily should heare?That nothing is, but that which he hath seene?


The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser
Vol. 8, Faerie Queene, Book the Second, Introduction


Reference #: 8690

Sperry, Roger
General Category: SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Probably the widest, deepest rift in contemporary culture and the source of its most profound conflict is that separating the two major opposing views of existence upheld by science and by orthodox religions, respectively. Together they represent two totally different kinds of 'truth', the former asking us to accept impersonal mass-energy accounts of the cosmos, the latter requiring faith in varied spiritual explanations.


Perspectives in Biological Medicine
The New Mentalist Paradigm and Ultimate Concern, Vol. 29, No. 3, Part I, Spring 1986
(p. 415)


Reference #: 5536

Sperry, Roger W.
General Category: BRAIN

Before brains there was no color or sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably little sense and no feeling or emotion.


James Arthur Lecture on the Evolution of the Human Brain
(p. 2)


Reference #: 5535

Sperry, Roger W.
General Category: BRAIN

There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience.


James Arthur Lecture on the Evolution of the Human Brain
(p. 3)


Reference #: 4677

Sperry, Roger W.
General Category: BRAIN

The centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension that no one I know of has been able to imagine their nature.


In D Brian
Genius Talk. Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries
Chapter 20
(p. 376)
New York: Plenum Press 1995


Reference #: 6666

Spiegel, M.R.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

An engineer called E has students who complain
That mathematics taught to them is nothing but a pain.

"Why can't we take a course," they ask, "a course designed for us?
A course which helps us in our fields without this kind of fuss.

Why ask us for a proof and make us say, `I can't, sir,'
When what we'd really like to know is how to get the answer."

With empathy E rushed to M who gave the ill-famed course
And told him of the problem and also of the source.

"The students say the course give drives them up the wall.
Epsilons and deltas seem to have no point at all.

They need the kind of math that helps with circuitry and cables.
They need to know how they can use the mathematics tables.

Professor M was not surprised—he'd heard complaints before.
"You realize," he said to E, "there are things we can't ignore.

Math requires subtleties—you can't just make a list.
You cannot take derivatives of things that don't exist."

On and on he lectured E with little hesitation
On topics such as limits and improper integration,

On necessary and sufficient conditions for existence.
E tried, but could not shake, Professor M's insistence.

There is no end to this debate; E and M cannot agree.
There are two sides and each will teach as only he can see.


Mathematics Magazine
E and M, Vol. 54, No. 3, May 1981
(p. 139)


Reference #: 5314

Spiegel, M.R.
General Category: MATHEMATICS

As I recite the alphabet to one wh? s only three
The world of mathematics is opened up to me.

For a, b, c are constants or parameters assigned
And D is a determinant or distance undefined.

The image with e gives to me is one I cna't erase
For it can only mean for me the logarithmic base.

F, G, H are functions with appropriate domain
And i's a unit vector in the Gauss or complex plane.

J's a Bessel function and another kind is K.
L's a linear operator or inductance one could say.

M and N are integers but m could be mass.
O is the number zero but Æ`s the empty class.

P and Q give odds that you will win or lose a bet.
R gives correlation of two variables you have met.

I see before me Einstein's world when I hear S and T
For they make me think of space and time and relativity.

At this point I'm so deep in thought of time and space and such
That velocity components u, v, w don't seem much.

Perhaps some day that three-year old may learn when fully grown
Why x y, z imply for me how much there is unknown.


Mathematics Magazine
Our Mathematical Alphabet, Vol. 57, No. 3, May 1984
(p. 141)


Reference #: 1367

Spilhaus, Athelistan
General Category: OCEANOGRAPHY

The science of oceanography is not a discipline but an adventure wherein any discipline or combination of disciplines may be focused on understanding and using the sea and all that is in it.


Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1964
The Future of Oceanography
(p. 361)


Reference #: 3998

Spinoza, Baruch de
General Category: NATURE

...Nature has set no end before herself, and that all final causes are nothing but human fictions.


Ethics
Part I, Appendix
(p. 370)


Reference #: 4377

Sporn, Philip
General Category: ENGINEERING

The scientist usually works - but very seldom under the pressure of a timetable - in a field of his special interest, in which he has generally chosen to stake out a narrow sector for his own specialization. The engineer, on the other hand, while also operating within the area of his own competence, has to tackle a variety of problems, some of which may be new to him, but to which he has to apply his scientifically based knowledge and skill to produce workable and practical solutions; this work includes economics and involves both analysis and synthesis, generally within a rigid time limit. This is technology and engineering.


Foundations of Engineering
(pp. 12-13)


Reference #: 14083

Sprat, Thomas
General Category: INVENTION

Invention is an Heroic thing and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind: a thousand difficulties must be contemn'd, with which a mean heart would be broken: many attempts must be made to no purpose: much Treasure must be scattered without any return: much violence and vigor of thought must attend it: some irregularities and excesses must be granted it that would hardly be pardon'd by the severe Rules of Prudence.


The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge
Section XXXI
(p. 392)


Reference #: 2331

Squire, J.C.
General Category: MAN

Men were on earth while climates slowly swung.
Fanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long
Subsidence turned great continents to sea,
And seas dried up, dried up interminably.
Age after age; enormous seas were dried
Amid wastes of land. And the last monster
Died.


Collected Poems
The Birds


Reference #: 5437

Squire, Sir John C.
General Category: LAW

Nature and Natur? s laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
But not for long. The devil howling, "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.


Quoted by Cecilia Payne-Gasposchkin
Introduction to Astronomy
(p. 168)


Reference #: 74

St. Ambrose
General Category: NATURE

The evidence of nature is worth more than the arguments of learning.


Chapter II
(p. 29)


Reference #: 3199

St. Augustine
General Category: TIME

Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. ...The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation.


Confessions
11, XX


Reference #: 2452

St. Augustine
General Category: TIME

...see that all time past is forced to move on by the incoming future; that all the future follows from the past; and that all, past and future, is created and issues out of that which is forever present. Who will hold the heart of man that it may stand still and see how the eternity which always stands still is itself neither future nor past but expresses itself in the times that are future and past?


Confessions
11, XI


Reference #: 2453

St. Augustine
General Category: PHYSICIAN

...one who has tried a bad physician fears to trust himself with a good one...


Confessions
VI, [IV]


Reference #: 2829

St. Augustine
General Category: MATHEMATICIAN

...beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.


De Genesi ad Litteram


Reference #: 6180

St. Bernard
General Category: TREE

Believe me who have tried. Thou wilt find something more in woods than in books. Trees and rocks will teach what thou canst not hear from a master.


In A.C. Seward
Links with the Past in the Plant World
Chapter I
(p. 1)


Reference #: 2795

St. Clair, George
General Category: MUSEUM

The crust of the earth, with its embedded fossils, must not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made at hazard and at rare intervals.


Darwinism and Design, or, Creation by Evolution
Chapter III
(p. 52)


Reference #: 14476

St. Exupery
General Category: DARK MATTER

What is most essential is invisible to the eye.


The Little Prince


Reference #: 10814

St. John, Nicholas
General Category: ADDICTION

Dependency is a marvelous thing. It does more for the soul than any formulation of doctor or material.


The Addiction
Screenplay


Reference #: 14677

Stabler, E. Russell
General Category: MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the science of number and space. It starts from a group of self-evident truths and by infallible deduction arrives at incontestable conclusions...the facts of mathematics are absolute, unalterable, and eternal truths.


The Mathematics Teacher
An Interpretation and Comparison of Three Schools of Thought in the Foundations of Mathematics, Vol. 26, January 1935
(p. 6)


Reference #: 9820

Stace, W.T.
General Category: SCIENCE AND GOD

...no scientific argument - by which I mean an argument drawn from the phenomena of nature - can ever have the slightest tendency either to prove or disprove the existence of God....science is irrelevant to religion.


Religion and the Modern Mind
The Consequences for Religion
(p. 76)


Reference #: 6108

Stackman, Elvin
General Category: ETHICS

Science cannot stop while ethics catches up...and nobody should expect scientists to do all the thinking for the country.


Life
U.S. Science Holds Its Biggest Powwow, January 9, 1950
(p. 17)


Reference #: 5351

Stalin, Joseph
General Category: ENGINEER

The writer is an engineer of the human soul.


In John Gunther
Inside Russia Today
(p. 284)


Reference #: 15152

Stalin, Joseph
General Category: STATISTICS

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.


Quoted by Anne Fremantle
The New York Times Book Review
Unwritten Pages at the End of the Diary, September 28, 1958
(p. 3)


Reference #: 13125

Stallo, John Bernard
General Category: ENERGY

In a general sense, this doctrine [conservation of energy] is coeval with the dawn of human intelligence. It is nothing more than an application of the simple principle that nothing can come from or to nothing...


The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics
(pp. 68-69)


Reference #: 14830

Stallone, Sylvester
General Category: MATHEMATICS

If you hang around with nice people you get nice friends, hang around with smart people and you get smart friends, hang around with yo-yos and you get yo-yos fro friends. It's simple mathematics.


The Movie
Rocky


Reference #: 17334

Stamaty, Mark Alan
General Category: STATISTICS

I propose that infinitely refutable statistics be declared the official language of politics.


Time
Washingtoon, September 25, 1995
(p. 21)


Reference #: 10923

Stamp, Josiah
General Category: AVERAGE

Ask a ferryman or a toll-keeper how many visitors come through daily on an average, and with an appearance of great intellectual discomfort he assures you the number varies so much.


Some Economic Factors in Modern Life
Chapter VII
(p. 253)


Reference #: 10920

Stamp, Josiah
General Category: STATISTICIAN

I sometimes think that statisticians do not deserve quite all the hard things that are said about them. They are supposed to be cold, unemotional, bloodless and steely-eyed. But, as a matter of fact, we are all statisticians nowadays. We are either forming opinions on other people's statistics, whether we like it or not, or we are providing the raw material of statistics.


Some Economic Factors in Modern Life
Chapter VIII
(p. 253)


Reference #: 10922

Stamp, Josiah
General Category: STATISTICIAN

Most of you would as soon be told that you are cross-eyed or knock-kneed as that you are destined to be a statistician...


Some Economic Factors in Modern Life
Chapter VIII
(p. 253)


Reference #: 10924

Stamp, Josiah
General Category: DATA

The individual source of the statistics may easily be the weakest link. Harold Cox tells a story of his life as a young man in India. He quoted some statistics to a Judge, an Englishman, and a very good fellow. His friend said, "Cox, when you are a bit older, you will not quote Indian statistics with that assurance. The Government are very keen on amassing statistics—they collect them, and they raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that everyone of those figures come in the first instance from the chowty dar (village watchman), who just puts down what he damn pleases.


Some Economic Factors in Modern Life
Chapter VII
(p. 258)


Reference #: 10921

Stamp, Josiah
General Category: STATISTICAL

You cannot escape the statistical method, so you may as well make friend with it. You think it is cold and inhuman and impersonal, but, as a matter of fact, it is fuller of red blood and human nature than half the descriptive literature in the world.


Some Economic Factors in Modern Life
Chapter VIII
(p. 256)


Reference #: 15080

Standage, Tom
General Category: PLANET

A planet is, by definition, an unruly object.


The Neptune Files
Chapter 2
(p. 17)


Reference #: 10266

Standen, Anthony
General Category: ELECTRON

...nothing will do for Mr. Average Citizen but to stuff himself full of electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, genes, chromosomes, glands, hormones, potassium, chloride, high-octane gasoline, ultrasonic vibrations, and the theory of relativity.


Science is a Sacred Cow
(p. 26)


Reference #: 10269

Standen, Anthony
General Category: PHYSICS

Physics is not about the real world, it is about 'abstractions' from the real world, and this is what makes it so scientific.


Science is a Sacred Cow
Chapter III
(p. 61)


Reference #: 10263

Standen, Anthony
General Category: SCIENTIST

We are having wool pulled over our eyes if we let ourselves be convinced that scientists as a group are anything special in the way of brains. They are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their own trade, just like all other professional men.


Science is a Sacred Cow


Reference #: 10268

Standen, Anthony
General Category: PHYSICIST

Physicists, being in no way different from the rest of the population, have short memories for what is inconvenient.


Science is a Sacred Cow
(p. 68)


Reference #: 10261

Standen, Anthony
General Category: BIOLOGY

In its central content, biology is not accurate thinking, but accurate observation and imaginative thinking, with great sweeping generalizations.


Science is a Sacred Cow
Chapter IV
(pp. 99-100)


Reference #: 10262

Standen, Anthony
General Category: LOGIC

A man gets drunk on Monday on whisky and sodawater; he gets drunk on Tuesday on brandy and sodawater, and on Wednesday on gin and sodawater. What causes his drunkenness? Obviously, the common factor, the sodawater.


Science is a Sacred Cow


Reference #: 10264

Standen, Anthony
General Category: PHYSICS

This is the explanation of the extraordinary degree of dullness that pervades the laboratory periods of physics courses, a dullness so acute that for many people it is the bitterest experience of their education.


Science is a Sacred Cow
(p. 83)


Reference #: 10265

Standen, Anthony
General Category: CHEMIST

Chemists are, on the whole, like physicists, only 'less so'.They don't make quite the same wonderful mistakes, and much what they do is an art, related to cooking, instead of a true science. They have their moments, and their sources of legitimate pride. They don't split atoms, as the physicists do. They join them together, and a very praiseworthy activity that is.


Science is a Sacred Cow
Chapter III
(pp. 77-78)


Reference #: 10260

Standen, Anthony
General Category: SCIENTIST

When a white-robed scientist, momentarily looking away from his microscope or cyclotron, makes some pronouncement for the general public, he may not be understood but at least he is certain to be believed.Scientists are exalted beings who stand at the very topmost pinnacle of popular prestige, for they have the monopoly of the formula "It has been scientifically proved..", which appears to rule out all possibility of disagreement. Thus the world is divided into Scientists, who practice the art of infallibility, and non-scientists, sometimes contemptuously called "laymen", who are taken in by it.


Science is a Sacred Cow
Chapter I
(p. 13)


Reference #: 10267

Standen, Anthony
General Category: MEASURE

If the idols of scientists were piled on top of one another in the manner of a totem pole the topmost would be a grinning fetish called Measurement.


Science is a Sacred Cow
Chapter III
(p. 82)


Reference #: 6709

Stanislaus, Leszczynski (Stanislaus I)
General Category: SCIENCE

Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.


Maxims
no. 43


Reference #: 8063

Stanley, Henry Morton, Sir
General Category: DOCTOR

Doctor Livingston, I presume?


On meeting David Livingston in Ujini, Central Africa
November 10, 1871


Reference #: 1043

Stanley, Wendell M.
General Category: CHEMICAL

With the realization that there is no definite boundary between the living, and the non-living, it becomes possible to blend the atomic, the germ theory, and the cell theory into a unified philosophy, the essence of which is structure or architecture. The chemical, biological, and physical properties of matter, whether atoms, molecules, germs, or cells, are directly dependent upon the chemical structure of matter, and the results of the work with viruses have permitted the conclusion that this structure is fundamentally the same regardless of its occurrence.


American Scientist
Virus Achievement and Promise, Vol. 36, 1948


Reference #: 16337

Stansfield, William D.
General Category: SCIENCE

Absolutes have no place in science. The scientist should carefully avoid dogmatic statements, couching all conclusions in relativistic terms. When the scientist fails to do this, other members of the scientific community must be ready to correct such errors.


The Science of Evolution


Reference #: 16333

Stansfield, William D.
General Category: SCIENCE

The purpose of science is not to find 'facts' or discover 'truth,' but rather to formulate and use theories in order to solve problems and ultimately to organize, unify, and explain all the material phenomena of the universe. Scientists attempt to avoid the use of 'fact, 'proof,' and 'truth,' because these words could easily be interpreted to connote absolutes. Nothing in science is deemed absolute. Science deals only with theories or relative 'truth,'—a temporary correctness so far as can be ascertained by the rational mind at the present time.


The Science of Evolution


Reference #: 16334

Stansfield, William D.
General Category: THEORY

The purpose of science is not to find "facts" or discover "truth," but rather to formulate and use theories in order to solve problems and ultimately to organize, unify, and explain all the material phenomena of the universe. Scientists attempt to avoid the use of "fact, "proof," and "truth," because these words could easily be interpreted to connote absolutes. Nothing in science is deemed absolute. Science deals only with theories or relative "truth,"-a temporary correctness so far as can be ascertained by the rational mind at the present time.


The Science of Evolution
Introduction
(p. 7)


Reference #: 16335

Stansfield, William D.
General Category: SCIENCE

Most scientific theories, however, are ephemeral. Exceptions will likely be found that invalidate a theory in one or more of its tenets. These can then stimulate a new round of research leading either to a more comprehensive theory or perhaps to a more restrictive (i.e., more precisely defined) theory. Nothing is ever completely finished in science; the search for better theories is endless. The interpretation of a scientific experiment should not be extended beyond the limits of the available data. In the building of theories, however, scientists propose general principles by extrapolation beyond available data. When former theories have been shown to be inadequate, scientists should be prepared to relinquish the old and embrace the new in their never-ending search for better solutions. It is unscientific, therefore, to claim to have 'proof of the truth' when all that scientific methodology can provide is evidence in support of a theory.


The Science of Evolution


Reference #: 16336

Stansfield, William D.
General Category: THEORY

The interpretation of a scientific experiment should not be extended beyond the limits of the available data. In the building of theories, however, scientists propose general principles by extrapolation beyond available data. When former theories have been shown to be inadequate, scientists should be prepared to relinquish the old and embrace the new in their never-ending search for better solutions. It is unscientific, therefore, to claim to have "proof of the truth" when all that scientific methodology can provide is evidence in support of a theory.


The Science of Evolution
Introduction
(pp. 8-9)


Reference #: 3509

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady
General Category: PHYSICIAN

Besides the obstinacy of the nurse, I had the ignorance of the physicians to contend with.


Eighty Years and More
Motherhood
(pp. 118-119)


Reference #: 3874

Stantz, Ray
General Category: DIMENSION

As a duly designated representative of the City, County and State of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activities and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.


Ghostbusters


Reference #: 5866

Stapledon, Olaf
General Category: RED SHIFT

I noticed that the sun and all the stars in his neighbourhood were ruddy. Those at the opposite pole of the heaven were of an icy blue. The explanation of this strange phenomenon flashed upon me. I was still traveling, and traveling so fast that light itself was not wholly indifferent to my passage. The overtaking undulations took long to catch me. They therefore affected me as slower pulsations than they normally were, and I saw them therefore as red. Those that met me on my headlong flight were congested and shortened, and were seen as blue.


Last and First Men and Star Maker
Star Maker, Chapter III
(p. 262)


Reference #: 11454

Stapledon, Olaf
General Category: STARS

Very soon the heavens presented an extraordinary appearance, for all the stars directly behind me were now deep red, while those directly ahead were violet. Rubies lay behind me, amethysts ahead of me. Surrounding the ruby constellations there spread an area of topaz stars, and round the amethyst constellations an area of sapphires.


Star Maker
Chapter II


Reference #: 11453

Stapledon, Olaf
General Category: QUANTUM THEORY

...whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.


Star Maker
Chapter XV, 2


Reference #: 6734

Starkey, W.L.
General Category: ENGINEER

The engineer knows that it is easier to analyze a machine than it is to design one. Engineering analysis is simpler than engineering synthesis or design.


Mechanical Engineering
The Ingredients of Design, May 1966


Reference #: 7447

Starling, E.H.
General Category: FAILURE

Every discovery, however important and apparently epoch-making, is but the natural and inevitable outcome of a vast mass of work, involving many failures, by a host of different observers, so that if it is not made by Brown this year it will fall into the lap of Jones, or of Jones and Robinson simultaneously, next year or the year after.


Nature
Discovery and Research, Vol. 113, No. 2843, April 1924
(p. 606)


Reference #: 16547

Starr, Paul
General Category: MEDICINE

The organizational culture of medicine used to be dominated by the ideals of professionalism and volunteerism which softened the underlying acquisitive activity. The restraint exercised by these ideals now grows weaker, the health center of one era is the profit center of the next.


The Social Transformation of American Medicine
(p. 448)
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York, New York, United States of America; 1982


Reference #: 10340

Starr, Victor P.Gilman, Peter A.
General Category: SUN

It has always been easier to record and describe solar events than to provide theoretical explanations for them.


Scientific American
The Circulation of the Sun's Atmosphere, Vol. 218, No. 1, January 1968
(p. 100)


Reference #: 2993

Stassen, Harold E.
General Category: ENGINEER

The building of a just and durable peace absolutely requires the sustained strength which flows in such a large measure from the work of engineers.


American Engineer
Vol. 26, No. 3, March 1956
(p. 3)


Reference #: 13856

Statius
General Category: CONSTELLATION

Vast as the starry Serpent, that on high
Tracks the clear ether, and divides the sky,
And southward winding from the Northern Waiu,
Shoots to remoter spheres its glittering train.


In Elijah H. Burritt
The Geography of the Heavens
(p. 103)


Reference #: 1283

Stead, Eugene A. Jr.
General Category: DRUGS

The weller you are the more drugs you can take without getting sick. That's why doctors don't get into more trouble than they do with therapy.


Annals of Internal Medicine
Aphorisms from Eugene A. Stead, Jr., Vol. 69, 1968


Reference #: 11781

Steadman, Frank M.
General Category: QUALITY CONTROL

Without quality control you, as a producer or purchaser, are in the same position as the man who bets on a horse race - with one exception, the odds are not posted.


Textile World
Quality Control Posts Mill-Production Odds, Vol. 94, Jul-Dec 1944
(p. 63)


Reference #: 15909

Stedman, E.C.
General Category: FLOWER HELIOTROPE

O sweetest of all the flowrets
That bloom where angels tread!
But never such marvelous odor
From heliotrope was shed.


The Poetical Works of Edmund Clarence Stedman
Heliotrope, Stanza 2


Reference #: 15856

Stedman, Edmund Clarence
General Category: ATOM

White orbs like angels pass
Before the triple glass
That men may scan the record of each flame,-
Of spectral line and line
The legendary divine
Finding their mould the same, and aye the same,
The atoms that we knew before
Of which ourselves are made,—dust, and no more.


The Poems of Edmund Clerence Stedman
Poems of Occasion, Corda Concordia


Reference #: 375

Steele, Joel Darman
General Category: NATURE

In Nature all is common, and no use is base. She keeps no selected elements done up in gilt papers for sensitive people.


A Fortnight in Kerry
A Fourteen Weeks Course in Chemistry, Conclusion
(p. 223)


Reference #: 376

Steele, Joel Dorman
General Category: GOD

God has no idlers in his world. Each atom has its use. There is not an extra particle in the entire universe.


A Fourteen Weeks Course in Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry, Oxygen
(p. 27)


Reference #: 6667

Steen, Lynn
General Category: AESTHETIC

...despite an objectivity about mathematical results that has no parallel in the world of art, the motivation and standards of creative mathematics are more like those of art than of science. Aesthetic judgments transcend both logic and applicability in the ranking of mathematical theorems: beauty and elegance have more to do with the value of a mathematical idea than does either strict truth or possible utility.


Mathematics Today: Twelve Informal Essays
Mathematics Today
(p. 10)


Reference #: 5320

Steen, Lynn Arthur
General Category: MATHEMATICS

The world of mathematics may be visualized as many concentric layers built on the core of pure mathematics. This core is still red-hot with new ideas, new structures, and new theories. Ideas from the core percolate through the outer layers of the mathematical sciences, providing a constant supply of intellectual fuel for some of the incredibly complex problems of the more applied fields. And, in return, problems arising in the outer layers—in the diffuse boundary where pure mathematics blends with applied science—provide the central core with new structures, new methods, and new concepts. Core mathematics is the science of significant form. It is nourished both by internal energy, like a self-sustaining atomic reaction, and by new fuel supplied by outer layers that are in closer contact with the surface of human problems. Layers near the core employ sophisticated techniques in the service of external objectives. Theories in these layers are directed more towards solving problems than towards discovering basic form. Layers remote from the core employ mathematics more as a metaphor than as theory: applications blend with technique so thoroughly that a totally different discipline emerges. Theory and problems diffuse through the ill-defined boundaries between these layers, each enriching the other and nourishing both mathematics and science.


Mathematics Today
(p. 7)
New York: Springer-Verlag, 1978


Reference #: 5492

Steensen, Niels
General Category: BEAUTY

Beautiful are the things we see
More beautiful those we understand
Much the most beautiful those we no not comprehend.


Introductory Lecture
Copenhagen Anatomical Theater 1673


Reference #: 8933

Stein, Gertrude
General Category: CREATIVITY

Picasso siad once that he who created a thing is forced to make it ugly. In the effort to create the intensity and the struggle to create this intensity, the result always produces a certain ugliness; those who follow can make of this thing a beautiful thing because they know what they are doing, the thing having already been invented, but the inventor because he does not know he is going to invent inevitably the thing he makes must have its ugliness.


Picasso
(p. 9)


Reference #: 17501

Steinbeck, John
General Category: TREE REDWOOD

The redwoods once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always....It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not just like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.


Travels with Charley
Part Three
(p. 169)


Reference #: 16991

Steinbeck, John
General Category: PHILOSOPHY

No one wants advice—only corroboration.


The Winter of Our Discontent
(p. 106)
Penguin, 1983


Reference #: 1684

Steinbeck, John
General Category: OBSERVATION

...one can live in a prefabricated world, smugly and without question, or one can indulge perhaps the greatest human excitement: that of observation to speculation to hypothesis. This is a creative process, probably the highest and most satisfactory we know.


In Edward F. Ricketts, Jack Calvin and Joel W. Hedgpeth
Between Pacific Tides
Prefaces
(p. xi)


Reference #: 1685

Steinbeck, John
General Category: OBSERVATION

There are good things to see in the tidepools and there are exciting and interesting thoughts to be generated from the seeing. Every new eye applied to the peep hole which looks out at the world may fish in some new beauty and some new pattern, and the world of the human mind must be enriched by such fishing.


In Edward F. Ricketts, Jack Calvin, and Joel W. Hedgpeth
Between Pacific Tides
Prefaces
(p. xi)


Reference #: 3392

Steinbeck, John
General Category: MEDICAL

The medical profession is unconsciously irritated by lay knowledge.


East of Eden
Chapter 54, Section 1
(p. 589)


Reference #: 14511

Steinbeck, John
General Category: BIOLOGIST

We sat on crates of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud laughing and healthy....Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.


The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Chapter Four
(p. 28, 28-9)


Reference #: 14512

Steinbeck, John
General Category: HYPOTHESIS

When a hypothesis is deeply accepted it becomes a growth which only a kind of surgery can amputate.


The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Chapter Seventeen
(p. 183)


Reference #: 14513

Steinbeck, John
General Category: MAN

Man is related...inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable...[P]lankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.


The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Chapter Twenty-One
(p. 218)


Reference #: 14514

Steinbeck, John
General Category: KNOWLEDGE

...knowledge is a sacred thing, not to be questioned or even inspected.


The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Chapter Twenty-one
(p. 211)


Reference #: 14510

Steinbeck, John
General Category: SAND

The beach was alive with hoppers feeding on the refuse, but the course sand was not productive of other animal life.


The Log from the Sea of Cortez


Reference #: 14818

Steinbeck, John
General Category: ARITHMETIC

He was an arithmetician rather than a mathematician. None of the humour, the music, or the mysticism of higher mathematics ever entered his head. Men might vary in height or weight or colour, just as 6 is different from 8, but there was little other difference.


The Moon is Down
Chapter Two
(p. 22)

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