SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING

A SMALL COLLECTION OF SCIENCE QUOTATIONS FROM
"THE SPEAKING SERIES"

Provided by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither

Each book, or the entire Speaking Series, would be a fine reference addition or gift for the graduating student, the professional, or the person who has everything.

Interested readers are directed to our web page at The Speaking Series for information and the book reviews.

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Aristotle
We think we have scientific knowledge when we know the cause, and there are four causes: (1) the definable form, (2) an antecedent which necessitates a consequent, (3) the efficient cause, (4) the final cause.
Posterior Analytics
Book II, Chapter 11, 94a, [20]

Aron, Raymond
Foreknowledge of the future makes it possible to manipulate both enemies and supporters.
The Opium of the Intellectuals
Chapter IX (p. 284)

Auster, Paul
I've dealt with numbers all my life, of course, and after a while you begin to feel that each number has a personality of its own. A twelve is very different from a thirteen, for example. Twelve is upright, conscientious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants. Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman who likes tramping through woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what he's told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation .... Numbers have souls, and you can?t help but get involved with them in a personal way.
The Music of Chance
Chapter 4 (p. 73)

Baez, Joan
Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.
Daybreak
What Would You Do If (p. 134)

Banach, Stefan
Good mathematicians see analogies between theorems or theories, the very best ones see analogies between analogies.
Quoted in S.M. Ulam
Adventures of a Mathematician
Chapter 10 (p. 203)

Barth, John
"My project", he told us, "is to learn where to go by discovering where I am by reviewing where I've been--where we've all been..."
Chimera
Dunyazadiad (p. 10)

Bell, Eric T.
The technical analysis of any large collection of data is a task for a highly trained and expensive man who knows the mathematical theory of statistics inside and out. Otherwise the outcome is likely to be a collection of drawings--quartered pies, cute little battleships, and tapering rows of sturdy soldiers in diversified uniforms--interesting enough in a colored Sunday supplement, but hardly the sort of thing from which to draw reliable inferences.
Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 383)

Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view--this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs.
The Search for Truth (p. 25)

Berkeley, Edmund C.
The moment you have worked out an answer, start checking it--it probably isn't right.
Computers and Automation
Right Answers--A Short Guide for Obtaining Them (p. 20)
Sept. 1969

Bernard, Claude
A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
Part I, chapter II, section ii (p. 34)

Berry, Daniel M.
Yavne, Moshe
In the beginning, everything was void, and J.H.W.H. Conway began to create numbers. Conway said, "Let there be two rules which bring forth all numbers large and small. This shall be the first rule: Every number corresponds to two sets of previously created numbers, such that no member of the left set is greater than or equal to any member of the right set.
And the second rule shall be this: One number is less than or equal to another number if and only if no member of the first number's left set is greater than or equal to the second number, and no member of the second number's right set is less than or equal to the first number." And Conway examined these two rules he had made, and behold! they were very good.
Mathematics Magazine
The Conway Stones: What the Original Hebrew May Have Been
Volume 49, Number 4, September 1976 (p. 208)

Beston, Henry
Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man.
The Outermost House
Forward (p. ix)

Biggs, Noah
I praise God who hath been so bountiful to me as to call me to the practise of Chymistry, out of the dregs of other Professions: Since Chymistry hath principles not drawn from fallacious reasonings, but such as are known by nature, & conspicuoul by fire; and she prepareth the Intellect to penetrate, not the upper deck or surface of things, but the deep hold, the concentrick and hidden things of nature, and maketh an investigation into the America of nature?.
The Vanity of the Craft of Physick (p. 57)

Black, Joseph
Chemistry is not yet a science. We are very far from the knowledge of first principles. We should avoid every thing that has the pretensions of a full system. The whole of chemical science should, as yet, be analytical, like Newton's Optics, in the form of a general law, at the very end of our induction, as the reward of our labour.
Lecture on the Elements of Chemistry
Volume I (p. 547)

Blanshard, Brand
A mind with muscles so flabby that it sickens under a little gymnastics, is one whose creations we can afford to lose. And the fact seems to be that analysis, if not indulged to excess, is an aid, not a hindrance, to appreciation.
The Nature of Thought
Volume I
Chapter VI, section 17 (p. 239)

Borel, Emile
The problem of error has preoccupied philosophers since the earliest antiquity. According to the subtle remark made by a famous Greek philosopher, the man who makes a mistake is twice ignorant, for he does not know the correct answer, and he does not know that he does not know it.
Probability and Certainty
Chapter 9 (p. 114)

Box, G.E.P.
To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it).
Technometrics
Use and Abuse of Regression (p. 629)
Volume 8, Number 4, November 1966

Bradley, Omar
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
The Collected Writings of General Omar N. Bradley
Speeches, 1945-1949
Volume 1 (p. 588)

With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents. Our knowledge of science has already outstripped our capacity to control it. We have many men of science, too few men of God.
Address in Boston
November 10, 1948

Buffon, Comte de Georges, Louis Leclerc
Nature is that system of laws established by the Creator for regulating the existence of bodies, and the succession of beings. Nature is not a body; for this body would comprehend every thing. Either is it a being; for this being would necessarily be God. But nature may be considered as an immense living power, which animates the universe, and which, in subordination to the first and supreme Being, began to act by his command, and its action is still continued by his concurrence or consent.
Natural History, General and Particular
Volume VI
Of Nature
First View (p. 249)

Burroughs, John
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Ways of Nature
Ways of Nature (p. 15)

Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.
Harvest of a Quiet Eye
The Gospel of Nature
5 (p. 149)

We study botany so hard that we miss the charm of the flower entirely.
The Atlantic Monthly
In the Noon of Science (p. 324)
Volume cx, September 1912

Campbell, Norman R.
...analogies are not "aids" to the establishment of theories; they are an utterly essential part of theories, without which theories would be completely valueless and unworthy of the name. It is often suggested that the analogy leads to the formulation of the theory, but once the theory is formulated the analogy has served its purpose and may be removed and forgotten. Such a suggestion is absolutely false and perniciously misleading.
Physics, The Elements
Chapter VI (p. 129)

Cardenal, Ernesto
And that was Big Bang.
The Great Explosion.
The universe subjected to relations of uncertainty,
its radius of curvature undefined,
its geometry imprecise
with the uncertainty principle of Quantum Mechanics...
Cosmic Canticle
Cantigua 1
Big Bang

Carroll, Lewis
"This is the most interesting Experiment" the Professor announced. "It will need time, I'm afraid: but that is a trifling disadvantage. Now observe. If I were to unhook this weight, and let go, it would fall to the ground. You do not deny that?"
Nobody denied it.
"And in the same way, if I were to bend this piece of whalebone round the post--thus--and put the ring over this hook-- thus--it stays bent: but, if I unhook it, it straightens itself again. You do not deny that?"
Again, nobody denied it.
"Well, now suppose we left things as they are, for a long time. The force of the whalebone would get exhausted, you know, and it would stay bent, even when you unhooked it. Now, why shouldn't the same thing happen with the weight. The whalebone gets so used to being bent, that it ca'n't straighten itself any more. Why shouldn't the weight get so used to being held up, that it ca'n't fall any more? That's what I want to know!"
"That's what we want to know!" echoed the crowd.
"How long must we wait?" grumbled the Emperor.
The Professor looked at his watch. "Well, I think a thousand years will do to begin with, . . ."
The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
Chapter XXI

Chaisson, Eric
If we are examples of anything in the cosmos, it is probably of magnificent mediocrity.
Cosmic Dawn (p. 291)

Chandrasekhar, S.
The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time.
Quoted by John D. Barrow in
The World within the World (p. 310)

Chaucer, Geoffrey
In everything there lieth measure.
Troylus and Cryseyde
c

Chesterton, G.K.
Far away in some strange constellation in skies infinitely remote, there is a small star, which astronomers may some day discover. At least, I could never observe in the faces or demeanour of most astronomers or men of science any evidence that they had discovered it; though as a matter of fact they were walking about on it all the time. It is a star that brings forth out of itself very strange plants and very strange animals; and none stranger than the men of science.
The Everlasting Man
Chapter I (p. 23)

Cicero
How could one haruspex look another in the face without laughing?
Cicero: De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione
De Divinatione
ii, 24

Coleridge, Samuel T.
Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material.
Table-Talk
December 27, 1831

Collins, Wilkie
"Facts?" he repeated. "Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin, and you'll get over the weakness of believing facts! Foul play, Sir"
The Moonstone
Second Narrative
Chapter IV (p. 275)

Collingwood, R.G.
Different kinds of facts, having different degrees of scientific value, are ascertainable in these two ways. Facts ascertainable by mere observation are what are called common-sense facts, i.e. facts accessible to a commonplace mind on occasions frequent enough to be rather often perceived and of such a kind that their characteristics can be adequately perceived without trouble: so that the facts concerning them can be familiar to persons not especially gifted and not especially alert.
The New Leviathan
Part II, Chapter XXXI, aphorism 31.47

Colton, Charles Caleb
We know the effects of many things, but the causes of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.
Lacon: or many things in a few words (p. 111)

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
Lacon: or many things in a few words (p. 163)

Compton, Karl Taylor
We live in an age of science. I do not say "an age of technology" for every age has been an age of technology. We recognize this when we describe past civilizations as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Age of Steam or of Steel, thus implicitly admitting that the stage of civilization is determined by the tools at man's disposal--in other words, by his technology....Science, unlike invention and technical skill, is a relatively modern concept.
A Scientist Speaks (p. 1)

Comte, Auguste
The business of concrete mathematics is to discover the equations which express the mathematical laws of the phenomenon under consideration; and these equations are the startingpoint of the calculus, which must obtain from them certain quantities by means of others
The Positive Philosophy
Volume I
Book I, Chapter II (p. 47)

Conrad, Joseph
They demand facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.
Lord Jim
IV

The language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words.
Lord Jim
XXXVI

Crick, F.H.C.
Mathematics cares neither for science nor for engineering (except as a source of problems) but only about the relationship between abstract entities.
What Mad Pursuit
Epilogue: My Later Years (p. 160)

Cross, Hardy
There is an unfortunate tendency to burden engineers, through books, with endless techniques and procedures of mathematical analysis. Few students know that at best books can furnish only a perishable net of large mesh through which they may begin to strain their information and that every fiber of that net must be rewoven from man's own thinking and that many new strands must be added if it is to be permanent and reliable in holding the selected data of years of engineering practice. Books present the sets of tools; it is the task of the analytical engineer to select those tools which can be used most advantageously.
Engineers and Ivory Towers
For Man's Use of God's Gifts (p. 106)

Davisson, Clinton
We think we understand the regular reflection of light and x-rays--and we should understand the reflections of electrons as well if electrons were only waves instead of particles. It is rather as if one were to see a rabbit climbing a tree, and were to say, "well that is rather a strange for a rabbit to be doing, but after all there is really nothing to get excited about. Cats climb trees--so that if the rabbit were only a cat, we would understand its behavior perfectly."
Quoted by Anthony French and Edwin Taylor in
An Introduction to Quantum Physics (p. 54)

Davy, John
Appearances in these things are most deceptive: in the theatre experiments are made for illustration, and are generally of a simple kind, and easily comprehended, and the minds of the audience are prepared by the lecturer to follow and understand them. In the laboratory, on the contrary, this aid is wanting when most necessary; and, in consequence, operations...of a very accurate kind, and carried on with a perfect design, may appear confused to the ininstructed, or to the uninitiated.
Memories of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy
Volume I (pp. 259-60)

de Cervantes, Miguel
Take away the cause, and the effect ceases; what the eye ne'er sees, the heart ne'er rues.
Don Quixote
2.4.67

de St. Exupry, Antoine
Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
The Little Prince (p. 16)

Deming, William Edwards
Anyone can easily misuse good data.
Some Theory of Sampling (p. 18)

There is only one kind of whiskey, but two broad classes of data, good and bad.
The American Statistician
On the Classification of Statistics (p. 16)
Volume 2, Number 2, April 1948

Dillard, Annie
Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. If your dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there's always room for one more...
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Chapter 4, section II (p. 65)

Dirac, P.A.M.
...it is a general rule that the originator of a new idea is not the most suitable person to develop it because his fears of something going wrong are really too strong and prevent his looking at the method from a purely detached point of view in the way that he ought to.
The Development of Quantum Theory (p. 24)

Dobzhansky, Theodosius
One may detest nature and despise science, but it becomes more and more difficult to ignore them. Science in the modern world is not an entertainment for some devotees. It is on its way to becoming everybody's business.
The Biology of Ultimate Concern
Chapter 1 (p. 9)

Donghia, Angelo
Assumption is the mother of screw-up...
New York Times
Behind Angelo Donghia's Gray Flannel Success
Section C, page 6
January 20, 1983

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
A Study in Scarlet
Part I, Chapter 5 (p. 37)

Drexler, K.E.
Because of our superficial self-awareness, we often wonder where an idea in our heads came from. Some people imagine that these thoughts and feelings come directly from agencies outside their own minds; they incline towards a belief in haunted heads.
Engines of Creation
Chapter 5 (p. 67)

du Noüy, Pierre Lecomte
...I said that an observed fact only becomes a scientific fact when all the observers are in unanimous agreement.
The Road to Reason
Chapter I (pp. 29-30)

Dumal, Rene
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again....So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. In climbing, take careful note of the difficulties along your way; for as you go up, you can observe them. Coming down, you will no longer see them, but you will know they are there if you have observed them well.
There is an art of finding one's direction in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
Mount Analogue
Editor's Note (p. 110)

Keep your eye fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look right in front of you. The last step depends on the first. Don't think you?ve arrived just because you see the summit. Watch your footing, be sure of the next step, but don't let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.
Mount Analogue
Editor's Note (p. 111)

Dunsany, Lord Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett
But, logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
My Ireland
Weeds & Moss (p. 186)

Durant, Will
Durant, Ariel
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life...peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law.
The Lessons of History
Chapter III (p. 19)

Ecclesiastes 1:18
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
The Bible

Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley
Our method of making an atom work is to knock it about; and if it does not do what we want, knock it still harder.
New Pathways in Science (p. 203)

Edison, Thomas
The only way to keep ahead of the procession is to experiment. If you don't, the other fellow will. When there's no experimenting there's no progress. Stop experimenting and you go backward. If anything goes wrong, experiment until you get to the very bottom of the trouble.
In Frank Lewis Dyer
Edison His Life and Inventions
Volume II
Chapter XXIV (p. 617)

Einstein, Albert
It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.
Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
The NY Times
Einstein Seeks Lack in Applying Science
February 17, 1931 (p. 6)

The use of the word 'Discovery' in itself is to be deprecated. For discovery is equivalent to becoming aware of a thing which is already formed; this links up with proof, which no longer bears the character of "discovery" but, in the last instance, of the means that leads to discovery....Discovery is really not a creative act!
In Alexander Moszkowski
Conversations with Einstein
Chapter V (p. 95)

All matter of the universe is made up of elementary particles of only a few kinds. It is like seeing in one town buildings of different sizes, construction and srchitecture, but from shack to sky-scraper only very few different kinds of bricks were used, the same in all buildings. So all known elements of our material world, from hydrogen the lightest, to uranium the heaviest, are built of the same kinds of bricks, that is, the same kinds of elementary particles. The heaviest alements, the most complicated buildings, are unstable and they disintegrate or, as we say, are radioactive. Some of the bricks, that is, the elementary particles of which radioactive atoms are constructed, are sometimes thrown out with a very great velocity approaching that of light. An atom of an element, say radium, according to our present views,...is a complicated structure, and radioactive disintegration is one of the phenomena in which the composition of atoms from still simpler bricks, the elementary particles, is revealed.
The Evolution of Physics
Field Relativity (pp. 206-7)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
What connection do the books show between the fifty or sixty chemical elements and the historical eras...
Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Volume II
(p. 40)

...science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.
The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Volume I
The American Scholar (p. 54)

Feynman, Richard P.
One of the most impressive discoveries was the origin of the energy of the stars, that makes them continue to burn. One of the men who discovered this was out with his girl friend the night after he realized that nuclear reactions must be going on in the stars in order to make them shine. She said "Look at how pretty the stars shine!" He said "Yes, and right now I am the only man in the world who knows why they shine." She merely laughed at him. She was not impressed with being out with the only man who, at that moment, knew why stars shine. Well, it is sad to be alone, but that is the way it is in this world.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Volume 1
Chapter 3-4 (p. 3-7)

Now you may ask, "What is mathematics doing in a physics lecture?" We have several possible excuses: first, of course, mathematics is an important tool, but that would only excuse us for giving the formula in two minutes. On the other hand, in theoretical physics we discover that all our laws can be written in mathematical form; and that this has a certain simplicity and beauty about it. So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Volume 1
Chapter 22-1 (p. 22-1)

To those who do not know Mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty of nature .... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.
The Character of Physical Law

Feyerabend, Paul
The history of science, after all, does not just consist of facts and conclusions drawn from facts. It also contains ideas, interpretations of facts, problems created by conflicting interpretations, mistakes, and so on. On closer analysis we even find that science knows no 'bare facts' at all but that the 'facts' that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a certain way and are, therefore, essentially ideational.
Against Method
Introduction (p. 19)

Finn, Huckleberry
I had been to school...and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty?five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.
Quoted in Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Chapter IV

Fisher, Sir Ronald A.
No human mind is capable of grasping in its entirety the meaning of any considerable quantity of numerical data.
Statistical Methods for Research Workers (p. 6)

Flammarion, Camillie
Far from being a difficult and inaccessible science, Astronomy is the science which concerns us most, the one most necessary for our general instruction, and at the same time the one which offers for our study the greatest charms and keeps in reserve the highest enjoyments. We cannot be indifferent to it, for it alone teaches us where we are and what we are; and, moreover, it need not bristle with figures, as some severe savants would wish us to believe. The algebraical formulæ are merely scaffoldings analogous to those which are used to construct an admirably designed palace. The figures drop off, and the palace of Urania shines in the azure , displaying to our wondering eyes all its grandeur and all its magnificence.
Popular Astronomy (p. 1)

Fort, Charles
The interpretations will be mine, but the data will be for anybody to form his own opinions on.
In Damon Knight
Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained
A Charles Fort Sampler (p. vii)

France, Anatole
I hate science...for having loved it too much, after the manner of voluptuaries who reproach women with not having come up to the dream they formed of them.
The Opinions of Jérôme Coignard
Volume II
Chapter 9 (p. 113)

Gamow, George
God was very much disappointed, and wanted first to contract the Universe again, and to start all over from the beginning. But it would be much too simple. Thus, being almighty, God decided to correct His mistake in a most impossible way.
And God said: "Let there by Hoyle." And there was Hoyle. And God looked at Hoyle...and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased.
And Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by supernova explosions.
My World Line (p. 127)

To keep order and preserve the properties, I never permit more than two electrons to follow the same track; a menage a trois always gives a lot of trouble, you know.
Mr. Tompkins in Paperback
Chapter 10 (p. 115)

Atome prreemorrdiale!
All-containeeng Atome!
Deesolved eento fragments exceedeengly small.
Galaxies formeeng,
Each wiz prrimal enerrgy!
Mr. Tompkins in Paperback
Chapter 6 (p. 57)

Genesis 2:20
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast.
The Bible

Gillispie, C.C.
Indeed the renewals of the subjective approach to nature make a pathetic theme. Its ruins lie strewn like good intentions all along the ground traversed by science, until it survives only in strange corners like Lysenkoism and anthroposophy, where nature is socialized or moralized. Such survivals are relics of the perpetual attempt to escape the consequences of western man's most characteristic and successful campaign, which must doom to conquer. So like any thrust in the face of the inevitable, romantic natural philosophy has induced every nuance of mood from desperation to heroism. At the ugliest, it is sentimental or vulgar hostility to intellect. At the noblest, it inspired Diderot's naturalistic and moralizing science, Goethe's personification of nature, the poetry of Wordsworth, and the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, or of any other who would find a place in science for our qualitative and aesthetic appreciation of nature. It is the science of those who would make botany of blossoms and meteorology of sunsets.
The Edge of Objectivity
Chapter V (pp. 199-200)

Gissing, George
I hate and fear science because of my conviction that for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts; I see it bringing a time of vast conflicts which will pale into insignificance 'the thousand wars of old' and, as likely as not, will wheel all the laborious advances of mankind in blood?drenched chaos.
In Morris Goran
Science and Anti-Science
Chapter 3 (p. 23)

Glasgow, Ellen
Last night the stars were magnificent--Pegasus and Andromeda faced me brilliantly when I lifted my shade, so I went down and had a friendly reunion with the constellations--
Letters of Ellen Glasgow
Letter to Mary Johnson (pp. 53?4)
August 15, 1906

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Content without method leads to fantasy; method without content to empty sophistry; matter without form to unwieldy crudition, form without matter to hollow speculation.
Scientific Studies
Volume 12
Chapter VIII (p. 306)

Graham, L.A.
Hey diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped into the blue;
Her leap into action
Took plenty of traction,
The product of Force times mew.
Ingenious Mathematical Problems and Methods
Mathematical Nursery Rhyme No. 8

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Wondering how hard he would fall.
Force times time, you will agree,
Is equal to mass times velocity.
Ingenious Mathematical Problems and Methods
Mathematical Nursery Rhyme No. 15

Graton, L.C.
The purpose of classification is not to set forth final and indisputable truths but rather to afford stepping stones towards better understanding.
In Fred M. Bullard
Volcanoes of the Earth
Chapter 4 (p. 30)

Gregory, Olinthus
The science of mechanics, whether considered in its theory as a subject of curious and refined speculations, calculated for the learned, ingenious, and contemplative, or in practice as contribution to the conveniences and elegancies of life, and the wealth of nations, may be ranked the first and most important of all human acquirements.
American Journal of Science
A Treatise of Mechanics
Volume 7, 1824 (p. 72)

Gross, David
One of the best of the many Pauli jokes tells of Pauli's arriving in Heaven and being given, as befits a theoretical physicist, an appointment with God. When granted the customary free wish, he requests that God explain to him why the value of the fine-structure constant, a = e2/( h x c), which measures the strength of the electric force, is 0.00729735....God goes to the blackboards and starts to write furiously. Pauli watches with pleasure but soon starts shaking his head violently...
Physics Today
On the Calculation of the Fine-Structure Constant (p. 9)
Volume 142, Number 13, December 1989

Hall, A.R.
The cumulative growth of science, arising from the employment of methods of investigation and reasoning which have been justified by their fruits and their resistance to the corrosion of criticism, cannot be reduced to any single themes. We cannot say...why some men can perceive the truth, or a technical trick, which has eluded others. From the bewildering variety of experience in its social, economic and psychological aspects it is possible to extract only a few factors, here and there, which have had a bearing on the development of science. At present at least, we can only describe, and begin to analyse, where we should like to understand. The difficulty is the greater because the history of science is not, and cannot be, a tight unity. The different branches of science are themselves unlike in complexity, in techniques, and in their philosophy. They are not all affected equally, or at the same time, by the same historical factors, whether internal or external. It is not even possible to trace the development of a single scientific method, some formulation of principles and rules of operating which might be imagined as applicable to every scientific inquiry, for there is no such thing.
The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800
Introduction (p. xiv)

Halmos, Paul
Teachers of elementary mathematics in the USA frequently complain that all calculus books are bad. That is a case in point. Calculus books are bad because there is no such subject as calculus; it is not a subject because it is many subjects. What we call calculus nowadays is the union of a dab of logic and set theory, some axiomatic theory of complete ordered fields, analytic geometry and topology, the latter in both the "general" sense (limits and continuous functions) and the algebraic sense (orientation), real-variable theory properly so called (differentiation), the combinatoric symbol manipulation called formal integration, the first steps of low?dimensional measure theory, some differential geometry, the first steps of the classical analysis of the trigonometric, exponential, and logarithmic functions, and, depending on the space available and the personal inclination of the author, some cook?book differential equations, elementary mechanics, and a small assortment of applied mathematics. Any one of these is hard to write a good book on; the mixture is impossible.
L'Enseignement Mathématique
How to Write Mathematics
Volume 16, 1970 (p. 125)

Hartley, David
Animals are also analogous to Vegetables in many things, and Vegetables to Minerals: So that there seems to be a perpetual Thread of Analogy continued from the most perfect Animal to the most imperfect Mineral, even till we come to elementary Bodies themselves.
Observations on Man
Volume I
Chapter III, Section 1, Proposition 82 (p. 294)

Hawking, Stephen
Although Bekenstein's hypothesis that black holes have a finite entropy requires for its consistency that black holes should radiate thermally, at first it seems a complete miracle that the detailed quantum-mechanical calculations of particle creation should give rise to emission with a thermal spectrum. The explanation is that the emitted particles tunnel out of the black hole from a region of which an external observer has no knowledge other than its mass, angular momentum and electric charge. This means that all combinations or configurations of emitted particles that have the same energy, angular momentum and electric charge are equally probable. Indeed, it is possible that the black hole could emit a television set or the works of Proust in 10 leather-bound volumes...
Scientific American
The Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes (p. 40)
Volume 236, Number 1, January 1977

Heaviside, Oliver
...an old idea that the speed of gravitation must be an enormous multiple of the speed of light...is only moonshine.
Electromagnetic Theory
Volume III
Chapter X (p. 144)

Helmholtz, Hermann von
...the ultimate aim of physical science must be to demonstrate the movements which are the real causes of all other phenomena and discover the motive powers on which they all depend; in other words, to merge itself into mechanics.
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects
The Aim and Progress of Physical Science (p. 375)

Henslow, John Stevens
To obtain a knowledge of a science of observation, like botany, we need make very little more exertion at first than is required for adapting a chosen set of terms to certain appearances of which the eye takes cognisance, and when this has been attained, all the rest is very much like reading a book after we have learned to spell, where every page affords a fresh field of intellectual enjoyment.
Magazine of Zoology and Botany
On the Requisites Necessary for the Advance of Botany (p. 115)
Volume 1, 1837

Hodnett, Edward
A formula is like a basket. Try to pick up a dozen apples from the ground and carry them in your hands. It is well-nigh impossible. With a basket you can carry as many as you can lift.
The Art of Problem Solving (p. 86)

What you do to a situation when you use a formula approach is to schematize it. You impose a pattern on it...
The Art of Problem Solving (p. 89)

Holmes, Oliver Wendell
But he who, blind to universal laws,
Sees but effects, unconscious of the causes,...
The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes
A Metrical Essay

Holmes, Sherlock
. . . you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confiding yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.
In Arthur Conan Doyle
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

Holton, Gerald
And yet, on looking into the history of science, one is overwhelmed by evidence that all too often there is no regular procedure, no logical system of discovery, no simple, continuous development. The process of discovery has been as varied as the temperament of the scientist.
Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought
Chapter 11 (pp. 384-5)

Hopkins, Harry
Figures are faceless and incestuous.
The Numbers Game: the Bland Totalitarianism (p. 15)

Hoyle, Fred
On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much the less palatable of the two. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms.
The Nature of the Universe
The Expanding Universe (p. 124)

Huxley, Aldous
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.
Brave New World
Chapter One (pp. 6?7)

Huxley, Thomas
I often wish that this phrase "applied science," had never been invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is termed "pure science." But there is no more complete fallacy than this.
Collected Essays
Volume III
Science and Education
Science and Culture (p. 137)

Nature is never in a hurry, and seems to have had always before her eyes the adage, :keep a thing long enough and you will find a use for it".
Collected Essays
Volume VIII
Discourses, Biological and Geological

The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
A Liberal Education (p. 8)

Irwin, Keith Gordon
It is nature, of course, that is the great chemist. Every growing plant is a marvelous chemical factory, every living thing a brilliant shifter of atoms from one bewildering compound to another. And down in the depths of the earth enormous forces operate to create the minerals that someday may be close to the earth's surface.
The Romance of Chemistry
Forward (p. xi)

King, Alexander
Newton saw an apple fall and discovered the Laws of Gravity.
Eve made an apple fall and discovered the Gravity of Law...
I Should Have Kissed Her More (p. 51)

Kronenberger, L.
Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has actually become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its nonmystical methods; above all...of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.
Company Manners
Chapter 4 (p. 94)

Lagen, Doug
The lab is my jeopardy, I cannot breathe.
It eateth my clothes with strong acids.
It destroyeth my soles.
It leadeth me into the paths of science for its own sake.
Yea, though I walk through the welter of stink and smells, I will fear not chemical, for it is oneness.
It provideth me a bench in the presence of fluorine.
It loadeth my day with toil.
My beaker runneth over.
Surely bad tastes and odors shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of science forever.
Chemistry
The Lab (p. 27)
June 1976

Leacock, Stephen
Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.
Literary Lapses
A Manual of Education (p. 67)

Lewis, C.S.
This is called the inductive method. Hypothesis, my dear young friend, establishes itself by a cumulative process: or, to use popular language, if you make the same guess often enough it ceases to be a guess and becomes a Scientific Fact.
The Pilgrim's Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism (p. 37)

Mathematical Sciences Education Board
Calculators and computers should be used in ways that anticipate continuing rapid change due to technological developments. Technology should be used not because it is seductive, but because it can enhance mathematical learning by extending each student's mathematical power.
Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education (p. 84)

Maxwell, James Clerk
As long as we have to deal with only two molecules, and have all the data given us, we can calculate the result of their encounter; but when we have to deal with millions of molecules, each of which has millions of encounters in a second, the complexity of the problem seems to shut out all hope of a legitimate solution.
In W.D. Niven (ed.)
The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell
Volume II
Molecules (p. 373)

[Molecular science is] one of those branches of study which deal with things invisible and imperceptible by our senses, and which cannot be subjected to direct experiment.
Scientific Papers
Volume II
Molecules (p. 361)

McAleer, Neil
The Galaxy contains more than 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 100 thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion dust grains.
The Mind-Boggling Universe (p. 18)

Mill, John Stuart
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

Noyes, Alfred
It was a comet, made of mortal sins...
The Torch Bearers: Watchers of the Sky (p. 61)

Nye, Bill
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)

Pasternak, Boris
And there, with frightful listing
Through emptiness, away
Through unknown solar systems
Revolves the Milky Way...
Boris Pasternak: Fifty Poems
Night

Payne-Gaposchkin, Celia Helena
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)

Peebles, Phillip James Edwin
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)

Poincare, Henri 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)

Raju, P.T.
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)

Rucker, Rudy
I love cosmology: theres 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)

Russell, Bertrand A.
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

Sagan, Carl
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.
Cosmos (p. 4)

Sage, M.
...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)

Simpson, George Gaylord
Biology, then, is the science that stands at the center 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: The World of an Evolutionist
Chapter Five (p. 107)

Starling, E.H.
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
Volume 113, Number 2843, April 1924 (p. 606)

Tennyson, Alfred Lord
The fires that arch this dusty dot-- Yon myriad worlded?ways-- The vast sun-cluster' gathered blaze, World-isles in lonely skies, Whole heavens within themselves amaze Our brief Humanities.
Alfred Tennysons Poetical Works,
Epilogue, l. 51?56

Waismann, Friedrich
Will anyone seriously assert that the existence of negative numbers is guaranteed by the fact that there exist in the world hot assets and cold, and debts? Shall we refer to these things in the structure of arithmetic? Who does not see that thereby an entirely foreign element enters into arithmetic, which endangers the pureness and clarity of its concepts?
Introduction to Mathematical Thinking
Chapter 2 (p. 15)

Watts, Alan W.
The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought.
The Wisdom of Insecurity
Chapter IX (p. 149)

West, Nathaniel
Prayers for the condemned man's soul will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers, he explained, constitute the only universal language.
Miss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts and the Deadpan

Whitehead, Alfred North
The living cell is to biology what the electron and the proton are to physics.
Science and the Modern World
The Nineteenth Century (p. 146)