History

In parts of biology — the study of heredity, for example — the first universally received paradigms are still more recent; and it remains an open question what parts of social science have yet acquired such paradigms at all. History suggests the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous.
— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edition, 1970, 15.

I established the opposite view, that this history of the embryo (ontogeny) must be completed by a second, equally valuable, and closely connected branch of thought – the history of race (phylogeny). Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation... ‘ontogenesis is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis, determined by the physiological functions of heredity (generation) and adaptation (maintenance).’
— Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919), Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, 1899.

Where cultivation on irrigated fields prevailed, a definite social order came into existence, for this form of agriculture requires the close cooperation of all the inhabitants of each separate village under common leadership. This factor may have determined the social organisation of the people of Java and other parts of the archipelago until the present day.
— Bernard H. M. Vlekke, Nusantara: a History of Indonesia (1959), 12.

David Davies, a Welsh mine foreman, was the first to make really large collections of plant material from different coal seams. He showed that even when the plants did not differ very much, there were differences in the proportions of different kinds, just as in one meadow you will find a great deal of clover among the grass, in another very little.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) Everything Has a History, Allen and Unwin 1951, 50.

Geology is related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. A historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well-versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature.
— Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), quoted in A Thousand and One Gems of English Prose, selected by Charles Mackay, (19th century?).

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius begin by acknowledging his indebtedness to his grandfather, father, adopted father, various teachers, and the gods … He owes it to the gods … that when he took to philosophy he did not waste time on history, syllogism or astronomy.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) A History of Western Philosophy, chapter XXVIII, 271.

Few of our readers have heard of the name of Edward Davy in connection with the history of the telegraph … nothing has been published of his labours. Yet it is certain that, in those days, he had a clearer grasp of the requirements and capabilities of an electric telegraph than, probably, Cooke and Wheatstone themselves …
— J. J. Fahie, The Electrician, July 7, 1883.

 

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
— Henry Ford (1863 – 1947).

The old story of Sir Walter Raleigh’s looking from his prison-window, on some street tumult, which afterwards three witnesses reported in three different ways, himself differing from them all, is still a true lesson for us.
— Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881), On History.

Naval history has recently been written in terms of timber. Sooner or later it will become necessary to write it again in terms of gunpowder . For there can be no doubt that one factor in the English success at sea was the good quality of the powder used. It was pointed out in a letter to the Moniteur  that the powder burnt in the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile was adulterated by more than 25 per cent. This was naturally, perhaps rightly, attributed to the dishonesty of the contractors and the venality of the commissaries. Yet an exhaustive experiment at Bombay in 1808, with the powder used on each side in the action between the San Fiorenzo and the Piedmontaise, proved that the English powder was better … It is hard at least to believe that all of the dishonest contractors were on one side. And this suggests, again, that English powder may have owed its quality to the purity of Bengal saltpetre , of which England had a complete and permanent monopoly. The raw material was peculiar in the ease with which it was prepared for export, and perhaps it had other merits.
— C. Northcote Parkinson (1909 – 1993), Trade in Eastern Seas 1793-1813, 1937, 84.

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