— Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Sphere Books, 1967, 73.
We’ve got no money,
so we’ve got to think.
— Lord Rutherford, quoted by Sir Edward Appleton, 1956 Reith lectures.
We come here to be
philosophers, and I hope you will always remember that whenever a result happens,
especially if it be new, you should say, ‘What is the cause? Why does it occur?’
and you will, in the course of time, find out the reason.
— Michael Faraday (1791-1867), A Course of
Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, 1861.
… it were good to
divide natural philosophy into the mine and the furnace, and to make two professions
or occupations of natural philosophers, some to be pioneers and some smiths; some
to dig, and some to refine and hammer.
— Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), Of the Advancement
of Learning (1605), Oxford University Press World’s Classics, 1969, 106.
Nobody will object
to an ardent experimentalist boasting of his measurements and rather looking down
on the ‘paper and ink’ physics of his theoretical friend, who on his part is proud
of his lofty ideas and despises the dirty fingers of the other.
— Max Born (1882 – 1970), Experiment and Theory
in Physics, 1943.
… in a few years,
all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the
only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements
to another place of decimals.
— James Clerk Maxwell (1813 – 1879), Scientific papers, 1871, (Maxwell was describing
this view in preparation to attacking it).
Ideas are cheap; mere
statement counts for little or nothing. Intellectual fame accrues to people with
the vision to make a good idea work in two ways: by using it to make new discoveries
and by recognising its implications as a far-ranging instrument for transforming
general attitudes.
— Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002), The Flamingo’s
Smile, Penguin 1991, 345.
It is the greatest
discovery in method which science has made that the apparently trivial, the merely
curious, may be clues to an understanding of the deepest principles of nature.
— Sir George Paget Thomson (1892 – 1975).
It follows, though
the point will require extended discussion, that a discovery like that of oxygen
or X-rays does not simply add one more item to the population of the scientist’s
world. Ultimately it has that effect, but not until the professional community has
re-evaluated traditional experimental procedures, altered its conception of entities
with which it has long been familiar, and, in the process, shifted the network of
theory through which it deals with the world.
— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, second edition, 1970, 7.
Have you listened
with attention? Are you now free from your doubts and confusion?
— Bhagavad Gita, 18:72, in the translation
of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.
In the very beginnings
of science,
The parsons, who managed things then,
Being handy with hammer and chisel,
Made gods in the likeness of men;
Till Commerce arose, and at length
Some men of exceptional power
Supplanted both demons and gods
By the atoms, which last to this hour.
— James Clerk Maxwell (1831 – 1879) (Said to be notes on the address of a president
of the British Association to its members.)
The creative impulse
seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way after
the idea is born; and if we go on, creation is work.
— Clarence Day.
Yet out of pumps grew
the discussions about Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum, and then it was discovered
that Nature does not abhor a vacuum, but that air has weight; and that notion paved
the way for the doctrine that all matter has weight, and that the force which produces
weight is co-extensive with the universe — in short, to the theory of universal
gravitation and endless force.
— Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 – 1895), On the
Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge,
1866.
You will find an index to this blog at the foot of this link. Please be patient: I am pedalling as fast as I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment