Henri Poincare Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• 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.

  Henri Poincare

  Beautiful, Math, Science

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.318, Modern Library

• It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.

  Henri Poincare

  Creativity, Science, Intuition

  "Atlas of the Poetic Continent: Pathways in Ecological Citizenship". Book by Shelley Sacks, Wolfgang Zumdick, p. 60, 2013.

• Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.

  Henri Poincare

  Believe, Science, Reflection

• Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Player, Vices

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.642, Modern Library

• Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Discovery, Important

• Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

  Henri Poincare

  Art, Science, Math

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.622, Modern Library

• 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 unrecognisable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile and vain.

  Henri Poincare

  Eye, Science, Past

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.328, Modern Library

• It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover.

  Henri Poincare

  Truth, Knowledge, Science

• Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?

  Henri Poincare

  Writing, Science, Numbers

  "The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare".

• It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. Every man has his own conception of the world, and this he cannot so easily lay aside. We must, example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas. Only they are unconscious preconceived ideas, which are a thousand times the most dangerous of all.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Men, Ideas

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.192, Modern Library

• A very small cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we cannot ignore, and we say that this effect is due to chance.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Causes, Chance

• Chance ... must be something more than the name we give to our ignorance.

  Henri Poincare

  Ignorance, Science, Names

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.666, Modern Library

• Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Night, Thinking

• Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer.

  Henri Poincare

  Prayer, Rain, Science

• In one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is a necessity that imposes itself on the most circumspect observer.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Experience, Observation

• It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry; the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.

  Henri Poincare

  Mean, Science, Perfect

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.236, Modern Library

• Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages. If a being with such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him; we should always lose.

  Henri Poincare

  Powerful, Science, Law

• I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of entirely different things. One day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me, again with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry.

  Henri Poincare

  Success, Science, Ideas

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.649, Modern Library

• Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas.

  Henri Poincare

  Stars, Distance, Moving

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.905, Modern Library

• Deviner avant de démontrer! Ai-je besoin de rappeler que c'est ainsi que se sont faites toutes les découvertes importantes.

  Henri Poincare

  Science

• It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Differences, Finals

• What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Understanding, Definitions

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.730, Modern Library

• A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.

  Henri Poincare

  Independent, Science, Reality

• When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Thanks, Problem

• Sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Technology, Numbers

  Science et Methode ch. 1 (1908)

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