History Of Science Quotes - Page 3

• Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.

  Martin Gardner

  Real, Science, Self

  11 Copy quote

• Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

  Imre Lakatos

  Philosophy, Blind, Empty

  Imre Lakatos (1978). “Philosophical Papers”

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I came to realize that exaggerated concern about what others are doing can be foolish. It can paralyze effort, and stifle a good idea. One finds that in the history of science, almost every problem has been worked out by someone else. This should not discourage anyone from pursuing his own path.

  Theodore von Karman

  Science, Ideas, Effort

  24 Copy quote

• Evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science. Every question it raises leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. The science of evolution is as expansive as nature itself. It is also the most meaningful creation story that humans have ever found.

  Bill Nye

  Meaningful, Powerful, Ideas

  "The best popular science books of 2014: Biological sciences" by GrrlScientist, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The history of science shows that the progress of science has constantly been hampered by the tyrannical influence of certain conceptions that finally came to be considered as dogma. For this reason, it is proper to submit periodically to a very searching examination, principles that we have come to assume without any more discussion.

  Louis de Broglie

  Progress, Examination, Principles

  "The Revolution in Physics: A Non-mathematical Survey of Quanta". Book by Louis de Broglie, Noonday Press, p. 237, "Will Quantum Physics Remain Indeterministic", 1953.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bruce Parker's The Power of the Sea is an engaging and essential history of science.  It’s also a terrific account of survival on our wild blue planet.

  David Helvarg

  Sea, Blue, Survival

  4 Copy quote

• The task of the educator is to make the child's spirit pass again where its forefathers have gone, moving rapidly through certain stages but suppressing none of them. In this regard, the history of science must be our guide.

  Henri Poincare

  Children, Moving, History

  "'La logique et l'intuition dans la science mathématique et dans l'enseignement' ('Logic and intuition in the science of mathematics and in teaching')". Book by Henri Poincare, 1899.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• History without the history of science, to alter slightly an apothegm of Lord Bacon, resembles a statue of Polyphemus without his eye-that very feature being left out which most marks the spirit and life of the person. My own thesis is complementary: science taught ... without a sense of history is robbed of those very qualities that make it worth teaching to the student of the humanities and the social sciences.

  I. Bernard Cohen

  Life, Teaching, Eye

  7 Copy quote

• I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its record for being accurately predictive is really, really poor! If you look at the whole history of science fiction, what people have said is going to happen, what writers have said is going to happen, and what actually happened - it's terrible.

  William Gibson

  Thinking, People, Important

  "William Gibson on Why Sci-Fi Writers Are (Thankfully) Almost Always Wrong". Interview with Geeta Dayal, www.wired.com. September 13, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Philosophy, Reading, Remember

  "London calling" by John O'Mahony, www.theguardian.com. July 02, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.

  Karl Popper

  Inspirational, Dream, Errors

  1960 Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), ch.10.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You ask whether I am going over to the history of science... no, I am not as old as that.

  Christopher Kelk Ingold

  Science, Biographies, Asks

  6 Copy quote

• In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

  Abdus Salam

  Respect, Civilization, Gone

  Abdus Salam, Ahmed Ali (1994). “Selected Papers of Abdus Salam: (with Commentary)”, p.306, World Scientific

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Long, Doe

  Charles Darwin (2010). “Natural Selection”, p.202, Bibliolis Books

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 to 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.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Acceptance, Science, Discovery

  13 Copy quote

• Any one who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature," that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long run.

  Thomas Huxley

  Running, Knowledge, Science

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.62, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

  Simon Newcomb

  Knowledge, Science, Simple

  Simon Newcomb (1903). “The reminiscences of an astronomer”, Harper and Brothers

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Men

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

  97 Copy quote

  Show source

• The history of science shows that great mysteries get solved. It may be that there's an answer that humans are too stupid to understand. I'm intrigued by that possibility.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stupid, Answers, May

  "Why Revive ‘Cosmos?’ Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Just About Everything We Know Has Changed". Interview With David Freeman, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 4, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source