Knowledge Quotes - Page 37

• In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell.

  Walter Alexander Raleigh

  Science, Wish, Examination

  Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1923). “Laughter from a Cloud”

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• In order to survive, an animal must be born into a favoring or at least tolerant environment. Similarly, in order to achieve preservation and recognition, a specimen of fossil man must be discovered in intelligence, attested by scientific knowledge, and interpreted by evolutionary experience. These rigorous prerequisites have undoubtedly caused many still-births in human palaeontology and are partly responsible for the high infant mortality of discoveries of geologically ancient man.

  Earnest Hooton

  Science, Animal, Men

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• In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.

  Auguste Comte

  Mean, Science, Law

  "Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings".

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• In the natural sciences, and particularly in chemistry, generalities must come after the detailed knowledge of each fact and not before it.

  Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

  Science, Facts, Chemistry

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• In vertebrate paleontology, increasing knowledge leads to triumphant loss of clarity.

  Alfred Romer

  Loss, Science, Paleontology

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• Increased knowledge of heredity means increased power of control over the living thing, and as we come to understand more and more the architecture of the plant or animal we realize what can and what cannot be done towards modification or improvement.

  Reginald Punnett

  Mean, Science, Animal

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• Increasing knowledge lessens the sphere of the supernatural.

  Edward Westermarck

  Science, Spheres, Knows

  Edward Westermarck (1908). “The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas”

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• Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Science, Views, Law

  Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan (1995). “Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays”, p.208, University of Chicago Press

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• It is hard to hide our genes completely. However devoted someone may be to the privacy of his genotype, others with enough curiosity and knowledge can draw conclusions from the phenotype he presents and from the traits of his relatives.

  Philip Kitcher

  Science, Curiosity, May

  Philip Kitcher (1997). “The Lives to Come”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

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• It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.

  Ernest Nagel

  Science, Organization, Goal

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• It might be said that all knowledge is linked to the essential forms of cruelty.

  Michel Foucault

  Science, Essentials, Might

  Michel Foucault (1987). “Maladie Mentale Et Psychologie”, p.73, Univ of California Press

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• It will be contributing to bring forward the moment in which, seeing clearer into the nature of things, and having learnt to distinguish real knowledge from what has only the appearance of it, we shall be led to seek for exactness in every thing.

  Jean-Andre Deluc

  Real, Science, Moments

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• Knowledge of Nature is an account at bank, where each dividend is added to the principal and the interest is ever compounded; and hence it is that human progress, founded on natural knowledge, advances with ever increasing speed.

  Grove Karl Gilbert

  Science, Progress, Speed

  Grove Karl Gilbert (1896). “Presidential Address by Grove Karl Gilbert: With Constitution and Standing Rules, Abstracts of Minutes and Lists of Officers and Members, 1895”

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• Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an overly rigorous control of an insignificant variable and a widespread deficiency in the framing of pertinent questions. Investigators seem to have settled for what is measurable instead of measuring what they would really like to know.

  Edmund Pellegrino

  Science, Data, Pertinent Questions

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• My task was to show the psychologists that it is possible to apply physiological knowledge to the phenomena of psychical life.

  Ivan Sechenov

  Science, Tasks, Possibility

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• On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes.

  Karl Jaspers

  Lying, Science, World

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• Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals who love knowledge and the creation of it. ... Thus, it is the communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of science.

  Philip Abelson

  Integrity, Communication, Science

  Philip Hauge Abelson (1985). “Enough of Pessimism: 100 Essays”, Westview Press

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• Science is public, not private, knowledge.

  Robert K. Merton

  Science, Accounts, Knows

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• Science is teaching man to know and reverence truth, and to believe that only so far as he knows and loves it can he live worthily on earth, and vindicate the dignity of his spirit.

  Moses Harvey

  Love, Truth, Believe

  Moses Harvey (1886). “Where are We and Whither Tending?: Three Lectures on the Reality and Worth of Human Progress”

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• Scientific modes of thought cannot be developed and become generally accepted unless people renounce their primary, unreflecting, and spontaneous attempt to understand all their experience in terms of its purpose and meaning for themselves. The development that led to more adequate knowledge and increasing control of nature was therefore, considered from one aspect, also a development toward greater self-control by men.

  Norbert Elias

  Science, Men, Self

  Norbert Elias (1982). “The history of manners”, Random House Inc

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• The basis of the discovery is imagination, careful reasoning and experimentation where the use of knowledge created by those who came before is an important component.

  Bengt I. Samuelsson

  Science, Discovery, Imagination

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• The first business of a man of science is to proclaim the truth as he finds it, and let the world adjust itself as best it can to the new knowledge.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Science, Men, Firsts

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• The first thing the reasonable man must do is to be content with a very little knowledge and a very great deal of ignorance. The second thing he must do is to make the utmost possible use of the knowledge he has and not waste his energy crying for the moon. The third thing he must do is try and see clearly where his knowledge ends and his ignorance begins.

  Arthur David Ritchie

  Ignorance, Science, Moon

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• The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.

  Auguste Comte

  Science, Law, Three

  Auguste Comte (1975). “Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings”, p.68, Transaction Publishers

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• The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.

  John N. Bahcall

  Science, Discovery, Important

  Obituary at CalTech, September 7, 2005.

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