Knowledge Quotes - Page 38

• The question whether atoms exist or not... belongs rather to metaphysics. In chemistry we have only to decide whether the assumption of atoms is an hypothesis adapted to the explanation of chemical phenomena... whether a further development of the atomic hypothesis promises to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of chemical phenomena... I rather expect that we shall some day find, for what we now call atoms, a mathematico-mechanical explanation, which will render an account of atomic weight, of atomicity, and of numerous other properties of the so-called atoms.

  August Kekule

  Science, Promise, Atoms

  13 Copy quote

• The science and technology which have advanced man safely into space have brought about startling medical advances for man on earth. Out of space research have come new knowledge, techniques and instruments which have enabled some bedridden invalids to walk, the totally deaf to hear, the voiceless to talk, and, in the foreseeable future, may even make it possible for the blind to "see."

  Hubertus Strughold

  Science, Technology, Men

  "From Outer Space - Advances For Medicine on Earth" by Hubertus Strughold, contributed in "Space, Its Impact on Man and Society" by Lillian Levy, (p. 117), 1965.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.

  Rudolf Virchow

  Science, Limits, Tasks

  "On Man". 1849.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The task of science, therefore, is not to attack the objects of faith, but to establish the limits beyond which knowledge cannot go and found a unified self-consciousness within these limits.

  Rudolf Virchow

  Science, Self, Limits

  Rudolf Virchow (1958). “Disease, Life, and Man: Selected Essays”, p.69, Stanford University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The word "mathematics" is a Greek word and, by origin, it means "something that has been learned or understood," or perhaps "acquired knowledge," or perhaps even, somewhat against grammar, "acquirable knowledge," that is, "learnable knowledge," that is, "knowledge acquirable by learning."

  Salomon Bochner

  Mean, Science, Greek

  6 Copy quote

• There are few substance to which it yields interest, when it is considered how very intimately the knowledge and properties and uses of iron is connected with human civilization.

  George Fownes

  Science, Civilization, Iron

  George Fownes (1845). “Elementary Chemistry: Theoretical and Practical”, p.224

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician.

  Daniel Bernoulli

  Philosophy, Science, Profit

  25 Copy quote

• To seek in the great accumulation of the already-said the text that resembles "in advance" a later text, to ransack history in order to rediscover the play of anticipations or echoes, to go right back to the first seeds or to go forward to the last traces, to reveal in a work its fidelity to tradition or its irreducible uniqueness, to raise or lower its stock of originality, to say that the Port -Royal grammarians invented nothing, or to discover that Cuvier had more predecessors than one thought, these are harmless enough amusements for historians who refuse to grow up.

  Michel Foucault

  Growing Up, Science, Order

  7 Copy quote

• To solve a problem is to create new problems, new knowledge immediately reveals new areas of ignorance, and the need for new experiments. At least, in the field of fast reactions, the experiments do not take very long to perform.

  George Porter

  Ignorance, Science, Long

  4 Copy quote

• To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.

  William Crookes

  Science, Light, Criticism

  "Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science". "Nature", No. 1506, Vol. 58, (p. 438), September 8, 1989.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• To this day, we see all around us the Promethean drive to omnipotence through technology and to omniscience through science. The effecting of all things possible and the knowledge of all causes are the respective primary imperatives of technology and of science. But the motivating imperative of society continues to be the very different one of its physical and spiritual survival. It is now far less obvious than it was in Francis Bacon's world how to bring the three imperatives into harmony, and how to bring all three together to bear on problems where they superpose.

  Gerald Holton

  Spiritual, Science, Technology

  Gerald James Holton (1986). “The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays”, p.183, CUP Archive

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Tyrants, Church

  Paul Feyerabend (1975). “Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge”, Not Avail

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.

  Evariste Galois

  Hurt, Book, Science

  34 Copy quote

• We do not live in a time when knowledge can be extended along a pathway smooth and free from obstacles, as at the time of the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, and in a measure also when in the development of projective geometry obstacles were suddenly removed which, having hemmed progress for a long time, permitted a stream of investigators to pour in upon virgin soil. There is no longer any browsing along the beaten paths; and into the primeval forest only those may venture who are equipped with the sharpest tools.

  Heinrich Burkhardt

  Science, Discovery, Long

  4 Copy quote

• We seem to be heading for a state of affairs in which the determination of whether or not Doomsday has arrived will be made either by an automatic device ... or by a pre-programmed president who, whether he knows it or not, will be carrying out orders written years before by some operations analyst.

  Herbert York

  Determination, Science, Order

  4 Copy quote

• We thus begin to see that the institutionalized practice of citations and references in the sphere of learning is not a trivial matter. While many a general reader-that is, the lay reader located outside the domain of science and scholarship-may regard the lowly footnote or the remote endnote or the bibliographic parenthesis as a dispensable nuisance, it can be argued that these are in truth central to the incentive system and an underlying sense of distributive justice that do much to energize the advancement of knowledge.

  Robert K. Merton

  Learning, Science, Practice

  Robert K. Merton, Piotr Sztompka (1996). “On Social Structure and Science”, p.333, University of Chicago Press

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Were I asked to define it, I should reply that archeology is that science which enables us to register and classify our knowledge of the sum of man's achievement in those arts and handicrafts whereby he has, in time past, signalized his passage from barbarism to civilization.

  Amelia B. Edwards

  Art, Science, Past

  53 Copy quote

• Wisdom is not knowledge, but lies in the use we make of knowledge.

  Nilakanta Sri Ram

  Wisdom, Lying, Science

  16 Copy quote

• With crystals we are in a situation similar to an attempt to investigate an optical grating merely from the spectra it produces... But a knowledge of the positions and intensities of the spectra does not suffice for the determination of the structure. The phases with which the diffracted waves vibrate relative to one another enter in an essential way. To determine a crystal structure on the atomic scale, one must know the phase differences between the different interference spots on the photographic plate, and this task may certainly prove to be rather difficult.

  Max von Laue

  Determination, Science, Differences

  11 Copy quote

• The big idea we start with is: "How is the genome interpreted, and how are stable decisions that affect gene expression inherited from one cell to the next?" This is one of the most competitive areas of molecular biology at the moment, and the students are reading papers that in some instances were published this past year. As a consequence, one of the most common answers I have to give to their questions is, "We just don't know."

  Shirley M. Tilghman

  Reading, Past, Cells

  16 Copy quote

• [Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing - one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.

  Paul Halmos

  Science, Analysis, Architecture

  "Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics".

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Knowledge is the death of research.

  Walther Nernst

  Science, Research, Knows

  14 Copy quote

• With full responsibility for my words as a professional biologist, I do not hesitate to say that all existing and genuine knowledge about the way in which the physical characteristics of human communities are related to their cultural capabilities can be written on the back of a postage stamp.

  Lancelot Hogben

  Responsibility, Science, Community

  Lancelot Thomas Hogben (1940). “Dangerous Thoughts”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Science, Sensual

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Man That Knowz Something Knowz That He Knowz Nothing At All.

  Erykah Badu

  Life, Humble, Men

  40 Copy quote