Observation Quotes - Page 30

• The whole value of science consists in the power which it confers upon us of applying to one object the knowledge acquired from like objects; and it is only so far, therefore, as we can discover and register resemblances that we can turn our observations to account.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Knowledge, Science, Turns

  William Stanley Jevons (1874). “The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method”, p.1

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Thinking, Views

  43 Copy quote

• Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Practice, Criticism

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.87, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a word, I consider hospitals only as the entrance to scientific medicine; they are the first field of observation which a physician enters; but the true sanctuary of medical science is a laboratory; only there can he seek explanations of life in the normal and pathological states by means of experimental analysis.

  Claude Bernard

  Life, Mean, Science

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.168, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine ... bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 ... this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Butterfly, Air, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

  Wilhelm Wundt

  Science, Mind, Hypothesis

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1969). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion.

  Alfred Binet

  Science, Numbers, People

  10 Copy quote

• To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them.

  Robin G. Collingwood

  Nature, Science, Intelligent

  7 Copy quote

• A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.

  Karl Popper

  Religion, Atheism, Theory

  11 Copy quote

• Difficulties arise when reported observations seem to conflict with 'facts' that the majority of scientists accept as established and immutable. Scientists tend to reject conflicting observations.....Nevertheless, the history of science shows that new observations and theories can eventually prevail.

  Ian Stevenson

  Atheism, Facts, Majority

  11 Copy quote

• It is better to use this available energy for your observation, inner observation. Just watch everything - and it is good because you have nothing much to do. You have not to go here and there and visit people and become a member of the Rotary Club. You are saved from so much nonsense that I felt really jealous of you! Enjoy it! And feel sorry for everybody else! They are poorer and you can become immensely rich. And the art of that richness is witnessing. Witnessing is another name for meditation.

  Rajneesh

  Art, Sorry, Jealous

  4 Copy quote

• In awareness there is no becoming, there is no end to be gained. There is silent observation without choice and condemnation, from which there comes understanding.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Choices, Meditation, Understanding

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1991). “The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, (1945-1948): The Observer Is the Abserved”, Krishnamurti Foundation of Amer

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.

  Joseph Addison

  Beautiful, Strong, Art

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.306

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

  Aristotle

  Country, Army, Gun

  7 Copy quote

• I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Evolution, Theory, Experiments

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.256, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?

  John Templeton

  Purpose, Strange, Evolution

  John Templeton (1998). “The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God”, p.19, Templeton Foundation Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Opportunity, Views, Giving

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1991). “The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, (1945-1948): The Observer Is the Abserved”, Krishnamurti Foundation of Amer

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would appear... that moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive, in inquiries of this kind, at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Science, Greatness, Numbers

  Francis Bisset Hawkins, Adolphe Quetelet (1973). “Comparative statistics in the 19th century”, Gregg Revivals

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I find, by close observation, that the mothers are the levers which move in education. The men talk about it . . . but the women work most for it.

  Frances Harper

  Mother, Moving, Son

  55 Copy quote

• Observation is like a piece of glass, which, as a mirror, must be very smooth, and must be very carefully polished, in order that it may reflect the image pure and undistorted.

  Justus von Liebig

  Science, Glasses, Mirrors

  15 Copy quote

• The person who observes a clock, sees in it not only the pendulum swinging to and fro, and the dial-plate, and the hands moving, for a child can see all this; but he sees also the parts of the clock, and in what connexion the suspended weight stands to the wheel-work, and the pendulum to the moving hands.

  Justus von Liebig

  Children, Moving, Science

  4 Copy quote

• To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it).

  George E. P. Box

  Science, Research, Happens

  George E. P. Box, George C. Tiao (1985). “The collected works of George E.P. Box”, Chapman & Hall/CRC

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am convinced, by repeated observation, that marbles, lime-stones, chalks, marls, clays, sand, and almost all terrestrial substances, wherever situated, are full of shells and other spoils of the ocean.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Ocean, Science, Rocks

  Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1785). “Natural History, General and Particular”, p.13

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as that of Jesus....I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Jesus, Real

  8 Copy quote

• Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it.

  Pascual Jordan

  Physics, Quantum Physics, Produce

  54 Copy quote