Observation Quotes - Page 32

• Medicine is an incoherent assemblage of incoherent ideas, and is, perhaps, of all the physiological Sciences, that which best shows the caprice of the human mind. What did I say! It is not a Science for a methodical mind. It is a shapeless assemblage of inaccurate ideas, of observations often puerile, of deceptive remedies, and of formulae as fantastically conceived as they are tediously arranged.

  Marie Francois Xavier Bichat

  Science, Ideas, Medicine

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• My interest in science was excited at age nine by an article on astronomy in National Geographic; the author was Donald Menzel of the Harvard Observatory. For the next few years, I regularly made star maps and snuck out at night to make observations from a locust tree in our back yard.

  Dudley R. Herschbach

  Stars, Science, Night

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• Nothing is known in our profession by guess; and I do not believe, that from the first dawn of medical science to the present moment, a single correct idea has ever emanated from conjecture: it is right therefore, that those who are studying their profession should be aware that there is no short road to knowledge; and that observation on the diseased living, examination of the dead, and experiments upon living animals, are the only sources of true knowledge; and that inductions from these are the sole bases of legitimate theory.

  Astley Cooper

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  A Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints

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• Of course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to have an "elegant" or "robust" theory. But it isn't science.

  Halton Arp

  Science, Robust, Claims

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• Open up a few corpses: you will dissipate at once the darkness that observation alone could not dissipate.

  Marie Francois Xavier Bichat

  Science, Darkness, Corpses

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• Our model of Nature should not be like a building-a handsome structure for the populace to admire, until in the course of time some one takes away a corner stone and the edifice comes toppling down. It should be like an engine with movable parts. We need not fix the position of any one lever; that is to be adjusted from time to time as the latest observations indicate. The aim of the theorist is to know the train of wheels which the lever sets in motion-that binding of the parts which is the soul of the engine.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Soul

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• Sir, The Planet [Neptune] whose position you marked out actually exists. On the day on which your letter reached me, I found a star of the eighth magnitude, which was not recorded in the excellent map designed by Dr. Bremiker, containing the twenty-first hour of the collection published by the Royal Academy of Berlin. The observation of the succeeding day showed it to be the Planet of which we were in quest.

  Johann Gottfried Galle

  Stars, Science, Twenties

  "The Cambridge Planetary Handbook". Book by Michael E. Bakich, 2000.

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• The discrepancy between what was expected and what has been observed has grown over the years, and we're straining harder and harder to fill the gap.

  Jeremiah P. Ostriker

  Science, Years, Discrepancies Between

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• The first observation of cancer cells in the smear of the uterine cervix gave me one of the greatest thrills I ever experienced during my scientific career.

  Georgios Papanikolaou

  Cancer, Science, Cells

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• The idea of making a fault a subject of study and not an object to be merely determined has been the most important step in the course of my methods of observation. If I have obtained some new results it is to this that I owe it.

  Marcel Alexandre Bertrand

  Science, Ideas, Important

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• The importance of group theory was emphasized very recently when some physicists using group theory predicted the existence of a particle that had never been observed before, and described the properties it should have. Later experiments proved that this particle really exists and has those properties.

  Irving Adler

  Science, Should Have, Groups

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• The King saw them with no common satisfaction, expressing his desire in no particular to have yt Stellar fish engraven and printed. We wish very much, Sir, yt you could procure for us a particular description of yesd Fish, viz. whether it be common there; what is observable in it when alive; what colour it then hath; what kind of motion in the water; what use it maketh of all that curious workmanship, wch Nature hath adorn'd it with?

  Henry Oldenburg

  Kings, Science, Water

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• The knowledge of Natural-History, being Observation of Matters of Fact, is more certain than most others, and in my slender Opinion, less subject to Mistakes than Reasonings, Hypotheses, and Deductions are; ... These are things we are sure of, so far as our Senses are not fallible; and which, in probability, have been ever since the Creation, and will remain to the End of the World, in the same Condition we now find them.

  Hans Sloane

  Mistake, Knowledge, Science

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• The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience.

  William Herschel

  Fall, Eye, Science

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• The star [Tycho's supernova] was at first like Venus and Jupiter, giving pleasing effects; but as it then became like Mars, there will next come a period of wars, seditions, captivity and death of princes, and destruction of cities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air, pestilence, and venomous snakes. Lastly, the star became like Saturn, and there will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment and all sorts of sad things.

  Tycho Brahe

  Stars, War, Science

  "Patrick Moore's Data Book of Astronomy". p. 336, 2011.

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• The two fulcra of medicine are reason and observation. Observation is the clue to guide the physician in his thinking.

  Giorgio Baglivi

  Science, Thinking, Two

  Introduction to De Praxi Medica

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• The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another in no apparent order. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

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• Today we no longer ask what really goes on in an atom; we ask what is likely to be observed-and with what likelihood-when we subject atoms to any specified influences such as light or heat, magnetic fields or electric currents.

  Otto Robert Frisch

  Science, Light, Atoms

  Otto Robert Frisch (1980). “What Little I Remember”, p.20, Cambridge University Press

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• We ought to observe that practice which is the hardest of all - especially for young physicians - we ought to throw in no medicine at all - to abstain - to observe a wise and masterly inactivity.

  John Randolph of Roanoke

  Wise, Science, Practice

  Register of Debates in Congress, vol. 4, col. 1170, January 25, 1828.

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• What the use of P [the significance level] implies, therefore, is that a hypothesis that may be true may be rejected because it has not predicted observable results that have not occurred.

  Harold Jeffreys

  Science, Use, Levels

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• [All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to have a sufficient number of observations and a mathematics that is complex enough.

  Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

  Science, Law, Numbers

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• [An engineer's] invention causes things to come into existence from ideas, makes world conform to thought; whereas science, by deriving ideas from observation, makes thought conform to existence.

  Carl Mitcham

  Science, Engineering, Ideas

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• [Henry Cavendish] fixed the weight of the earth; he established the proportions of the constituents of the air; he occupied himself with the quantitative study of the laws of heat; and lastly, he demonstrated the nature of water and determined its volumetric composition. Earth, air, fire, and water-each and all came within the range of his observations.

  Thomas Edward Thorpe

  Science, Fire, Air

  Sir Thomas Edward Thorpe (1894). “Essays in Historical Chemistry”

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• [It] may be laid down as a general rule that, if the result of a long series of precise observations approximates a simple relation so closely that the remaining difference is undetectable by observation and may be attributed to the errors to which they are liable, then this relation is probably that of nature.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Nature, Science, Simple

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• [Modern science] passed through a long period of uncertainty and inconclusive experiment, but as the instrumental aids to research improved, and the results of observation accumulated, phantoms of the imagination were exorcised, idols of the cave were shattered, trustworthy materials were obtained for logical treatment, and hypotheses by long and careful trial were converted into theories.

  Thomas George Bonney

  Science, Idols, Long

  Thomas George Bonney (1913). “The Present Relations of Science and Religion”

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