Observation Quotes - Page 33

The progress of science has always been the result of a close interplay between our concepts of the universe and our observations on nature. The former can only evolve out of the latter and yet the latter is also conditioned greatly by the former. Thus in our exploration of nature, the interplay between our concepts and our observations may sometimes lead to totally unexpected aspects among already familiar phenomena.

Tsung-Dao Lee

Nature, Science, Progress

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What I most cherish is the observation of the movement of colors. Only in this have I found the laws of those simultaneous and complementary color contrasts that nourish the actual rhythm of my vision. In this I find the actual essence, an essence which is not born out of an a priori system or theory.

August Macke

Color, Law, Essence

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Our natural state of being is in relationship, a tango, a constant state of one influencing the other. Just as the subatomic particles that compose us cannot be separated from the space and particles surrounding them, so living beings cannot be isolated from each other... By the act of observation and intention, we have the ability to extend a kind of super-radiance to the world.

Lynne McTaggart

Space, Secret, Radiance

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The astronomer is, in some measure, independent of his fellow astronomer; he can wait in his observatory till the star he wishes to observe comes to his meridian; but the meteorologist has his observations bounded by a very limited horizon, and can do little without the aid of numerous observers furnishing him contemporaneous observations over a wide-extended area.

James Pollard Espy

Stars, Independent, Waiting

James Pollard Espy, Alfred Osborn Pope Nicholson (1857). “Message from the President of the United States: Communicating, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate of July 24, 1854, the Fourth Meteorological Report of Prof. James P. Espy”, p.40

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These neutrino observations are so exciting and significant that I think we're about to see the birth of an entirely new branch of astronomy: neutrino astronomy. Supernova explosions that are invisible to us because of dust clouds may occur in our galaxy as often as once every 10 years, and neutrino bursts could give us a way to study them.

John N. Bahcall

Thinking, Clouds, Dust

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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

Knowledge, Mean, Science

"Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings".

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There is no such thing as absolute truth and absolute falsehood. The scientific mind should never recognise the perfect truth or the perfect falsehood of any supposed theory or observation. It should carefully weigh the chances of truth and error and grade each in its proper position along the line joining absolute truth and absolute error.

Henry Augustus Rowland

Science, Errors, Perfect

Henry Augustus Rowland (1902). “The physical papers of Henry Augustus Rowland ...: John Hopkins University, 1876-1901”

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[Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

David Quammen

Mean, Reality, Views

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Some months ago we discovered that certain light elements emit positrons under the action of alpha particles. Our latest experiments have shown a very striking fact: when an aluminium foil is irradiated on a polonium preparation [alpha ray emitter], the emission of positrons does not cease immediately when the active preparation is removed: the foil remains radioactive and the emission of radiation decays exponentially as for an ordinary radio-element. We observed the same phenomenon with boron and magnesium.

Frederic Joliot-Curie

Science, Light, Preparation

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Do not expect to be hailed as a hero when you make your great discovery. More likely you will be a ratbag-maybe failed by your examiners. Your statistics, or your observations, or your literature study, or your something else will be patently deficient. Do not doubt that in our enlightened age the really important advances are and will be rejected more often than acclaimed. Nor should we doubt that in our own professional lifetime we too will repudiate with like pontifical finality the most significant insight ever to reach our desk.

Samuel Warren Carey

Hero, Science, Discovery

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In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field.

Alexander Fleming

Science, Discovery, Deep Thought

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This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of distances from the Sun. Thus, at least, we should unhappily soon fall among bodies invisible by reason of their immense distance, but whose orbits might yet be traced in a succession of ages, with the greatest exactness, by the theory of Secular Inequalities.

Urbain Le Verrier

Distance, Fall, Science

"The Planet Neptune: An Exposition and History". Book by John Pringle Nichol, 1848.

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In fact, current cosmological observations indicate that the average density of matter and energy in the universe is equal, within measurement errors, to the critical density for which the total energy of the universe was exactly zero at the beginning.

Victor J. Stenger

Zero, Errors, Average

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I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.

Charles Hard Townes

God, Faith, Believe

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I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible.

William Daniel Phillips

Believe, Intelligent, Atheism

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The observations and experiments of science are so wonderful that the truth that they establish can surely be accepted as another manifestation of God. God shows himself by allowing man to establish truth.

Derek Barton

Men, Atheism, Wonderful

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God created the universe out of nothing in an act which also brought time into existence. Recent discoveries, such as observations supporting the Big Bang and similar astronomical phenomena, are wholly compatible with this view.

Henry Margenau

Discovery, Views, Atheism

Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Varghese (1992). “Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens”, p.62, Open Court Publishing

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I have just been through the process of killing a cistudo for the sake of science; but I cannot excuse myself for this murder, and see that such actions are inconsistent with the poetic perception, however they may serve science, and will affect the quality of my observations. I pray that I may walk more innocently and serenely through nature. No reasoning whatever reconciles me to this act. It affects my day injuriously. I have lost some self-respect. I have a murderer's experience to a degree.

Henry David Thoreau

Philosophical, Animal, Self

Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.70, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

Samuel Johnson

Running, Reality, Ideas

James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.390

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In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity [i.e evolutionism] has always necessitated on retreat from pure empiricism [i.e., logic an observation], and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists [i.e creationist], not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have struck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach... It was Darwin the evolutionist who was retreating from the facts.

Michael Denton

Real, Community, Doctrine

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In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to "bend" their observations to fit in with it.

Henry Lipson

Facts, Creation Science, Evolution

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It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.

George Gaylord Simpson

Definitions, Evolution, Inherent

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The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations.

Paul Cezanne

Character, Intelligent, Artist

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With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative.

William Happer

Zero, Years, Water

"Non-Climate Scientist ‘Climate Scientist’ Sets the Record Straight" by Bill Chameides, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 10, 2009.

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On the whole, the evidence indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent with observations.

David Douglass

Energy, Trends, Environment

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