Physical Science Quotes - Page 3

• Unlike the position that exists in the physical sciences, in economics and other disciplines that deal with essentially complex phenomena, the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Data, Discipline, Important

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", p. 24, 1978.

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• The advantages of a uniform statistical nomenclature, however im- perfect, are so obvious, that it is surprising no attention has been paid to its enforcement in bills of mortality. Each disease has in many instances been denoted by three or four terms, and each term has been applied to as many different diseases ; vague, inconvenient names have been employed, or complications have been registered, instead of primary diseases. The nomenclature is of as much importance in this depart- ment of inquiry as weights and measures in the physical sciences, and should be settled without delay.

  William Farr

  Names, Perfect, Attention

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• The theory that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance leads by remorseless logic to the conclusion that the path of a planet should be an ellipse .... It is this logical thinking that is the real meat of the physical sciences. The social scientist keeps the skin and throws away the meat.... His theorems no more follow from his postulates than the hunches of a horse player follow logically from the latest racing news. The result is guesswork clad in long flowing robes of gobbledygook.

  Anthony Standen

  Horse, Real, Distance

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• In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ... The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

  Arthur Eddington

  Drama, Shadow, Ink

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Introduction), 1928.

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• If we wish to imitate the physical sciences, we must not imitate them in their contemporary, most developed form; we must imitate them in their historical youth, when their state of development was comparable to our own at the present time. Otherwise we should behave like boys who try to copy the imposing manners of full-grown men without understanding their raison d' être, also without seeing that in development one cannot jump over intermediate and preliminary phases.

  Wolfgang Kohler

  Boys, Men, Psychology

  "Gestalt Psychology". Book by Wolfgang Köhler, p. 32, 1930.

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• It has been a fortunate fact in the modern history of physical science that the scientist constructing a new theoretical system has nearly always found that the mathematics. . . required. . . had already been worked out by pure mathematicians for their own amusement. . . . The moral for statesmen would seem to be that, for proper scientific "planning", pure mathematics should be endowed fifty years ahead of scientists.

  R. B. Braithwaite

  Years, Amusement, Fifty

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• Since coming to Congress, I have been advocating for increased resources for research in the physical sciences and for the Department of Energy Office of Science in particular.

  Judy Biggert

  Office, Energy, Research

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• As the Nation's primary supporter of research in the physical sciences, the DOE Office of Science led the way in creating a unique system of large-scale, specialized, often one-of-a-kind facilities for scientific discovery.

  Judy Biggert

  Unique, Discovery, Creating

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• Instruction in academia did not emphasize what I thought of as essential points. I was interested in the broad range of interrelated connections within the physical sciences, but formal studies isolated each branch of science.” I feel that I have advantages greater than Da Vinci’s such as access to more information, materials, and methods.

  Jacque Fresco

  Essentials, Connections, Academia

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• [When thinking about the new relativity and quantum theories] I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are ore or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness.

  Arthur Eddington

  Science, Thinking, Path

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• One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

  Freeman Dyson

  Education, Science, Imagination

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• The words 'theory' and 'practice' are of Greek origin; they carry our thoughts back to the ancient philosophers by whom they were contrived, and by whom they were also contrasted and placed in opposition, as denoting two mutually conflicting and mutually inconsistent ideas. ... [this fallacy] based on a double system of natural laws retarded for centuries the development of physical science, notably mechanics.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Practice, Ideas

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• Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, "an old and trained engineer," and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Real, Science

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• The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the universe as it is assumed to be in physical science is only an idealized world, while the real universe is the spiritual universe in which spiritual values count for everything.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Spiritual, Real, Science

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• While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research.

  Francis Crick

  Simplicity, Tools, Use

  "What Mad Pursuit". Book by Francis Crick, 1988.

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• There are a multitude of allied branches of knowledge connected with mans condition; the relation of these to political economy is analogous to the connexion of mechanics, astronomy, optics, sound, heat, and every other branch more or less of physical science, with pure mathematics.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Knowledge, Political, Sound

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The sages are often ignorant of physical science, because they read the wrong book-the book within; and the scientists are too often ignorant of religion, because they too read the wrong book-the book outside.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Book, Ignorant, Sage

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• The year 1896 ... marked the beginning of what has been aptly termed the heroic age of Physical Science. Never before in the history of physics has there been witnessed such a period of intense activity when discoveries of fundamental importance have followed one another with such bewildering rapidity.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Hero, Science, Years

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• The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a kind of centre to which they all converge. We may even judge the degree of perfection to which a science has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Judging, Perfection, Progress

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• If one might wish for impossibilities, I might then wish that my children might be well versed in physical science, but in due subordination to the fulness and freshness of their knowledge on moral subjects. ... Rather than have it the principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament.

  Tom Arnold

  Stars, Children, Science

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• I would staple a green card to the diploma of anyone that graduates with a degree in the physical sciences or engineering in the U.S.

  John Doerr

  Engineering, Degrees, Cards

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• Do not trust financial market risk models. Despite the predilection of some analysts to model the financial markets using sophisticated mathematics, the markets are governed by behavioral science, not physical science.

  Seth Klarman

  Risk, Financial, Sophisticated

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• The life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.

  Lord Kelvin

  Knowledge, Science, Soul

  Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883) in "The Life of Lord Kelvin" by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, 1910.

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• It seems perfectly clear that Economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Most persons appear to hold that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method-I know not what.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Science, Spheres, Prejudice

  William Stanley Jevons (1871). “The Theory of Political Economy”, p.3

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• The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Ideas, Nomenclature

  Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, David M. Knight (1998). “The Development of Chemistry, 1789-1914: Elements of chemistry”, p.14, Taylor & Francis

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