History Of Science Quotes

• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, Motivational

  "Science, Philosophy, and Religion" (1940).

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• [T]he history of science has proved that fundamental research is the lifeblood of individual progress and that the ideas that lead to spectacular advances spring from it.

  Edward Victor Appleton

  Spring, Science, Ideas

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• To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.

  Evelyn Fox Keller

  Science, Mortality, Claims

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• The history of science alone can keep the physicist from the mad ambitions of dogmatism as well as the despair of pyrrhonian scepticism.

  Pierre Duhem

  Ambition, Mad, Despair

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• The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

  Isaac Asimov

  Might, Facts, Revolutionary

  "The Three Numbers". Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 1974.

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• The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies.

  Ayn Rand

  Progression, Fallacy

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.260, Hamilton Books

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• The history of science is rich in example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Ideas, Two, Technique

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.75, Springer Science & Business Media

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• If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance “God”.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Ignorance, Shows, Labeling

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• The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

  Alan Lightman

  Principles, Fundamentals, Causes

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• It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann's work on kinetic theory, Planck's discovery of quantum theory or Einstein's theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics.

  Ilya Prigogine

  Hard Work, Science, Discovery

  "Time, Structure and Fluctuations". Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1977.

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• To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Science, Discovery, Two

  "The Organization of Thought" (1917)

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• Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another of our previous conviction about our own self-importance.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Self, Arrogance, Ironic

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• ...I think the popular view of Science is a solid body of truth, shared by a whole lot of learned men in a room, all agreeing on the answers to the questions of how the Universe works. Whereas nothing could be further from the truth!!! The one truth that I see emerging from the History of Science is that experiment has always surprised theorists. Einstein included!

  Brian May

  Men, Thinking, Views

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• It would be foolish to give credit to Euclid for pangeometrical conceptions; the idea of geometry deifferent from the common-sense one never occurred to his mind. Yet, when he stated the fifth postulate, he stood at the parting of the ways. His subconscious prescience is astounding. There is nothing comperable to it in the whole history of science.

  George Sarton

  Ideas, Common Sense, Giving

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• One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.

  Henri Poincare

  Desire, Development, Remember

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• The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe.

  Richard Dawkins

  Long, Generations, Levels

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• Any one who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature," that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long run.

  Thomas Huxley

  Running, Knowledge, Science

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.62, Cambridge University Press

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• The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.

  John William Draper

  Faith, Science, Discovery

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.6, New York, D. Appleton

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• 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

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• One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Writing, Done, Authority

  "The Rolling Stones". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, 1952.

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• One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

  Simon Newcomb

  Knowledge, Science, Simple

  Simon Newcomb (1903). “The reminiscences of an astronomer”, Harper and Brothers

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• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Men

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.

  Martin Gardner

  Real, Science, Self

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• Indeed, nothing more beautifully simplifying has ever happened in the history of science than the whole series of discoveries culminating about 1914 which finally brought practically universal acceptance to the theory that the material world contains but two fundamental entities, namely, positive and negative electrons, exactly alike in charge, but differing widely in mass, the positive electron-now usually called a proton-being 1850 times heavier than the negative, now usually called simply the electron.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Acceptance, Science, Discovery

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• The history of science shows that great mysteries get solved. It may be that there's an answer that humans are too stupid to understand. I'm intrigued by that possibility.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stupid, Answers, May

  "Why Revive ‘Cosmos?’ Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Just About Everything We Know Has Changed". Interview With David Freeman, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 4, 2014.

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