Knowledge Quotes - Page 38

• The world has entered a new era, evolving from an industrial into a knowledge-based society, and into a society that wants to live in harmony with nature.

  Minoru Mori

  World, Want, Eras

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• In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.

  Arthur Koestler

  Believe, Magic, Mutation

  "Janus: A Summing Up". Book by Arthur Koestler, p. 184-5, 1983.

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• Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth.

  Charles Scott Sherrington

  Taken, Sacrifice, Science

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• To know things as they are is better than to believe things as they seem.

  Tom Wicker

  Believe, Belief, Knows

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• But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Intelligent, Years

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Knowledge without devotion is like a stone in water.

  Sylvia Fraser

  Water, Stones, Devotion

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• Knowing how hard it is to collect a fact, you understand why most people want to have some fun analyzing it.

  Jesse L. Greenstein

  Fun, Science, Knowing

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• Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement; ... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals, ... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry.

  Justus von Liebig

  Country, Mean, Science

  Justus von Liebig (1859). “Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in its relation to Physiology, Dietetics, Agriculture, Commerce and Political Economy: Edited by John Blyth”, p.21

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• At the age of three I began to look around my grandfather's library. My first knowledge of astronomy came from reading and looking at pictures at that time. By the time I was six I remember him buying books for me. ... I think I was eight, he bought me a three-inch telescope on a brass mounting. ... So, as far back as I can remember, I had an early interest in science in general, astronomy in particular.

  Jesse L. Greenstein

  Book, Reading, Science

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• But it must not be forgotten that ... glass and porcelain were manufactured, stuffs dyed and metals separated from their ores by mere empirical processes of art, and without the guidance of correct scientific principles.

  Justus von Liebig

  Art, Science, Glasses

  David M. Knight, Justus von Liebig (1998). “The Development of Chemistry, 1789-1914: Familiar letters on chemistry”, p.2, Taylor & Francis

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• Coastal sailing as long as it is perfectly safe and easy commands no magic. Overseas expeditions are invariably bound up with ceremonies and ritual. Man resorts to magic only where chance and circumstances are not fully controlled by knowledge.

  Bronislaw Malinowski

  Science, Men, Long

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• Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Book, Science, Men

  Discours sur le Style (1753)

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• To eliminate the discrepancy between men's plans and the results achieved, a new approach is necessary. Morphological thinking suggests that this new approach cannot be realized through increased teaching of specialized knowledge. This morphological analysis suggests that the essential fact has been overlooked that every human is potentially a genius. Education and dissemination of knowledge must assume a form which allows each student to absorb whatever develops his own genius, lest he become frustrated. The same outlook applies to the genius of the peoples as a whole.

  Fritz Zwicky

  Education, Teaching, Science

  Morphological astronomy, The Observatory, Vol. 68, p. 121-143, 1948.

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• We cannot conceive how the Foetus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures, to whom we are such strangers.

  Joseph Glanvill

  Spring, Science, Self

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• The study of taxonomy in its broadest sense is probably the oldest branch of biology or natural history as well as the basis for all the other branches, since the first step in obtaining any knowledge of things about us is to discriminate between them and to learn to recognize them.

  Richard E. Blackwelder

  Science, Taxonomy, Branches

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• To get to know, to discover, to publish-this is the destiny of a scientist.

  Francois Arago

  Science, Destiny, Discovery

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• During the last two centuries and a half, physical knowledge has been gradually made to rest upon a basis which it had not before. It has become mathematical. The question now is, not whether this or that hypothesis is better or worse to the pure thought, but whether it accords with observed phenomena in those consequences which can be shown necessarily to follow from it, if it be true

  Augustus De Morgan

  Science, Two, Half

  Augustus De Morgan (1872). “A Budget of Paradoxes Reprinted, with the Author's Additions, from the Athenaeum Augustus De Morgan”, p.2

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• For the little that one has reflected on the origin of our knowledge, it is easy to perceive that we can acquire it only by means of comparison. That which is absolutely incomparable is wholly incomprehensible. God is the only example that we could give here. He cannot be comprehended, because he cannot be compared. But all which is susceptible of comparison, everything that we can perceive by different aspects, all that we can consider relatively, can always be judged according to our knowledge.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  God, Mean, Science

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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, Science, Animal

  A Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints

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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

  Science, Soul, Needs

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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, Science, World

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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, Science, Order

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• Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory.

  Hannes Alfven

  Science, Hands, Data

  "Hannes Alfvén: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents". Book by Anthony L. Peratt, p. 197, 1998.

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• Our knowledge of stars and interstellar matter must be based primarily on the electromagnetic radiation which reaches us. Nature has thoughtfully provided us with a universe in which radiant energy of almost all wave lengths travels in straight lines over enormous distances with usually rather negligible absorption.

  Lyman Spitzer

  Stars, Distance, Science

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• That our knowledge only illuminates a small corner of the Universe, that it is incomplete, approximate, tentative and merely probable need not concert us. It is genuine nevertheless. Physical science stands as one of the great achievements of the human spirit.

  Arthur David Ritchie

  Science, Achievement, Needs

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