Natural Science Quotes - Page 5

• To write about history or language is supposed to be within the reach of every man. To write about natural science is allowed to be within the reach only of those who have mastered the subjects on which they write.

  Edward Augustus Freeman

  Writing, Men, Language

  Edward Augustus Freeman (1886). “The Methods of Historical Study: Eight Lectures Read in the University of Oxford In...1884, with the Inaugural Lecture on The Office of the Historical Professor”

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• A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.

  Lawrence Joseph Henderson

  Knowledge, Men, Differences

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• The expectation of substantive unity between natural science and social science has faded.... Gone is the cosmic intention of placing man in the universe.

  Allan Bloom

  Men, Expectations, Unity

  Allan Bloom (1988). “Closing of the American Mind”, Simon & Schuster

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• The most vitally characteristic fact about mathematics is, in my opinion, its quite peculiar relationship to the natural sciences, or more generally, to any science which interprets experience on a higher than purely descriptive level.

  John von Neumann

  Levels, Facts, Peculiar

  John Von Neumann, F. Bródy, Tibor Vámos (1995). “The Neumann Compendium”, p.618, World Scientific

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• Almost everyone... seems to be quite sure that the differences between the methodologies of history and of the natural sciences are vast. For, we are assured, it is well known that in the natural sciences we start from observation and proceed by induction to theory. And is it not obvious that in history we proceed very differently? Yes, I agree that we proceed very differently. But we do so in the natural sciences as well.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Differences, Well Known

  Karl Popper (2014). “The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality”, p.140, Routledge

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• I note that warmists are often banging on about the fact that sceptics like Christopher Booker and myself 'only' have arts degrees. But actually that's our strength, not our weakness. Our intellectual training qualifies us better than any scientist - social or natural sciences - for us to understand that this is, au fond, not a scientific debate but a cultural and rhetorical one.

  James Delingpole

  Art, Training, Intellectual

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• Whether...a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place...depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge.

  Erich Fromm

  Caring, Men, Challenges

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• The role of metaphysics in relation to other disciplines, whether philosophical or not and including the natural sciences, is thus a foundational role. Lack of clarity in the concepts of metaphysics implies lack of clarity in other disciplines - both theoretical and practical disciplines - employing those concepts or employing concepts that depend on those of metaphysics.

  Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra

  Philosophical, Discipline, Roles

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I'm very suspicious of the idea of a "final theory" in natural science, and the thought of a complete system of ethical rules seems even more dubious.

  Philip Kitcher

  Ideas, Dubious, Finals

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never-relaxing crusade against skepticism and dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and will always be, 'On to God.'

  Max Planck

  Fighting, Rallying Cry, Battle

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• Nature is earlier than man, but man is earlier than natural science.

  Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker

  Nature, Science, Men

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• I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.

  Greg Graffin

  People, Natural, Given

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• Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Bible, Shining, Mind

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• For me, the study of these laws is inseparable from a love of Nature in all its manifestations. The beauty of the basic laws of natural science, as revealed in the study of particles and of the cosmos, is allied to the litheness of a merganser diving in a pure Swedish lake, or the grace of a dolphin leaving shining trails at night in the Gulf of California.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Nature, Science, Night

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• In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Mass., before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.

  Louis Agassiz

  Teacher, Laughter, Teaching

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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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• Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Generations, Might, Enough

  "Orgonotic Pulsation in International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone-Research", Vol. 3, No. 1, March, 1944.

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• The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of "physical reality" indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. We must always be ready to change these notions - that is to say, the axiomatic basis of physics - in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way.

  Albert Einstein

  Mean, Independent, Science

  "Maxwell's Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality" by Albert Einstein, 1931.

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• I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.

  William James

  Science, Psychology, Helping

  William James (1983). “Essays in Psychology”, p.270, Harvard University Press

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• In a few decades of reconstruction, even the mathematical natural sciences, the ancient archetypes of theoretical perfection, have changed habit completely!

  Edmund Husserl

  Perfection, Ancient, Habit

  Edmund Husserl, Peter McCormick, Frederick Elliston (1981). “Husserl, shorter works”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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• There are few humanities that could surpass in discipline, in beauty, in emotional and aesthetic satisfaction, those humanities which are called mathematics, and the natural sciences.

  Robert Watson-Watt

  Emotional, Discipline, Humanity

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• There's this old saying that, if you aren't particularly gifted in natural sciences, if you don't want to become a teacher or pastor or doctor, and don't know what else to do, then you become a lawyer. But I've never regretted it.

  Bernhard Schlink

  Teacher, Doctors, Want

  "On the moral high ground' by Edward Marriott, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2008.

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• Literary or scientific, liberal or specialist, all our education is predominantly verbal and therefore fails to accomplish what it is supposed to do. Instead of transforming children into fully developed adults, it turns out students of the natural sciences who are completely unaware of Nature as the primary fact of experience, it inflicts upon the world students of the humanities who know nothing of humanity, their own or anyone else's.

  Aldous Huxley

  Children, Humanity, Adults

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• I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Simple, Men

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• After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.

  Carroll Quigley

  Years, Important, Different

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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