Nomenclature Quotes - Page 2

• The maxim is, that whatever can be affirmed (or denied) of a class, may be affirmed (or denied) of everything included in the class. This axiom, supposed to be the basis of the syllogistic theory, is termed by logicians the dictum de omni et nullo.

  John Stuart Mill

  Science, Class, May

  John Stuart Mill (1858). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.117

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• One dictionary that I consulted remarks that "natural history" now commonly means the study of animals and plants "in a popular and superficial way," meaning popular and superficial to be equally damning adjectives. This is related to the current tendency in the biological sciences to label every subdivision of science with a name derived from the Greek. "Ecology" is erudite and profound; while "natural history" is popular and superficial. Though, as far as I can see, both labels apply to just about the same package of goods.

  Marston Bates

  Mean, Science, Animal

  0 Copy quote

• The world of organisms, of animals and plants, is built up of individuals. I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual-of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities.

  Marston Bates

  Science, Animal, Thinking

  Marston Bates (2014). “The Nature of Natural History”, p.7, Princeton University Press

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word.

  Gottlob Frege

  Mean, Science, Decision

  Gottlob Frege (1952). “Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• To discover the laws of operative power in material productions, whether formed by man or brought into being by Nature herself, is the work of a science, and is indeed what we more especially term Science.

  William Whewell

  Science, Men, Law

  William Whewell (1856). “Lectures on the Progress of Arts and Science, Resulting from the Great Exhibition in London ...”, p.6

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.

  Aristotle

  Hard Work, Science, Differences

  3 Copy quote

• For in disease the most voluntary or most special movements, faculties, etc., suffer first and most, that is in an order the exact opposite of evolution. Therefore I call this the principle of Dissolution.

  John Hughlings Jackson

  Science, Opposites, Order

  John Hughlings Jackson, James Taylor, Sir Gordon Holmes (1931). “Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson: On Epilepsy and epileptiform convulsions”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

  Fred Hoyle

  Science, Past, Expression

  3 Copy quote

• One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties.

  Fred Hoyle

  Life, Science, Ideas

  Fred Hoyle (1960). “The nature of the universe”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was a reaction from the old idea of "protoplasm", a name which was a mere repository of ignorance.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Ignorance, Science, Names

  3 Copy quote

• We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Memories, Science, Names

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.249, Oxford University Press

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have spent some months in England, have seen an awful lot and learned little. England is not a land of science, there is only a widely practised dilettantism, the chemists are ashamed to call themselves chemists because the pharmacists, who are despised, have assumed this name.

  Justus von Liebig

  Learning, Science, Land

  50 Copy quote

• It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.

  Lionel Trilling

  Science, Class, Names

  Lionel Trilling, Leon Wieseltier (2009). “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays”, p.425, Northwestern University Press

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Pitchblende] consists of a peculiar, distinct, metallic substance. Therefore its former denominations, Pechblende, pitch-iron-ore, &c. are no longer applicable, and must be supplied by another more appropriate name. I have chosen that of Uranium, as a kind of memorial, that the chemical discovery of this new metal happened in the period of astronomical discovery of the new planet Uranus.

  Martin Heinrich Klaproth

  Science, Discovery, Names

  "Analytical Essays towards Promoting the Chemical Knowledge of Mineral Substances" by Martin Heinrich Klaproth, London: Cadell & Davies, 1801.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the expressions we adopt to prescribe physical phenomena we necessarily hover between two extremes. We either have to choose a word which implies more than we can prove, or we have to use vague and general terms which hide the essential point, instead of bringing it out. The history of electrical theories furnishes a good example.

  Arthur Schuster

  Science, Expression, Two

  4 Copy quote

• There is a reference in Aristotle to a gnat produced by larvae engendered in the slime of vinegar. This must have been Drosophila.

  Alfred Sturtevant

  Science, Gnats, Vinegar

  3 Copy quote

• My amateur interest in astronomy brought out the term "magnitude," which is used for the brightness of a star.

  Charles Richet

  Stars, Science, Brightness

  8 Copy quote

• The mathematics clearly called for a set of underlying elementary objects-at that time we needed three types of them-elementary objects that could be combined three at a time in different ways to make all the heavy particles we knew. ... I needed a name for them and called them quarks, after the taunting cry of the gulls, "Three quarks for Muster mark," from Finnegan's Wake by the Irish writer James Joyce.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Science, Names, Different

  10 Copy quote

• There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Real, Science, Ideas

  16 Copy quote

• This constitution we designate by the word genotype. The word is entirely independent of any hypothesis; it is fact, not hypothesis that different zygotes arising by fertilisation can thereby have different qualities, that, even under quite similar conditions of life, phenotypically diverse individuals can develop.

  Wilhelm Johannsen

  Independent, Science, Diversity

  4 Copy quote

• The combination of such characters, some, as the sacral ones, altogether peculiar among Reptiles, others borrowed, as it were, from groups now distinct from each other, and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria.

  Richard Owen

  Character, Science, Order

  Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science "Report on British Fossil Reptiles" (1842)

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• And teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night.

  William Shakespeare

  Science, Moon, Night

  William Shakespeare, Kathleen Ermitage (2002). “The Tempest”, p.56, Barron's Educational Series

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• This king [Sesostris] divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But everyone from whose part the river tore anything away, had to go to him to notify what had happened; he then sent overseers who had to measure out how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to Hellas.

  Herodotus

  Kings, Science, Egypt

  13 Copy quote

• Analogue. A part or organ in one animal which has the same function as another part or organ in a different animal.

  Richard Owen

  Science, Animal, Differences

  Richard Owen (1848). “On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton”, p.7

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• These microscopic organisms form an entire world composed of species, families and varieties whose history, which has barely begun to be written, is already fertile in prospects and findings of the highest importance. The names of these organisms are very numerous and will have to be defined and in part discarded. The word microbe which has the advantage of being shorter and carrying a more general meaning, and of having been approved by my illustrious friend, M. Littré, the most competent linguist in France, is one we will adopt.

  Louis Pasteur

  Science, Names, World

  14 Copy quote