Physical Science Quotes

• Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

  Blaise Pascal

  Time, Ignorance, Knowledge

  c.1654-1662 Pense es, no.23.

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• Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Simple, Infallible

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• Without renouncing the support of physics, it is possible for the physiology of the senses, not only to pursue its own course of development, but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance.

  Ernst Mach

  Powerful, Support, Development

  Ernst Mach (1897). “Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations”

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• The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.

  Albert A. Michelson

  Discovery, Law, Important

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• Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Taught Us, Abnormal, Deities

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• I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.

  Sally Ride

  Math, Favorite Subject, Astronomy

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• The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

  Irving Babbitt

  Humanity, Needs, Today

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• But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

  David Brin

  Honest, Biology, Theme

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• One aim of physical sciences had been to give an exact picture the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Giving, Achievement

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex worldwide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write.

  H. G. Wells

  Writing, Thinking, Average

  H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.8611, Delphi Classics

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• I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student.

  Alan Shepard

  Math, Science, Thinking

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• Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth are essentially physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical science.

  D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

  Flower, Math, Law

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• You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Stars, Study, Astronomers

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• Applying the axioms of physical science to human life has something reprehensible to it.

  Albert Einstein

  Human Life, Humans, Axioms

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• Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry by pursuing chimerical problems and theories which are false. In physical science, which is more advanced than biology, we might still cite men of science who make great discoveries by relying on false theories.

  Claude Bernard

  Mistake, Science, Men

  "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine".

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• One of the things that got me transitioning from physical science to brain science was asking, Why do we understand so much about the universe?

  Edward Boyden

  Asking Why, Brain, Universe

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Science does not know its debt to imagination.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Imagination, Doe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.5, Harvard University Press

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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

  Knowledge, Science, Achievement

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• The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Temples, Theology

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• Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Mind, Investing

  Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld (1966). “Evolution of Physics”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• If you suppress laboratories, physical science will be stricken with barrenness and death.

  Louis Pasteur

  Laboratory, Ifs

  Some Reflections on Science in France Pt 1

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• About 70% of what I've written about is centered on the clashes and conformities between the emerging life and physical sciences and older metaphysical frameworks in the 17th and 18th centuries. The other 30% consists of one-off essays or researches into other intriguing contemporary topics such as visual experience, aesthetics, social justice issues, and the epistemology of moral knowledge.

  Catherine Wilson

  Issues, Justice, Research

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

  Immanuel Kant

  Science, Mathematics, Department

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• The establishment of Christianity . . . arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Years, Religion, Development

  Andrew Dickson White (1930). “History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom”, p.266, Library of Alexandria

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• The social sciences, like much of biology but unlike most fields of the physical sciences, have to deal with structures of essential complexity, i.e. with structures whose characteristic properties can be exhibited only by models made up of relatively large numbers of variables.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Numbers, Essentials, Variables

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