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Quote by David Quammen

“Wallace's sales agent, back in London, heard mutterings from some naturalists that young Mr. Wallace ought to quit theorizing and stick to gathering facts. Besides expressing their condescension toward him in particular, that criticism also reflected a common attitude that fact-gathering, not theory, was the proper business of all naturalists.”

Quote by David Quammen

Book:The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions

Work

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions

This book delves into the field of island biogeography, examining the distribution and abundance of species on islands. It also discusses the role of human activity in the extinction of various species, providing a critical analysis of the ecological consequences of human influence. more

Author

David Quammen is an American writer known for his in-depth exploration of natural history. His works often involve biology, ecology, and the relationship between humans and nature. Born on February 24, 1948, Quammen's writing career spans multiple genres, including scientific writing, travel literature, and journalism. more

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“[The infinitely small] neither have nor can have theory; it is a dangerous instrument in the hands of beginners [ ... ] anticipating, for my part, the judgement of posterity, I would dare predict that this method will be accused one day, and rightly, of having retarded the progress of the mathematical sciences.”

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“I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'”

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Author:George Clooney

“[Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.”

“'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science.”

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Author:Gottlob Frege

“Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. ... So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.”

“A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.”

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Author:Gilbert Ryle

“Facts are certainly the solid and true foundation of all sectors of nature study ... Reasoning must never find itself contradicting definite facts; but reasoning must allow us to distinguish, among facts that have been reported, those that we can fully believe, those that are questionable, and those that are false. It will not allow us to lend faith to those that are directly contrary to others whose certainty is known to us; it will not allow us to accept as true those that fly in the face of unquestionable principles.”

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Author:Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur

“I am ever more intrigued by the correspondence between mathematics and physical facts. The adaptability of mathematics to the description of physical phenomena is uncanny.”

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Author:Nicolaas Bloembergen

“Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately derived from facts.”

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Book:Elements of Chemistry

Source: Elements of Chemistry

“In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a "discovery" of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up.”

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Author:Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar