Home / Quotes / Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.”

Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Work

Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

This book delves into the lesser-known facets of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work, examining his various inventions and observations. It includes insights into his innovative thinking and the impact of his ideas on the world around him. more

Author

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was a renowned paleontologist, evolutionary theorist, science writer, and academic. He is known for his work in ornithology, paleontology, evolutionary theory, and speciation. Gould's writings and papers have had a profound impact on the scientific community, and he was a long-time contributor to the journal 'Nature'. more

“To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. This instinct, 'tis true, arises from past observation and experience; but can anyone give the ultimate reason, why past experience and observation produces such an effect, any more than why nature alone should produce it?”

Source: A Treatise of Human Nature

“To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.”

Ifs Men Firsts Looks Science Differences Study Essentials Discovery Observation Characteristics Afar

Author:Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?”

Children Science Known Clear Fields Scientist Clarity Observation Discourse Great Scientist

Book:The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez

“We have three approaches at our disposal: the observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation serves to assemble the data, reflection to synthesise them and experimentation to test the results of the synthesis. The observation of nature must be assiduous, just as reflection must be profound, and experimentation accurate. These three approaches are rarely found together, which explains why creative geniuses are so rare.”

Together Science Three Found Results Creative Genius Approach Reflection Tests Profound Experiments Observation Data Accurate Experimentation Synthesis Creative Genius

Author:John Dewey

“We receive experience from nature in a series of messages. From these messages we extract a content of information: that is, we decode the messages in some way. And from this code of information we then make a basic vocabulary of concepts and a basic grammar of laws, which jointly describe the inner organization that nature translates into the happenings and the appearances we meet.”

Way Law Science Nature Information Messages Happenings Concepts Experience Organization Series Appearance Observation Code Translate Vocabulary Grammar

Author:Jacob Bronowski

“Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.”

Wells Facts Science Theory Evidence Weight Observation Collapse Obsolete

Author:Al Gore

“What really matters for me is ... the more active role of the observer in quantum physics ... According to quantum physics the observer has indeed a new relation to the physical events around him in comparison with the classical observer, who is merely a spectator.”

Matter Science Roles Events Relation Active Physics Observation Comparison Quantum Observers Spectators Quantum Physics

Book:Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956

Source: Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956

“What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.”

Trying Mean Science Language Nature Natural Answers Asking Method Physics Experiments Observation Exposed Questioning Asking Questions

Author:Werner Heisenberg

“Whoever wishes to acquire a deep acquaintance with Nature must observe that there are analogies which connect whole branches of science in a parallel manner, and enable us to infer of one class of phenomena what we know of another. It has thus happened on several occasions that the discovery of an unsuspected analogy between two branches of knowledge has been the starting point for a rapid course of discovery.”

Source: The Principles of Science: Book IV. Inductive investigation. Book V. Generalization, analogy, and classification. Book VI. Reflections on the results and limits of scientific method

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Work

Author

You May Also Like