“It is sometimes easier to circumvent prevailing difficulties [in science] rather than to attack them.” SometimesScienceEasierDifficultyPrevailing Author:Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
“It is very difficult to say nowadays where the suburbs of London come to an end and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country have turned the countryside into a city.” EndsCountryScienceDifficultCitiesDifficultyLondonSuburbsCountrysideEnablingRailwayLondoners Author:Anthony Trollope
“Ohm (a distinguished mathematician, be it noted) brought into order a host of puzzling facts connecting electromotive force and electric current in conductors, which all previous electricians had only succeeded in loosely binding together qualitatively under some rather vague statements. Even as late as 20 years ago, "quantity" and "tension" were much used by men who did not fully appreciate Ohm's law.” MenYearsFactsTogetherLawScienceUsedOrderForceLateYears AgoAppreciateDifficultyCurrentsStatementsTensionHostQuantityElectricMathematicianVagueConnectingDistinguishedBindingConductorPuzzlingElectricianElectric Current Author:Oliver Heaviside
“The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. ... If you will simply admit that maybe Nature does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possible avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.” IfsKnowsDoeScienceDesireTermResultsKnow HowReflectionDifficultyBlindFamiliarPsychologicalVainBehavePerpetualDelightfulTormentDrainsNobody KnowsAlleys Author:Richard P. Feynman
“The increasing technicality of the terminology employed is also a serious difficulty. It has become necessary to learn an extensive vocabulary before a book in even a limited department of science can be consulted with much profit. This change, of course, has its advantages for the initiated, in securing precision and concisement of statement; but it tends to narrow the field in which an investigator can labour, and it cannot fail to become, in the future, a serious impediment to wide inductive generalisations.” BookScienceCoursesFailingFieldsSeriousAdvantageDifficultyProfitWideStatementsDepartmentLabourVocabularyEmployedPrecisionImpedimentsInvestigatorsTerminologyTechnicalitiesGeneralisation Author:Thomas George Bonney
“A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations.” MindSciencePrinciplesCasesSourceHabitTastePureExcitingContemplationEnquiry Author:John Herschel
“If you walk along the street you will encounter a number of scientific problems. Of these, about 80 per cent are insoluble, while 19½ per cent are trivial. There is then perhaps half a per cent where skill, persistence, courage, creativity and originality can make a difference. It is always the task of the academic to swim in that half a per cent, asking the questions through which some progress can be made.” IfsMadeProblemScienceDifferencesWalksNumbersHalfCreativityProgressStreetsSkillsTasksAskingPersistenceEncountersMaking A DifferenceSwimAcademicOriginalityCentsEnquiry Author:Hermann Bondi
“In science, self-satisfaction is death. Personal self-satisfaction is the death of the scientist. Collective self-satisfaction is the death of the research. It is restlessness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, agony of mind that nourish science.” MindSelfScienceAnxietyResearchScientistSatisfactionCollectivesAgonyDissatisfactionRestlessnessEnquirySelf-satisfactionPersonal Satisfaction Author:Jacques Monod
“The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so” WorldHumansStillsEndsScienceCausesUnderstandingLimitsPressesPhilosopherVainShallowSubordinatesEnquiry Book:The Great Instauration Source: The Great Instauration
“Experience hobbles progress and leads to abandonment of difficult problems; it encourages the initiated to walk on the shady side of the street in the direction of experiences that have been pleasant. Youth without experience attacks the unsolved problems which maturer age with experience avoids, and from the labors of youth comes progress. Youth has dreams and visions, and will not be denied.” Has BeensProblemDreamAgeScienceDifficultSidesWalksVisionProgressStreetsYouthLaborExperiencePleasantDeniedAbandonmentShadyDifficult ProblemsUnsolved Problems Book:In the time of Henry Jacob Bigelow Source: In the time of Henry Jacob Bigelow