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Experiments Quotes

Browse 1652 quotes about Experiments.

Experiments Quotes

“Il ne fallait jamais faire des expériences pour confirmer ses idées, mais simplement pour les contrôler. We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.”

Ideas Experiments

Author:Claude Bernard

“An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.”

May Science Natural Study Events Particular Circumstances Advantage Relation Experiments Phenomenon Natural Phenomena

Book:The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell

Source: The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell

“An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.”

Moving Universe Property Astronomy Experiments Observers Cosmology Nebula

Author:Hermann Bondi

“Angling may be said to be so like the Mathematics that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.”

Men May Said Stills Science Left Learning Succeed Mathematics Trials Experiments Angling

Book:The Complete Angler of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton: Estensively Embellished with Engravings on Copper and Wood, from Original Paintings and Drawings, by First-rate Artists, to which are Added, an Introductory Essay, the Linnœan Arangement of the Various River Fish Delineated in the Work, and Illustrative Notes

Source: The Complete Angler of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton: Estensively Embellished with Engravings on Copper and Wood, from Original Paintings and Drawings, by First-rate Artists, to which are Added, an Introductory Essay, the Linnœan Arangement of the Various River Fish Delineated in the Work, and Illustrative Notes

“Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work-and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.”

“Any work of science, no matter what its point of departure, cannot become fully convincing until it crosses the boundary between the theoretical and the experimental: Experimentation must give way to argument, and argument must have recourse to experimentation.”

Way Giving Matter Science Argument Crosses No Matter What Boundaries Experiments Convincing Theoretical Departure Experimentation Recourse

Author:Gaston Bachelard

“But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.”

Ifs Science Experiments Demonstration

Book:Selected Philosophical Works

Source: Selected Philosophical Works

“Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing game, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquirement of experience by our nervous organization.”

Should Moving Science Games Lost Results Numbers Player Consequence Machines Organization Chess Experiments Nervous Accumulation Register Playing Games Chess Players

Author:William Stanley Jevons

“During the time that [Karl] Landsteiner gave me an education in the field of imununology, I discovered that he and I were thinking about the serologic problem in very different ways. He would ask, What do these experiments force us to believe about the nature of the world? I would ask, What is the most. simple and general picture of the world that we can formulate that is not ruled by these experiments? I realized that medical and biological investigators were not attacking their problems the same way that theoretical physicists do, the way I had been in the habit of doing.”

“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. What are now working conceptions, employed as a matter of course because they have withstood the tests of experiment and have emerged triumphant, were once speculative hypotheses.”

Matter Science Courses Imagination Tests Experiments Conception Employed Hypothesis Triumphant Audacity Advances In Science

Book:James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

Source: James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

“For the better part of my last semester at Garden City High, I constructed a physical pendulum and used it to make a "precision" measurement of gravity. The years of experience building things taught me skills that were directly applicable to the construction of the pendulum. Twenty-five years later, I was to develop a refined version of this measurement using laser-cooled atoms in an atomic fountain interferometer.”

“How insidious Nature is when one is trying to get at it experimentally.”

Trying Science Nature Natural Experiments Insidious

Author:Albert Einstein

“I am afraid of radium and polonium ... I don't want to monkey with them.”

Want Science Experiments Monkeys

Author:Thomas A. Edison

“I experimented with all possible maneuvers-loops, somersaults and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill, distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of the air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy, I flew around in space.”

Science Space Laughing Air Fingers Experiments Rhythm Gravity Flew Altered Upside Down Barrels Loops Buoyancy

Author:Jacques Yves Cousteau

“I give them experiments and they respond with speeches.”

Giving Science Speech Experiments

Author:Louis Pasteur

“I happen to be a kind of monkey. I have a monkeylike curiosity that makes me want to feel, smell, and taste things which arouse my curiosity, then to take them apart. It was born in me. Not everybody is like that, but a scientific researchist should be. Any fool can show me an experiment is useless. I want a man who will try it and get something out of it.”

Men Want Feels Should Trying Kind Shows Happens Science Born Fool Birth Taste Curiosity Smell Experiments Useless Show Me Monkeys Scientific Research

Author:Willis R. Whitney

“I have often had cause to feel that my hands are cleverer than my head. That is a crude way of characterizing the dialectics of experimentation. When it is going well, it is like a quiet conversation with Nature. One asks a question and gets an answer, then one asks the next question and gets the next answer. An experiment is a device to make Nature speak intelligibly. After that, one only has to listen.”

Way Feels Wells Hands Science Next Asks Speak Causes Nature Answers Listening Quiet Conversation Experiments Devices Crude Experimentation Scientific Method Dialectics

Author:George Wald

“I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal.”

“I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion.”

“I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists I have known have had an intense curiosity that no Keep Out sign could mute. Physicists do, of course, show a healthy respect for High Voltage, Radiation, and Liquid Hydrogen signs. They are not reckless. I can think of only six who have been killed on the job.”

“If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.”

Ifs World Way Years Today Science Views Return Years Ago Mathematics Intuition Physics Experiments Mathematical Consistent Mystical Precision Sophistication World View

Author:Fritjof Capra

“If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, we will, But-there must be risks! There must be. In experimental work there always are!”

Ifs Littles Science Risk Planets Experiments

Author:George Herbert

“In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.”

Should Philosophy Science Contrary Experiments Exception Propositions Hypothesis Liable

Book:The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Source: The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

“In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig'd to destroy! If there is no other Use discover'd of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.”

Ifs Men May Helping Use Science Humble Experiments Vain Electricity

Book:Benjamin Franklin: a biography in his own words

Source: Benjamin Franklin: a biography in his own words

“In recent weeks we learned that scientists have created human embryos in test tubes solely to experiment on them. This is deeply troubling, and a warning sign that should prompt all of us to think through these issues very carefully.”

Thinking Should Humans Science Issues Week Tests Scientist Experiments Warning Tubes Prompts Embryos Warning Signs

Author:George W. Bush

“It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.”

Should Mean Science Madness Experiments Contradiction

Book:The Novum Organum Scientiarum: In Two Parts

Source: The Novum Organum Scientiarum: In Two Parts

“It is very different to make a practical system and to introduce it. A few experiments in the laboratory would prove the practicability of system long before it could be brought into general use. You can take a pipe and put a little coal in it, close it up, heat it and light the gas that comes out of the stem, but that is not introducing gas lighting. I'll bet that if it were discovered to-morrow in New York that gas could be made out of coal it would be at least five years before the system would be in general use.”

Ifs Years Littles Long Made Different Use Light Would Be Science Five New York Tomorrow Prove Practicals Experiments Heat Five Years Gas Introducing Stem Coal Laboratory Pipe Lighting Morrow

Author:Thomas A. Edison

“It was a great step in science when men became convinced that, in order to understand the nature of things, they must begin by asking, not whether a thing is good or bad, noxious or beneficial, but of what kind it is? And how much is there of it? Quality and Quantity were then first recognised as the primary features to be observed in scientific inquiry.”

Men Firsts Kind Science Order Understanding Quality Steps Discovery Asking Convinced Experiments Primaries Features Quantity Inquiry Beneficial Measurement

Book:The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell

Source: The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell

“Let the experiment be made.”

Made Science Experiments

Book:Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin Franklin

Source: Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin Franklin

“My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.”

Book Reason Light Science Order Design Prove Property Definitions Following Experiments Hypothesis Propose Premises Axioms

Author:Isaac Newton

“Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged, or exalted by experiments, in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. The body of natural science, then, consists of facts; is analogy,-the relation of resemblance of facts by which its different parts are connected, arranged, and employed, either for popular use, or for new speculative improvements.”

“No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the "one chance in a million" will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.”

Should May Science Natural Chance Millions Significant Experiments Appropriate Phenomenon Isolated Frequency Demonstration One Chance Natural Phenomena

Author:Ronald Fisher

“Now I know what the atom looks like.”

Knows Looks Science Experiments Atoms

Author:Ernest Rutherford

“Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.”

“Only by following out the injunction of our great predecessor [William Harvey] to search out and study the secrets of Nature by way of experiment, can we hope to attain to a comprehension of 'the wisdom of the body and the understanding of the heart,' and thereby to the mastery of disease and pain, which will enable us to relieve the burden of mankind.”

Way Heart Body Pain Science Understanding Nature Secret Study Mankind Disease Following Burden Experiments Mastery Comprehension Predecessors Harvey

Author:Ernest Starling

“You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.”

Real Science Animal Mere Curiosity Experiments Investigation Physiological Experiments On Animals

Author:Charles Darwin

“Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.”

Knows Reason Form Science Experiments Fewer

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense back into a liquid state become water. They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of which determines their flavour.”

Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1: The Revised Oxford Translation

“Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.”

“Subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.”

Science Understanding Understood Experiments Observation Preparation Isolation Isolated Entity Particles Measurement Interconnection Subatomic Particles

Book:The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism

Source: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism

“The artist does not illustrate science; ... [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations.”

Doe Science Artist Interest Expression Scientist Experiments Visuals Demonstration Synthesis

Author:Lewis Mumford

“The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.”

Way Should Firsts May Philosophy Seems Science Experience Property Experiments Explanation Employed Hypothesis Explaining

Author:Isaac Newton

“The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity.”

Children Law Science Walks Learning Experiments Gravity

Book:Methods of Social Reform: And Other Papers

Source: Methods of Social Reform: And Other Papers

“The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.”

Men Believe Science Doubt Experiments Interpretation Doubters True Man

Author:Claude Bernard

“The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.”

Mind Science Freedom Principles Virtue Doubt Medicine Valuable Experiments Initiative Philosophic Investigators Physiology

Book:Experimental Medicine

Source: Experimental Medicine

“The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics.”

War Science Courses Consequence Direct Experience Winter Nuclear Physics Experiments Investigation Predictions Governing Nuclear War Nuclear Winter

Author:Carl Sagan

“The progression of physical science is much more connected with your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country.”

Important Country Philosophy Science Advantage Prosperity Connected Experiments Peculiar Conquest Progression Physical Science

Book:The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (etc.)

Source: The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (etc.)

“The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to fill bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.”

Body Science Found Quality Degrees Universal Experiments Remission

Author:Isaac Newton

“The rigid electron is in my view a monster in relation to Maxwell's equations, whose innermost harmony is the principle of relativity... the rigid electron is no working hypothesis, but a working hindrance. Approaching Maxwell's equations with the concept of the rigid electron seems to me the same thing as going to a concert with your ears stopped up with cotton wool. We must admire the courage and the power of the school of the rigid electron which leaps across the widest mathematical hurdles with fabulous hypotheses, with the hope to land safely over there on experimental-physical ground.”

“There is more evidence to prove that saltness [of the sea] is due to the admixture of some substance, besides that which we have adduced. Make a vessel of wax and put it in the sea, fastening its mouth in such a way as to prevent any water getting in. Then the water that percolates through the wax sides of the vessel is sweet, the earthy stuff, the admixture of which makes the water salt, being separated off as it were by a filter.”

Way Science Stuff Sides Water Sea Sweet Prove Mouths Evidence Dues Experiments Substance Salt Vessel Filters

Book:Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1: The Revised Oxford Translation

Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1: The Revised Oxford Translation