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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“How strange it would be if the final theory were to be discovered in our lifetimes! The discovery of the final laws of nature will mark a discontinuity in human intellectual history, the sharpest that has occurred since the beginning of modern science in the seventeenth century. Can we now imagine what that would be like?”

IfsHumansWould BeLawScienceHistoryImagineModernCenturyStrangeTheoryIntellectualDiscoveryMarkLifetimeFinalsLaws Of NatureModern ScienceDiscontinuity
Book:Dreams of a Final Theory
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“As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.”

WorldFirstsFactsScienceHistoryDesignFirst TimeTragedyIntelligentAddHistoricalTrialsScopeRemarksTheoristsFarceIntelligent DesignHegelBryanHistorical FactsScopes Trial
Author:Michael Shermer
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“Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.”

MindMeanHas BeensWholeLawScienceNatureHistoryGroupsPeriodsComplexesSimplicityAncientProductionsVariousConnectedAstronomyRangeOperationsContinentsUniformsInferiorsImpressedFormationSuccessionSurveysGeologyCombiningDepositsSinglenessTracing
Book:The silurian system, founded on geological researches in the counties of Salop, Hereford etc
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“Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to versemaking, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject.”

MindWellsMeanLittlesHas BeensSometimesWholeSchoolTogetherScienceLanguageAttentionBoysHistoryTeachingSubjectsTaughtDevelopmentPaidAncientWhole LifeCollectionsVersesBlankIncapableDrsCould Have BeenGeographyOf My MindMany FriendsButlersGeography And History
Book:Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution
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“The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event in the history of those heavenly bodies, however influential they may have become from that time in advancing the progress of sound philosophy among men.”

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Book:Principles of Geology
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“Among the older records, we find chapter after chapter of which we can read the characters, and make out their meaning: and as we approach the period of man's creation, our book becomes more clear, and nature seems to speak to us in language so like our own, that we easily comprehend it. But just as we begin to enter on the history of physical changes going on before our eyes, and in which we ourselves bear a part, our chronicle seems to fail us-a leaf has been torn out from nature's record, and the succession of events is almost hidden from our eyes.”

MenHas BeensBookCharacterSeemsEyeScienceSpeakLanguageNatureHistoryClearRecordsFailingEventsCreationFailureBearsPeriodsApproachChaptersLeafsTornSuccessionMake OutChronicles
Book:A complete guide to the Lakes, comprising minute directions for the tourist, with mr. Wordsworth's Description of the scenery of the country, &c. and Three letters upon the geology of the Lake district, by prof. Sedgwick
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“To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them.”

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Author:Robin G. Collingwood
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“[Decoding the human genome sequence] is the most significant undertaking that we have mounted so far in an organized way in all of science. I believe that reading our blueprints, cataloguing our own instruction book, will be judged by history as more significant than even splitting the atom or going to the moon.”

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Author:Francis Collins
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“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”

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Book:The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
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“Geology is rapidly taking its place as an introduction to the higher history of man. If the author has sought to exalt a favorite science, it has been with the desire that man-in whom geological history had its consummation, the prophecies of the successive ages their fulfilment-might better comprehend his own nobility and the true purpose of his existence.”

IfsMenHas BeensMightAgeScienceDesirePurposeExistenceHistoryHigherProphecyNobilityIntroductionGeologyFulfilmentTrue Purpose
Book:Manual of Geology: Treating of the Principles of the Science, with Special Reference to American Geological History, for the Use of Colleges, Academies, and Schools of Science
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“Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings.”

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Author:Donna J. Haraway
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“Geological facts being of an historical nature, all attempts to deduce a complete knowledge of them merely from their still, subsisting consequences, to the exclusion of unexceptionable testimony, must be deemed as absurd as that of deducing the history of ancient Rome solely from the medals or other monuments of antiquity it still exhibits, or the scattered ruins of its empire, to the exclusion of a Livy, a Sallust, or a Tacitus.”

StillsFactsScienceKnowledgeHistoryConsequenceHistoricalAncientAbsurdObservationRuinsEmpiresRomeTestimonyMedalMonumentExhibitsAntiquityExclusionGeologyAncient Rome
Book:Geological essays
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“Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month, there is now more economic comment in the supposedly serious literature than survives from the whole of the thousand years commonly denominated as the Middle Ages ... anyone who claims to be familiar with it all is a confessing liar.' I believe that all physicists would subscribe to the same sentiments regarding their own professional literature. I do at any rate.”

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Author:Abraham Pais
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“In the expressions we adopt to prescribe physical phenomena we necessarily hover between two extremes. We either have to choose a word which implies more than we can prove, or we have to use vague and general terms which hide the essential point, instead of bringing it out. The history of electrical theories furnishes a good example.”

TwoUseScienceTermHistoryExampleExpressionTheoryProveEssentialsExtremesVagueElectricalGood ExamplesNomenclatureTwo Extremes
Author:Arthur Schuster
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“[In geology,] As in history, the material in hand remains silent if no questions are asked. The nature of these questions depends on the "school" to which the geologist belongs and on the objectivity of his investigations. Hans Cloos called this way of interrogation "the dialogue with the earth," "das Gesprach mit der Erde."”

IfsWayHandsSchoolEarthScienceHistoryMaterialsDependsRemainsSilentDialogueInvestigationObjectivityGeologyInterrogationMitGeologist
Author:Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
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“The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life.”

IfsKnowsLifeWellsMeanHardPastScienceCertainViewsEffortHistoryOur LivesCenturyVainBackwardsAlchemistElixirProlongingElixir Of Life
Author:Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp
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