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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic.”

Knows Should Philosophy Science Certain Knowledge Knowing Ignorance Ought Concepts Affair Practicals Certainty Useless Not Knowing Precise Precision Arithmetic Sceptic

Author:Bertrand Russell

“Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.”

Mean Wisdom Knowledge Technology Tasks Practicals Organized Application Systematic Science And Technology Knowledge Wisdom

Book:the new industrial state

Source: the new industrial state

“But, in history, practical usefulness never determines the moral value of an achievement. Only the person who increases the knowledge humanity has about itself and enhances its creative consciousness permanently enriches humanity.”

Persons Values Humanity Consciousness Moral Knowledge Creative Achievement Increase Determine Practicals Usefulness Moral Values

Author:Stefan Zweig

“Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.”

Has Beens Science Purpose Views Knowledge Gone Discovery Pursuit Practicals Pursuit Of Knowledge Scientific Discovery Scientific Knowledge

Book:Where is science going?

Source: Where is science going?

“The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.”

Doe Ideas Philosophy Action Energy Knowledge Study Practicals Significance Ethical Speculation Theoretical Shallowness

Author:Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values.”

Believe Wisdom Values I Believe Decision Attitude Knowledge Intellectual Practicals Positive Attitude Ethical Factual Belive Ethical Values

Book:Ideas and Opinions

Source: Ideas and Opinions

“This missing science of heredity, this unworked mine of knowledge on the borderland of biology and anthropology, which for all practical purposes is as unworked now as it was in the days of Plato, is, in simple truth, ten times more important to humanity than all the chemistry and physics, all the technical and indsutrial science that ever has been or ever will be discovered.”

Has Beens Important Science Purpose Humanity Simple Knowledge Missing Mines Ten Physics Practicals Biology Chemistry Plato Anthropology Heredity Simple Truths

Author:George Herbert

“...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.”

Feels Believe Reason Enough Science I Believe Results Knowledge Virtue Research Discovery Instinct Practicals Biographies Scientific Research Scientific Discovery

Book:The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1847-1850

Source: The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1847-1850

“His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.”

“The life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.”

“Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.”

Source: The Scientific Outlook

“The object of science is knowledge; the objects of art are works. In art, truth is the means to an end; in science, it is the only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed among the sciences”

Knows Mean Art Ends Science Knowledge Objects Truth Is Practicals Means To An End

Book:Novum Organon Renovatum

Source: Novum Organon Renovatum

“Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.”

Source: Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays