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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“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.”

KnowsGivingMayFactsLawScienceValuesPerfectResultsViewsNumbersKnowledgeNegativeSeriesValuablePoint Of ViewPracticalsExperimentsIsolatedTheoreticalRecurringIncompleteness
Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays
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“Knowledge of Nature is an account at bank, where each dividend is added to the principal and the interest is ever compounded; and hence it is that human progress, founded on natural knowledge, advances with ever increasing speed.”

KnowsHumansScienceInterestNaturalKnowledgeProgressAccountsSpeedPrincipalDividendsHuman Progress
Book:Presidential Address by Grove Karl Gilbert: With Constitution and Standing Rules, Abstracts of Minutes and Lists of Officers and Members, 1895
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“Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an overly rigorous control of an insignificant variable and a widespread deficiency in the framing of pertinent questions. Investigators seem to have settled for what is measurable instead of measuring what they would really like to know.”

KnowsSeemsScienceDecisionResultsKnowledgeConclusionDataDecision MakingInvestigationHypothesisInsignificantExaminationMeasurementDeficiencyVariablesMeasuringInvestigatorsFramingPertinentPertinent Questions
Author:Edmund Pellegrino
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“Science is teaching man to know and reverence truth, and to believe that only so far as he knows and loves it can he live worthily on earth, and vindicate the dignity of his spirit.”

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Book:Where are We and Whither Tending?: Three Lectures on the Reality and Worth of Human Progress
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“Scientific modes of thought cannot be developed and become generally accepted unless people renounce their primary, unreflecting, and spontaneous attempt to understand all their experience in terms of its purpose and meaning for themselves. The development that led to more adequate knowledge and increasing control of nature was therefore, considered from one aspect, also a development toward greater self-control by men.”

PeopleKnowsMenSelfSciencePurposeTermKnowledgeGreaterDevelopmentAspectAcceptedPrimariesSelf ControlSpontaneousAdequateRenouncePurpose And MeaningAdequate Knowledge
Book:The history of manners
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“The first thing the reasonable man must do is to be content with a very little knowledge and a very great deal of ignorance. The second thing he must do is to make the utmost possible use of the knowledge he has and not waste his energy crying for the moon. The third thing he must do is try and see clearly where his knowledge ends and his ignorance begins.”

KnowsMenTryingFirstsLittlesEndsUseScienceEnergyDealsKnowledgeCryIgnoranceMoonWasteThirdsIgnorantReasonableLittle KnowledgeReasonable Man
Author:Arthur David Ritchie
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“The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.”

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Book:Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings
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“The question whether atoms exist or not... belongs rather to metaphysics. In chemistry we have only to decide whether the assumption of atoms is an hypothesis adapted to the explanation of chemical phenomena... whether a further development of the atomic hypothesis promises to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of chemical phenomena... I rather expect that we shall some day find, for what we now call atoms, a mathematico-mechanical explanation, which will render an account of atomic weight, of atomicity, and of numerous other properties of the so-called atoms.”

ScienceKnowledgeDevelopmentPromiseWeightAccountsPropertyExplanationAssumptionChemistryChemicalsAtomsMechanismMetaphysicsHypothesisAdapted
Author:August Kekule
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“The science and technology which have advanced man safely into space have brought about startling medical advances for man on earth. Out of space research have come new knowledge, techniques and instruments which have enabled some bedridden invalids to walk, the totally deaf to hear, the voiceless to talk, and, in the foreseeable future, may even make it possible for the blind to "see."”

MenMayEarthScienceSpaceWalksKnowledgeTechnologyPossibilityResearchAccountsInstrumentsBlindMedicineTechniqueMedicalDeafScience And TechnologyVoicelessNew KnowledgeMedical Advances
Author:Hubertus Strughold
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“To seek in the great accumulation of the already-said the text that resembles "in advance" a later text, to ransack history in order to rediscover the play of anticipations or echoes, to go right back to the first seeds or to go forward to the last traces, to reveal in a work its fidelity to tradition or its irreducible uniqueness, to raise or lower its stock of originality, to say that the Port -Royal grammarians invented nothing, or to discover that Cuvier had more predecessors than one thought, these are harmless enough amusements for historians who refuse to grow up.”

KnowsFirstsSaidEnoughPlayLastsScienceOrderGrowsKnowledgeGrowing UpTraditionRaisesRefuseSeedsHistorianOriginalityAnticipationUniquenessEchoesRoyalAmusementAccumulationFidelityPortPredecessors
Author:Michel Foucault
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“To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.”

KnowsShouldMayReasonLightScienceKnowledgeResearchFairsCriticismDifficultyGatesInchesUp And DownReproachAdverseInvestigatorsRecoilWisps
Author:William Crookes
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“To this day, we see all around us the Promethean drive to omnipotence through technology and to omniscience through science. The effecting of all things possible and the knowledge of all causes are the respective primary imperatives of technology and of science. But the motivating imperative of society continues to be the very different one of its physical and spiritual survival. It is now far less obvious than it was in Francis Bacon's world how to bring the three imperatives into harmony, and how to bring all three together to bear on problems where they superpose.”

KnowsWorldDifferentProblemTogetherSpiritualScienceThreeCausesKnowledgeTechnologyBearsSurvivalAll ThingsAccountsHarmonyObviousPrimariesThis DayImperativesOmnipotenceOmniscience
Book:The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays
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“Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.”

MayScienceChurchOpinionKnowledgeModernWillingWeakMethodVictimAncientHumanitarianMythObjectivesVarietyFrightenedFollowersTyrantsGreedyOutlookFittingScientific MethodUnanimity
Book:Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge
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“We thus begin to see that the institutionalized practice of citations and references in the sphere of learning is not a trivial matter. While many a general reader-that is, the lay reader located outside the domain of science and scholarship-may regard the lowly footnote or the remote endnote or the bibliographic parenthesis as a dispensable nuisance, it can be argued that these are in truth central to the incentive system and an underlying sense of distributive justice that do much to energize the advancement of knowledge.”

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Book:On Social Structure and Science
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“What the founders of modern science ... had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science - and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all.”

KnowsWorldDifferentScienceCertainNaturalCommonKnowledgeModernTheoryApproachConceptsIntellectCommon SenseReformEvolveCriticizeCombatFoundersFrameworkModern ScienceNew Approach
Author:Alexandre Koyre
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“With crystals we are in a situation similar to an attempt to investigate an optical grating merely from the spectra it produces... But a knowledge of the positions and intensities of the spectra does not suffice for the determination of the structure. The phases with which the diffracted waves vibrate relative to one another enter in an essential way. To determine a crystal structure on the atomic scale, one must know the phase differences between the different interference spots on the photographic plate, and this task may certainly prove to be rather difficult.”

KnowsWayMayDoeDifferentScienceDifficultDifferencesSituationKnowledgePositionProduceProveEssentialsDeterminationTasksStructureWaveDetermineScalesSpotsIntensityRelativeAtomsPlatesPhasesCrystalsInterferenceVibrate
Author:Max von Laue
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“[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing - one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.”

HumansScienceKnowledgeOne ThingSecurityTruth IsMathematicsStructureInsightArchitectureSecureCertaintyAnalysisGloriousFacetsAlgebraInterconnectedHuman KnowledgeInterconnectionTopology
Author:Paul Halmos
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“With full responsibility for my words as a professional biologist, I do not hesitate to say that all existing and genuine knowledge about the way in which the physical characteristics of human communities are related to their cultural capabilities can be written on the back of a postage stamp.”

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Book:Dangerous Thoughts
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“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.”

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Book:The Analects of Confucius In Plain and Simple English: BookCaps Study Guide
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“It is not therefore the business of philosophy, in our present situation in the universe, to attempt to take in at once, in one view, the whole scheme of nature; but to extend, with great care and circumspection, our knowledge, by just steps, from sensible things, as far as our observations or reasonings from them will carry us, in our enquiries concerning either the greater motions and operations of nature, or her more subtile and hidden works. In this way Sir Isaac Newton proceeded in his discoveries.”

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Book:An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries. 2. Ed
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