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Method Quotes

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Method Quotes

“With an absurd oversimplification, the "invention" of calculus [method in mathematics] is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz.”

Men Two Sometimes Mathematics Method Invention Absurd Newton Calculus Oversimplification

Author:Richard Courant

“The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.”

Century Method Invention Nineteenth Century

Author:Alfred North Whitehead

“Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.”

Mean Easy Results Method Invention Analysis Construction Equations Elegant Demonstration Ingenuity Refined Algebra

Book:1691-1695

Source: 1691-1695

“Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups or between groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to be run. If you look back, you will see that warfare was an invention, just as ways of handling government or taxes are inventions. You will see, too, that once people use an invention they go on using it until they find another which they think is superior.”

People Ifs Thinking Way Firsts Looks Different War Use Problem Government Running Views Groups Goes On Conflict Taxes Method Invention Superiors Warfare Different Views

Book:PEOPLE AND PLACES

Source: PEOPLE AND PLACES

“It may be that the invention of the aeroplane flying-machine will be deemed to have been of less material value to the world than the discovery of Bessemer and open-hearth steel, or the perfection of the telegraph, or the introduction of new and more scientific methods in the management of our great industrial works. To us, however, the conquest of the air, to use a hackneyed phrase, is a technical triumph so dramatic and so amazing that it overshadows in importance every feat that the inventor has accomplished.”

“Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.”

Science Chance Known Knowledge Nice Accounts Method Dues Experiments Invention Setting Settings New Work

Book:The works

Source: The works

“How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.”

Real Hands Science Time Understanding Theory Development Tools Mathematics Method Complicated Math Invention Mathematical Casting Hand In Hand

Author:David Hilbert

“I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact, and of using in their construction methods and materials which are not entirely without the pale of contemporary engineering skill and knowledge.”

Made Facts Romance Materials Skills Method Invention Contemporary Construction Engineering Pale Groundwork Skills And Knowledge

Book:Invasion of the Sea

Source: Invasion of the Sea

“The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.”

“It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.”

“In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.”

Men Art Done Science Genius Thousand Achievement Capacity Accounts Method Supreme Shoulders Invention One Man Moderates Predecessors Successors

Book:Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays

Source: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays

“Either one or the other [analysis or synthesis] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.”

“Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.”

Giving Should Humans Able Language Sound Expression Ought Six Method Sentences Tongue Invention Ingenious

Author:Virginia Woolf

“Long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their practical application... Those intellectual qualifications, which give birth to new principles or to new methods, are of quite a different order from those which are necessary for their practical application.”

Giving Long Different Science Order Principles Creativity Birth Intellectual Discovery Method Practicals Invention Application Intervals Qualifications

Book:Reflections on the Decline of Science in England: And on Some of Its Causes, by Charles Babbage (1830). To which is Added On the Alleged Decline of Science in England, by a Foreigner (Gerard Moll) with a Foreword by Michael Faraday (1831).

Source: Reflections on the Decline of Science in England: And on Some of Its Causes, by Charles Babbage (1830). To which is Added On the Alleged Decline of Science in England, by a Foreigner (Gerard Moll) with a Foreword by Michael Faraday (1831).

“The tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic and political patterns …it is safe to predict that… such social inventions as modern-type capitalism, facism and communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed towards the adjustment of modern society to modern methods”

“It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.”