Best method & science Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

Source: A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation

“If I have put the case of science at all correctly, the reader will have recognised that modern science does much more than demand that it shall be left in undisturbed possession of what the theologian and metaphysician please to term its 'legitimate field'. It claims that the whole range of phenomena, mental as well as physical-the entire universe-is its field. It asserts that the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.”

Source: The Grammar of Science

“Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility.”

“The fundamental idea of these pylons, or great archways, is based on a method of construction peculiar to me, of which the principle consists in giving to the edges of the pyramid a curve of such a nature that this pyramid shall be capable of resisting the force of the wind without necessitating the junction of the edges by diagonals as is usually done.”

Giving Ideas Done Science Force Principles Wind Capable Method Fundamentals Edges Peculiar Construction Curves Pyramids Resisting Junction Archways

Author:Gustave Eiffel

“But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology. Moreover, they must be men of action and not contemplation. I have the impression that no method of education can produce people with all the qualities required. I am haunted by the idea that this break in human civilization, caused by the discovery of the scientific method, may be irreparable.”

“It has been recognized that hydrogen bonds restrain protein molecules to their native configurations, and I believe that as the methods of structural chemistry are further applied to physiological problems it will be found that the significance of the hydrogen bond for physiology is greater than that of any other single structural feature.”

Source: The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry

“The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge.”

Needs May Has Beens Science Desire Situation Knowledge Knowing Environment Theory Pages Aim Method Environmental Organized Disposition Pragmatic

Book:Democracy And Education

Source: Democracy And Education

“God pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does.”

Ifs Men Believe Humans Doe God Science Belief Human Beings Divine He Man Needed Prove Method Pity Scientific Method

Author:J. G. Holland

“In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton's laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction.”

Ifs Mean God Together Law Science Force Development Mass Mathematics Method Math Mathematical Appropriate Newton Deductions Laws Of Motion Newton's Laws

Book:A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein

Source: A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein

“The chemists work with inaccurate and poor measuring services, but they employ very good materials. The physicists, on the other hand, use excellent methods and accurate instruments, but they apply these to very inferior materials. The physical chemists combine both these characteristics in that they apply imprecise methods to impure materials.”

Use Hands Science Poor Materials Method Instruments Excellence Very Good Excellent Characteristics Accurate Inferiors Physicist Measurement Measuring Chemist

Author:Wolfgang Ostwald

“Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.”

Knows Science Asks Knowledge Method Arrogance Arrogant Experimentation Gaining Knowledge

Author:Isaac Asimov

“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.”

“I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.”

Giving Would Be Science Sound Ability Perfect Knowledge Doubt Impossible Ignorance Theory Capacity Infinite Method Convinced Certainty Probability Infinite Knowledge

Author:William Stanley Jevons

“I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”

Knows Science Lying Values Decision Knowledge Mankind Decided Method Intellect Realms Falsehood Scientific Method Truth And Falsehood

Book:Religion and Science

Source: Religion and Science

“I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.”

“Research is industrial prospecting. The oil prospectors use every scientific means to find new paying wells. Oil is found by each one of a number of methods. My own group of men are prospecting in a different field, using every possible scientific means. We believe there are still things left to be discovered. We have only stumbled upon a few barrels of physical laws from the great pool of knowledge. Some day we are going to hit a gusher.”

Men Believe Wells Mean Stills Different Use Law Science Found Belief Left My Own Numbers Knowledge Groups Fields Research Method Oil Pool Barrels Prospecting

Author:Charles Kettering

“That the great majority of those who leave school should have some idea of the kind of evidence required to substantiate given types of belief does not seem unreasonable. Nor is it absurd to expect that they should go forth with a lively interest in the ways in which knowledge is improved and a marked distaste for all conclusions reached in disharmony with the methods of scientific inquiry.”

Source: The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1910-1911

“To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.”

Knows Way States Body Science Causes Term Knowledge Subjects Disease Method Agents Organisms Cultivation Contagion Microbes

Book:Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology

Source: Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology

“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

“Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its non-mystical methods; above all-which perhaps most explains the expert's sovereignty-of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.”

Age Science Faith Morality Evidence Tests Accounts Method Experts Superstitions Cop Traffic Mystical Sovereignty Inquiry Rabbits Infallibility

Author:Louis Kronenberger

“Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.”

“Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature. The scientific method ... changes and transforms its object: the procedure can no longer keep its distance from the object.”

Men Science Nature Position Objects Accounts Method Distance Observers Procedures Scientific Method Man And Nature

Author:Werner Heisenberg

“The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification-judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind-essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.”

Source: The Grammar of Science

“The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.”

Science Materials Accounts Method Unity

Book:The Grammar of Science

Source: The Grammar of Science

“The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.”

Source: The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery

“Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.”

Wells Self Matter Facts Running Science Causes Trouble Mankind Method Assured Matter Of Fact

Author:Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

“The scientific method of examining facts is not peculiar to one class of phenomena and to one class of workers; it is applicable to social as well as to physical problems, and we must carefully guard ourselves against supposing that the scientific frame of mind is a peculiarity of the professional scientist.”

Mind Wells Facts Problem Science Social Class Scientist Method Workers Peculiar Examination Examining Scientific Method Frame Of Mind Supposing Supposing That

Author:Karl Pearson

“[I shall not] discuss scientific method, but rather the methods of scientists. We proceed by common sense and ingenuity. There are no rules, only the principles of integrity and objectivity, with a complete rejection of all authority except that of fact.”

Facts Science Common Principles Integrity Authority Scientist Method Common Sense Rejection Objectivity Ingenuity Scientific Method

Book:Science in the Making

Source: Science in the Making

“I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.”

Doe Country Truth Science Teach Method Faults Analysis Geometry Sects Calculus Synthesis

Author:Frederick The Great

“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.”

“But medicine has long had all its means to hand, and has discovered both a principle and a method, through which the discoveries made during a long period are many and excellent, while full discovery will be made, if the inquirer be competent, conduct his researches with knowledge of the discoveries already made, and make them his starting-point. But anyone who, casting aside and rejecting all these means, attempts to conduct research in any other way or after another fashion, and asserts that he has found out anything, is and has been victim of deception.”

“Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.”

Source: The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose

“The office of science is not to record possibilities; but to ascertain what nature does ... As far as Darwinism deals with mere arguments of possibilities or even probabilities, without a basis of fact, it departs from the true scientific method and injures science, as most of the devotees of the new ism have already done.”

Doe Done Facts Science Nature Deals Records Possibility Office Argument Bases Method Mere Probability Scientific Method Darwinism Isms Devotee

Author:Louis Agassiz

“Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by which so many of the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to the gradual formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political science.”

Source: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women, On Liberty, Principles of Political Economy, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Memoirs…

“It seems perfectly clear that Economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Most persons appear to hold that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method-I know not what.”