Best Observation Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 21

“The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure.”

“The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative; we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.”

Firsts Real Science Process Consequence Sight Appearance Complicated Observation Confused Assumption Observing Corrections Regularity Supposition Tracing

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

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

“The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work-that is, correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area.”

Trying Science Certain Models Evidence Areas Accounts Mathematics Wide Expected Observation Mathematical Interpretation Justification Constructs Mathematical Models

Book:The Neumann Compendium

Source: The Neumann Compendium

“The significance of a fact is relative to [the general body of scientific] knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law; for science, though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general. A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance. In this the scientist differs from the artist, who, if he deigns to notice facts at all, is likely to notice them in all their particularity.”

Ifs Art Facts Helping Body Law Science Artist Knowledge Particular Concerned Scientist Mere Significant Instance Observation Significance Relative Scientific Knowledge

Author:Bertrand Russell

“The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the Brain and the Fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of Observations on material and obvious things.”

Should Long Has Beens Made Science Time Nature Brain Materials Return Truth Is Accounts Obvious Observation Fancy Obvious Things Soundness Plainness

Book:Extracts from Micrographia: Or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon

Source: Extracts from Micrographia: Or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon

“Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.”

Knows Needs Giving Facts Might Science Strong Theory Observation Substance Organize

Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. This instinct, 'tis true, arises from past observation and experience; but can anyone give the ultimate reason, why past experience and observation produces such an effect, any more than why nature alone should produce it?”

Source: A Treatise of Human Nature

“To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.”

Ifs Men Firsts Looks Science Differences Study Essentials Discovery Observation Characteristics Afar

Author:Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?”

Children Science Known Clear Fields Scientist Clarity Observation Discourse Great Scientist

Book:The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez

“We have three approaches at our disposal: the observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation serves to assemble the data, reflection to synthesise them and experimentation to test the results of the synthesis. The observation of nature must be assiduous, just as reflection must be profound, and experimentation accurate. These three approaches are rarely found together, which explains why creative geniuses are so rare.”

Together Science Three Found Results Creative Genius Approach Reflection Tests Profound Experiments Observation Data Accurate Experimentation Synthesis Creative Genius

Author:John Dewey

“We receive experience from nature in a series of messages. From these messages we extract a content of information: that is, we decode the messages in some way. And from this code of information we then make a basic vocabulary of concepts and a basic grammar of laws, which jointly describe the inner organization that nature translates into the happenings and the appearances we meet.”

Way Law Science Nature Information Messages Happenings Concepts Experience Organization Series Appearance Observation Code Translate Vocabulary Grammar

Author:Jacob Bronowski

“Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.”

Wells Facts Science Theory Evidence Weight Observation Collapse Obsolete

Author:Al Gore

“What really matters for me is ... the more active role of the observer in quantum physics ... According to quantum physics the observer has indeed a new relation to the physical events around him in comparison with the classical observer, who is merely a spectator.”

Matter Science Roles Events Relation Active Physics Observation Comparison Quantum Observers Spectators Quantum Physics

Book:Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956

Source: Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956

“What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.”

Trying Mean Science Language Nature Natural Answers Asking Method Physics Experiments Observation Exposed Questioning Asking Questions

Author:Werner Heisenberg

“Whoever wishes to acquire a deep acquaintance with Nature must observe that there are analogies which connect whole branches of science in a parallel manner, and enable us to infer of one class of phenomena what we know of another. It has thus happened on several occasions that the discovery of an unsuspected analogy between two branches of knowledge has been the starting point for a rapid course of discovery.”

Source: The Principles of Science: Book IV. Inductive investigation. Book V. Generalization, analogy, and classification. Book VI. Reflections on the results and limits of scientific method

“With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary-the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.”