Experimental Science Quotes

An experimental science is supposed to perform experiments that find generalities. It's not just supposed to tally up a long list of individual cases and their unique life histories. That's butterfly collecting. ~ Richard Lewontin

Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on. ~ Oliver Heaviside

In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose. ~ Francois Arago

Moreover, in the experimental sciences, the scientific fraternity must test a new theory to destruction, if possible. ~ Peter D. Mitchell

Experimental science hardly ever affords us more than approximations to the truth; and whenever many agents are concerned we are in great danger of being mistaken. ~ Humphry Davy

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. ~ John Tukey

Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts. ~ Michael Faraday

Experimental science is a craft and an art, and part of the art is knowing when to end a fruitless experiment. There is a danger of becoming obsessed with a fruitless experiment even if it goes nowhere. It is always a good plan for a speculative experimenter to have two experiments going, or at least one going and one being built. ~ Martin Lewis Perl

Experimental science is the queen of knowledge. ~ Roger Bacon

Today, just two generations on, the Monte Carlo method (in various forms) so dominates some fields that many young scientists don't realize how thoroughly they've departed from traditional theoretical or experimental science. ~ Sam Kean

Restoration ecology is experimental science, a science of love and altruism. In its attempts to reverse the processes of ecosystem degradation it runs exactly counter to the market system, to land speculation, to the whole cultural attitude of regarding the Earth as commodity rather than community. It is a soft-souled science. ~ Stephanie Mills

[I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. ~ Clifford Geertz

With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress of the experimental sciences. ~ Claude Bernard

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate. ~ Edmund Burke

I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. ~ Erwin Schrodinger

My final remark to young women and men going into experimental science is that they should pay little attention to the speculative physics ideas of my generation. After all, if my generation has any really good speculative ideas, we will be carrying these ideas out ourselves. ~ Martin L. Perl

At the present time, political power is everywhere constituted on insufficient foundations. On the one hand it emanates from the so-called divine right of kings, which is none other than military force; on the other from universal suffrage, which is merely the instinct of the masses, or mere average intelligence. A nation is not a number of uniform values or ciphers; it is a living being composed of organs. So long as national representation is not the image of this organization, right from its working to its teaching classes, there will be no organic or intelligent national representation. So long as the delegates of all scientific bodies, and the whole of the Christian churches do not sit together in one upper council, our societies will be governed by instinct, by passion, and by might, and there will be no social temple.

...We are beginning to understand that Jesus, at the very height of his consciousness, the transfigured Christ, is opening his loving arms to his brothers, the other Messiahs who preceded him, beams of the Living Word as he was, that he is opening them wide to Science in its entirety, Art in its divinity, and Life in its completeness. But his promise cannot be fulfilled without the help of all the living forces of humanity. Two main things are necessary nowadays for the continuation of the mighty work: on the one hand, the progressive unfolding of experimental science and intuitive philosophy to facts of psychic order, intellectual principles, ~ Édouard Schuré

I have a Ph.D. in cell biology. And that's really manual labor. I mean, experimental science, you do it with your hands. So it's very different. You're out there in a lab, cleaning test tubes, and it just wasn't that fascinating. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

I went into science, ending up with a Ph.D. in cell biology, but along the way I found out that experimental science involves many hours and days and nights of laboratory work, which is a lot like washing dishes, only a little more challenging. I was too impatient, and maybe a little too sloppy, for it. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The theory of numbers, more than any other branch of mathematics, began by being an experimental science. Its most famous theorems have all been conjectured, sometimes a hundred years or more before they were proved; and they have been suggested by the evidence of a mass of computations. ~ G.H. Hardy

The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift. ~ Socrates

Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager. ~ Ned Beauman

Those who are unacquainted with the details of scientific investigation have no idea of the amount of labour expended in the determination of those numbers on which important calculations or inferences depend. They have no idea of the patience shown by a Berzelius in determining atomic weights; by a Regnault in determining coefficients of expansion; or by a Joule in determining the mechanical equivalent of heat. ~ John Tyndall

Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind - preserved in an urn - thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organi ~ Stanisław Lem

The body is a very low level machine language. The language of the soul, of the mind, is much more evolved. ~ Frederick Lenz

Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. ~ Karl Popper

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact ... ~ Charles Babbage

We have more than enough to take care of everybody on earth at this time. If we have a shortage of anything, it's very easy for science to make a substitute material. There's no shortage of anything except brains in Washington. ~ Jacque Fresco

I don't play accurately
any one can play accurately
but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life. ~ Oscar Wilde

I don't think you can impose limits on science because the very nature of homo sapiens is that he - she - is an inquisitive species. You can't control science. You have to control the effects of science. ~ Robert Winston

Never memorize something that you can look up. ~ Albert Einstein

Wishing the world was predictable an controllable does not make it so, and it might make us disregard what is actually happening ~ Jean G. Boulton

Willard Gibbs is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems to me, it is the emblem of the naked imagination - which is called abstract and impractical, but whose discoveries can be used by anyone who is interested, in whatever 'field' - an imagination which for me, more than that of any other figure in American thought, any poet, or political, or religious figure, stands for imagination at its essential points. ~ Muriel Rukeyser

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry. ~ John Dryden

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing. ~ Victor Hugo

Birds know, better than humans, not to spoil the nest. ~ Carl Sagan

The revolutionary environmentalists twist science to get what they want, saying they're using the "best available science" to determine public policy, when in fact these are code words for cherry picking from a repertoire of biased science studies. Arguing with the Greenies' faulty science is like shouting into the wind, because they will disregard or minimize evidence that disputes any position they are trying to assert. Your points will be ignored, and you will be demonized. ~ Brian Herbert

I want to enrich medical science with a new term: Arbeitskur. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Despite the experimental success of the theory...the fact that the infinities occur at all continues to produce grumbling...Dirac in particular always referred to renormalization as sweeping the infinities under the rug. I disagreed with Dirac and argued the point with him at conferences at Coral Gables and Lake Constance. Taking account of the difference between the bare charge and mass of the electron and their measured values is not merely a trick that is invented to get rid of infinities; it is something we would have to do even if everything was finite. There is nothing arbitrary or ad hoc about the procedure; it is simply a matter of correctly identifying what we are actually measuring. ~ Steven Weinberg

Through the judicious employment of symbols, diagrams, and calculations, mathematics enables us to acquire significant facts about extremely significant things (universal laws, even), not by first forging out into the cosmos with teams of scientists, but rather from the comforts and confines of coffee tables in our living rooms! p. 72 ~ G. Arnell Williams

The true subject of science fiction is death, not life. It will all end. The totality of it. ~ Gary Shteyngart

I fell in love with science and decided to continue for my Ph.D., and from there on, I was a scientist. ~ Dan Shechtman

It's hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am. ~ Danny Elfman

... As Weber suggests, once science is employed to justify and enact ideal values, especially through the actions of an elite few (the academy), particular values, in this case the idea of what is 'natural', are cast into an objectively valid and legitimate form, and thus appear as being beyond critique. And at this point Weber rightly warns that science, contrary to Durkheim's belief, is not both cognitive and moral in nature, for it rests upon a designation of authority, and may, especially if used beyond its own limits, give rise to new means of domination. ~ Nicholas Gane

Leaving Egypt and the people I loved so much, and the environment I liked, was definitely worth it, because I also have great love for medicine and science. ~ Magdi Yacoub

It is a thoughtless and immodest presumption to learn anything about art from philosophy. Some do begin as if they hoped to learnsomething new here, since philosophy cannot and should not do anything further than develop the given art experiences and the existing art concepts into a science, improve the views of art, and promote them with the help of a thoroughly scholarly art history, and produce that logical mood about these subjects too which unites absolute liberalism with absolute rigor. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology. ~ Irving Babbitt

Facts are ventriloquist's dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism. ~ Aldous Huxley

Archie says -Science- the same way he says -Modern-, as if someone has lent him the words and made him swear not to break them. ~ Zadie Smith

It is impossible to describe exactly what I learn, though I know it lies somewhere between science and art. It is all about the smallest details and understanding how they make the biggest difference. ~ Christie Watson

You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it. ~ Isaac Newton

In science, modesty and genius do not coexist well together. (In Washington, modesty and cleverness don't.) Einstein is perhaps the most famous exception to the rule. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy.
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell ... Or say with princes if it shall go well ... ~ William Shakespeare

Dawn wore a pink dress and crept across the land like a timid girl. Her sister Morning followed, dressed in blue, the sun a dazzling locket on her breast. ~ Robert F. Young

Astronomy is so easy to love ... Fairly or not, physics is associated with nuclear bombs and nuclear waste, chemistry with pesticides, biology with Frankenfood and designer-gene superbabies. But astronomers are like responsible ecotourists, squinting at the scenery through high-quality optical devices, taking nothing but images that may be computer-enhanced for public distribution, leaving nothing but a few Land Rover footprints on faraway Martian soil, and OK, OK, maybe the Land Rover, too. ~ Natalie Angier

We have written the equations of water flow. From experiment, we find a set of concepts and approximations to use to discuss the solution--vortex streets, turbulent wakes, boundary layers. When we have similar equations in a less familiar situation, and one for which we cannot yet experiment, we try to solve the equations in a primitive, halting, and confused way to try to determine what new qualitatitive features may come out, or what new qualitative forms are a consequence of the equations. Our equations for the sun, for example, as a ball of hydrogen gas, describe a sun without sunspots, without the rice-grain structure of the surface, without prominences, without coronas. Yet, all of these are really in the equations; we just haven't found the way to get them out.

...The test of science is its ability to predict. Had you never visited the earth, could you predict the thunderstorms, the volcanoes, the ocean waves, the auroras, and the colourful sunset? A salutary lesson it will be when we learn of all that goes on on each of those dead planets--those eight or ten balls, each agglomerated from the same dust clouds and each obeying exactly the same laws of physics.

The next great era of awakening of human intellect may well produce a method of understanding the qualitative content of equations. Today we cannot. Today we cannot see that the water flow equations contain such things as the barber pole structure of turbulence that one sees between rotatin ~ Richard P. Feynman

Trout might have said, and it can be said of me as well, that he created caricatures rather than characters. His animus against so-called mainstream literature, moreover, wasn't peculiar to him. It was generic among writers of science fiction. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Analysis of error begins with analysis of language. ~ Hans Reichenbach

There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause, there is no First Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. ~ Robert Jastrow

Every question leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. ~ Bill Nye

I don't think about being male or female, I just behave naturally. I think in terms of excellence in science, not gender. ~ May-Britt Moser

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really don't? Now she was me - the familiar stranger.

She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair - long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma's had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth - more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I'd always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn't that my skin was suddenly so white ... maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.

I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness ... as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger ... more barbaric.

From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment - just an instant - I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced. ~ P.C. Cast

When I was in my late twenties, a friend suggested that, since I was an avid SF reader and had been since I was barely a teenager, that since it didn't look like the poetry was going where I wanted, I might try writing a science fiction story. I did, and the first story I ever wrote was 'The Great American Economy.' ~ L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Mathematics as we know it and as it has come to shape modern science could never have come into being without some disregard for the dangers of the infinite. ~ David Bressoud

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art. ~ William Bernbach

If you can't appreciate science and religion at the same time, your life must be scary. ~ Vizi Andrei

If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

We in science are spoiled by the success of mathematics. Mathematics is the study of problems so simple that they have good solutions. ~ Whitfield Diffie