Scientific History Quotes

Feynman resented the polished myths of most scientific history, submerging the false steps and halting uncertainties under a surface of orderly intellectual progress, but he created a myth of his own. ~ James Gleick

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific. ~ Lion Feuchtwanger

The great Caltech physicist Richard Feynman once observed that if you had to reduce scientific history to one important statement it would be: "All things are made of atoms. ~ Bill Bryson

It is a fact of life that oversimplified accounts of the development of science are often necessary in its teaching. Most scientific progress is a messy, complex and slow process; only with the hindsight of an overall understanding of a phenomenon can a story be told pedagogically rather than chronologically. This necessitates the distilling of certain events and personalities from the melee: those who are deemed to have made the most important contributions. It is inevitable therefore that the many smaller or less important advances scattered randomly across hundreds of years of scientific history tend to be swept up like autumn leaves into neat piles, on top of which sit larger-than-life personalities credited with taking a discipline forward in a single jump. Sometimes this is perfectly valid, and one cannot deny the genius of an Aristotle, a Newton, a Darwin or an Einstein. But it often leaves behind forgotten geniuses and unsung heroes. ~ Jim Al-Khalili

The persistence of this imagery calls to mind what Ludwik Fleck termed 'the self-contained' nature of scientific thought. As he described it, 'the interaction between what is already known, what remains to be learned, and those who are to apprehend it, go to ensure harmony within the system. But at the same time they also preserve the harmony of illusions, which is quite secure within the confines of a given thought style. ~ Emily Martin

We have to find our own purposes in life, which are not derived directly from our scientific history. ~ Richard Dawkins

Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. ~ Terry Pratchett

The Eucharist is the full realization of the worship which humanity owes to God, and it cannot be compared to any other religious experience ... The risen Lord ... calls the faithful together to give them the light of His Word and the nourishment of His Body as the perennial sacramental wellspring of redemption. The grace flowing from this wellspring renews mankind, life, and history. ~ Pope John Paul II

I felt a tightening in my chest, a sharp spike of intense sadness-almost like nostalgia, except it was for a life I never had. ~ Katie Alender

He had a theory about it. It happened, and re-happened, because it was a city uninterested in history. Strange things occurred precisely because there was no necessary regard for the past. The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn't care less about where it stood. He had seen a t-shirt once that said: New York F***in City. As of it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would. ~ Mccann Colum

One Child:
I hope it will be said we taught them to stand tall & proud, even in the face of history & the future was made new & whole for us all, one child at a time. ~ Brian Andreas

Wandering across the vast room, I stopped at a set of shelves as high as the ceiling, and holding about six hundred volumes - all classics on the history of Soalris, starting with the nine volumes of Giese's monumental and already relatively obsolescent monograph. Display for its own sake was improbable in these surroundings. The collection was a respective tribute to the memory of the pioneers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat leafing through them. Rheya had also located som reading matter. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that she had picked one of the many books brought out by the first expedition, the Interplanetary Cookery Book, which could have been the personal property of Giese himself. She was pouring over the recipes adapted to the arduous conditions of interstellar flight. I said nothing, and returned to the book resting on my knees. Solaris - Ten Years of Exploration had appeared as volumes 4-12 of the Solariana collection whose most recent additions were numbered in the thousands. ~ Stanisław Lem

A man who goes forth to take the life of another whom he does not know must believe one thing only - that by his act he will change the course of history. ~ Yitzhak Shamir

["...]I have learned what all who live in a land of slaver[y] must learn sooner or later; that is to process approbation where you cannot feel it; to be hard when most inclined to melt; and to say that all is right, and good; and true when you know that nothing could be more wrong and unjust.["] ~ Hannah Crafts

We see only glimpses of history, even our own. It is not entirely ours--in memory, in writing it down, in hearing or in reading it. We can reclaim only part of the past. Sometimes it is enough.... ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I did not know much history when I became a bombardier in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. Only after the War did I see that we, like the Nazis, had committed atrocities ... Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, my own bombing missions. And when I studied history after the War, I learned from reading on my own, not from my university classes, about the history of U.S. expansion and imperialism. ~ Howard Zinn

Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries. ~ Kenzaburo Oe

The political and intellectual orders remain permanently distinct from the spiritual. They follow their own ends, they obey their own laws, and in doing so they support the cause of religion by the discovery of truth and the upholding of right. They render this service by fulfilling their own ends independently and unrestrictedly, not by surrendering them for the sake of spiritual interests. Whatever diverts government and science from their own spheres, or leads religion to usurp their domains, confounds distinct authorities, and imperils not only political right and scientific truths, but also the cause of faith and morals. A government that, for the interests of religion, disregards political right, and a science that, for the sake of protecting faith, wavers and dissembles in the pursuit of knowledge, are instruments at least as well adapted to serve the cause of falsehood as to combat it, and never can be used in furtherance of the truth without that treachery to principle which is a sacrifice too costly to be made for the service of any interest whatever. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

American houses ... ' she said, peering over her right shoulder and down the street. 'They always seem to believe that nobody ever loses anything, has lost anything. I find that very sad. Do you know what I mean? ~ Zadie Smith

Of course, the speed at which any society embraces these strategies will always be a product of the interplay between politics, culture, and leadership. Culture shapes a society's political responses, and its leadership and politics, in turn, shape culture. What exactly is culture? I like this concise definition offered by BusinessDictionary.com: culture is the "pattern of responses discovered, developed, or invented during the group's history of handling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment. These responses are considered the correct way to perceive, feel, think, and act, and are passed on to the new members through immersion and teaching. Culture determines what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong, workable or unworkable." One ~ Thomas L. Friedman

History offers examples of winning in diplomacy after losing in war. ~ Shigeru Yoshida

My little hobby. Book Collecting. And yet, old friends, books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when we are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive. -Bulldog ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Taken together, the narratives of how the animals ended up at Lowry Park revealed as much about Homo sapiens as they revealed about the animals themselves. The precise details - how and where each was born, how they were separated from their mothers and taken into custody, all they had witnessed and experienced on their way to becoming the property of this particular zoo - could have filled an encyclopedia with insights into human behavior and psychology, human geopolitics and history and commerce. Lowry Park's very existence declared our presumption of supremacy, the ancient belief that we have been granted dominion over other creatures and have the right to do with them as we please. The zoo was a living catalogue of our fears and obsessions, the ways we see animals and see ourselves, all the things we prefer not to see at all. Every corner of the grounds revealed our appetite for amusement and diversion, no matter what the cost. Our longing for the wildness we have lost inside ourselves. Our instinct to both exalt nature and control it. Our deepest wish to love and protect other species even as we scorch their forests and poison their rivers and shove them toward oblivion.
All of it was on display in the garden of captives. ~ Thomas French

It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress. ~ Robert Winston

Fine," he said. "You're right. We're not normal. We're the most fucked-up, star-crossed lovers in history. So let's not play nice. ~ Larissa Ione

The history of sea power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected. To secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence. The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial regions, led to wars. On the other hand, wars arising from other causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the control of the sea. Therefore the history of sea power, while embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history... ~ Alfred Thayer Mahan

Improving upon nature is the very essence of plant breeding, and so it goes to the heart of one of the central debates of the human condition: the relationship between humanity and nature and the degree to which the human race has a right (or indeed a responsibility) to change plant life for its own ends. ~ Noel Kingsbury

How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies. ~ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Human nature in time is engraved in history. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

[N]ot only is the most marvellous event in this book collaborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages. ~ Herman Melville

To me, hearing that those girls gave my brother Eric a blow job sounded very nice.
History shows that all boys consider blow job to be a nice-sounding set of words.
I thought a blow job was putting your face in front of an air conditioner, which is something all nine-year-old boys love to do, even though Eric did not look like he had been cooled off very much. ~ Andrew Smith

It occurred to me that I had been extraordinarily fortunate to have grown up in a prosperous country in an era when, for pretty much the first time in its history, I could read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to. And what had I done with this freedom? I had slowly, though unintentionally, abused it. My reading life had become an accumulation of bad habits, short cuts and lies. ~ Andy Miller

Too much has been said of the heroes of history-the strong men, the troublesome men; too little of the amiable, the kindly, the tolerant. ~ Stephen Leacock

Consciousness, unprovable by scientific standards, is forever, then, the impossible phantom in the predictable biologic machine, and your every thought a genuine supernatural event. Your every thought is a ghost, dancing. ~ Alan Moore

If you want to know who the real heroes of world history are, just look at the mothers. ~ Peter Hoeg

The Strategic Bombing Survey estimates that "probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man." The fire storm at Dresden may have killed more people but not in so short a space of time. More than 100,000 men, women and children died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945; a million were injured, at least 41,000 seriously; a million in all lost their homes. Two thousand tons of incendiaries delivered that punishment - in the modern notation, two kilotons. But the wind, not the weight of bombs alone, created the conflagration, and therefore the efficiency of the slaughter was in some sense still in part an act of God. ~ Richard Rhodes

To me, money is a means to do good. I reached a point in my life where I had enjoyed tremendous business success that afforded my family everything we could possibly want. My wife and I then decided that we could use our wealth to make a difference. So we created the Broad Foundations to do four things: to improve urban public education, to support innovative scientific and medical research, to foster art appreciation for audiences worldwide and to support civic initiatives in Los Angeles. ~ Eli Broad

Most American heroes of the Revolutionary period are by now two men, the actual man and the romantic image. Some are even three men - the actual man, the image, and the debunked remains. ~ Esther Forbes

Sadly, history shows us that people literally scrambled their children's brains with heavy exposure to screens at young ages. Developing primate brains are wired to interact with others in a real environment, learning the enormous range of human behaviours from copying the people they love and trust, not staring mindlessly at images. ~ EXO Books

The bloody times, the horror, will just be history to them, words on a page, so how will they dare to judge? Very easily, I should imagine. ~ Storm Constantine

I don't deny that scientific investigation is capable of delivering important truths about nature, but that doesn't stop questions about whether, as it is practiced, science today lives up to its potential for benefiting humanity. ~ Philip Kitcher

Boys did not go to work on the railroad simply because their fathers did. What fetched them were sights and sounds of moving trains, and above all the whistle of a locomotive. I've heard of the call of the wild, the call of the law, the call of the church. There is also the call of the railroad. ~ Gary Krist

The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries. ~ John Reid

As man reaches out toward the twenty-first century, he will learn to be suspicious of all ideas that are not formulated so that they can be tested by observation. He will realize that the history of human thought shows that the ideas of which we are surest are the ones we most need to test. He will realize that his common sense only mirrors his training and experience. What seems natural and right to him is usually a reflection of the conditions under which he spent his first decade of life. ~ Jacque Fresco

Gould carried the art of bending over backward to positively supine lengths. Why shouldn't we comment on God, as scientists? ... A universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter? ~ Richard Dawkins

It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when an elite minority was enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s. ~ Naomi Klein

Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures. ~ Edward Snowden

The playwright Edward Albee has characterized [the suddenness of the appearance of fruits and flowers in evolutionary history] as 'that heartbreaking second when it all got together: the sugars and the acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets. ~ Adam Leith Gollner

Journalism is merely history's first draft. ~ Geoffrey Ward

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time. ~ Russell Hoban