Science History Quotes

“The world is round.”
― Christopher Columbus

“There is indeed a fundamental beauty in mathematical abstractions. They so attracted the Greek philosopher Plato that he declared that all those things that we can see and touch are, in fact, mere shadows of the true reality and that the real things of this universe can be found only through the use of pure reason. Plato's knowledge of mathematics was relatively naive, and many of the cherished purities of Greek mathematics have been shown to be flawed.”
― David Salsburg, The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century

“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, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

“Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.

(Enoch Root observes six-year-old Isaac Newton)”
― Neal Stephenson

“No one listened to us! No one listened to the scientists and the doctors. They pulled science and medicine into politics. Of course they did!”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“The early years of statistical development were dominated by men. Many women were working in the field, but they were almost all employed in doing the detailed calculations needed for statistical analysis, and were indeed called "computers".”
― David Salsburg, The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century

“Women tended to be more docile and patient, so went the belief, and could be depended upon more than men to check and recheck the accuracy of their calculations. A typical picture of the Galton Biometrical Laboratory under Karl Pearson would have Pearson and several men walking around, looking at output from the computers or discussing deep mathematical ideas, while all about them rows of women were computing.”
― David Salsburg, The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century

“..it may be comforting to recall that detailed longitudinal analysis of the behavior of a single solar system was the foundation stone for Kepler's laws, and ultimately Newton's.”
― Herbert A. Simon

“Many people agreed with one executive who sneered that [Thomas] Edison had a vacuum where his conscience ought to be.”
― Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science

“I shall also have to look deeply into the nature of language. I will have to explain the difference between language, which appears to be unique to humans, and a system of communication, which many species possess in varying degrees of complexity.”
― Keith Devlin , The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved And Why Numbers Are Like Gossip by Keith Devlin

“At first, calculus was mainly directed toward the study of physics, and many of the great seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mathematicians were also physicists.”
― Keith Devlin , The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved And Why Numbers Are Like Gossip by Keith Devlin

“قبل حوالي 400 ألف سنة، استأنس أسلافنا النار، وكمختصص في علم الآثار، أرى أن اكتشاف النار أهم بكثير من أن تكون مجرد وسيلة إضاءة في الأماكن والليالي المظلمة، أو طهي وشي الطعام. لقد منحت النار الإنسان البدائي ولأول مرة القدرة على إذابة المعادن، ومن ثم القدرة على تشكيلها وتطويعها لا سيما الحديد وصنع بعض الأدوات البسيطة منها جنبا إلى جنب الأدوات الحجرية، ومن هنا بدأت مهنة الحدادة.

رغم تلك الأهمية العظيمة لاكتشاف النار، لم يتساءل أحدٌ عن ماهيتها، ولم يكونوا في حاجة لذلك، لكن الإنسان فضولي بفطرته، وعندما تستقر الحضارة، يتساءل الإنسان عن مقومات الحضارة.”
― أحمد سعد الدين محمود, العودة إلى هوجوورتس