Which was first, Matter or Force? If we think on this question, we shall find that we are unable to conceive of matter without force, or force without matter. When God created the elements of which the earth is composed, He created certain wondrous forces, which are set free and become evident when matter acts on matter.
source: - Michael Faraday, Sir William CROOKES (1860). “A course of six lectures on the various forces of Matter, and their relations to each other ... Edited by W. Crookes. With numerous illustrations”, p.3
Topics: Thinking, Matter, Firsts
It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.
source: - Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain), Society for Psychical Research (London, England), Henry Sidgwick, Balfour Stewart, Arthur James Balfour Balfour (Earl of) (1912). “Presidential Addresses to the Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1911”
Topics: Fundamentals, Firsts, Inquiry, Denied, Combustion
Most students of nature sooner or later pass through a process of writing off a large percentage of their supposed capital of knowledge as a merely illusory asset. As we trace more accurately certain familiar sequences of phenomena we begin to realize how closely these sequences, or laws , as we call them, are hemmed round by still other laws of which we can form no notion. With myself this writing off of illusory assets has gone rather far and the cobweb of supposed knowledge has been pinched (as some one has phrased) into a particularly small pill.
source: - Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain), Society for Psychical Research (London, England), Henry Sidgwick, Balfour Stewart, Arthur James Balfour Balfour (Earl of) (1912). “Presidential Addresses to the Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1911”
Topics: Writing, Law, Pills
Probably our atomic weights merely represent a mean value around which the actual atomic weights of the atoms vary within certain narrow limits... when we say, the atomic weight of, for instance, calcium is 40, we really express the fact that, while the majority of calcium atoms have an actual atomic weight of 40, there are not but a few which are represented by 39 or 41, a less number by 38 or 42, and so on.
Topics: Mean, Science, Numbers, Calcium
...Nature-the word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the Universe. Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august, and wonderful, with every barrier that is withdrawn.
source: - "Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science". "Nature", No. 1506, Vol. 58, (p. 438), September 8, 1898.
Topics: Beautiful, Nature, Heart
To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.
source: - "Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science". "Nature", No. 1506, Vol. 58, (p. 438), September 8, 1989.
Topics: Knowledge, Light, Criticism, Wisps, Recoil
If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Thnk of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words-not only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another! Is not that something of a miracle?
Topics: Mean, Thinking, Should Have, Disk, Human Voice
