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d453646
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A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension. I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow. In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze. I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead. But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning. There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. 'If I have seen further than other men,' said , 'it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
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discovery
science
historian-of-science
history-of-science
fallacy
research
horror
isaac-newton
newton
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Isaac Asimov |
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fd1d050
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Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than ? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than ? Was he more patient, more charitable, than ? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than ? In what respect was he the superior of ? Was he gentler than , more universal than ? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of ? Did he express grander truths than ? Was his mind subtler than 's? Was his brain equal to 's or 's? Was he grander in death - a sublimer martyr than ? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of , the greatest of the human race?
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shakespeare
kindness
wisdom
bruno
epicurus
gautama-buddha
giordano-bruno
laozi
zeno
zeno-of-citium
zoroaster
cicero
baruch-spinoza
epictetus
spinoza
buddha
buddhism
socrates
stoicism
patience
isaac-newton
johannes-kepler
kepler
newton
william-shakespeare
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Robert G. Ingersoll |
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9cce14b
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"You could give a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after , , , , , and their colleagues. I'm not saying you're more intelligent than
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understanding
science
einstein
aristotle
crick
francis-crick
james-d-watson
james-watson
max-planck
planck
polymath
watson
charles-darwin
darwin
intellect
knowledge
isaac-newton
newton
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Richard Dawkins |
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5d332f2
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...But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of . Let each man hope and believe what he can.
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evolution
profound
science
beneficence
omnipotent
biology
tolerance
design
evidence
misery
isaac-newton
newton
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Charles Darwin |
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bb119d4
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"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of
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metaphor
history
science
illimitable
inexplicability
principia
solidity
origin-of-species
possessions
intellectual
business
biology
charles-darwin
goal
justification
darwin
infinite
knowledge
ocean
isaac-newton
newton
unknown
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Thomas Henry Huxley |
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926aba8
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...The Presidential election has given me less anxiety than I myself could have imagined. The next administration will be a troublesome one, to whomsoever it falls, and our John has been too much worn to contend much longer with conflicting factions. I call him our John, because, when you were at the Cul de sac at Paris, he appeared to me to be almost as much your boy as mine. ...As to the decision of your author, though I wish to see the book { }, I look upon it as a mere game at push-pin. Incision-knives will never discover the distinction between matter and spirit, or whether there is any or not. That there is an active principle of power in the universe, is apparent; but in what substance that active principle resides, is past our investigation. The faculties of our understanding are not adequate to penetrate the universe. Let us do our duty, which is to do as we would be done by; and that, one would think, could not be difficult, if we honestly aim at it. Your university is a noble employment in your old age, and your ardor for its success does you honor; but I do not approve of your sending to Europe for tutors and professors. I do believe there are sufficient scholars in America, to fill your professorships and tutorships with more active ingenuity and independent minds than you can bring from Europe. The Europeans are all deeply tainted with prejudices, both ecclesiastical and temporal, which they can never get rid of. They are all infected with episcopal and presbyterian creeds, and confessions of faith. They all believe that great Principle which has produced this boundless universe, 's universe and 's universe, came down to this little ball, to be spit upon by Jews. And until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world. I salute your fireside with best wishes and best affections for their health, wealth and prosperity. { }
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science
university-of-virginia
blasphemy
confessions-of-faith
creeds
episcopal
flourens
herschel
jean-pierre-flourens
liberal-science
matter-and-spirit
presbyterian
virginia
william-herschel
judaism
golden-rule
europeans
belief
jefferson
thomas-jefferson
jews
isaac-newton
newton
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John Adams |
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fe1b286
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Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that discovered his three laws--discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that , , , and , almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of , , and , of , and and of all the pioneers of progress--that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that and , , and , and , and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?
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discoveries
progress
tragedy
libraries
poets
shakespeare
india
light
writer
fiction
books
inspiration
bible
science
songs
intelligence
alessandro-volta
benjamin-franklin
beranger
bonaventura-cavalieri
bonaventura-francesco-cavalieri
burns
cavalieri
chemistry
china
copernicus
descartes
euclid
experiments
franklin
fulton
galileo
galileo-galilei
galvani
gottfried-leibniz
gottfried-von-leibniz
gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz
gottfried-wilhelm-von-leibniz
greece
hydrostatics
inventions
isaac-newton
james-watt
johann-von-goethe
johannes-kepler
kepler
laws-of-motion
leibniz
luigi-aloisio-galvani
luigi-galvani
math
mathematics
morse
newton
nicolaus-copernicus
optics
pentateuch
pierre-jean-de-béranger
pioneers
pneumatics
rene-descartes
richard-trevithick
robert-burns
robert-fulton
rome
samuel-finley-breese-morse
samuel-morse
schiller
the-bible
theory-of-gravity
theory-of-universal-gravitation
trevethick
volta
watt
Æschylus
johann-wolfgang-von-goethe
goethe
egypt
william-shakespeare
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Robert G. Ingersoll |
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82ccab0
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"One day at Fenner's (the university cricket ground at Cambridge), just before the last war, G. H. Hardy and I were talking about Einstein. Hardy had met him several times, and I had recently returned from visiting him. Hardy was saying that in his lifetime there had only been two men in the world, in all the fields of human achievement, science, literature, politics, anything you like, who qualified for the Bradman class. For those not familiar with cricket, or with Hardy's personal idiom, I ought to mention that "the Bradman class" denoted the highest kind of excellence: it would include Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Newton, Archimedes, and maybe a dozen others. Well, said Hardy, there had only been two additions in his lifetime. One was Lenin and the other Einstein."
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shakespeare
literature
politics
science
bradman-class
count-lev-nikolayevich-tolstoy
g-h-hardy
godfrey-hardy
godfrey-harold-hardy
lev-nikolayevich-tolstoy
vladimir-ilyich-lenin
leo-tolstoy
vladimir-lenin
einstein
tolstoy
archimedes
cambridge
lenin
isaac-newton
newton
william-shakespeare
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C.P. Snow |
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74e3abc
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During the century after , it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
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science
scientific-knowledge
master
newton
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Isaac Asimov |