Historians of science

"… Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or however long. That's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and don't even know it. That's when you see that it's so interdependent, that if you take one thing away, the whole thing falls down and leaves you with nothing."

"These are the great ancient temples of Karnak, on the edge of the Nile about 450 miles south of Cairo. They were the center of Egyptian religion, built in the imperial city of Thebes, when the Egyptian empire was at its height, the greatest power in the world. This was the New York of its time. The temples were built over a period of 2,000 years, each pharaoh adding his bit, leaving his name in stone, to last forever. Inside the temple domain, there were 65 towns, 433 gardens & orchards, 400,000 animals, and it took 80,000 people just to run the place. Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and Romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilisation that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts. It still has that effect today. You come here from the great modern cities, full of the immense power of modern technology at your finger tips, press a button, turn a switch. And this place... stops you dead."

"The Egyptians built an empire and ran it with a handful of technology... the wheel, irrigation canals, the loom, the calendar, pen & ink, some cutting tools, some simple metallurgy, and the plough, the invention that triggered it all off. And yet look how complex and sophisticated their civilisation was. And how soon it happened, after that first man-made harvest. The Egyptian plough and those of the few other civilisations sprang up around the world at the same time... Gave us control over nature... And at the same time, tied us for good, to the things that we invent so that tomorrow will be better than today. The Egyptians knew that. That's why they had gods. To make sure that their systems didn't fail."

"Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods. Ironically, the modern equivalent lies, again, in the desert. This time, the nomads also settled by a river... a river of oil. But what took the pharaohs 4,000 years to build took the Kuwaitis 4,000 days. What's happened in Kuwait, the change from a nomadic existence to being able to buy and use everything modern technology has to offer has come in much less than one generation. Kuwait represents the immense power of technology used in a way most of us have never experienced, because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than a hundred years. Here it's been focused. Change has been instant and total. Kuwait has suddenly become like New York, or any other of the great urban islands on technology, totally dependent on that technology. Like them, without it, Kuwait would return to the desert."

"You see how increasingly the only way we in the advanced industrial nations, with our bewildering technology network, can survive, is by selling bewilderment and dependence on technology to the rest of the world. Or is it not bewilderment and dependence, but a healthier wealthier better way of living than the old way? And, yet, whether or not you dress up technology to look local, the technology network is the same. And as it spreads, will it spread the ability to use machines, as we do, without understanding them?"

"An invention acts rather like a trigger, because, once it's there, it changes the way things are, and that change stimulates the production of another invention, which in turn, causes change, and so on. Why those inventions happened, between 6,000 years ago and now, where they happened and when they happened, is a fascinating blend of accident, genius, craftsmanship, geography, religion, war, money, ambition... Above all, at some point, everybody is involved in the business of change, not just the so-called "great men." Given what they knew at the time, and a moderate amount of what's up here [pointing to head], I hope to show you that you or I could have done just what they did, or come close to it, because at no time did an invention come out of thin air into somebody's head, [snaps fingers] like that. You just had to put a number of bits and pieces, that were already there, together in the right way."

"Following the trail of events from some point in the past to a piece of modern technology is rather like a detective story, with you as the detective, knowing only as much as the people in the past do, and like them having to guess at what was likely to happen next."

"I would say it was a pretty safe bet, that the one magic wish most people would like to be granted would be to be able to see into the future. Think what it would mean. And backing the right horse! But we can't. We have to guess about tomorrow and we have to act on that guess, and it's never been any different. And that's why following the trail from the past up to the emergence of the modern technology that surrounds us in our daily lives, and affects our lives, is rather like a detective story. Because, at no time in the past, did anybody have anything to do with the business of inventing or changing things, ever know what the full effect of his actions would be. He just went ahead and did what he did for his own reasons, like we do. That's how change comes about. And it's like a detective story because if you follow the trail from the past up to a modern man-made object, the story is full of sudden twists and false clues and guesswork, and you never know where the story is heading until the very last minute."

"Today, the nuclear bomb is like a Sword of Damocles hanging over us. Will it fall again?"

"Television tells us everyday that we live in a world we don't understand. And yet in the main it does little to explain that world. It tells us of new products that make the products we have either old-fashioned or obsolete. Above all, if today we are aware of how fast the world around us is changing, it's because television acts as a relentless reminder of that fact."

"Does the cycle that goes, interest in something, involvement in it, tiring of it, and rejection of it, looking into something else, get shorter every decade?"

"Edison invented inventing."

"If you believe that science and technology have given us the highest standard of living in history or that they have trapped us inside of a machine we can't escape from, we live in a situation we inherited, as a result of a long and complex series of events through history. At no time in the past could anybody have known that what they were doing then would end up like this now."

"You can only know where you're going if you know where you've been."

"This bomber stands for the interdependent world we have made for ourselves; where the rate of change accelerates every second because every one of man's inventions acts like a trigger to cause change."

"The question is in what way are the triggers around us likely to operate to cause things to change -- for better or worse. And, is there anything we can learn from the way that happened before, so we can teach ourselves to look for and recognize the signs of change? The trouble is, that's not easy when you have been taught as I was, for example, that things in the past happened in straight-forward lines. I mean, take one oversimple example of what I'm talking about: the idea of putting the past into packaged units -- subjects, like agriculture. The minute you look at this apparently clear-cut view of things, you see the holes. I mean, look at the tractor. Oh sure, it worked in the fields, but is it a part of the history of agriculture or a dozen other things? The steam engine, the electric spark, petroleum development, rubber technology. It's a countrified car. And, the fertilizer that follows; it doesn't follow! That came from as much as anything else from a fellow trying to make artificial diamonds. And here's another old favorite: Eureka! Great Inventors You know, the lonely genius in the garage with a lightbulb that goes ping in his head. Well, if you've seen anything of this series, you'll know what a wrong approach to things that is. None of these guys did anything by themselves; they borrowed from other people's work. And how can you say when a golden age of anything started and stopped? The age of steam certainly wasn't started by James Watt; nor did the fellow whose engine he was trying to repair -- Newcomen, nor did his predecessor Savorey, nor did his predecessor Papert. And Papert was only doing what he was doing because they had trouble draining the mines. You see what I'm trying to say? This makes you think in straight lines. And if today doesn't happen in straight lines -- think of your own experience -- why should the past have? That's part of what this series has tried to show: that the past zig-zagged along -- just like the present does -- with nobody knowing what's coming next. Only we do it more complicatedly, and it's because our lives are that much more complex than theirs were that it's worth bothering about the past. Because if you don't know how you got somewhere, you don't know where you are. And we are at the end of a journey -- the journey from the past."

"Never before have so many people understood so little about so much."

"So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start."

"We expect to learn new tricks because one of our science based abilities is being able to predict. That after all is what science is about. Learning enough about how a thing works so you'll know what comes next. Because as we all know everything obeys the universal laws, all you need is to understand the laws."

"Copernicus published his manuscript in 1543 just in time for the council of Trent. So you're a church father and what this new system of Copernicus is saying is this: The Earth moves, although the Bible says it doesn't. It's no longer at the center of God's universe, although the Bible says it is. It's a planet, so heaven and Earth are no longer separate. And Aristotle was wrong, although church authority depends on his being right. You're a church father and you pick up this subversive, heretical, revolutionary piece of lunacy and you start foaming at the mouth, right? Wrong. When the council finally got around to reading Copernicus they were delighted. His new system had made calendar reform more precise. And the business of it turning every basic belief about the universe on its head? A mere fairytale since from the church's viewpoint he was talking nonsense. Astronomy drew lines and circles in the sky but they weren't really there, they're a mathematical convenience for measuring or teaching astronomy. While the Copernicus system might well have been brilliant mathematics, no one thought for a minute that he was actually suggesting the earth was whizzing around the sun. That kind of talk would blow holes in everything."

"Take movement for example. Forces acting up, down, or from side to side. You make theories to explain it all, but you might well remember that it was you that invented them all. For Mach there was no reason to believe the rest of the cosmos was doing what your little bit was doing, so science should only describe not try to explain. Even description is relative. Am I moving or is the back ground? Or take the position of a star. It depends on the position you see it from, which depends on the date and time, which in turn depends on the position of the earth, in a solar orbit, in a solar system, moving around the edge of a Galaxy which may be moving away from other Galaxies. Say that you've decided that I'm moving and the background is standing still. Is the background moving relative to something else?"

"Einstein's theory was that everything about the laws of the universe and nature was relative. What you observe about something depends greatly upon your frame of reference at the time. That's why I can stand here in this Concorde [jetliner]cabin and drop my pen in comfort. In here I'm not traveling 1,400mph, am I? Everything works like that. Conditioned by its frame of reference. All the electronics in all the instruments in this cockpit obey the exact same laws they would if the plane were standing still. Because in this frame, like me they are not traveling at Mach two. And all the laws of nature behave the same way. This beam of light is going out in all directions at 186,000 miles per second. Being on the concord makes no difference to it's speed going forward, backwards sideways."

"When any good attitude or concept or system worked well, we hung onto it. We preserved representative democracy, intended for a time when only a few could get to the capital to speak for the many. Modern finance was designed in the 17th century. Literacy as a test of intelligence came in the 15th century. The idea of progress is 19th century. And yet, all of those things are part of our mental furniture today, because when the answer to a question -- a solution to a problem -- suits us, we kind of institutionalize it, so that it won't change even when we do. The business of questioning, itself, has been institutionalized like that, in the kind of place that Jodrell Bank telescope belongs to: a university."

"The oldest answers to the most basic questions about how to operate are common to virtually every culture on the planet, because at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order -- especially this kind: (James Burke displays a wedding ring.) This is one of those things in life we protect most against being changed when knowledge changes us. We protect it by turning it into a ritual. When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is. The people doing it are effectively saying, "No matter what else may change, we won't rock the boat! We're not maverick. You can trust us." Expressions of approval follow. Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it. They include something from an ancient rite -- in this case, the old symbol of fertility: the ring. And then, it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being: a God. So, the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution if you broke your promise later on. Some things, this ritual says, must be permanent."

"A ritual wouldn't be much of a ritual if you didn't feel like you've been put through the wringer, would it?"

"If something becomes common enough to turn into a ritual, and then starts to involve really large numbers of people, that's when the ritual becomes something else. It becomes widespread enough to affect the general agreement we all share. So, that's when the responsibility for running it goes out of your hands to be taken over by the institutions set up to run the rituals that matter on a regular basis, so that people can have clear rules and regulations to follow if they decide to get up to that particular ritual. The institutions take the admin out of daily life and run it for you: banking, government, sewage, tax collecting. Or, if you break the rules and regulations, one institution can take you out of daily life. This one: (James Burke displays a trial.) In every community, the law -- whether it's dressed up like this or the village elders telling you what the local custom is -- the law is all those rules I was on about earlier. I suppose what institutions like this do, most of all, is the dirty work. While they're putting them away here in the law court, for instance, that leaves us free to get on with making money, having a career, and avoiding the social responsibilities that these people have to deal with. And after a few centuries of this buck-passing, the institutions get big and powerful, and reach into everybody's lives so much they become hard to alter and virtually impossible to get rid of."

"The name of the game here, and in all the institutions that run your life, is keeping order, because if the institutions didn't do that, it would be the end of civilization as we know it, wouldn't it? So, the institutions are usually old-fashioned; don't like change."

"Closing monologue"

"… That's all it takes to get you back to the late 18th century. Three grandfather's lifetimes. That's how close we are to it. And, yet, that world has disappeared so totally, it's like fairyland. Thatched cottages, meadows, happy peasants. A golden age. Garbage, all that. Nasty, brutish, and short - that's what life was all about. And dirty. And boring. And it had been like that for thousands of years! And then, suddenly, the whole complex polluted overpopulated phrenetic nonstop stressful high tech rat race that is the modern world... Life was suddenly no longer as simple as it had been. And the extraordinary thing is, none of that was planned."

"These are the moments when the powerful mind or the forceful character feels the ferment of the times, when his thoughts quicken, and when he can inject into the uncertainties of others the creative ideas which will strengthen them with purpose. At such a moment the man who can direct others, in thought or in action, can remake the world."

"The air in a man's lungs contains 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived — Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses."

"I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together."

"The most modest research worker at his bench, pushing a probe into a neuron to measure the electric response when a light is flashed, is enmeshed in a huge and intertwined network of theories that he carries into his work from the whole field of science, all the way from Ohm’s law to Avogadro's number. He is not alone; he is sustained and held and in some sense imprisoned by the state of scientific theory in every branch. And what he finds is not a single fact either: it adds a thread to the network, ties a knot here and another there, and by these connections at once binds and enlarges the whole system."

"The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed unlike. Faraday did this when he closed the link between electricity and magnetism. Clerk Maxwell did it when he linked both with light. Einstein linked time with space, mass with energy, and the path of light past the sun with the flight of a bullet; and spent his dying years in trying to add to these likenesses another, which would find a single imaginative order between the equations between Clerk Maxwell and his own geometry of gravitation When Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought: beauty he said, is "unity in variety." Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature — or more exactly, in the variety of our experience."

"It has been one of the most destructive modern prejudices that art and science are different and somehow incompatible interests. We have fallen into the habit of opposing the artistic to the scientific tempers; we even identify them with a creative and a critical approach."

"The sneer that science is only critical came from others. It was made by the timid and laboured artists of the nineties in order that they might by comparison appear to be creative and intuitive. Yet this finesse could not hide their own knowledge that the best minds were already being drawn to the more adventurous practice of the new sciences."

"Science is not a special sense. It is as wide as the literal meaning of its name: knowledge."

"Many people affect to believe that science has progressively strangled the arts, or distorted them into some unpleasant “modern” form; and therefore that the arts can be revived only by throwing over science. Often of course this is merely an elderly sentiment in favour of the art of our younger days, and the real scapegoat is not science but change."

"Science changes our values in two ways. It injects new ideas into the familiar culture. And it subjects it to the pressure of technical change, in the way I have just been describing, until the whole basis of our culture has imperceptibly been remade."

"Science and the arts shared the same language at the Restoration. They no longer seem to do so today. But the reason is that they share the same silence: they lack the same language. And it is the business of each of us to make that one universal language which alone can unite art and science, and layman and scientist, in a common understanding."

"There are three creative ideas which, each in its turn, have been central to science. They are the idea of order, the idea of causes, and the idea of chance."

"Unhappily, common sense has no recorded history."

"Newton was born during Cromwell’s revolution in the troubled 1640s; he was eighteen at the Restoration in 1660; and he published the Principia during the intrigues which ended by bringing William of Orange to England in the revolution of 1688. These are the moments when the powerful or the forceful character feels the ferment of the times, when his thoughts quicken and when he can inject into the uncertainties of others the creative ideas which will strengthen them with purpose. At such a moment the man who can direct others, in thought or in action, can remake the world."

"There has never been another moment in English history to equal the promise of that moment in the 1660’s when the Royal Society was formally founded. And though it was less dramatic elsewhere, it was a high moment throughout Europe."

"About 1660 therefore, Europe was in the course of a great revolution in thought. This was the Scientific Revolution, and it reached into all forms of culture. We sometimes speak as if science has step by step squeezed other interests out of our culture, and is slowly strangling the traditional ways of thinking. Nothing of the kind. The Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century was a universal revolution. Indeed it could not have begun unless there had already been a deep change in the attitude to everything natural and super-natural among thoughtful men."

"The great flood was the seventeenth century. That was the time of change, the hanging moment of instability in which men like Cromwell and Newton could remake the world."

"The whole structure of thought in the Middle Ages is one which we find hard to grasp today. It was an orderly structure, but the principles by which it was ordered seem to us now outlandish and meaningless."

"Nature does not provide identical objects; on the contrary, these are always human creations. What nature provides is a tree full of apples which are all recognisably alike and yet are not identical, small apples and large ones, red ones and pale ones, apples with maggots and apples without. To make a statement about all these apples together, and about crab-apples, Orange Pippins, and Beauties of Bath, is the whole basis of reasoning."

"This ability to order things into likes and unlikes is, I think, the foundation of human thought."

"On the one hand, all science, and indeed all thinking starts from and rests upon notions of order; what marks the Middle Ages is that their order was always a hierarchy. And on the other hand what marks the scientific view is not that it turned to the mechanism of causes, but that it saw the world as a mechanism at all—a machine of events."

"The Scientific Revolution revolution was a change from a world of things ordered according to their ideal nature, to a world of events running in a steady mechanism of before and after."

"Of these massive achievements I shall single out two. One is Newton’s working out of the concept of the cause, by making it over from its scholastic form in, say, St. Thomas Aquinas, to the modern form which now seems so obvious to us. This is one theme in this chapter. But I shall go to it by way of a related achievement, and to my mind one which is as remarkable: the marriage of the logical with the empirical method."

"In order to act in a scientific manner, in order to act in a human manner at all, two things are necessary: fact and thought. Science does not consist only a finding the facts; nor is it enough only to think, however rationally. The processes of science are characteristic of human action in that they move by the union of empirical fact and rational thought, in a way which cannot be disentangled."

"In Whitehead’s view, the Middle Ages were quite as logical in their speculations about nature as we are. It is not as rationalists that we have the advantage of them; our material successes stem from joining to their logic a ruthless appeal, at each bold deductive step, back to the hard empirical facts."

"The outlook before the Scientific Revolution was content with scholastic logic applied to a nature of hierarchies. The Scientific Revolution ended that: it linked the rational and the empirical, thought and fact, theory and practical experiment. And this has remained the content of science ever since."

"The [eighteenth] century settled down in two camps of Philistines: the literary Philistines and, largely to spite them, the scientific Philistines. It was the beginning of the mistaken opposition between them from which we still suffer."

"Order is the selection of one set of appearances rather than another because it gives a better sense of the reality behind the appearances."

"We cannot change our character, we can only enlarge it. If we are wise, then we go on learning all through life, and go on fitting what is new to what we have learnt before, piece by piece."

"The purpose of science is to describe the world in an orderly scheme or language which will help us to look ahead. We want to forecast what we can of the future behaviour of the world; particularly we want to forecast how it would behave under several alternative actions of our own between which we are usually trying to choose."

"Science is a way of describing reality; it is therefore limited by the limits of observation; and it asserts nothing which is outside observation. Anything else is not science; it is scholastics."

"Of course, everyone is free to prefer his favourite article of faith to the scientific, that is the empirical method. But do not let us imagine that his faith is then anything except a piece of comfortable and customary superstition. To try to make a nice distinction between what science can predict and what is somehow supernaturally determined is a piece of elegant but really quite shameless self-deception. Science is a practical study of what can be observed, and the prediction from that of what will be observed. To say that causes are somehow getting under this observable world, when anything under it is essentially unobservable, is neither helpful nor meaningful; it is just a piece of faithful comfort. We might as well say that the electrons are really pushed about by blue fairies with red noses who know exactly what they are doing, only it happens that every time we look in their direction these fairies instantly hide. If they are essentially unobservable, beyond all hope of future unravelling, then it simply does not make sense to bring them into any system, logical, metaphysical, or even religious."

"Life is not an examination; we do not get marks for the steps; what matters is getting the right answer. So it is perfectly possible to base a system of prediction on no principle except trying to get the right answer. This is exactly what all plants and animals do. The bat avoids obstacles by shouting at them that shrill cry just beyond my hearing, and then listens for the echo. Whatever system it has for translating the echo into a prediction it has found by evolution, and evolution has found it by trial and error."

"The laws of science have two functions, to be true and to be helpful; probably each of these functions includes the other. If the statistical law does both, that is all that can be asked of it. We may persuade ourselves that it is intellectually less satisfying than a causal law, and fails somehow to give us the same feeling of understanding the process of nature. But this is an illusion of habit."

"Science as we know it is indeed a creation of the last three hundred years. It has been made in and by the world that took its settled shape about 1660, when Europe at last shook off the long nightmare of religious wars and settled into a life of inquisitive trade and industry. Science is embodied in those new societies; it has been made by them and has helped to make them."

"The mastery and the greatness of science rests in the end on this, that here the rational and the empirical are knotted together. Science is fact and thought giving strength to one another."

"We do not construct the world from our experiences; we are aware of the world in our experiences."

"We are troubled by a two-sidedness in our own behaviour, where one side is what we have long been taught to value, and the other is worldly success. We are faced every day with actions of which our own code of conduct makes us ashamed, but which we find compelling if we are to battle with the hard facts of society. We do not consciously blame science for this rift until it throws out some unavoidable challenge, such as in our time has been set by the atomic bomb. But that sharp issue is merely a symbol. Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: how are we to choose between that which we have been taught to think right and something else which manifestly succeeds?"

"There has never been a great book or a powerful work of art which has not been thought immoral by those with an older tradition."

"There is indeed no system of morality which does not set a high value on truth and on knowledge, above all on a conscious knowledge of oneself. It is therefore at least odd that science should be called amoral, and this by people who in their own lives set a high value on being truthful. For whatever else may be held against science, this cannot be denied, that it takes for ultimate judgment one criterion alone, that it shall be truthful."

"At bottom, we have remain individually too greedy to distribute our surplus, and collectively too stupid to pile it up in any more useful form than the traditional mountains of arms."

"If any ideas have a claim to be called creative, because they have created something, then certainly it is the ideas of science."

"A good prediction is one which defines its area of uncertainty; a bad prediction ignores it."

"Science is a great many things, and I have called them a great many names; but in the end they all return to this: science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think."

"Here is the ultimate hope of saving ourselves from extinction. We must learn to understand that the contents of all knowledge is empirical; that its test is whether it works; and we must learn to act on that understanding in the world as well as in the laboratory."

"I have seen in my lifetime an abyss open in the human mind: a gulf between the endeavour to be man, and the relish in being brute. The scientist has indeed had a hand in this, and every other specialist too, with his prim detachment and his oracular airs. But of course, the large strain which has opened this fault is social. We have made men live in two halves, a Sunday half and a workday one. We have ordered them to love their neighbor and to turn the other cheek, in a society which has constantly compelled them to shoulder their neighbor aside and to turn their backs. So we have created a savage sense of failure which, as we now know to our cost, can be tapped with an ease which is frightening; and which can thrust up, with explosive force, a symbol to repeat to an unhappy people its most degrading dream."

"Can science heal that neurotic flaw in us? If science cannot, then nothing can. Let us stop pretending. There is no cure in high moral precepts. We have preached them too long to men who are forced to live how they can: that makes the strain which they have not been able to bear. We need an ethic which is moral and which works. It is often said that science has destroyed our values and put nothing in their place. What has really happened of course is that science has shown in harsh relief the division between our values and our world. We have not begun to let science get into our heads; where then was it supposed to create these values?"

"The discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations — more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness. The discoverer or the artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses them into one. This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art."

"Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her."

"We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experience, because he himself re-creates them."

"Mass, time, magnetic moment, the unconscious: we have grown up with these symbolic concepts, so that we are startled to be told that man had once to create them for himself. He had indeed, and he has: for mass is not an intuition in the muscle, and time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's."

"The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry."

"In effect what Luther said in 1517 was that we may appeal to a demonstrable work of God, the Bible, to override any established authority. The Scientific Revolution begins when Nicolaus Copernicus implied the bolder proposition that there is another work of God to which we may appeal even beyond this: the great work of nature. No absolute statement is allowed to be out of reach of the test, that its consequence must conform to the facts of nature. The habit of testing and correcting the concept by its consequences in experience has been the spring within the movement of our civilization ever since. In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so? This is the habit of truth, always minute yet always urgent, which for four hundred years has entered every action of ours; and has made our society and the value it sets on man."

"No fact in the world is instant, infinitesimal and ultimate, a single mark. There are, I hold, no atomic facts. In the language of science, every fact is a field — a crisscross of implications, those that lead to it and those that lead from it. … We condense the laws around concepts. Science takes its coherence, its intellectual and imaginative strength together, from the concepts at which its laws cross, like knots in a mesh."

"Positivists and analysts alike believe that the words is and ought belong to different worlds, so that sentences which are constructed with is usually have verifiable meaning, but sentences constructed with ought never have. This is because Ludwig Wittgenstein's unit, and Bertrand Russell's unit, is one man; all British empiricist philosophy is individualist. And it is of course clear that if the only criterion of true and false which a man accepts is that man's, then he has no base for social agreement. The question of how man ought to behave is a social question, which always involves several people; and if he accepts no evidence and no judgment except his own, he has no tools with which to frame an answer."

"There is a social injunction implied in the positivist and analyst methods. This social axiom is that We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so."

"Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime."

"Tolerance among scientists cannot be based on indifference, it must be based on respect. Respect as a personal value implies, in any society, the public acknowledgements of justice and of due honor. These are values which to the layman seem most remote from any abstract study. Justice, honor, the respect of man for man: What, he asks, have these human values to do with science? [...] Those who think that science is ethically neutral confuse the findings of science, which are, with the activity of science, which is not."

"Nature is more subtle, more deeply intertwined and more strangely integrated than any of our pictures of her — than any of our errors. It is not merely that our pictures are not full enough; each of our pictures in the end turns out to be so basically mistaken that the marvel is that it worked at all."

"The painter's portrait and the physicist's explanation are both rooted in reality, but they have been changed by the painter or the physicist into something more subtly imagined than the photographic appearance of things."

"The force that makes the winter grow Its feathered hexagons of snow, and drives the bee to match at home Their calculated honeycomb, Is abacus and rose combined.An icy sweetness fills my mind, A sense that under thing and wing Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring."

"Dissent is the mark of freedom."

"There is today almost no scientific theory which was held when, say, the Industrial Revolution began about 1760. Most often today's theories flatly contradict those of 1760; many contradict those of 1900. In cosmology, in quantum mechanics, in genetics, in the social sciences, who now holds the beliefs that seemed firm sixty years ago? Yet the society of scientists has survived these changes without a revolution, and honors the men whose beliefs it no longer shares. No one has recanted abjectly at a trial before his colleagues. The whole structure of science has been changed and no one has been either disgraced or deposed. Through all the changes of science, the society of scientists is flexible and single-minded together, and evolves and rights itself. In the language of science, it is a stable society."

"The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself. The discovery must be compared in importance with the invention of cave-painting and of writing. Like these earlier human creations, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from inside. And like them, science has surely made a critical step in human development which cannot be reversed. We cannot conceive a future society without science. I have used three words to describe these far - reaching changes : discovery, invention and creation. There are contexts in which one of these words is more appropriate than the others."

"Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies, and Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. We do not call their achievements creations because they are not personal enough. The West Indies were there all the time; and as for the telephone, we feel that Bell's ingenious thought was somehow not fundamental. The groundwork was there, and if not Bell then someone else would have stumbled on the telephone almost as accidently as on the West Indies."

"A fact is discovered, a theory is invented; is any theory ever deep enough for it to be truly called a creation? Most scientists would answer: no! Science, they would say, engages only part of the mind - the rational intellect - but creation must engage the whole mind. Science demands none of that ground swell of emotion, none of the rich bottom of personality, which fills out the work of art..."

"To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man."

"To imagine means to make images and to move them about inside one's head in new arrangements."

"With the... symbolic memory we spell out the future—not one but many futures, which we weigh one against another."

"I am using the word image in a wide meaning, which does not restrict it to the mind's eye as a visual organ. An image in my usage is what Charles Pierce called a sign..."

"[T]he most important images for human beings are simply words, which are abstract symbols. ...[E]volution has greatly enlarged the front lobes of the human brain, which govern the sense of the past and the future; and... they are probably the seat of our other images."

"The images play out for us events which are not present in our senses, and... create the future—a future that... may never come to exist in that form."

"Almost everything that we do that is worth doing is done in the first place in the mind's eye."

"The richness of human life is that we have many lives, we live the events that do not happen (and some that cannot) as vividly as those that do, and if thereby we die a thousand deaths, that is the price we pay..."

"Imagination is the manipulation of images in one's head... the rational manipulation... as well as the literary and artistic manipulation."

"When a child begins to play games... he enters the gateway to reason and imagination together."

"[T]he human reason discovers new relations between things not by deduction, but by that unpredictable blend of speculation and insight... induction, which—like other forms of imagination—cannot be formalized."

"The strength of the imagination, its enriching power and excitement, lies in its interplay with reality—physical and emotional."

"All great scientists have used their imaginations freely, and let it ride them to outrageous conclusions without crying "Halt!""

"The symbol is the tool which gives man his power, and it is the same tool whether the symbols are images or words, mathematical signs or s."

"[S]ymbols have a reach and a roundness that goes beyond their literal and practical meaning. They are the rich concepts under which the mind gathers many particulars into one name, and many instances into one general induction."

"When a man counts one, two, three, he is not only doing mathematics, he is on the path to the mysticism of numbers in Pythagoras and Vitruvius and Kepler, to the Trinity and the signs of the Zodiac."

"[I]magination... is the faculty... the common root from which science and literature... spring and grow and flourish together. ...the great ages of science are the great ages of all the arts... [P]owerful minds have taken fire from one another... without asking... to tie their imagination to falling balls or a haunted island. ...When Galileo was looking through his telescope at the moon, Shakespeare was writing The Tempest and all Europe was in ferment, from Johannes Kepler to Peter Paul Rubens, and from the first table of logarithms by John Napier to the Authorized version of the Bible."

"Let me end with... man's ageless fantasy, to fly to the moon. ...Plutarch and Lucian, Ariosto and Ben Jonson wrote about it, before the days of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and science fiction. The seventeenth century was heady with... fables about voyages to the moon. Kepler wrote one full of deep scientific ideas... wrote... '... wrote... The Discovery of a New World. They did not draw a line between science and fancy... they all tried to guess where... earth's gravity would stop. Only Kepler understood that gravity has no boundary, and put a law to it—... the wrong law. All this was a few years before Isaac Newton was born, and it was all in his head that day in 1666, when he... came to conceive... that the moon is like a ball... thrown so hard that it falls exactly as fast as the horizon... he went on to calculate how long... the distant moon would take to round the earth... [T]he imagination that day chimed with nature, and made a harmony."

"In every age there is a turning point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world. It is frozen in the statues of Easter Island that put a stop to time—and in the medieval clocks of Europe that once also seemed to say the last word about the heavens for ever. Each culture tries to fix its visionary moment, when it was transformed by a new conception either of nature or of man. But in retrospect, what commands our attention as much are the continuities—the thoughts that run or recur from one civilization to another."

"Man is not the most majestic of the creatures; long before the mammals even, the dinosaurs were far more splendid. But he has what no other animal possesses: a jigsaw of faculties, which alone, over three thousand million years of life, made him creative. Every animal leaves traces of what he was. Man alone leaves traces of what he created."

"In a parched African landscape like this at Omo, man first put his foot to the ground. That seems a pedestrian way to begin the ascent of man."

"Of course it's tempting to close one's eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. The evidence for that, we saw, in the walled city of Jericho and its prehistoric tower... That is the beginning of war."

"One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientist or dogmatist, open the door to tragedy. All knowledge, all information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility."

"The symbol of the University is the iron statue outside the Rathskeller of a barefoot goose girl that every student kisses at graduation. The University is a Mecca to which students come with something less than perfect faith. It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known but to question it."

"The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science, or outside of it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses. First, in the engineering sense: Science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge – all information between human beings – can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance – and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it – the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty."

"It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people."

"Fifty years from now, if an understanding of man's origins, his evolution, his history, his progress is not in the common place of the school books, we shall not exist."

"And I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into—into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about, Are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself. We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us."

"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation."

"We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man."

"Since the word "knowledge" occurs in my general title... I am going to be talking about epistemology, although I prefer to use the eighteenth-century, indeed, medieval phrase, "natural philosophy." ...that enterprise of the human mind which attempts to trace lawfulness to nature, dead and living, but which is not directed to specific inquiries into how this or that law works. Philosophy in the sense in which I practice it, natural philosophy, is concerned with lawfulness rather than with laws and the general nature of laws rather than with the specific structure of this or that law. Natural philosophy was one of the three topics (moral philosophy and metaphysical philosophy were the others) to which one graduated in medieval universities after having studied the seven liberal arts. I believe that we need to review the whole of our natural philosophy in the light of scientific knowledge that has arisen in the last fifty years."

"What we really mean by free will... is the visualizing of alternatives and making a choice between them. ...the central problem of human consciousness depends on this ability to imagine."

"I believe that the world is totally connected: that is to say, that there are no events anywhere in the universe which are not tied to every other event in the universe. ...It is... an essential part of the methodology of science to divide the world for any experiment into... relevant and... irrelevant. We make a cut. We put the experiment... into a box. ...the moment we do that, we do violence to the connections ...I get a set of answers which I try to decode in this context. ...I am certainly not going to get the world right, because the basic assumption that I have made about the world is a lie. ...it is bound to give me only an approximation to what goes inside the fence. Therefore, when we practice science (and this is true of all our experience) we are always decoding a part of nature which is not complete. We simply cannot get out of our own finiteness."

"Let me close by reminding you of what Newton actually did on the day that he conceived G = k \frac{mm'}{r^2}. ...Newton did not have any subsidies, grants, funds, Secret Service money. But he had the moon. He said, "... I cannot throw a ball round the world, but let me picture the moon as if it were a ball which has been flung around the world... How long will it take to go round the world?" ...He knew the value of gravity at the earth's surface ...but he did not know the value of the earth's gravity for the moon. He said, "Let us suppose that it is given by an inverse square law. Now, how long will it take the moon to go around?" It comes out at twenty-eight days. As Newton said, "They agreed pretty nearly.""

"Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. ...it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most nonscientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve. ...by the time science becomes a closed—that is, computerizable—project, it is not science anymore. It is not in the area of the exploration of errors."

"[A]ll our symbols have the same purpose; words are merely the symbols we use most commonly. The function of words in human thought is to stand for things which are not present to the senses, and allow the mind to manipulate them—things, concepts, ideas, everything that does not have a physical reality in front of us now."

"The language of ideas creates a different universe: a universe which has multiplied the monkey's vocabulary of forty words to the million words in the English dictionary."

"Human beings can imagine situations which are different from those in front of their eyes... because they make and hold in their minds images for absent things."

"When a child... discovers his own imagination, he suddenly walks into a new life. ...seeing situations that do not exist. ...in part as fantasy, and in part as a quite rational exploration of future experiences. ...play ...frolics in the fantasy world, and it experiments in the rational world... They project themselves into all worlds, possible and impossible, and discover for themselves the knife-edge boundary between them."

"The ability... to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom... the pleasure in trying out and exploring imaginary situations. A child's play is concerned with this pleasure; and so is much of art, and much of science... [P]ure science... is a form of play, in this sense."

"He first became familiar to the British public through appearances on the BBC television version of The Brains Trust in the late 1950s, but is better known for his... series The Ascent of Man (1973). This was an inspiration for Carl Sagan to make Cosmos in 1980. During the making of The Ascent of Man he was interviewed by Michael Parkinson, and Bronowski's description of a visit to Auschwitz—he had lost many family members during the Nazi era—was described by Parkinson as one of his most memorable interviews. ...Bronowski died of a heart attack in East Hampton, New York a year after The Ascent of Man was completed, and was buried in the western side of London's ..."

"[[Richard von Mises|[V]on Mises]] and raised the objection that in Reichenbach's theory a theory was said to be "valid with a probability of 70%," if 70 per cent of the conclusions of the theory were confirmed by experiment. However, we know... a theory which is in disagreement with experience in 30% of... experiments is called "false" or "wrong." We come to the same conclusion if we apply Carnap's "." An attempt to avoid these difficulties and to advance a radically different approach... was made by Jacob Bronowski. His purpose was to formalize the criterion for the validity of a theory that was advocated by men like John Frederick Herschel and William Whewell. ...these scientists and philosophers saw the main achievement of a theory in its unifying and simplifying power. The simpler the theory... the more probable the theory. If the theory consists in a complete enumeration of all observable facts, the "theory" would have a very high probability... However, von Mises and Bronowski rejected this... If we have two theories which yield the same observable facts, the scientist prefers the... more economical or just simpler. Bronowski compares the scientific theory with a code... We prefer the code which is more practical, more efficient. ...to improve the code, we try systematically... "to break down the code into its constituent symbols and their laws of arrangement." ...If we break down [chemical] elements into... elementary particles (protons, neutrons, and electrons) and the forces acting between them, we have a code which describes... the interaction between hydrogen and oxygen... from which can be derived much more information than from any theory in which "oxygen" and "hydrogen"...occur as primitive symbols. ...Bronowski calls a theory the more probable, the more the code... is broken down into constituent symbols and laws of arrangement."

"Every acceptance of a debatable theory is due to a compromise between Reichenbach's and Bronowski's criteria: agreement with facts and efficiency as a code."

"The criteria of Reichenbach and Carnap, which are based, like John Stuart Mill's inductive logic, upon agreement with observations, have to be complemented by the criterion of economy and simplicity which was advanced in the history of science by men like William Ockham, Isaac Newton, and Ernst Mach. In out twentieth century, the importance of criteria other than mere agreement with observation was stressed by von Mises and Bronowski."

"The ashes of millions of people were flushed into the pond at Auschwitz, but on that sunny day... I stood at its edge... twenty-four years earlier I sat in front of our television set and watched... Bronowski... as a scientist, a human being, a survivor and a witness at the edge of this pond. Many members of his family had died at Auschwitz. He reminded us that it is said that science will turn people into numbers and told... passionately that this is '...tragically false', and that it was here... that people were turned into numbers and murdered not by the gas... but by the arrogance, the dogma and ignorance... and by the murderers'... belief that they possessed absolute knowledge... never—unlike scientists—tested... against objective reality. ...Bronowski ...reminded us that science is a very human form of knowledge in which every judgement stands on the edge of error and is personal. Quoting the words of Oliver Cromwell—'I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken'—he reached into the water... telling us that we must close the distance between the push-button order and the human act... ending with the words: 'We have to touch people.' ...Bronowski's active defiance of failings such as despair, failing of nerve, fashionable pessimism and irresponsibility had made a permanent and indelible impression on me..."

"If Engels had not been the constant companion in arms of Marx in the revolutionary struggles of the 19th century, there is no doubt that he would be remembered chiefly as one of the foremost scientist-philosophers of the century. It was an ironical tribute paid to the correctness of his views as to the relations between politics and ideology that he suffered complete neglect from the scientists of the Victorian age. But time now has taken its revenge, and Engels’ contemporary views on 19th century science seem to us now in the 20th far more fresh and filled with understanding than those of the professional philosophers of science of his day, who for the most part are completely forgotten, while the few that linger on, such as Lange and Herbert Spencer, are only quoted as examples of the limitations of their times."

"One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement."

"In the decade after the war Freud’s theories dominated the narrow circles of British intellectuals. His psycho-analysis was accepted warmly for many reasons. It was new and exciting, it was shocking, it debunked religion and morals, it promised an internal liberation from all restraints. Nevertheless, it was essentially a creed of escape into an inner world of complexes and repressions and away from social and economic realities."

"No one, who knows what the difficulties are, now believes that the crisis of physics is likely to be resolved by any simple trick or modification of existing theories. Something radical is needed, and it will have to go far wider than physics. A new world outlook is being forged, but much experiment and argument will be needed before it can take a definitive form. It must be coherent, it must include and illuminate the new knowledge of fundamental particles and their complex fields, it must resolve the paradoxes of wave and particle, it must make the world inside the atom and the wide spaces of the universe equally intelligible. It must have a different dimension from all previous world views, and include in itself an explanation of development and the origin of new things. In this it will fall naturally in line with the converging tendencies of the biological and social sciences in which a regular pattern blends with their evolutionary history."

"But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary."

"Life is a partial, continuous, progressive, multiform and conditionally interactive self-realization of the potentialities of atomic electron states."

"The central industry of modern civilisation, tending, because of its control over materials, to spread into and ultimately incorporate older industries such as mining, smelting, oil- refining, textiles, rubber, building, and even agriculture in respect to fertilizers and food processing."

"If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?"

"There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradiscial future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men."

"The problem [of specialization] is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order."

"As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt."

"The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved."

"The present aristocracy of western culture, at the very moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country."

"At different stages in the educational process different changes are required. In schools the chief need is for a general change in the attitude towards science, which should be from the beginning an integral part and not a mere addition, often an optional addition, to the curriculum. Science should be taught not merely as a subject but should come into all subjects. Its importance in history and in modern life should be pointed out and illustrated. The old contrast, often amounting to hostility, between scientific and humane subjects need to be broken down and replaced by a scientific humanism. At the same time, the teaching of science proper requires to be humanized. The dry and factual presentation requires to be transformed, not by any appeal to mystical theory, but by emphasizing the living and dramatic character of scientific advance itself. Here the teaching of the history of science, not isolated as at present, but in close relation to general history teaching, would serve to correct the existing atmosphere of scientific dogmatism. It would show at the same time how secure are the conquests of science in the control they give over natural processes and how insecure and provisional, however necessary, are the rational interpretations, the theories and hypotheses put forward at each stage. Past history by itself is not enough, the latest developments of science should not be excluded because they have not yet passed the test of time. It is absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that science not only has changed but is continually changing, that it is an activity and not merely a body of facts. Throughout, the social implications of science, the powers that it puts into men's hands, the uses they could make of them and those which they in fact do, should be brought out and made real by a reference to immediate experience of ordinary life."

"Hogben's Science for the Citizen would be an admirable text-book for such teaching."

"[The goal of efficiency was] a system in which all relevant information would be available to each research worker in an amplitude proportional to its degree of relevance."

"The problem of the re-organization of science will not be solved by administrative or financial changes. It will also be necessary to reorganise in a most comprehensive way the whole apparatus of scientific communication."

"World Encyclopaedia. -- Behind these lies another prospect of greater and more permanent importance; that of an attempt at a comprehensive and continually revised presentation of the whole of science in its social context, an idea most persuasively put forward by H. G. Wells in his appeal for a World Encyclopaedia of which he has already given us a foretaste in his celebrated outlines. The encyclopaedic movement was a great rallying point of the liberal revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The real encyclopaedia should not be what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has degenerated into, a mere mass of unrelated knowledge sold by high-pressure salesmanship, but a coherent expression of the living and changing body of thought; it should sum up what is for the moment the spirit of the age... The original French Encyclopaedia which did attempt these things was, however, made in the period of relative quiet when the forces of liberation were gathering ready to break their bonds. We have already entered the second period of revolutionary struggle and the quiet thought necessary to make such an effort will not be easy to find, but some effort is worth making because the combined assault on science and humanity by the forces of barbarism has against it, as yet, no general and coherent statement on the part of those who believe in democracy and the need for the people of the world to take over the active control of production and administration for their own safety and welfare."

"Science is one of the most absorbing and satisfying pastimes, and as such it appeals in different ways to different types of personality. To some it 1s a game against the unknown where one wins and no one loses, to others, more humanly minded, it is a race between different investigators as to who should first wrest the prize from nature. It has all the qualities which make millions of people addicts of the crossword puzzle or the detective story, the only difference being that the problem has been set by nature or chance and not by man, that the answers cannot be got with certainty, and when they are found often raise far more questions than the original problem."

"In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal."

"It was my purpose to emphasize... to what extent the advance of natural science has helped to determine that of society... not only in economic changes... by the application of scientific discoveries, but... by the effect of the general frame of thought... [N]othing less would be adequate than a complete reevaluation of the reciprocal relations of science and society."

"It would be as one-sided to assess the effects of science on society as of society on science."

"[T]o seek to discover how the advance of science had altered the whole frame of human thought, it would... be necessary to go back through the great controversies of the Renaissance about the Nature of the heavens, and... to the Ancients, without whose theories the controversies would have no meaning. There was nothing... but to attempt to trace the whole story from the... origins of human society. This involved a parallel study of all social and economic history in relation to the history of science... [T]here seemed some excuse for making a first attempt to sketch out the field, if only to stimulate, through... omissions and errors, others more leisured and qualified... No attempt is made here to present a chronologically uniform picture."

"[S]cience has so changed its nature over... human history that no definition could be made to fit."

"[T]he centre of interest... lies in natural science and technology because... the sciences of society were first embodied in tradition and ritual and only took shape under the influence and on the model of the natural sciences."

"The theme which constantly recurs is the complex interaction between techniques, science, and philosophy. Science stands as a middle term between the established and transmitted practice of men who work for a living, and the pattern of ideas and traditions which assure the continuity of society and the rights and privileges of the classes that make it up."

"Science, in one aspect, is ordered technique; in another, it is rationalized mythology. Because it started as a hardly distinguishable aspect of the mystery of the craftsman and the lore of the priest... science was long in establishing any independent existence in society. Even when it did find its own... adepts in medicine, astrology, and alchemy, these formed, for many ages a small group parasitic on wealthy princes, clerics, and merchants. It is only in the last three centuries that science has become traditionally established as a profession in its own right, with its specific education, literature, and fellowship."

"The progress in science has been anything but uniform in time and place. ...In the course of time the centres of scientific activity have been continually displaced, usually following rather than leading the migration of the centres of commercial and industrial activity. Babylonia, Egypt, and India have all been the foci of ancient science. Greece became their common heir, and there the rational basis... was first worked out. There was little place for science in Rome and none in the barbarian kingdoms of western Europe. The heritage of Greece returned to the East from whence it had come. In Syria, Persia, and India, even in... China, new breaths... came... in a brilliant synthesis under the banner of Islam. There they underwent a development which... was to give rise to... modern science."

"[T]radition links us with the revolutionary science of the Renaissance... we can distinguish... four major periods of advance. [1] [C]entred in Italy... the renewal of mechanics, anatomy, and astronomy with Leonardo, Vesalius, and Copernicus, destroying the authority of the Ancients in their central doctrines of man and the world. [2] [S]preading to the Low Countries, France, and Britain, beginning with Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes, and ending in Newton, hammered out a new mathematical mechanical model of the world. [3] [C]entred in industrial Britain and revolutionary Paris, opened... areas of experience... as... electricity... It was then that science could help... with power, machinery, and chemicals, to transform production and transport. [4] [T]he scientific revolution of our own time. ...[T]he beginning of a world science, transforming old and creating new industries, permeating every aspect of human life. ...[N]ow... we find science directly involved in the violent and terrible drama of wars and social revolution."

"Never had Frederick Engels' famous notion of 'scientific socialism' been treated so literally."

"For Bernal the humanistic and the scientific dimensions were one. His vision of the sort of future that science could make possible for mankind was in total contrast to that of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Full automation, nuclear energy, and cybernetics could bring a fuller realisation of human potential. His futuristic sketches grew increasingly better grounded as his Marxism matured, making the society of the future set out in The Social Function of Science far more plausible than the one set out in his earlier work, The World, the Flesh and the Devil. His sense of history was sweeping, stretching back into the ancient past and shooting forward into the coming future."

"The extent of his faith in science can best be described as religious devotion. He comments himself: 'The same type of mind that would now make a physicist would in the Middle Ages have made a scholastic theologian.'"

"He idealized science not just as knowledge but in a political sense too, believing that the management of human affairs could also be more scientific by virtue of being socialist. He was thus particularly inclined to accept the claims of Soviet Marxism to represent science in general, and to accord it the same degree of respect."

"I remember excitedly buying a boxed set of 4 books, Science in History by John D. Bernal (Pelican, 1965), when I was an undergraduate. At the time I was an amateur Marxist and Bernal’s work was an encyclopaedic analysis of science and society from a Marxist point of view. I was delighted to learn that Bernal was an Irishman who had spent a brilliant career at the leading edge of UK science, making many notable contributions."

"John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was undoubtedly the most important of the "Western" scientists who, during the twentieth century, accepted the Marxist view of social development. He did more than "accept" it: he tried to sketch the whole history of science from a Marxist viewpoint; he wrote a number of articles explicitly expounding his view of the relation of Marxism to science; and from his student days he played an active role in Communist politics. He has been criticised: during his lifetime, for too readily accepting official Soviet policy, whether relating to society or to science; since his death, for having been too ready to hope that his vision of the use of science for human ends could be implemented by capitalist societies; and at all times, for an allegedly simplistic faith in science as the salvation of mankind."

"« La Logique peut être patiente, car elle est éternelle. » ("Logic can be patient because it is eternal.") ibid. p. 150"

"The first question we should face is: What is the aim of a physical theory? To this question diverse answers have been made, but all of them may be reduced to two main principles: "A physical theory," certain logicians have replied, "has for its object the explanation of a group of laws experimentally established." "A physical theory," other thinkers have said, "is an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and classify logically a group of experimental laws without claiming to explain these laws... Now these two questions — Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? — do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics... Now, to make physical theories depend on metaphysics is surely not the way to let them enjoy the privilege of universal consent."

"[U]n symbole n'est, à proprement parler, ni vrai, ni faux; il est plus ou moins bien choisi pour signifier la réalité qu'il représente, il la figure d'une manière plus ou moins précise, plus ou moins détaillée..."

"A physical theory reputed to be satisfactory by the sectarians of one metaphysical school will be rejected by the partisans of another school."

"Agreement with experiment is the sole criteria of truth for a physical theory."

"The one who contributed most to break down the barrier between physical method and metaphysical method, and to confound their domains, so clearly distinguished in the Aristotelian philosophy, was surely Descartes."

"Every time people cite a principle of theoretical physics in support of a metaphysical doctrine or physical dogma, they commit a mistake, for they attribute to this principle a meaning not its own, an import not belonging to it."

"There you have, then, a theoretical physics which is neither the theory of a believer nor that of a nonbeliever, but merely and simply a theory of a physicist; admirably suited to classify the laws studied by the experimenter, it is incapable of opposing any assertion whatever of metaphysics or of religious dogma, and is equally incapable of lending effective support to any such assertion."

"If a demarcation criterion exists (we must not, I think, seek a sharp or decisive one), it may lie just in that part of science which Sir Karl ignores."

"Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers."

"I suggest that scientific knowledge, though logically more articulate and far more complex, is of this sort. The books and teachers from whom it is acquired present concrete examples together with a multitude of theoretical generalizations. Both are essential carriers of knowledge, and it is therefore Pickwickian to seek a methodological criterion that supposes the scientist can specify in advance whether each imaginable instance fits or would falsify his theory."

"To my complete surprise, that exposure to out-of-date scientific theory and practice radically undermined some of my basic conceptions about the nature of science and the reasons for its special success. Those conceptions were ones I had previously drawn partly from scientific training itself and partly from a long-standing avocational interest in the philosophy of science. Somehow, whatever their pedagogic utility and their abstract plausibility, those notions did not at all fit the enterprise that historical study displayed. Yet they were and are fundamental to many discussions of science, and their failures of verisimilitude therefore seemed thoroughly worth pursuing. The result was a drastic shift in my career plans, a shift from physics to history of science and then, gradually, from relatively straightforward historical problems back to the more philosophical concerns that had initially led me to history."

"Somehow, the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry or biology normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today seem endemic among, say, psychologists or sociologists. Attempting to discover the source of that difference led me to recognize the role in scientific research of what I have since called “paradigms.” These I take to be universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners."

"History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed."

"Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That choice, however, makes it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion."

"Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments."

""Normal science" means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice."

"Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition."

"Ever since prehistoric antiquity one field of study after another has crossed the divide between what the historian might call its prehistory as a science and its history proper. These transitions to maturity have seldom been so sudden or so unequivocal as my necessarily schematic discussion may have implied. But neither have they been historically gradual, coextensive, that is to say, with the entire development of the fields within which they occurred."

"Few people who are not actually practitioners of a mature science realize how much mop-up work of this sort a paradigm leaves to be done or quite how fascinating such work can prove in the execution."

"These three classes of problems—determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory—exhaust, I think, the literature of normal science, both empirical and theoretical. They do not, of course, quite exhaust the entire literature of science. There are also extraordinary problems, and it may well be their resolution that makes the scientific enterprise as a whole so particularly worthwhile. But extraordinary problems are not to be had for the asking. They emerge only on special occasions prepared by the advance of normal research."

"The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well."

"Scientists work from models acquired through education and through subsequent exposure to the literature often without quite knowing or needing to know what characteristics have given these models the status of community paradigms"

"Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none."

"We must now ask how changes of this sort can come about, considering first discoveries, or novelties of fact, and then inventions, or novelties of theory. That distinction between discovery and invention or between fact and theory will, however, immediately prove to be exceedingly artificial."

"In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation."

"In the development of any science, the first received paradigm is usually felt to account quite successfully for most of the observations and experiments easily accessible to that science’s practitioners. Further development, therefore, ordinarily calls for the construction of elaborate equipment, the development of an esoteric vocabulary and skills, and a refinement of concepts that increasingly lessens their resemblance to their usual common-sense prototypes. That professionalization leads, on the one hand, to an immense restriction of the scientist’s vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change. The science has become increasingly rigid. On the other hand, within those areas to which the paradigm directs the attention of the group, normal science leads to a detail of information and to a precision of the observation-theory match that could be achieved in no other way."

"Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. History of science indicates that, particularly in the early developmental stages of a new paradigm, it is not even very difficult to invent such alternates. But that invention of alternates is just what scientists seldom undertake except during the pre-paradigm stage of their science’s development and at very special occasions during its subsequent evolution. So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture so in science—retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. The significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion for retooling has arrived."

"Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense... that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way."

"The subject of a gestalt demonstration knows that his perception has shifted because he can make it shift back and forth repeatedly while he holds the same book or piece of paper in his hands. Aware that nothing in his environment has changed, he directs his attention increasingly not to the figure (duck or rabbit) but to the lines of the paper he is looking at. Ultimately he may even learn to see those lines without seeing either of the figures, and he may then say (what he could not legitimately have said earlier) that it is these lines that he really sees but that he sees them alternately as a duck and as a rabbit. ...As in all similar psychological experiments, the effectiveness of the demonstration depends upon its being analyzable in this way. Unless there were an external standard with respect to which a switch of vision could be demonstrated, no conclusion about alternate perceptual possibilities could be drawn."

"These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another."

"We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth"

"A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than its predecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow a better representation of what nature is really like. One often hears that successive theories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, between the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there.” Perhaps there is some other way of salvaging the notion of ‘truth’ for application to whole theories, but this one will not do. There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle. Besides, as a historian, I am impressed with the implausability of the view. I do not doubt, for example, that Newton’s mechanics improves on Aristotle’s and that Einstein’s improves on Newton’s as instruments for puzzle-solving. But I can see in their succession no coherent direction of ontological development. On the contrary, in some important respects, though by no means in all, Einstein’s general theory of relativity is closer to Aristotle’s than either of them is to Newton’s."

"I rapidly discovered that Aristotle had known almost no mechanics at all. ... How could his characteristic talents have deserted him so systematically when he turned to the study of motion and mechanics? Equally, if his talents had so deserted him, why had his writings in physics been taken so seriously for so many centuries after his death? ... I was sitting at my desk with the text of Aristotle's Physics open in front of me... Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place together. My jaw dropped, for all at once Aristotle seemed a very good physicist indeed, but of a sort I'd never dreamed possible. Now I could understand why he had said what he'd said, and what his authority had been. Statements that had previously seemed egregious mistakes, now seemed at worst near misses within a powerful and generally successful tradition. That sort of experience -- the pieces suddenly sorting themselves out and coming together in a new way -- is the first general characteristic of revolutionary change that I shall be singling out after further consideration of examples. Though scientific revolutions leave much piecemeal mopping up to do, the central change cannot be experienced piecemenal, one step at a time. Instead, it involves some relatively sudden and unstructured transformation in which some part of the flux of experience sorts itself out differently and displays patterns that were not visible before."

"By now it may be clear that the position I'm developing is a sort of post-Darwinian Kantianism."

"Kuhn’s treatment of philosophical ideas is neither systematic nor rigorous. He rarely engaged in the stock-in-trade of modern philosophers, the careful and precise analysis of the details of other philosophers’ views, and when he did so the results were not encouraging."

"Thomas Kuhn was undoubtedly the strongest influence on the philosophy of science in the last third of the twentieth century. Yet today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century it is unclear what his legacy really is. In the philosophy of science there is no characteristically Kuhnian school. This could be because we are all Kuhnians now. But it might also be because Kuhn's thought, although revolutionary in its time, has since been superseded. In a sense both may be true."

"Partly because he was an outsider to philosophy he was unable to appreciate that philosophy of science had gone beyond Kuhn in distancing itself from positivism. And thus when he rejected aspects of contemporary philosophy of science—notably referentialism and a realist conception of truth—he was unintentionally aligning himself more closely to positivism than to its opponents."

"To introduce my story, I take the reader back to 1962, when the academic world saw the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolution, by Thomas Kuhn. … Most certainly, it upset my own Logical Empiricist assumptions. It had that effect for two reasons. The first was his claim, vividly documented, that past scientific revolutions were not the unambiguous expression of sheerly logical and experimental factors, rationally played out according to a well-defined methodology. Rather, they were the expression of a variety of nonlogical factors as well: social, psychological, metaphysical, technological, aesthetic, and personal. … The second reason for the ensuing controversy was his claim, also well-documented, that the unit of scientific understanding is not the sentence, or set of sentences, but rather the so-called "paradigm", or family of paradigms."

"In fact, Kuhn is decidedly conservative in his methodological impulses. If science is politics, then he is a staunch Tory, not an anything-goes radical. In fact, Kuhn was not attacking scientific standards. Rather, he was attacking a false and confabulatory theory about the nature of scientific standards, a worthy and nontrivial philosophical theory called Logical Empiricism, a theory that tried to capture all such standards in narrowly logical terms. If one already accepts that orthodox but confabulatory theory, as most philosophers did, then one is doomed to see an attack on it as an attack on scientific standards in general. But it needn't be so. Once we have seen that a scientific theory is much more than a set of sentences, then we can appreciate that its evaluation must encompass much more than mere logical relations among sentences. Once we are freed from the grip of the orthodox philosophical approach, we can pursue the question of theory evaluation with a fresh eye."

"Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), is the godfather of all the subsequent discussions, and it should be noted that Kuhn's book is perhaps the all-time champion in the category of Enthusiastically Misunderstood Classic. It's a wonderful book, in spite of all the misuse to which it's been put."

"Kuhn’s book has been misread and misused in many quarters; Kuhn’s excellent points are not as radical as many like to believe."

"How do scientists think? The short answer: very much like you or me. If that statement doesn’t raise any eyebrows today, it’s because of a college professor named Thomas Kuhn who died in 1996."

"A lot of people have put Genealogy of Morals on their lists because Nietzsche was the first person they read who pointed out that morals might have an instrumental and particularistic motivation. I’m not sure Kuhn is completely correct in his vivisection of how science works, but it was only after reading this book that I began to recognize the instrumental, cognitive, and sociological dimensions of scientists."

"A few years ago I happened to meet Kuhn at a scientific meeting and complained to him about the nonsense that had been attached to his name. He reacted angrily. In a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the hall, he shouted, "One thing you have to understand. I am not a Kuhnian." Kuhn never said that science is a political power struggle. If some of his followers claim that he denied the objective validity of science, it is only because he overemphasized the role of ideas and underemphasized the role of experimental facts in science."

"Thomas Kuhn is the Thomas Hobbes of science, assuring us that unless there is an Absolute (conceptual) Sovereign, known as The Paradigm, all is chaos, and the life of cognitive ideas is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

"Without doubt, Kuhn's work was the single most influential force in creating the intersection of history, philosophy and sociology of science that became identified as 'science studies'. The irony and tragedy is that, in spite of official honours and genuine attempts at reconciliation by both Kuhn and others, he himself was never truly at home in any of these disciplines, nor in their intersection. The majority of historians and philosophers of science never permitted Kuhn to feel genuinely comfortable in their professional associations. The sociologists tried, but Kuhn himself was not comfortable in their company. He died professionally homeless."

"I did learn from Kuhn that he was very dissatisfied with the way in which his earlier book, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was being transformed into an anti-science post-modern diatribe by many academics. He taught me that there is nothing post-modern whatever about his theory of scientific change. I never forgot the lesson."

"So who cares? We should care. Kuhn's work supports the idea that science progresses from-what-we-know to what-we-know-next. This is in contrast with the Whig interpretation of science, which is the inevitable march from darkness to light, from confusion to clarity, from error to truth. Of course, there is nothing wrong with teaching physics by recounting its past successes, but that is not in fact how the dynamic of knowledge works."

"Kuhn cannot take seriously that “there is some one full, objective, true account of nature.” Does this mean that he does not take truth seriously? Not at all. [...] Kuhn did reject a simple “correspondence theory” which says true statements correspond to facts about the world.[...] In the wave of skepticism that swept American scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, many influential intellectuals took Kuhn as an ally in their denials of truth as a virtue. I mean the thinkers of the sort that cannot write down or utter the word true except by literally or figuratively putting quotation marks around it—to indicate how they shudder at the very thought of so harmful a notion. Many reflective scientists, who admire much of what Kuhn says about the sciences, believe he encouraged deniers. It is true that Structure gave enormous impetus to sociological studies of science. Some of that work, with its emphasis on the idea that facts are “socially constructed” and apparent participation in the denial of “truth,” is exactly what conservative scientists protest against. Kuhn made plain that he himself detested that development of his work..."

"Notice that there is no sociology in the book. Scientific communities and their practices are, however, at its core, entering with paradigms, as we saw, at page 10 and continuing to the final page of the book. There had been sociology of scientific knowledge before Kuhn, but after Structure it burgeoned, leading to what is now called science studies. This is a self-generating field (with, of course, its own journals and societies) that includes some work in the history and the philosophy of sciences and technology, but whose emphasis is on sociological approaches of various kinds, some observational, some theoretical. Much, and perhaps most, of the really original thinking about the sciences after Kuhn has had a sociological bent. Kuhn was hostile to these developments. In the opinion of many younger workers, that is regrettable. Let us put it down to dissatisfaction with growing pains of the field, rather than venturing into tedious metaphors about fathers and sons. One of Kuhn’s marvelous legacies is science studies as we know it today."

"Well, he wasn't a relativist. There's a long and complicated story of the rise of a desire for scientific relativism. Part of it may well be simply sort of rage against reason, the fear of the sciences and a kind of total dislike of the arrogance of a great many scientists who say we're finding out the truth about everything—and here [with Kuhn] there was a way to undermine that arrogance."

"Kuhn had the genius to find the words and sketch the concepts that made important old philosophical problems relevant to the public and newly discussable by philosophers. He had the strength of mind and commitment to lead the discussion. He could speak the truly incommensurable languages of physics, philosophy, and history, all necessary to frame and advance his epistemological quest. He wrote, as one of his admirers, Margaret Masterman, put it, in a "quasi-poetic style," sometimes veiled, sometimes with "rhetorical exaggeration," but always after careful and even painful thought. Or, to switch metaphors, he drew the portrait of science in the manner of the Impressionists. At a distance, where most viewers stand, the portrait appears illuminating, persuasive, and inspiring; close in, where historians and philosophers stare, it looks sketchy, puzzling, and richly challenging."

"Kuhn's recognition that science might cease—leaving us with what Charles Sanders Peirce had defined as the "truth" about nature—made it even more imperative for Kuhn than for Popper to challenge science's authority, to deny that science can ever arrive at absolute truth. "The one thing I think you shouldn't say is that now we've found out what the world is really like," Kuhn said. "Because that's not what I think the game is about.""

"In Structure, the “third and most important aspect of […] incommensurability” is world change (p. 150) There have been several reactions to this claim: a. Dismissal because of idealism b. Defusing of world change by a metaphorical or psychological reading c. “Neo-Kantian” reading"

"World change, reaction a: dismissalIsrael Scheffler in Science and Subjectivity, 1967, p. 19: “I cannot, myself, believe that this bleak picture, representing an extravagant idealism, is true.” The full argument contains four premises and one conclusion (this is for the philosophers): P1: Incommensurability encompasses world change P2: World change (in revolutions) implies idealism. P3: Idealism is bullshit. P4: Bullshit can be dismissed. Conclusion: Incommensurability can be dismissed. Ad P2: Yes, perhaps, but what sort of idealism? Ad P3: The high-school version of idealism is certainly very questionable: “What reality is depends on how you think of it” – period Was this Kuhn’s view?"

"World change, reaction b: metaphorical/psychological[...] The metaphorical/psychological reading of world change does not capture Kuhn’s intentions."

"World change, reaction c: “Neo-Kantian”From 1979 onward, Kuhn described his position as Kantian with “temporally mutable categories” (or in Peter Lipson’s words: Kuhn’s position is “Kant on wheels”) Note first that this cannot be entirely correct because"

"Kuhn as does Popper rejects the idea that science grows by accumulation of eternal truths.. But while according to Popper science is ‘revolution in permanence’, and criticism the heart of the scientific enterprise, according to Kuhn revolution is exceptional and, indeed, extra-scientific, and criticism is, in ‘normal’ times, anathema... The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. It concerns our central intellectual values, and has implications not only for theoretical physics but also for the underdeveloped social sciences and even for moral and political philosophy. If even in science there is no other way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power. Thus Kuhn’s position would vindicate, no doubt, unintentionally, the basic political credo of contemporary religious maniacs (‘student revolutionaries’)."

"What, then, is the hallmark of science? Do we have to capitulate and agree that a scientific revolution is just an irrational change in commitment, that it is a religious conversion? Tom Kuhn, a distinguished American philosopher of science, arrived at this conclusion after discovering the naivety of Popper’s falsificationism. But if Kuhn is right, then there is no explicit demarcation between science and pseudoscience, no distinction between scientific progress and intellectual decay, there is no objective standard of honesty."

"What truth is not, according to Kuhn, is an accurate representation of the world as it is in itself. Scientific theories represent a world, but one partially constituted by the cognitive activities of the scientists themselves. This is not a commonsensical view, but it has a distinguished philosophical pedigree, associated most strongly with Kant. The Kantian view is that the truths we can know are truths about a ‘phenomenal’ world that is the joint product of the ‘things in themselves’ and the organising, conceptual activity of the human mind. Kuhn, however, is Kant on wheels. Where Kant held that the human contribution to the phenomenal world is invariant, Kuhn’s view is that it changes fundamentally across a scientific revolution. This is what he means by his notorious statement that, after a scientific revolution, ‘the world changes’. This is neither the trivial claim that scientists’ beliefs about the world change, nor the crazy claim that scientists can change the things in themselves simply by changing their beliefs. It is the claim that the phenomenal world changes because the human contribution to it changes."

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions contains some nice observations on the nature of what Kuhn calls “normal science”, which makes it out to have none of the heroic aspects that Popper insisted on. But when Kuhn goes beyond normal science to “revolutionary science” the book is a disaster. It promotes an irrationalist view of scientific revolutions that is both false and pernicious. The Copernican Revolution is a lovely book, much needed at the time. Planck and the Black Body Discontinuity is a mixed bag: some good historiography and some poor analysis."

"Kuhn's description of how scientific revolutions happen does not apply to any biological revolution. To be very frank, I cannot understand how this book could have been such a success. The general thesis was not new, and when he did assert specific claims he was almost always wrong! Kuhn's book mainly appealed to historians and social scientists. It was they who built it up into a big thing. It was vague, and vagueness always appeals to historians and social scientists."

"Much of what Kuhn says about great theoretical shifts, and the inertial role of long-established scientific paradigms and their cultural entrenchment in resisting recalcitrant evidence until it becomes overwhelming, is entirely reasonable, but it is also entirely compatible with the conception of science as seeking, and sometimes finding, objective truth about the world. What has made him a relativist hero is the addition of provocative remarks to the effect that Newton and Einstein, or Ptolemy and Galileo, live in "different worlds," that the paradigms of different scientific periods are "incommensurable," and that it is a mistake to think of the progress of science over time as bringing us closer to the truth about how the world really is."

"This brutal summary of the revolutionary process does not do justice to the complexity and subtlety of Kuhn's thinking. To appreciate these, you have to read his book. But it does perhaps indicate why Structure… came as such a bombshell to the philosophers and historians who had pieced together the Whig interpretation of scientific progress."

"When Thomas Kuhn talked about paradigm shifts within science, he defined a paradigm as a disciplinary matrix, which included not just the dominant theoretical framework within a given science (say, quantum mechanics in modern fundamental physics), but also the vocabulary and methods accepted within the community, the range of questions deemed interesting, as well as the textbooks and other training tools for the next generation of scientists. In a very real sense, then, physics, biology, analytical philosophy, continental philosophy, and so forth are indeed “traditions,” and the best (if not the only) way to learn them is not just by reading books at home, but by engaging in personal training over a number of years. That’s one reason why lone individuals who style themselves as revolutionary geniuses and who are convinced to have discovered proof that, for instance, general relativity is flawed are (much) more likely to be cranks than anything else. And that is also why, again in part, pseudoscience has a very different character from the genuine article."

"Kuhn’s (and Feyerabend’s) account of the historical development of science threatens inductivist and hypothetico-deductivist methodologies in a straightforward and dramatic way. When we look at what past scientists do, their work does not seem to fit the methods described by either inductivists or hypothetico-deductivists. Scientists engaged in normal science are pursuing neither confirmations nor refutations of their theory. They are engaged in an activity that Kuhn calls articulating the paradigm, which as we have seen involves many things other than theory testing. That is an important negative conclusion, and the method of arriving at it should appeal to the naturalist. The argument is essentially an empirical one. The history of science refutes (or at least shows the inadequacy of) the most popular methodologies of science. But Kuhn’s and Feyerabend’s description of scientific revolutions also presents two problems for the naturalist. First, since both claim that there is never a compelling reason to change from one paradigm to another, their accounts of science threaten to make scientific change look irrational. If that story is right, it should shake the naturalists’ conviction that science is to be admired as much as they think. Secondly, even if we could retell the story of scientific progress to remove some of the arbitrariness that Kuhn and Feyerabend claim exists; even if we could explain why scientists have changed paradigms and thereby methods from one period to the next, then we shall still have to confront another issue. If the methods of science have changed through history, that means there is no such thing as the scientific method, and so obviously no way to make use of the methods of science in philosophy."

"Up until the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, the history, philosophy, and sociology of science maintained an internalist approach to scientific knowledge claims. Science was seen as somehow above any social, political, or cultural influences, and therefore, the examinations of scientific knowledge focused on areas such as 'discoveries,' 'famous men,' and 'the scientific revolution in the West.' When Kuhn opened the door to the possibility that external factors were involved in the development of scientific paradigms, science studies assumed a more critical tone."

"Whatever Kuhn’s intentions, I believe that his effect on general culture, though not on the practices of real scientists, has been unfortunate, because it has served to “demythologize” science, to “debunk” it, to prove that it is not what ordinary people have supposed it to be. Kuhn paved the way for the even more radical skeptical view of Paul Feyerabend, who argued that as far as giving us truths about the world, science is no better than witchcraft."

"Finally, by the early 1960s, Thomas Kuhn’s picture of “normal science” portrayed scientific activity not as an open-minded philosophical quest but as puzzle-solving—the extension and application of existing paradigms. To the shock and indignation of some, Kuhn argued that being a scientist involved obedience to “dogma” and a narrowing of perception. Science remained, of course, the most reliable knowledge we had, but whatever moral authority might follow from regarding science as uniquely free of prejudice was—for those persuaded by Kuhn—no longer available."

"To put the mater simply, I think that Kuhn might have vastly overemphasized the role of scientific revolutions. I also don’t believe that an evolutionary view can be compatible with Kuhnian discontinuities."

"Not long after publication of my first article on the subject, I was given a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. This book deals with the process by which scientific paradigms are produced and replaced. I warmly endorse this book because I have lived through several of the stages described in the book."

"I’m one of the few physicists I know who likes Thomas Kuhn. He was partly a historian of science, partly a sociologist. He got the basic idea right of what happens when the scientific paradigm shifts. A radical change of perspective suddenly occurs. Wholly new ideas, concepts, abstractions and pictures become relevant. Relativity was a big paradigm shift. Quantum mechanics was a big paradigm shift. So we keep on inventing new realisms. They never completely replace the old ideas, but they do largely replace them with concepts that work better, that describe nature better, that are often very unfamiliar, that make people question what is meant by “reality.” Then the next thing comes along and turns that on its head. And we are always surprised that the old ways of thinking, the wiring that we have or the mathematical wiring that we may have created, simply fail us."

"Although Kuhn's emphasis on revolutionary change was an antidote to the simplistic models of the logical empiricists, a finer-grained theory of revolutionary change than Kuhn presented need not succumb to irrationalism. To develop such a theory, however, we need tools different from both the formal ones of the logical empiricists and the vague historical ones of Kuhn."

"[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions] was hugely influential, especially on the liberal arts, giving them ammunition to suggest that science was no better way of knowing the truth than any other way of investigating. It made a huge case of scientists gathering around one truth, and then there’s a tipping point and everyone moves away from that truth to gather around another truth. Hence the title of the book. And this left people with the sense that science is just whatever is in fashion. Kuhn used, as his best example of this, Copernicus. That’s half his book ... almost half of that book describes the Copernican Revolution as an example of the way science works. But that’s not how science works. It’s just not. It’s how things happened until 1600."

"In his celebrated book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn went a step further and argued that in scientific revolutions the standards (or “paradigms”) by which scientists judge theories change, so that the new theories simply cannot be judged by the prerevolutionary standards. There is much in Kuhn’s book that fits my own experience in science. But in the last chapter Kuhn tentatively attacked the view that science makes progress toward objective truths: “We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth.” Kuhn’s book lately seems to have become read (or at least quoted) as a manifesto for a general attack on the presumed objectivity of science."

"The changes in the way we judge our theories have bothered philosophers and historians of science. Thomas Kuhn’s early book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, emphasized this process of change in our scientific standards. I think Kuhn went overboard in concluding that there was a complete incommensurability between present and past standards, but it is correct that there is a qualitative change in the kind of scientific theory we want to develop that has taken place at various times in the history of science. But Kuhn then proceeded to the fallacy—much clearer in what he has written recently—that in science we are not in fact moving toward objective truth. I call this a fallacy because it seems to me a simple non sequitur. I do not see why the fact that we are discovering not only the laws of nature in detail, but what kinds of laws are worth discovering, should mean that we are not making objective progress."

"By the way, in this respect my friend Thomas Kuhn has a lot to answer for. He distances himself from the postmoderns and the social constructivists, but he is endlessly quoted by them. He distances himself in saying that there is a place for evidence and reason in the scientific process—good to hear—but he attacks the idea that we are moving toward objective truth. As far as I can tell from one of his recent articles, his reason for rejecting the idea that science moves toward objective truth is that he and other philosophers have not succeeded in defining truth—and he cannot say what truth would be. This seems a bit like saying that because farmers cannot define cows or the difference between cows and, say, buffaloes, one should doubt the objective existence of cows. I would argue that it’s not the job of farmers to define cows; that’s the job of zoologists. Likewise, it’s not the job of physicists or other scientists to define truth; that’s the job of philosophers. If they haven’t done that job, too bad for them. But just as the farmer generally knows cows when he sees them, we scientists usually know truth when we see it."

"Now, that really was a paradigm shift. For Kuhn it seems to have been the paradigm of paradigm shifts, which set a pattern into which he tried to shoehorn every other scientific revolution. It really does fit Kuhn's description of paradigm shifts: it is extraordinarily difficult for a modern scientist to get into the frame of mind of Aristotelian physics, and Kuhn's statement that all previous views of reality have proved false, though not true of Newtonian mechanics or Maxwellian electrodynamics, certainly does apply to Aristotelian physics. Revolutions in science seem to fit Kuhn's description only to the extent that they mark a shift in understanding some aspect of nature from pre-science to modern science. The birth of Newtonian physics was a mega-paradigm shift, but nothing that has happened in our understanding of motion since then—not the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian mechanics, or from classical to quantum physics—fits Kuhn's description of a paradigm shift."

"Kuhn rejected our old metaphysics—consciousness consists of an inner representation of an outer reality—as incoherent, impossible, and fundamentally inhuman. That's why he begins SSR by invoking history not as a discipline that can be applied to science, but as a necessary part of scientific understanding. … The problems that dominated Kuhn's life after his great moment of insight arose not because Kuhn wasn't brilliant enough. Rather, they arose and persist because while we increasingly understand that the old metaphysical paradigm has failed, for several generations now we have not found our new paradigm."

"The Road since Structure is a collection of essays by Kuhn along with a lengthy interview with him conducted in 1995 by Aristide Baltas, Kostas Gavroglu, and Vassiliki Kindi. The essays form part of Kuhn’s thirty-year effort to clarify the contrast between paradigm shifts and normal science, with a focus on philosophical issues. For example, Kuhn alarmed many scientists with his claim that, while science makes progress, this progress is not towards truth but rather involves never-ending change through paradigm shifts. But the scientists have not realized that Kuhn’s claim is based on a philosopher’s definition of “truth,” which is not achieved (if ever) until there is exact knowledge of the ultimate constituents of matter on the quantum-gravity scale. Scientists use a less demanding definition for the word “truth,” in which measured parameters can be subject to nonzero error bars."

"Thomas Kuhn believed that a science has to become a "paradigm", with a shared technical language that excludes outsiders, before it can get any real work done. In the formative stages of a science, according to Kuhn, the adherents go to great pains to make their work comprehensible to outside academics. But (according to Kuhn) a science can only make real progress as a technical discipline once it abandons the requirement of outside accessibility, and scientists working in the paradigm assume familiarity with large cores of technical material in their communications. This sounds cynical, relative to what is usually said about public understanding of science, but I can definitely see a core of truth here."

"… science is the most revolutionary force in the world."

"The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence."

"Arabic science was the fruit of Semitic genius fertilized by the Iranian genius."

"The scientific books written in Arabic during the Middle Ages were, for a few centuries, the main vehicle of the living science."

"As I grew older my lectures became simpler; I tried to say fewer things and to say them better, with more humanity. This book continues in a different way the same evolution, but it is not yet as simple as I would have liked to have made it."

"The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level."

"Erudition without pedantry is as a rare as wisdom itself."

"It is childish to assume that science began in Greece; the Greek "miracle" was prepared by millenia of work in Egypt, Mesopotamia and possibly in other regions. Greek science was less an invention than a revival."

"Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations."

"Scientific achievements seem evanescent, because the very progress of science causes their supersedure; yet some of them are of so fundamental a nature that they are immortal in a deeper way."

"From the humanistic point of view every human achievement is unforgettable and immortal in its essence, even if it is replaced by a "better" one."

"Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude."

"The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect."

"Our own culture, of Greek and Hebraic origin, is the one that interests us the most... We do not say that it is the best culture, but simply that it is ours. To claim that it of necessity superior would be wrong and evil. That attitude is the main source of international trouble in the world. ...Each nation prefers its own usages."

"My main interest... is the love of truth, whether pleasant or not. Truth is self-sufficient, and there is nothing to which it can be subordinated without loss. When truth is made subservient to anything else, however great (say religion), it becomes impure and sordid."

"Wisdom is not mathematical, nor astronomical, nor zoological; when it talks too much of any one thing it ceases to be itself. There are wise physicists, but wisdom is not physical; there are wise physicians, but wisdom is not medical."

"The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up."

"Some men are abstract-minded, and they naturally think first of unity and God, of wholeness, of infinity and other such concepts, while the minds of other men are concrete and they cogitate about health and disease, profit and loss. They invent gadgets and remedies; they are less interested in knowing anything than in applying whatever knowledge... to practical problems... The first are called dreamers; the second kind are recognized as practical and useful. History has often proved the shortsightedness of the practical men and vindicated the "lazy" dreamers; it has also proved that the dreamers are often mistaken."

"There are two kinds of people in the world, whom we might dub the jobholders and the enthusiasts. ...The majority of the kings and emperors were jobholders and so were many of the popes. ...Most of the creators in the field of art and religion, and many of them in the field of science, were enthusiasts. Now economic conditions may deeply affect the jobs and the jobholders, but they make little impression on the enthusiasts. ...the jobholders ...keep things going with enough continuity and smoothness; they are the builders of usages and customs, the defenders of morality and justice. ...the enthusiasts ...are the main instruments of change and progress; they are the real creators and troublemakers. The enthusiasts are the salt of the earth, but man cannot live by salt alone."

"The history of science should not be an instrument to defend any kind of social or philosophic theory; it should be used only for its own purpose, to illustrate impartially the working of reason against unreason, the gradual unfolding of truth, in all its forms, whether pleasant or unpleasant, useful or useless, welcome or unwelcome."

"We can imagine that the Academy, which could be attended only by men of leisure, was a cradle of discontent. The author of the Laws was a disgruntled old man, full of political rancor, fearing and hating the crowd and above all their demagogues; his prejudices had crystallized and he had become an old doctrinaire, unable to see anything but the reflections of his own personality and to hear anything but the echoes of his own thoughts. The worst of it was that he, a noble Athenian, admired the very Spartans who had defeated and humiliated his fatherland. Plato was witnessing a social revolution (even as we are) and he could not bear it at all. His main concern was: how could one stop it."

"The main task of mankind was accomplished by Muslims. The greatest philosopher, al-Farabi, was a Muslim; the greatest mathematicians, Abu Kamil and Ibrahim ibn Sinan, Were Muslims; the greatest geographer and encyclopaedist, al-Mas'udi, was a Muslim; the greatest historian, aI-Tabari, was still a Muslim."

"The Hellenistic world was international to a degree, polyglot and inspired by many religious faiths. ...the Greek ideals were pagan and the Hellenistic age witnessed their death struggle against Asiatic and Egyptian mysteries, on the one side, and against Judaism, on the other."

"The intensity of a national culture should be represented by... the general education level and... the exceptional merit of a small elite of pioneers."

"In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high. ...the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B.C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone..."

"The whole past and the whole world are alive in my heart, and I shall do my part to communicate their presence to my readers."

"A deed happens in a definite place at a definite time, but if it be sufficiently great and pregnant, its virtue radiates everywhere in time and space."

"If we are generous enough, we can stretch our souls everywhere and everywhen else. If we succeed in doing so, we shall discover that our present embraces the past and the future and that the whole world is our province."

"All men are our brothers. As far as the discovery of the truth is concerned, they are all working for the same purpose; they may be separated by the accidents of space and time, and by the exigencies of race, religion, nationality, and other groupings; from the point of view of eternity they are working together."

"Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions."

"Superstitions... are nothing but persistent errors, foolish beliefs, and irrational fears. Superstitions are infinite in number and scope... It would not do to ignore them altogether, only if we should never forget the weakness and fragility of our minds. The consciousness that superstitions are rife in our own society is a healthy shock to our self-conceit and a warning. ...it lets us judge ancient superstitions with more indulgence and with a sense of humor. We could not overlook them without falsifying the general picture nor judge them too severely without hypocrisy."

"I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader."

"Ancient portraits are symbolic images without any immediate relation to the individuals represented; they are not portraits as we understand them. ...It is remarkable that philologists who are capable of carrying accuracy to the extremes in the case of words are as credulous as babies when it comes to "images," and yet an image is so full of information that ten thousands words would not add up to it."

"The whole iconography of ancient science is simply the fruit of wishful thinking."

"Some forty years of experience in my field as a scholar and as a teacher have given me great confidence mixed with greater humility."

"My gratitude to them [my first teachers] grows as I myself grow older."

"About Archimedes one remembers that he did strange things: he ran around naked shouting Heureka!, plunged crowns into water, drew geometric figures as he was about to be killed, and so on. … One ends up forgetting he was a scientist of whom we still have many writings."

"Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection."

"Since UFO stands for "unidentified flying object", the word ufology means approximately "knowledge about unknown flying objects", and is therefore a "science" whose content is void by definition. Similar considerations hold for parapsychology."

"Euclid … manages to obtain a rigorous proof without ever dealing with infinity, by reducing the problem [of the infinitude of primes] to the study of finite numbers. This is exactly what contemporary mathematical analysis does."

"Today Eratosthenes' method [of calculating the circumference of the earth] seems almost banal … yet it is inaccessible to prescientific civilizations, and in all of Antiquity not a single Latin author succeeded in stating it coherently."

"Many scholars have felt that the Heronian passage [on a pipe-organ moved by an anemourion-like wheel] can be disregarded because it is not confirmed by other writings. Heron presumably mentioned the anemourion in a moment of distraction, forgetting that it had not been invented yet. We know that he was given to such lapses."

"From semantics to shipbuilding, from dream theory to propositional logic, any specialist … is invariably astonished to discover that modern knowledge was foreshadowed at the time. … Should we not replace these foreshadowings by the study of the influences of Hellenistic thought on modern thought?"

"The oft-heard comment that Leonardo [da Vinci]'s genius managed to transcend the culture of his time is amply justified. But his was not a science-fiction voyage into the future as much as a plunge into the past."

"The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. … The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric."

"Science is not inevitable; this question is very fruitful indeed."

"Mercury on its axis turns like the Moon: One side has lasting day, the other night; One side in everlasting fire doth swoon; While th'other hides forever from the light."

"Amid the vast modern network of universities, corporate laboratories, and national science foundations has arisen an awareness that the best financed and best organized of research enterprises have not learned to engender, perhaps not even to recognize, world-tuning originality."

"Computer programs are the most intricate, delicately balanced and finely interwoven of all the products of human industry to date. They are machines with far more moving parts than any engine: the parts don't wear out, but they interact and rub up against one another in ways the programmers themselves cannot predict."

"It was God who breathed life into matter and inspired its many textures and processes. ...Rather than turn away from what he could not explain, he plunged in more deeply. ...There were forces in nature that he would not be able to understand mechanically, in terms of colliding billiard balls or swirling vortices. They were vital, vegetable, sexual forces—invisible forces of spirit and attraction. Later, it had been Newton, more than any other philosopher, who effectively purged science of the need to resort to such mystical qualities. For now, he needed them."

"Chaotic theory is mathematically based on non-linear propositions, "meaning that they expressed relationships that were not strictly proportional. Linear relationships can be captured with a straight line on a graph""

"Linear relationships can be captured with a straight line on a graph. Linear relationships are easy to think about....Linear equations are solvable... Linear systems have an important modular virtue: you can take them apart, and put them together again — the pieces add up."

"In the thousands of articles that made up the technical literature of chaos, few were cited more often than "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow." For years, no single object would inspire more illustrations, even motion pictures, than the mysterious curve depicted at the end, the double spiral that became known as the Lorenz attractor."

"Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads by choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the subtle disciplines"

"Sometimes I fear that, if Harvard does not give up trying to turn itself from an Institution of Learning into an Educational Institution, we may have a generation of professors whose duty it will be to disseminate information which they have not the time to acquire."

"I believe that robotic thinking helps precision of psychological thought, and will continue to help it until psychophysiology is so far advanced that an image is nothing other than a neural event, and object constancy is obviously just something that happens in the brain. That time is still a long way off, and in the interval I choose to sit cozily with my robot, squeezing his hand and feeling a thrill -- a scientist's thrill -- when he squeezes mine back again."

"Half the time I read Hayek's The Sensory Order with amazement at the extent of his reading and comprehension … he is right … most of the time."

"The experimental psychologist... needs historical sophistication within his own sphere of expertness. Without such knowledge he sees the present in distorted perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and methods. In this matter I can hardly state my faith too strongly. A psychological sophistication that contains no component of historical orientation seems to me to be no sophistication at all."

"Broca’s famous observation was in itself very simple. There had in 1831 been admitted at the Bicêtre, an insane hospital near Paris, a man whose sole defect seemed to be that he could not talk. He communicated intelligently by signs and was otherwise mentally normal. He remained at the Bicêtre for thirty years with this defect and on April 12, 1861, was put under the care of Broca, the surgeon, because of a gangrenous infection. Broca for five days subjected him to a careful examination, in which he satisfied himself that the musculature of the larynx and articulatory organs was not hindered in normal movements, that there was no other paralysis that could interfere with speech, and that the man was intelligent enough to speak. On April 17 the patient— fortunately, it must have seemed, for science—died; and within a day Broca had performed an autopsy, discovering a lesion in the third frontal convolution of the left cerebral hemisphere, and had presented the brain in alcohol to the Société d’Anthropologie."

"Leibniz foreshadowed the entire doctrine of the unconscious, but Herbart actually began it. Wundt was to appeal first to unconscious inference in order to explain perception, and then to apperception. Fechner was to take from Herbart the notion of the measurement of the magnitude..."

"[ ] was troubled by materialism... His philosophical solution of the spiritual problem lat in his affirmation of the identity of the mind and matter and in his assurance that the entire universe can be regarded as readily from the point of view of its consciousness... as it can be viewed as inert matter."

"So far as consciousness goes, one does one's thinking before one knows what he is to think about."

"Titchener interest lay in the generalized, normal, adult mind that had also been Wundt's main concern."

"American psychology inherited its physical body from German experimentalism, but it got its mind from Darwin."

"Psychologically attention is drainage, whatever it may be physiologically."

"[William James, in the 1890s] began that metamorphosis of German psychology which was to alter the Teutonic worm of sensory content into the American butterfly of functional reality."

"The gift of professional maturity comes only to the psychologist who knows the history of his science."

"It is not likely that the history of psychology can be written in the next three centuries without mention of Freud's name and still claim to be a general history of psychology... Perhaps, had Freud been smothered in his cradle, the times would have produced a substitute, It is hard to say. The dynamics of history lack control experiments."

"Introspectionism got its ism because the protesting new schools needed a clear and stable contrasting background against which to exhibit their novel features. No proponent of introspection a the basic method of psychology ever called himself an introspectionist."

"Introspection with inference and meaning left out as much as possible becomes a dull taxonomic account of sensory events which, since they suggest almost no functional value for the organism, are peculiarly uninteresting to the American scientific temper."

"The historical approach to understanding of scientific fact is what differentiates the scholar in science from the mere experimenter."

"[ Titchener ] always seemed to me the nearest approach to genius of anyone with whom I have been closely associated.… He was competent with languages, and could ad lib in Latin when the occasion required it. If you had mushrooms, he would tell you at once how they should be cooked. If you were buying oak for a new floor, he would at once come forward with all the advantages of ash. If you were engaged to be married, he would have his certain and insistent advice about the most unexpected aspects of your problems, and if you were honeymooning, he would write to remind you, as he did me, on what day you ought to be back at work."

"Scientific truth, like puristic truth, must come about by controversy. Personally this view is abhorrent to me. It seems to mean that scientific truth must transcend the individual, that the best hope of science lies in its greatest minds being often brilliantly and determinedly wrong, but in opposition, with some third, eclectically minded, middle-of-the-road nonentity seizing the prize while the great fight for it, running off with it, and sticking it into a textbook for sophomores written from no point of view and in defense of nothing whatsoever. I hate this view, for it is not dramatic and it is not fair; and yet I believe that it is the verdict of the history of science."

"Fechner laid down the general outlines of his program [psychophysics] in ZendAvesta, the book about heaven and the future life. Imagine sending a graduate student of psychology nowadays to the Divinity School for a course in immortality as preparation for advanced experimental work in psychophysics! How narrow we have become!"

"Proponents of the cyclical view of history will find in the 1920s poignant parallels with contemporary controversies between "pure" and "applied" psychologists. During that decade no advocate of the ideal of pure research was more embroiled professionally in the bitter debates surrounding that issue than E. G. Boring. While preoccupied with the practicalist challenge, Boring was also at work on his prodigious History of Experimental Psychology."

"Once Boring was invited to dinner at Titchener’s to celebrate Titchener’s birthday. After dinner the cigars were passed and Boring could not refuse under the circumstances, though he had never smoked a cigar. The consequence was that he had to excuse himself presently because of his nausea and go outside to throw up. Still, the honor of having been invited once was so great that every year thereafter Titchener’s birthday would be celebrated by dinner at the Boring home, followed by the smoking of a cigar, with the inevitable consequence."

"In his approach to the history of psychology, E. G. Boring (1886–1968) stressed the importance of the Zeitgeist in determining whether, or to what extent, an idea or viewpoint will be accepted. Clearly, ideas do not occur in a vacuum. A new idea, to be accepted or even considered, must be compatible with existing ideas. In other words, a new idea will be tolerated only if it arises within an environment that can assimilate it."

"The key role in creation of the origin myth of psychology as a “laboratory science” belongs to Edwin Boring (1929)."

"The Introductio does not boast an impressive number of editions, yet its influence was pervasive. In originality and in the richness of its scope it ranks among the greatest of textbooks; but it is outstanding also for clarity of exposition. Published two hundred and two years ago, it nevertheless possesses a remarkable modernity of terminology and notation, as well as of viewpoint. Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery."

"But what, after all, are the integers? Everyone thinks that he or she knows, for example, what the number three is — until he or she tries to define or explain it."

"It should be mentioned also that the Hindus, unlike the Greeks, regarded irrational roots of numbers as numbers. This was of enormous help in algebra, and Indian mathematicians have been much praised for taking this step; but one must remember that the Hindu contribution in this case was the result of logical innocence rather than of mathematical insight. We have seen the lack of nice distinction on the part of Hindu mathematicians between exact and inexact results, and it was only natural that they should not have taken seriously the difference between commensurable and incommensurable magnitudes. For them there was no impediment to the acceptance of irrational numbers, and later generations followed their lead uncritically until in the nineteenth century mathematicians established the real number system on a sound basis."

"A Hebrew belief asserted that if Yahweh lays aside his bow and hangs it in the clouds, this is a sign that his anger has subsided. Other peoples have had similar ideas, based upon the tradition that an archer carries his bow with the ends pointing downward when he wishes to indicate his peaceful intentions."

"In ancient classical literature the rainbow sometimes was deified as Iris; at other times it was regarded merely as the route traversed by the messenger of Hera. The conception of the rainbow as a pathway or bridge has been widespread. For some it has been the best of all bridges, built out of three colors; for others the phrase "building on the rainbow" has meant a bootless enterprise. North American Indians were among those who thought of the rainbow as the Pathway of Souls, an interpretation found in many other places. Among the Japanese the rainbow is identified as the "Floating Bridge of Heaven"; and Hawaiian and Polynesian myths allude to the bow as the path to the upper world. In the Austrian Alps the souls of the righteous are said to ascend the bow to heaven; and in New Zealand the dead chieftains are believed to pass along it to reach their new home. In parts of France the rainbow is called the pont du St. Esprit, and in many places it is the bridge of St. Bernard or of St. Martin or of St. Peter. Basque pilgrims knew it as the 'puente de Roma'. Sometimes it is called instead the Croy de St. Denis (or of St. Leonard or of St. Bernard or of St. Martin). In Italy the name arcu de Santa Marina is relatively familiar. Associations of the rainbow and the milky way are frequent. The Arabic name for the milky way is equivalent to Gate of Heaven, and in Russia the analogous role was played by the rainbow. Elsewhere also the bow has been called the Gate of Paradise; and by some the rainbow has been thought to be a ray of light which falls on the earth when Peter opens the heavenly gate. In parts of France the rainbow is known as the porte de St. Jacques, while the milky way is called chemin de St. Jacques. In Swabia and Bavaria saints pass by the rainbow from heaven to earth; while in Polynesia this is the route of the gods themselves. In Eddic literature the bow served as a link between the gods and man — the Bifrost bridge, guarded by Heimdel, over which the gods passed daily. At the time of the Gotterdamerung the sons of Muspell will cross the bridge and then demolish it. Sometimes also in the Eddas the rainbow is interpreted as a necklace worn by Freyja, the "necklace of the Brisings," alluded to in Beowulf; again it is the bow of Thor from which he shoots arrows at evil spirits. Among the Finns it has been an arc which hurls arrows of fire, in Mozambique it is the arm of a conquering god. In the Japanese Ko-Ji-Ki (or Records of Ancient Matters), compiled presumably in 712, the creation of the island of Onogoro is related to the rainbow. Deities, standing upon the "floating bridge of heaven," thrust down a jeweled spear into the brine and stirred with it. When the spear was withdrawn, the brine that dripped down from the end was piled up in the form of the island. In myth and legend the rainbow has been regarded variously as a harbinger of misfortune and as a sign of good luck. Some have held it to be a bad sign if the feet of the bow rest on water, whereas a rainbow arching from dry land to dry land is a good augury. Dreambooks held that when one dreams of seeing a rainbow, he will give or receive a gift according as the bow is seen in the west or the east. The Crown-prince Frederick August took it as a good omen when, upon his receiving the kingdom form Napoleon in 1806, a rainbow appeared; but others interpreted it as boding ill, a view confirmed by the war and destruction of Saxony which ensued. By many, a rainbow appearing at the birth of a child is taken to be a favorable sign; but in Slavonic accounts a glance from the fay who sits at the foot of the rainbow, combing herself, brings death."

"Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. … This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired … A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order … As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience."

"Robert Grosseteste … was born at the decisive moment when Greek and Arabic science became accessible in Latin versions."

"Robert [Grosseteste] became much interested in science and scientific method … He was conscious of the dual approach by means of induction and deduction (resolution and composition); i.e., from the empirical knowledge one proceeds to probable general principles, and from these as premises one them derives conclusions which constitute verifications or falsifications of the principles. This approach to science was not that far removed from Aristotle ..."

"Descartes maintained his confidence in the instantaneity of light. … Yet in his derivation of the law of refraction, Descartes reasoned that light travelled faster in a dense medium than in one less dense. He seems to have had no qualms about comparing infinite magnitudes!"

"Fermat had recourse to the principle of the economy of nature. Heron and Olympiodorus had pointed out in antiquity that, in reflection, light followed the shortest possible path, thus accounting for the equality of angles. During the medieval period Alhazen and Grosseteste had suggested that in refraction some such principle was also operating, but they could not discover the law. Fermat, however, not only knew (through Descartes) the law of refraction, but he also invented a procedure—equivalent to the differential calculus—for maximizing and minimizing a function of a single variable. … Fermat applied his method … and discovered, to his delight, that the result led to precisely the law which Descartes had enunciated. But although the law is the same, it will be noted that the hypothesis contradicts that of Descartes. Fermat assumed that the speed of light in water to be less than that in air; Descartes' explanation implied the opposite."

"Carl B. Boyer … is more or less the Gibbon of math history."

"Opticks was out of harmony with the ideas of 19th-century physics. ...an exposition of the "wrong" (i.e., corpuscular) theory of light,—even though it also contained many of the basic principles of the "correct" (i.e., wave) theory. Not only had Newton erred in his choice... but also he apparently had found no insuperable difficulty in simultaneously embracing features of two opposing theories. ...by adopting a combination of the two theories at once, he had violated one of the major canons of 19th-century physics... Today our point of view is influenced by the theory of photons and matter waves, or the... complementarity of Niels Bohr; and we may read with a new interest Newtons ideas on the interaction of light and matter or his explanation of the corpuscular and undulatory aspects of light."

"Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks. This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry. ...[The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it. ...in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto... —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence."

"Galileo had the experience of beholding the heavens as they actually are for perhaps the first time, and wherever he looked he found evidence to support the Copernican system against the Ptolemaic, or at least weaken the authority of the ancients. This shattering experience—of observing the depths of the universe, of being the first mortal to know what the heavens are actually like—made so deep an impression... that it is only by considering the events of 1609... that one can understand the subsequent direction of his life."

"His conflict with the Catholic Church arose because deep in his heart Galileo was a believer. There was for him no path of compromise, no way to have separate secular and theological cosmologies. If the Copernican system was true as he believed, what else could Galileo do but fight with every weapon he had in his arsenal... to make his Church accept a new system of the universe. ...In the contrast between Galileo's heroic stand when he tried to reform the cosmological basis of orthodox theology and his humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his Copernicanism, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant on the birth of modern science."

"Isaac Newton deserves to be included in a series of companions to major philosophers even though he was not a philosopher in the sense in which Descartes, Locke, and Kant were philosophers. That is, Newton made no direct contributions to epistemology or metaphysics that would warrant his inclusion in the standard list of major philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant – or even in a list of other significant philosophers of the era – Bacon, Hobbes, Arnauld, Malebranche, Wolff, and Reid. The contributions to knowledge that made Newton a dominant figure of the last millennium were to science, not to philosophy."

"By contrast, Galileo, the other legendary scientific figure of the era, not only published the most compelling critique of Aristotelian scholasticism in his Dialogues on the Two Chief World Systems, but in the process turned the issue of the epistemic authority of theology versus the epistemic authority of empirical science into a hallmark of modern times. Although Newton clearly sympathized with Galileo, he wrote virtually nothing critical of the Aristotelian tradition in philosophy, and the immense effort he devoted to theology was aimed not at challenging its epistemic authority, but largely at putting it on a firmer footing. Newton made no direct contributions to philosophy of a similar magnitude. Indeed, from his extant writings alone Newton has more claim to being a major theologian than a major philosopher."

"The seventeenth century witnessed the birth of modern science as we know it today. The science was something new, based on a direct confrontation of nature by experiment and observation. But there was another feature of the new science—a dependence on numbers, on real numbers of actual experience. ...The ancients knew a few numerical laws... But prior to the Scientific Revolution, the goal of science (or the study of nature) was not to seek laws of nature expressed in terms of numbers or number relations. ...the new science ...not only found laws based on numbers but they were also willing to express these laws in terms of higher powers of numbers—squares and cubes."

"The pioneering practitioners of the new science knew that they were producing a new kind of knowledge and so they declared this newness in the titles of their books and articles. Thus we have Galileo's Two New Sciences, Boyle's New Experiments, Kepler's New Astronomy, and Tartaglia's New Science. When Ben Jonson presented a masque entitled "News from the New World," his new world was not the newly found continent of North America, but the new world of science, the world revealed by the telescope of Galileo."

"Proud of being the first American to receive a doctorate expressly in the history of science (as opposed to writing a thesis for a history department), I Bernard Cohen went on to lead the professionalization of the discipline and to establish a flagship history of science department at Harvard."

"Nicolaus Copernicus is the supreme example of a man who revolutionized science by looking at the old facts in a new way."

"To understand events as experienced by actual men and institutions we must be concerned with the history of errors and false starts as well as successes-although we make this distinction on the basis of what we now know of the tradition of success. As we go back in time the uncertainty of the outlook and of the objectives of scientific inquiries increases. The essence of the scientific movement is research. The answers to the essential question, what to do in scientific research-what questions to put to nature, by what methods to get answers, what to count as satisfactory answers-became clear only by the accumulation of successes and the marking of failures."

"Newton achieved the clearest appreciation of the relation between the empirical elements in a scientific system and the hypothetical elements derived from a philosophy of nature."

"Grosseteste's contribution was to emphasize the importance of falsification in the search for true causes and to develop the method of verification and falsification into a systematic method of experimental procedure."

"The strategic act by which Grosseteste and his thirteenth- and fourteenth-century successors created modern experimental science was to unite the experimental habit of the practical arts with the rationalism of twelfth-century philosophy."

"Grosseteste appears to have been the first medieval writer to recognize and deal with the two fundamental methodological problems of induction and experimental verification and falsification which arose when the Greek conception of geometrical demonstration was applied to the world of experience. He appears to have been the first to set out a systematic and coherent theory of experimental investigation and rational explanation by which the Greek geometrical method was turned into modern experimental science. As far as is known, he and his successors were the first to use and exemplify such a theory in the details of original research into concrete problems."

"In its application to natural science Grosseteste based his method of verification and falsification on two assumptions about the nature of reality. (a) The first was the principle of the uniformity of nature, meaning that forms are always uniform in their operations. ...In support of this principle he quoted 'Aristotles II de Generat.: ...'the same cause, provided it remains in the same condition, cannot produce anything but the same effect.' (b) The second assumption Grosseteste made was that of the principle of economy, or lex parsimoniae. This he also derived from Aristotle, who stated it as a pragmatic principle."

"By this lux as the first corporeal form Grosseteste did not, of course, mean simply visible light. As an emanation or propagation of substance and power lux was the basis of all bodily magnitude and of all natural operations, of which the manifestation of visible light was only one. One of the most important functions of lux was to be the intermediary between spirit and matter. It was the instrument by which God produced the macrocosm of the universe, and the instrument by which the soul made contact with the physical body and the things of sense in the microcosm of man."

"John Philoponus (c. 490-570) of Alexandria... refuted Aristotle's theory that the velocities of falling bodies in a given medium are proportional to their weight, making the observation that "if one lets fall simultaneously from the same height two bodies differing greatly in weight, one will find that the ratio of the times of their motion does not correspond to the ratios of their weights, but the difference in time is a very small one." …He also criticized Aristotle's antiperistasis theory of projectile motion, which states that the air displaced by the object flows back to push it from behind. Instead Philoponus concluded that "some incorporeal kinetic power is imparted by the thrower to the object thrown" and that "if an arrow or a stone is projected by force in a void, the same will happen much more easily, nothing being necessary except the thrower." This is the famous "impetus theory," which was revived in medieval Islam and again in fourteenth century Europe, giving rise to the beginning of modern dynamics."

"Newton's proof of the law of refraction is based on an erroneous notion that light travels faster in glass than in air, the same error that Descartes had made. This error stems from the fact that both of them thought that light was corpuscular in nature."

"Although many historians of the new millennium now take issue with the notion of a Scientific Revolution, it is generally agreed that Newton's work culminated the long development of European science, creating a synthesis that opened the way for the scientific culture of the modern age."

"Parmenides believed that all Being is what he called the One, and denied absolutely the possibility of change. He believed that the cosmos is full (i.e., no void), uncreated, eternal, indestructible, unchangeable, immobile sphere of being, and all sensory evidence to the contrary is illusory. One Parmenidean fragment stated, "Either a thing is or it is not," meaning that creation and destruction is impossible."

"The atomic theory was not generally accepted in the time of Democritus, largely because of its deterministic character, for it allows no chance, choice, or free will."

"Empedocles tried to address the problem of change by saying that there is not one fundamental arche but four—earth, water, air, and fire—which generate all the material substances in nature by mixing together in various ways under the influence of forces he called Love and Strife."

"Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (0. 500—428 BC) postulated another element called the aether, which was in constant rotation and carried with it the celestial bodies. He also believed that there was a directing intelligence in nature that he called Nous which gives order to what otherwise would be a chaotic universe. By Nous he meant literally "the Mind of the Cosmos"… Anaxagoras was the last of the Ionian physicists."

"The dominant concept in Aristotle's philosophy of nature is his notion of causation. ...The final cause states that each substance has an inherent purpose. Thus there must be a purpose or design in the acorn such that it always grows into an oak tree. This aspect of existence is indicated by the word entelechy; this means the purpose that guides things to develop in one way rather than another."

"Alexander Bain was probably the first modern thinker whose primary concern was with psychology itself He has been credited with writing the first 'comprehensive treatise having psychology as its sole purpose'. His two-volume systematic work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), was the standard British text for almost half a century, until Stout's replaced it. He also founded Mind (1876-), the first psychological journal in any country. His work requires close attention, because it is the meeting-point of experimental sensory-motor physiology and the association psychology. His influence on the conceptions of later workers was direct and extremely important. Ferrier studied classics and philosophy under Bain at Aberdeen (first class honours, 1863). When he and Jackson acknowledge their intellectual debts or make references to psychology, the names most often mentioned are Bain and Spencer-the figures whose work was the culmination of the association psychology in its traditional form."

"People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don't you say the good now days?"

"The Marxist historian Robert M. Young (1985), building on the long-standing suspicion that the selection theory reflects the competitive ethos of Victorian capitalism, has undertaken a sustained critique of Darwinism intended to show that scientific knowledge reflects the values of those who generate it."

"On the one hand, the student has been informed by some writers that the only certain way lies in the use of the entropy-function and the thermodynamic potentials; on the other hand, he is told with equal authority that the method used by the original investigators has been the consideration of cyclic processes, and that the former method is nothing but a mathematical (perhaps unnecessary) refinement of the results obtained by the latter. These extreme attitudes appear to me to be unfortunate, and more especially when one observes the physical clearness introduced by the use of cyclic processes, but at the same time remembers that most of the results obtained by separate investigators using cyclic processes had, with a great many more, previously been found by J. Willard Gibbs by means of a purely analytical method."

"If the present volume will help towards the comprehension of the fundamental principles on which the science of thermodynamics rests, and also serve to bring home the importance of a knowledge of these principles in the suggestion and interpretation of experimental work, the purpose which has been kept in view during its preparation will have been amply fulfilled. In any case, it is hoped that neither the extreme view that thermodynamic principles alone suffice in the construction of a systematic physical or chemical science, nor the equally mistaken opinion that they are of little practical utility to the experimental worker, can fairly result from its study."

"The Atomic Theory and the Periodic Law have been given prominence, since their neglect unfailingly leads to obscurity and triviality."

"Gunpowder was known to Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus about 1250, but... I conclude that both obtained a knowledge of it from Arabic sources."

"Some recent short publications on Chinese gunpowder and firearms are misleading... I have had valuable assistance from Dr. J. Needham... If the dates of the texts are correct, the discovery of the use of saltpetre in explosives and the development of gunpowder are to be sought in China from the eleventh century. The history of gunpowder is associated with that of saltpetre, no comprehensive account of which was available."

"The statement of a law of nature involves the formation of a concept, or general idea, in which the likenesses of phenomena are collected, and the differences, in so far as they are not intimately involved in the nature of the case, are eliminated."

"To a person whose experience has never been brought into relation with the object sulphur, the name signifies nothing; to the scientist... his concept involves the ideas of specific gravity, crystalline form, element, atom, and the like, derived from past experiences. His concept is distinguished from the other by involving... number or quantity."

"The earliest chemical theory was qualitative in the strictest sense; the so-called Aristotelean doctrine of the four elements assumed that air, water, earth, and fire, were qualities impressed on a primal matter; and the changes of material bodies were explained by the assumption that properties could be taken up by, and impressed upon, or removed from, the base-stuff. Transmutation as a possibility followed at once, and centuries of vain endeavour were required to impress the fact of its impossibility, leading to the true concept of element."

"The quantitative investigations of Black on the burning of lime and magnesia alba, in which the balance (previously characterized by the French chemist Jean Rey as "an instrument for clowns") was applied at every turn, led to the rejection of a hypothetical "principle of causticity," and replaced it by a "sensible ingredient of a sensible body," fixed air."

"The extension of Black's method by the physicist Lavoisier led to the downfall of the purely qualitative theory of phlogiston, and gave to chemistry the true methods of investigation, and its first great quantitative law—the law of conservation of matter."

"Wenzel and Richter, the latter... of most pronounced mathematical temperament, laid the foundations of stoichiometry, or "the art of measuring the chemical elements"."

"Dalton, the mathematical tutor, following up the lead of Newton, combined the whole of the results of quantitative measurement which had accumulated up to his time, in a comprehensive theory, based on the concept of the chemical atom."

"The results of a scrutiny of the materials of chemical science from a mathematical standpoint are pronounced in two directions. In the first we observe crude, qualitative notions, such as fire-stuff, or phlogiston, destroyed; and at the same time we perceive definite measurable quantities such as fixed air, or oxygen, taking their place. In the second direction we notice the establishment of generalizations, laws, or theories, in which a mass of quantitative data is reduced to order and made intelligible. Such are the law of conservation of matter, the laws of chemical combination, and the atomic theory."

"As an instance of the remarkably far-reaching effect which a single mathematico-physical concept has had upon the development of chemical theory, one has but to recall the state of chemistry just before the revival of Avogadro's law by Cannizzaro, to be impressed by its confusion. Relying solely upon their "chemical instinct," the leaders of the various schools of chemical thought had developed each his own theoretical system. ...a host of ...conceptions strove for supremacy. The strife was stilled, order and unity were restored, as soon as Avogadro's great idea was seen in its true light, and the concept of the molecule was introduced into chemistry. A formula which had required pages of reasoning from a purely chemical standpoint to establish, and that insecurely, was fixed by a single numerical result."

"There are not wanting, even to-day, chemists who advocate "purely chemical" methods in chemistry, and cannot appreciate the value of physical evidence in conjunction with mathematical calculations. We can only hope that their number is decreasing exponentially with time."

"From the time when Guldberg and Waage gave quantitative form to the speculations of the physicist Berthollet, a clear conception of chemical equilibrium, in sharp contrast to an anthropomorphic theory of affinity dating back to Hippocrates and Barchausen, has yielded rich and abundant fruit."

"The philosopher Comte has made the statement that chemistry is a non-mathematical science. He also told us that astronomy had reached a stage when further progress was impossible. These remarks, coming after Dalton's atomic theory, and just before Guldberg and Waage were to lay the foundations of chemical dynamics, Kirchhoff to discover the reversal of lines in the solar spectrum, serve but to emphasize the folly of having "recourse to farfetched and abstracted Ratiocination," and should teach us to be "very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty"."

"An explanation of a phenomenon is regarded, apparently instinctively, as the most general possible when it is a mechanical explanation. The "mechanism" of the process is the ultimate goal of experiment. Now this mechanism in general lies beyond the range of the senses; either by reason of their limitations, as in the case of the atomic structure of matter, or by the very nature of the supposed mechanism, as in the theory of the ether. The only way to bridge the gap between the machinery of the physical process and the world of sense-impressions is to think out some consequence of that mechanism. This we will call the hypothesis. The hypothesis, resting still on the mechanical basis, is yet beyond the range of direct experimental investigation; but if, by mathematical reasoning, a consequence of the hypothesis can be deduced, this will often lie within the range of experimental inquiry, and thus a test of the soundness of the original mechanical conception may be instituted."

"Disagreement between theory and experiment has proved a most potent agent in broadening theoretical views, and in making clear the necessity for new concepts or hypotheses."

"It is necessary to guard against a possible danger... of submitting too readily to the result of a so-called "crucial experiment". Very few experiments can, in the nature of things, be really crucial. One so-called "crucial experiment" which decided between Newton's corpuscular theory of light and Huyghens' wave-theory, viz. the relation between the law of refraction and the velocity of light, was not at all decisive."

"We perceive clearly that theories and hypotheses are not accepted or rejected outright; they have their periods of activity, and then lie dormant for a time, only to be revived in a new form later on."

"The fundamental materials from which we construct our picture of the universe may appear in different shapes, but there is really very little discontinuity between what seem at first sight very different views."

"It is clear, however, that the distinguishing mark of the whole development of theoretical chemistry and physics is the elimination of the anthropomorphic elements, especially specific sense-impressions, from the concepts. This process is called by Prof. M. Planck the objectification of the physical system."

"In early physical systems we have optics dealing with phenomena perceived by the eye; acoustics treating of auditory percepts, and so on. The subjective concepts of "tone" and "colour" have now been replaced by the objectified concepts of frequency of vibration; and wave-length. The object of this process of elimination is, according to Planck, the striving towards a unification of the whole theoretical system, so that it shall be equally significant for all intelligent beings."

"The earliest applications of chemical processes were concerned with the extraction and working of metals and the manufacture of pottery. ...The irruption of an iron using race or races into Mediterranean sites ...introduced the Iron Age... but many of the oldest arts still survived in almost their original form. The potter, for example, still used nearly the same materials and appliances as Neolithic man."

"Side by side with the production of metals, the Egyptians and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia perfected the arts of making glazed pottery... and the production of glass. ...vessels were baked in tall closed furnaces. "Egyptian blue" was made in Egypt by heating silica with malachite and lime... applied with soda as a blue glaze on faience, and the blue glass is also colored with copper. Some early... Egyptian and Babylonian blue glass are coloured with cobalt."

"The blue dye indigo was obtained from the indigo plant by the Egyptians more than 4000 years ago. ...The famous and valuable "purple of Tyre" was perhaps first made in Crete in very early times... obtained at great cost... from tiny marine molluscs. ...The scarlet dye mentioned in the Bible was obtained from the kermes insect (hence the name "crimson")."

"The first clear expression of the idea of an element occurs in the teachings of the Greek philosophers. ...Aristotle ...who summarized the theories of earlier thinkers, developed the view that all substances were made of a primary matter... On this, different forms could be impressed... so the idea of the transmutation of the elements arose. Aristotle's elements are really fundamental properties of matter... hotness, coldness, moistness, and dryness. By combining these in pairs, he obtained what are called the four elements, fire, air, earth and water... a fifth, immaterial, one was added, which appears in later writings as the quintessence. This corresponds with the ether. The elements were supposed to settle out naturally into the earth (below), water (the oceans), air (the atmosphere), fire and ether (the sky and heavenly bodies)."

"A great number of our common ideas and ways of looking at the world were really shaped for us by the Greeks of antiquity, and... incorporated into the scientific knowledge of today. Such ideas as those of matter, force, element, number, space, time, etc., came to us from the ancient Greeks."

"We find Theophrastus (315 B.C.) describing... the manufacture of white lead... "lead is placed in an earthen vessel over sharp vinegar, and after it has acquired some thickness of a kind of rust... they open the vessels and scrape it off. ...repeating over and over again... til it is wholly gone. What has been scraped off they then beat to a powder and boil with water for a long time, and what at last settles to the bottom is white lead."

"In Alexandria two streams of knowledge met and fused together... The ancient Egyptian industrial arts of metallurgy, dyeing and glass-making... and... the philosophical speculations of ancient Greece, now tinged with ancient mysticism, and partly transformed into that curious fruit of the tree of knowledge which we call Gnosticism. ...the result was the "divine" or "sacred" art (...also means sulphur) of making gold of silver. ...during the first four centuries a considerable body of knowledge came into existence. The treatises written in Greek... in Alexandria, are the earliest known books on chemistry. ...The treatises also contain much of an allegorical nature... sometimes described as "obscure mysticism." ...the Neoplatonism which was especially studied in Alexandria... is not so negligible as has sometimes been supposed. ...The study of astrology was connected with that of chemistry in the form of an association of the metals with the planets on a supposed basis of "sympathy". This goes back to early Chaldean sources but was developed by the Neoplatonists."

"The Greek chemical treatises contain... a great amount of practical chemical information... fusion, calcination, solution, filtration, crystallization, sublimation and especially distillation; and methods of heating include the open fire, lamps, and the sand and water baths. Nearly all this practical knowledge... the Arabs... derived... from the very source we are now considering."

"The Alexandrian chemists were very near to a recognition of gases."

"The Chinese early learned to work in metals; bronze occurs in the 11th-10th centuries B.C., useful iron from about 500 B.C. At a later period they made brass... True porcelain was first made about A.D. 600. They were probably in possession of mercury at an early date, and learnt how to decompose cinnabar into mercury and sulphur, and recompose it from these materials."

"One of the most brilliant students we have had during the last thirty years."

"While still a graduate student, he published his first textbook, Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students."

"In 1919 he was appointed sole Professor of Chemistry at the East London College (renamed Queen Mary College in 1934). ...Partington chose to lecture exclusively on inorganic and physical chemistry. A compulsory one-term course on the history of chemistry that he introduced in 1919 was soon abandoned, though he revived it as an elective from 1945 onwards."

"Just as his four-volume History is an indispensable aid to our discipline, his chemistry papers, his Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students, his Thermodynamics, his Specific Heats of Gases, and his huge Advanced Physical Chemistry remain monuments to the development of physical chemistry since the 1900s."

"Partington's method presupposes... that Greek fire and gunpowder represent premodern forms of "scientific" knowledge. ...Partington's second presumptuous belief is that the history of Greek fire and gunpowder is primarily to be understood through chemistry... These beliefs were what justified Partington's biographical approach; he was interested in those who wrote texts and what was written in them, mainly recipes and formulas. Perhaps the most familiar practitioner of this method is the founder of the modern founder of the history of science, George Sarton, whose Introduction to the History of Science (1927-47) Partington's work closely resembles."

"The fact that the tragic story of Évariste Galois, the mathematical genius who burned brightly but all too briefly, is not as unusual as one might think among mathematicians of his and subsequent generations. It is, rather, the most famous and dramatic of an entire genre of mathematical stories that originated in the early decades of the nineteenth century but is still going strong today. Consider, for example... Niels Henrik Abel.. János Bolyai... Srinivasa Ramanujan... John Nash... Kurt Gödel... Alexander Grothendieck... Grigory Perelman... Among modern mathematicians, it seems, extreme eccentricity, mental illness, and even solitary death are not a matter of random misfortune. They are, rather... reserved only for the most outstanding members of the field."

"Catholics... believed that the grace of God was bestowed upon sinners only through the holy Church and its sacraments, enacted by an ordained priest. Protestants, conversely, believed in a "priesthood of all believers," meaning that God would bestow his grace directly upon them. Catholics believed that Christ was physically present in the bread and wine during the sacrament of the Mass. Protestants believed that Christ was either present everywhere (Luther) or that the Mass was a mere commemoration of his sufferings (Zwingli). Catholics believed that God would take into account a man's good works in this world in determining whether be saved or lost. Protestants believed that only faith and divine grace mattered. Catholics believed that the Bible required interpretation by the hierarchy and the traditions of the Church. Protestants believed that the Bible was a clear guide for righteous behavior, accessible to anyone. What these arguments had in common were that they were entirely inconclusive."

"Theological and philosophical disputes could rage forever, he Christopher Clavius] believed, because there was no universally accepted way to decide who was right and who was wrong. ...But mathematics was different: with mathematics, the truth forces itself upon its audience whether they like it or not. One could dispute the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments, but one could not deny the Pythagorean theorem; and no one could deny the correctness of the new calendar, based as it was on the detailed mathematical calculations."

"It was clear to Clavius that Euclid's method was successful in doing precisely what the Jesuits were struggling so hard to accomplish: imposing a true, eternal, and unchallengeable order upon a seemingly chaotic reality."

"...the whole point of studying and teaching mathematics was that it demonstrated how universal truth imposed itself upon the world—rationally, hierarchically, and inescapably. Ideally, the Jesuits believed, the truths of religion would be imposed on the world just like geometrical theorems, leaving no room for avoidance or denial by Protestant or other heretics and leading to the inevitable triumph of the Church."

"Where the Jesuits insisted on clear and simple postulates, the new mathematicians relied on a vague intuition of the inner structure of matter, whereas the Jesuits celebrated absolute certainty, the new mathematicians proposed a method rife with paradoxes, and seemed to revel in them; and whereas the Jesuits sought to avoid controversy at all cost, the new method was mired in intractable controversies... It was everything that the Jesuits thought mathematics must never be, and yet it flourished... It was known as the method of indivisibles."

"In writing Newton's biography, I have attempted, in accordance with my understanding of biography as a literary form, to avoid composing an essay on Newtonian science. At the same time I have sought to make Newton the scientist the central character of my drama."

"The physicists of Gilbert's time had recourse to mechanism infrequently, and its effective explanations touched only a few disconnected phenomena. The virtuosity, inventiveness, and optimism of Descartes, however, and the counter-example of latter- day hermetists like Robert Fludd, persuaded many that mechanical models offered the only hope for a precise and comprehensible physics. Expectations rose. Physicists demanded more from models, perhaps even a complete fit with phenomena, with little or no negative analogy. Gilbert's countrymen , diplomat and philosopher, and Thomas Browne, physician diplomat and literateur, freed his watery humor objections of Cabeo by concocting it into an unctuous, elastic vapor. Such a vapor could allow Cabeo's rebounds, occasion the reattractions of ricocheting that Digby noticed, and — in its elastic contractions — draw the electric as well as the chaff. This last inference was first made about 1660, by the unconventional Cartesian fellow traveller , S.J., 'a veritable giant in science' and a liberal and candid physicist whenever his Society's obligation to combat Copernicans did interfer."

"Structure joins the evocative concept of paradigm, a disarmingly simple dialectic of scientific change (long periods of paradigmatic "normal science" punctuated by short "revolutions"), and the apparent authority of historical example to show that major conceptual shifts in the natural sciences are effected not by logical argument alone but also by appeals to worldviews, religion, metaphysical commitments, notions of simplicity and order, and so on. The view that science, like other thought systems, advances or retreats through rhetoric and persuasion, not by logical necessity, was a revelation to people who had never practiced it or studied its history. The book comforted social scientists who wanted to assimilate their discipline to physics, Luddites who blamed social problems on scientists and engineers, and everyone who rejected authority. It repelled the philosophers of science at which it was aimed for the good reason that it undercut their belief that scientific knowledge advances by the application of rational criteria to the products of observation and experiment."

"Kuhn's revolution was not yet a Kuhnian revolution, although he dated his intention to write the book that became Structure to the time of his wrestle with Aristotle. What he needed was a historical exemplar. He found it in the Copernican revolution."

"Kuhn had the genius to find the words and sketch the concepts that made important old philosophical problems relevant to the public and newly discussable by philosophers. He had the strength of mind and commitment to lead the discussion. He could speak the truly incommensurable languages of physics, philosophy, and history, all necessary to frame and advance his epistemological quest. He wrote, as one of his admirers, Margaret Masterman, put it, in a "quasi-poetic style," sometimes veiled, sometimes with "rhetorical exaggeration," but always after careful and even painful thought. Or, to switch metaphors, he drew the portrait of science in the manner of the Impressionists. At a distance, where most viewers stand, the portrait appears illuminating, persuasive, and inspiring; close in, where historians and philosophers stare, it looks sketchy, puzzling, and richly challenging."

"Like the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, whom Steven Weinberg attacked in his 1996 New York Review of Books article on Sokal's hoax, Bohr was notorious for the obscurity of his writing. Yet physicists relate to Derrida's and Bohr's obscurities in fundamentally different ways: to Derrida's with contempt, to Bohr's with awe. Bohr's obscurity is attributed, time and again, to a "depth and subtlety" that mere mortals are not equipped to comprehend."

"Astonishing statements, hardly distinguishable from those satirized by Sokal, abound in the writings of Bohr; Heisenberg, Pauli, Born and Jordan. And they are not just casual, incidental remarks."

"While Einstein's belief in an objective reality is similar to that of Weinberg and Sokal, his arguments for his conception of reality are not. In fact, Einstein was no "naive realist," despite such caricaturing of his stand by the Copenhagen orthodoxy. He ridiculed the "correspondence" view of reality that many scientists accept uncritically. Einstein fully realized that the world is not presented to us twice-first as it is, and second, as it is theoretically described-so we can compare our theoretical "copy" with the "real thing." The world is given to us only once - through our best scientific theories. So Einstein deemed it necessary to ground his concept of objective reality in the invariant characteristics of our best scientific theories."

"By using only simple analogies and intuitively appealing, yet misleading, metaphorical images, Bohr established supposedly necessary connections between acausality, wave-particle duality and the impossibility of an objective unified description in the quantum domain. One needed no technical knowledge of quantum mechanics to read Bohr's operational analysis of mutually exclusive experimental arrangements consisting of bolts, springs, rods and diaphragms. While publicly abstaining from criticizing Bohr, many of his contemporaries did not share his peculiar insistence on the impossibility of devising new nonclassical concepts-an insistence that put rigid strictures on the freedom to theorize. It is on this issue that the silence of other physicists had the most far-reaching consequences. This silence created and sustained the illusion that one needed no technical knowledge of quantum mechanics to fully comprehend its revolutionary epistemological lessons. Many postmodernist critics of science have fallen prey to this strategy of argumentation and freely proclaimed that physics itself irrevocably banished the notion of objective reality."

"In an exchange several months after his New York Review of Books article, Weinberg admitted that the founders of quantum theory had been wrong in their "apparent subjectivism," and declared that "we know better now." What exactly do we know better now? Do we know better that one should not infer from the physical to the political realm and if yes, why? Or do we know better that the "orthodox" interpretation of quantum physics the one that confidently announced the final overthrow of causality and the ordinary conception of reality is not the only possible interpretation, and that, ultimately, it might not even be the surviving one?"

"The opponents of the postmodernist cultural studies of science condude confidently from the Sokal affair that "the emperors ... have no clothes." But who, exactly, are all those naked emperors? At whom should we be laughing?"

"We find ourselves in agreement with most of the points made in Mara Beller's article "The Sokal hoax: At whom are we laughing?". … Beller is right to point out that this quasi-religious attitude can arise in any field, even in physics. Thus, many physicists have for years blindly repeated Bohr's and Heisenberg's views on the foundations of quantum mechanics, without having a clear idea of what they meant. We are pleased to note that the grip of the so-called Copenhagen orthodoxy is weakening and that physicists are beginning to consider alternative views on foundational questions with an open mind."

"Indeed, in 1998, after the physicist Alan Sokal mocked humanists for delving into physics to support their ideas in a way that seemed ignorant at best and zany at worst – in what has come to be known as “Sokal’s hoax” – historian Mara Beller published an article in Physics Today entitled “The Sokal hoax: at whom are we laughing?”. She cited remarks by Bohr – but also by Heisenberg and Pauli – to make the point that in this respect physicists could sometimes be as zany as humanists, and there is no neat way to distinguish between the two."

"I read the Beller article in Physics Today. In fact, I’ve read several of her articles before: she writes very well. She of course has a point about Bohr’s intractable language; I’ve spent many hours myself trying to make some sense of it all. To the people with less patience than I, I’m sure it’s not obvious that they should struggle to find some meaning there. That’s exactly why someone has to get in and say something reasonable about (a modernday version of) the “Copenhagen interpretation” before things get out of hand."

"Shapin’s admirable essay misses, however, the point of Mara Beller’s piece in Physics Today (1998). Beller is not urging a more thoughtful attitude on physicists by pointing out that the wisdom of Bohr would sound like nonsense if it came from sociology or cultural studies. Quite the opposite. She is denouncing the great icons of quantum physics for uttering what she takes to be nonsense, and she is urging scientists to clean up their own act before they get on with the business of mocking others."

"Mara Beller has probably succeeded in making what may well be the first truly penetrating assessment of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Physicists have been too much in awe of the mystique of their topic to have done anything comparable. [...] I am sorry if this role reversal of old and new is an anticlimactic answer to three quarter century of Copenhagen riddle. Mara Beller made me do it!"

"A reference framework is required in order to locate events in time and space. With some contractions and omissions, Figure 1.1 shows the conventional divisions for the classical and medieval periods. Even before the birth of the idea of nationality, it is quite acceptable to refer to specific countries, such as Greece and Italy, whose boundaries are well defined. It is also usual to refer to areas in which there is felt to have been some degree of cultural unity —— for example, the Roman Empire and Islam. Sometimes space and time are embraced by one image: the Roman Empire can mean either the first four centuries of our era or the area under Roman dominion. Used with care, these concepts have value for some historical purposes, but they can be very misleading. In the first place, we have to bear in mind the shifting of frontiers; in AD 750, for example, the Iberian peninsula was predominantly Muslim while Asia Minor was Christian — by 1450 the reverse was the case. Also, and this can be more serious, the conventional divisions are associated most closely with political and military realities, and often have little bearing on intellectual or social activities."

"We see for the first time in al-Jazari's work several concepts important for both design and construction: the lamination of timber to minimize warping, the static balancing of wheels, the use of wooden templates (a kind of pattern), the use of paper models to establish designs, the calibration of orifices, the grinding of the seats and plugs of valves together with emery powder to obtain a watertight fit, and the casting of metals in closed mold boxes with sand."

"There has never been just one best way to teach quantum mechanics. My goal is neither to sow nostalgia for the philosophically engaged style of Oppenheimer and Nordheim, nor to condemn the pragmatic approach of Fermi, Bethe and Feynman. It is rather to highlight the choices that physicists must always make when stepping into the classroom. Choices of topics to discuss and problems to assign reflect deeper decisions about the ideal type of physicist one seeks to train. Should the new generation be philosophically attuned, concerned with minute details of conceptual interpretation? Or should physicists hone their ability to calculate, pushing Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger’s equations into the service of ever more elaborate problems to solve and phenomena to analyse? Competing ideals have flourished under different pedagogical conditions."

"Strangely enough, many of the philosophical issues surrounding quantum mechanics are today being used to entice potential students into physics. As quantum computing and quantum communication become a commercial reality, tomorrow’s students may find themselves routinely grappling with the same philosophical questions that challenged their forebears almost a century ago."

"[Time is not] a mysterious illusion of the intellect. ..It is an essential feature of the universe."

"Perhaps the first to approach the fourth dimension from the side of physics, was the Frenchman, Nicole Oresme, of the fourteenth century. In a manuscript treatise, he sought a graphic representation of the Aristotelian forms, such as heat, velocity, sweetness, by laying down a line as a basis designated longitudo, and taking one of the forms to be represented by lines (straight or circular) perpendicular to this either as a latitudo or an altitudo. The form was thus represented graphically by a surface. Oresme extended this process by taking a surface as the basis which, together with the latitudo, formed a solid. Proceeding still further, he took a solid as a basis and upon each point of this solid he entered the increment. He saw that this process demanded a fourth dimension which he rejected; he overcame the difficulty by dividing the solid into numberless planes and treating each plane in the same manner as the plane above, thereby obtaining an infinite number of solids which reached over each other. He uses the phrase "fourth dimension" (4am dimensionem)."

"Although the peculiarly fundamental nature of time in relation to ourselves is evident as soon as we reflect that our judgments concerning time and events in time appear themselves to be 'in' time, whereas our judgments concerning space do not appear themselves in any obvious sense to be in space, physicists have been influenced far more profoundly by the fact that space seems to be presented to us all of a piece, whereas time comes to us only bit by bit. The past must be recalled by the dubious aid of memory, the future is hidden from us, and only the present is directly experienced. This striking dissimilarity between space and time has nowhere had a greater influence than in physical science based on the concept of measurement. Free mobility in space leads to the idea of the transportable unit length and the rigid measuring rod. The absence of free mobility in time makes it much more difficult for us to be sure that a process takes the same time whenever it is repeated."

"Our conscious appreciation of the fact that one event follows another is of a different kind from our awareness of either event separately. If two events are to be represented as occurring in succession, then—paradoxically—they must also be thought of simultaneously."

"Whether the stars were all at the same distance, or whether they were scattered throughout infinite space, or whether they formed a finite system of vast but limited depth, were questions that could not be answered until towards the end of the eighteenth century. Until then, stellar astronomy was a field left to the unaided imagination."

"Although the classic theoretical foundation of distance measurement in physics is the 'rigid rod', nearly all distances in surveying, whether terrestrial or celestial, are made to depend on the properties of light. The two simplest properties so employed are the principle of propogation in straight lines and the principle that the intensity of light diminishes inversely as the square of the distance."

"Galileo had raised the concepts of space and time to the status of fundamental categories by directing attention to the mathematical description of motion. The midiaevel qualitative method had made these concepts relatively unimportant, but in the new mathematical philosophy the external world became a world of bodies moving in space and time. In the Timaeus Plato had expounded a theory that outside the universe, which he regarded as bounded and spherical, there was an infinite empty space. The ideas of Plato were much discussed in the middle of the seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonists, and Newton's views were greatly influenced thereby. He regarded space as the 'sensorium of God' and hence endowed it with objective existence, although he confessed that it could not be observed. Similarly, he believed that time had an objective existence independent of the particular processes which can be used for measuring it."

"Let us suppose that an explosion occurs on Mars, which is observed by an astronomer on earth, who records the instant when he sees the flash. If light travelled instantaneously with an infinite velocity, this instant would coincide with the time... recorded by the... observer on Mars. In this way a meaning could be attached automatically to absolute time and the simultaneity of events at different places; indeed, the classical theory is now regarded as the limiting form of Einstein's theory when the velocity of light becomes infinite. But as there is a mass of experimental evidence supporting the view that light takes a finite time to travel... the terrestrial observer must correct the time recorded on his watch. This correction... will depend on assumptions concerning the velocity of light and the measurement of distance. Thus the concept of a world-wide simultaneity ceases to be a primitive idea."

"Consider an event, for example the outburst if a nova... Suppose this event is observed from two stars in line with the nova, and suppose further that the two stars are moving uniformly with respect to each other in this line. Let the epoch at which these stars passed by each other be taken as the zero of time measurement, and let an observer A on one of the stars estimate the distance and epoch of the nova outburst to be x units of length and t units of time, respectively. Suppose the other star is moving toward the nova with velocity v relative to A. Let an observer B on the star estimate the distance and epoch of the nova outburst to be x units of length and t units of time, respectively. Then the Lorentz formulae, relating x to t, arex' = \frac {x-vt}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}} ; \qquad t' = \frac {t-\frac{vx}{c^2}}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}} These formulae are... quite general, applying to any event in line with two uniformly moving observers. If we let c become infinite then the ratio of v to c tends to zero and the formulae becomex' = x - vt ; \qquad t' = t."

"Minkowski made a remarkable discovery concerning the Lorentz formulae. He showed that, although each observer has his own private space and private time, a public concept which is the same for all observers can be formed by combining space and time as a kind of 'distance' by multiplying it by the velocity of light, c; in other words, with any time interval we can associate a definite spatial interval, namely the distance which light can travel in empty space in that period. If, according to a particular observer, the difference in time between any two events is T, this associated spatial interval is cT. Then, if R is the space-distance between these two events, Minkowski showed that the difference of the squares of cT and R has the same value for all observers in uniform relative motion. The square root of this quantity is called the space-time interval between two events. Hence, although time and three-dimensional space depend on the observer, this new concept of space-time is the same for all observers."

"In developing his theory of gravitation, Newton assigned to every material body another property which is called its gravitational mass. Gravitational mass determines the force exerted by the body on other bodies, and so its function appears to be quite distinct from that of inertial mass. Nevertheless, the two are found to be identical in magnitude. Newton made experiments to verify this remarkable equality by swinging a pendulum with a bob which could be made with different materials. The period of the swing depended on the ratio of the inertial and gravitational masses of the pendulum, but in all cases it was found to be the same... In 1890 Eötvös made a much more refined test with the aid of a... torsion balance. Repeated experiments showed that inertial mass and gravitational mass were equal to within one part in 100 million. Einstein suggested that this was because inertia and gravitation are identical."

"According to the Special Theory of Relativity, the velocity of a moving body is always less than the velocity of light. Since the energy of motion of a body depends on its inertial mass and its velocity, it follows that if the energy of a body is increased indefinitely by the continual application of a force, the inertial mass of the body must be increased too; for, if not, the velocity would ultimately increase indefinitely and exceed the velocity of light. Einstein found that, corresponding to any increase in the energy content of a body, there is an equivalent increase in its inertial mass. Mass and energy thus appeared to be different names for the same thing, the energy associated with a mass M being Mc2, where c is the velocity of light; and the mass M of a body moving with velocity v he found to be given by the following formulaM = \frac {m}{\sqrt{(1 - \frac {v^2}{c^2}}}"

"Although the Special Theory of Relativity does not account for electromagnetic phenomena, it explains many of their properties. General Relativity, however, tells us nothing about electromagnetism. In Einstein's space-time continuum gravitational forces are absorbed in the geometry, but the electromagnetic forces are quite unaffected. Various attempts have been made to generate the geometry of space-time so as to produce a unified field theory incorporating both gravitational and electromagnetic forces."

"The philosophical consequences of the General Theory of Relativity are perhaps more striking than the experimental tests. As Bishop Barnes has reminded us, "The astonishing thing about Einstein's equations is that they appear to have come out of nothing." We have assumed that the laws of nature must be capable of expression in a form which is invariant for all possible transformations of the space-time co-ordinates and also that the geometry of space-time is Riemannian. From this exiguous basis, formulae of gravitation more accurate than those of Newton have been derived. As Barnes points out..."

"Space-time is curved in the neighborhood of material masses, but it is not clear whether the presence of matter causes the curvature of space-time or whether this curvature is itself responsible for the existence of matter."

"Another interesting feature of the Einstein universe is that in principle it could be circumnavigated by a ray of light... it is unlikely that the rays would converge with sufficient accuracy. Nevertheless it is interesting to consider the possibility that some of the stars and nebulae which we see may after all be only optical ghosts."

"The models of Einstein and de Sitter are static solutions of Einstein's modified gravitational equations for a world-wide homogeneous system. They both involve a positive cosmological constant λ, determining the curvature of space. If this constant is zero, we obtain a third model in classical infinite Euclidean space. This model is empty, the space-time being that of Special Relativity. It has been shown that these are the only possible static world models based on Einstein's theory. In 1922, Friedmann... broke new ground by investigating non-static solutions to Einstein's field equations, in which the radius of curvature of space varies with time. This Possibility had already been envisaged, in a general sense, by Clifford in the eighties."

"By the time of Comte, scientists unanimously rejected the idea that there was any essential difference between celestial and terrestrial matter, but they still had no empirical evidence to support their view any more than had Aristotle to support his, and to the positivist philosopher it seemed that none could ever be obtained. ...The possibility of a solution to this problem appeared shortly after Comte's pronouncement with the rise of the science of astronomical spectroscopy..."

"From a careful determination of the amount of solar heat that which would fall per minute on an area of one square centimetre placed perpendicular to the radiation as it falls on Earth's surface and from a knowledge of the Earth's distance, we deduce that each square centimetre of the solar surface radiates on the average of about the rate of a nine horse-power engine."

"The solution... was found only after the rise of nuclear physics, and, strange to relate, was not known to Eddington when he developed his celebrated theory of stellar structure between 1916 and 1924. Indeed, it is one of the most intriguing facts in the history of science that the two most influential theories concerning the stars—Newton's theory of gravitation and Eddington's theory of stellar construction—were each developed so successfully although Newton was ignorant of the origin of gravitation and Eddington of the origin of stellar energy."

"Not until the pioneer work of Rutherford and his colleagues was the possibility of nuclear reactions and transformations as sources of stellar energy envisaged."

"Newton's laws of motion and gravitation achieved their original success when applied to the solar system. The first definite evidence that they were applicable on a larger scale came from the study of binary stars towards the eighteenth century. In recent times the limitations of Newton's theory have become apparent. Even on the scale of the solar system, it has been challenged by Einstein's."

"As the degree of observational accuracy at which general relativity becomes significantly different from Newtonian theory is far from being achieved in this field, and as stellar velocities are small compared with light, there is no sign yet that any non-Newtonian theory is required."

"Cosmology is peculiar among the sciences for it is both the oldest and the youngest. From the dawn of civilization man has speculated about the nature of the starry heavens and the origin of the world, but only in the present century has physical cosmology split away from general philosophy to become an independent discipline."

"Einstein's pioneer application in 1917 of his newly developed general relativity to the problem of world-structure ushered in a new phase in the theoretical approach to the subject. Then, some seven years later, Hubble's discovery of Cepheid variables in the Andromeda nebula finally settled the long-debated question concerning this and similar nebulae in the Milky Way."

"It became clear that our Galaxy is only one system among many, and that the universe is far vaster than the particular stellar system to which the Sun and planets belong. Since then developments have been more rapid than at any time since the days of Copernicus, Digges and Bruno when the geocentric hypothesis of the cosmos received its death-blow."

"Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future."

"The famous palaeolithic paintings found in caves such as that at Lascaux in the Dordogne have been interpreted as evidence that, at least implicitly people were operating 20,000 or more years ago with teleological intent in terms of past, present, and future. It may well be that those responsible for the so-called 'Dancing Sorcerer' ...may have felt that the actual performance of the dance was insufficient, since they were concerned with the magical efficacy of the dance after it ended."

"It must have required enormous effort for man to overcome his natural tendency to live like the animals in a continual present."

"The development of rational thought actually seems to have impeded man's appreciation for the significance of time. ...Belief that the ultimate reality is timeless is deeply rooted in human thinking, and the origin of rational investigation of the world was the search for permanent factors that lie behind the ever-changing pattern of events."

"Language itself inevitably introduced an element of permanence into the world. For, although speech itself is transitory, the conventionalized sound symbols of language transcended time."

"To obtain a greater degree of permanence the time symbols of oral speech had to be converted into the space symbols of written speech. ...The crucial stage in the evolution of writing occurred when ideographs became phonograms..."

"Our idea of the universe as a whole remains a product of the imagination."

"The history of natural philosophy is characterized by the interplay of two rival philosophies of time — one aiming at its "elimination" and the other based on the belief that it is fundamental and irreducible."

"The basic objection to attempts to deduce the unidirectional nature of time from concepts such as entropy is that they are attempts to reduce a more fundamental concept to a less fundamental one."

"Most of the illustrations in this book were scanned... from the volumes in which they originally appeared. One of these deserves special mention. It is... from the library of the late Gerald James Whitrow... I was honoured to receive this small book as a gift in 2001 from Professor Whitrow's widow, Magda... I wished to include a copy of this historic image in my own book both as a tribute to Pofessor Whitrow's memory and to express my sincere gratitude to all responsible for the gift."

"Whitrow... proposed an anthropic resolution of the venerable philosophical question Why physical space has three dimensions? (arguing that with a space of different dimensionality there would be no living being to pose the question) and, similarly to [Grigory Moiseevich] Idlis, alluded around 1955 to an anthropic explanation of the size of the observable universe. Anyway, he never published these last ideas, which were developed years later by Wheeler. The only reference to Whitrow’s argument that appeared in print during the 1950s seems to be that due to the philosopher of religion Eric Lionel Mascall, who attributed to the English’s mathematician thatit may be necessary for the universe to have the enormous size and complexity which modern astronomy has revealed, in order for the earth to be a possible habitation for living beings."

"The point at issue between the two theories [A and B theory] is whether 'time' really is, in some deep ontological sense, differentiated into past, present and future. ...Reichenbach and Whitrow propose that there is indeed such a type of event and this is the 'becoming', or 'coming into being' of factual states-of-affairs in the physical world. ...Whitrow expressed ..."The past is the determined, the present is the moment of 'becoming' when events become determined, and the future is as-yet undetermined. Although neither Reichenbach nor Whitrow developed their thesis at any length, the general purport of what they meant is clear: there is a basic chance element in nature, at least at the micro-level, and the moment of 'becoming', which they identify with 'the present', is marked by a tranisition from what is merely possible to what is factual. However... this important attempt to provide a physical basis for the A-theory is by no means immune from criticism."

"While at Oxford, he was much influenced by cosmologist, E. A. Milne. ...Whitrow is... remembered for his very loud voice which could be heard 'from miles away.'"

"Remarks on the concept of simultaneity may mislead the reader to believing that only modern physicists and philosophers recognize the crucial importance of this notion. ...this concept has occupied the attention of philosophers and scientists throughout the whole history of human thought and played an important role in the writings of such intellectual giants as Aristotle, St. Augustine, Leibniz, and Kant. It would be a serious mistake to associate the concept of simultaneity exclusively with philosophic or scientific reasoning. In fact it was at the level of prescientific apprehension, a fundamental ingredient in the process of human apperception and conception of time. As Gerald Whitrow rightly pointed out, "our conscious appreciation of the fact that one event follows another is of a different kind from our awareness of either event separately. If two events are to be represented as occurring in succession, then—paradoxically—they must also be thought of simultaneously.""

"One of the few authors to have explicitly connected the physical issue of the expansion of the universe with the philosophical topic of the metaphysical status of space is Gerald James Whitrow."

"Whitrow's stance... is probably the first attempt to introduce such a philosophical approach in modern cosmology... it could be the a stimulus for new insights and a better comprehension of the physical foundations of cosmology itself."

"By combining prodigious scholarship from the ancient Greeks to modern physicists, he argued persuasively in more than 100 academic papers and a string of books that an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of time should be possible."

"Much of Dr. Whitrow's work is concerned with problems in cosmology and relativity. ...He has been editor of The Observatory Magazine and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society."

"Perhaps the most important of Whitrow's books was The Natural Philosophy of Time. He showed that time can be studied independently of its magnitude. ...Whitrow's historical work included a paper on Robert Hooke."

"The shift toward a linear time conception, a confutation against (instead of a development from) the age-old cyclic time conception, did not occur suddenly and lasted well into the nineteenth century. ...Attention had clearly drifted away from seeking an eternally valid order toward a focus on change; truth had now ceased to lie in an unchanging order of things—rather, it tended to be regarded as dependent on process. Gerald Whitrow has put the matter succinctly, that in the nineteenth century " interest was transferred from the 'thing completed' to the genetic process, that is, from 'being' to 'becoming.' ""

"Professor Gerald Whitrow, who has died aged 87, wrote The Natural Philosophy of Time (1960) a tour de force that examined the subject from every side—mathematical, cosmological, historical, biological and psychological. ...As an opening for his talks, he would sometimes recount one of his favourite stories on time. It concerned the Russian poet Samuel Marshak, on a visit to London before 1914. Marshak's English was not too good and when he asked a man in the street "Please, what is time?", he received the surprised response, "But that's a big question. Why ask me?""

"The idea that time may be an active factor in causation has the mathematical significance that ' t ' (for the system in question) must appear explicitly in the formulation of the law. ...Such law may claim to express the fact of historic, irreversible duration."

"The question of the reversibility of natural processes provides the key to a great intellectual struggle which is now behind the complexities of philosophic and scientific thought. The issue can be formulated thus: Is there a real temporal process in nature? Is the passage of irreversible time a necessary element in any view of the structure of nature? Or, alternatively, is the subjective experience of time a mere illusion of the mind which cannot be given objective expression? These are not metaphysical questions that can still be neglected with impunity. For just as Einstein made his advance by analysing conceptions such as simultaneity, which had been thought to be adequately understood for the purposes of experimental science, so the next development of physical theory will probably be made by carrying on the analysis of time from the point at which Einstein left it."

"Thought is born of failure. When action satisfies there is no residue to hold the attention; to think is to confess a lack of adjustment which we must stop to consider. Only when the human organism fails to achieve an adequate response to its situation is there material for the process of thought, and the greater the failure the more searching they become. (p. 1)"

"The unitary system of thought has three main characteristics which distinguish it from many other systems: it deals with the form of systems rather than with their component parts; it recognizes a process of development as prior to the apparently static aspects of nature; and it is unitary, emphasizing one general form beneath all apparent dualism. (p. 21-22)"

"A unitary method of thought is indispensable to the interpretation of European history. The pervasive dualisms which distort the thought of western man are an element in this general condition, which therefore must be diagnosed in a language which does not take these dualisms for granted. No interpretation of European man in traditional European terms can bring the truth to light, any more than the color-blind can know their deficiency. (p. 25)"

"The internal tendencies of every organism, if isolated, lead to its disintegration. But the processes of the wider system sustain and modify those internal tendencies by "nourishing" them and gradually increasing the mutual conformity of organism and environment. (p. 36)"

"The term dissociation is here used for a condition in which the organizing process in an individual fail to develop one characteristic form, and two or more mutually incompatible systems of behavior compete for control. (p. 62)"

"Throughout history there runs one main trend: a progressive differentiation, or passage from simple to more complex forms in behavior, thought, and social organization. (p. 73)"

"During the metamorphosis from ancient to European man, self-awareness, rationalism, monotheism, and morality all developed in parallel as expressions of the influence of a new form of social tradition on the organization of the individual. […] Europe forced the new mode of life till it produced a definite dissociation, for self-awareness did not then bring with it an adequate understanding of the self; religion could not offer a complete integration; the rational intellect knew nothing of its own origins, limitations or mode of operation; and morality necessarily failed to realize its aim. (p. 114)"

"The dissociation of the typical adult European is a consequence not of any universal human nature, a term that has no meaning, but of the influence of an inadequately organized tradition. (p. 124)"

"In the religious age, the religious hierarchy wields power; in the political age, the ruler, nobles and commoners; in the economic, the hierarchy of wealth. The development of Europe during the last six centuries has consisted in the progressive shifting of the hierarchy of power from one set of functions to another. (p. 132)"

"The capitalist and the quantitative scientist were working out the final consequences of the tendencies that had begun with Plato and Archimedes, borne fruit in Kepler and Galileo, and were reaching their culmination in Carnegie, Ford, and Zaharoff, and – as we shall see – in Heisenberg. Yes, it would be unfair, and perhaps libelous, to accuse recent leaders of the West of a mature consciousness of their own historical significance. (p. 150)"

"More comprehensive process than those of the conscious mind control human destiny. (p. 151)"

"It is impossible today to escape the need for a general awareness of the phasing of the historical process. In the past great cultures could be created unconsciously, the organic processes forming the new patterns without man's attention being drawn to their wider significance. But the unconscious phase of history is now past. The acceleration of social change which has resulted from the attention paid to specialized techniques can only be controlled by paying attention also to the general formative processes which in earlier times were unconscious. Consciousness of specialized technical methods must be balanced by consciousness of general developing forms. (p. 167)"

"Three centuries of increasingly intense application of the quantitative method had exhausted its guarantee of the progressive improvement of thought, because the regions where the method is adequate have already been explored. [...] It is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that a new method is now necessary to supplement the method of quantitative analysis. (p. 180)"

"Man abhors the absence of integration. He demands integration, and will create religions, achieve heroic self-sacrifice, pursue mad ambitions, or follow the ecstasy of danger, rather than live without. If society refuses him this satisfaction in a constructive form he will seize a destructive principle to which he can devote himself and will take revenge on the society that thought his only demand was pleasure. (p. 188)"

"Man set out on a two-thousand-year trial of a particular method of differentiation, adapting the structure of his mental processes, conscious and unconscious, to a certain general form. We need to consider only the most general characteristics of this form, and for the purpose of this analysis, there reduce to two. Thought may be either unitary or dualistic (since other pluralistic forms may be neglected), and it may be either process or static. These two pairs produce four combinations or types of thought: unitary-process, unitary-static, dualistic-process and dualistic-static. The first and the last are the most stable and common types; the unitary-static and dualistic-process forms are less frequent and may be regarded as anomalous forms appearing at times of transition. (p. 193-194)"

"In Plato we find the essential form of the European attitude: the intellectual rejection of the phenomenal world of process on account of its sordid ruthlessness and the emancipation of the spirit within its own realm of permanent intellectual clarity and harmony. The ancient, aristocratic, tragic consciousness disappears; man sets out to console his spirit and protect his body by the exploitation of static ideas. (p. 201)"

"In separating consciousness from the material world Plato has to ascribe the formative faculty of the mind to consciousness, whereas the formative processes of the human system are largely unconscious, that is, they operate below the dominant processes of the human hierarchy and only come to attention at special moments. (p. 203)"

"The dualistic-static form of thought which marks the European tradition attains its most radical expression in Descartes. Whatever lip service we pay to other ideas, and however certain we are of its falsity, after three centuries we still behave as if we lived in a Cartesian world. The static clarity of Cartesian thought inevitably fascinated and imposed on beings who were so badly in need of harmony and so ready to deny process in the search for it. The very clarity of the method exposes its own errors, but we are accustomed to them and like them, for they satisfy our vanity. It has been evident for a century that unity is necessary to thought, and that process is inherent in nature, but western man has preferred to perish in his dualism rather than give up the proud autonomy of reason and risk losing his identity in the universal process. (p. 214)"

"Goethe did not propose a return to the undifferentiated condition of Heraclitus. The development of man lead from undifferentiated unity with nature, through a differentiation achieved by separation, to a new organized unity. But this last state would be different from the first; it must contain within its recovered unity all the differentiated knowledge, all the specialized organs and faculties, of two thousands years of development. (p. 224)"

"The human need for unity first created subjective religion, then objective analytical science; now it corrects the partiality of these attitudes by substituting one complete doctrine. (p. 251)"

"The failure of idealistic thought lay partly in the fact that it did not recognize that every ideal is linked to its shadow. [...] Whatever is incomplete is thus always complemented by its contrary; the penalty for any principle which fails to express the whole is the necessity to co-exist with its opposite. Partial love implies partial hate; spirit, sensuality; self-sacrificing compassion, sadism. The denial of any aspect sharpens and preserves it, while its acceptance transforms it by bringing it within the process of the whole. (p. 254)"

"Unitary man escapes these confusions through his recognition that one factor is of supreme importance: the maturity proper to man can only come through the experience of adult unity. This experience may come in many ways, but it means that the individual has, for the moment, outgrown the sense of any division, either within himself of from others, through a mature relations to at least one other person. Tension is inherent in the process, but tension does not become frustrating conflict if the overriding unity is realized. (p. 255)"

"Security is an impostor; little can be achieved while each seeks his own freedom from want, from war, or from fear. The general nature of all fear is the awareness that development is threatened. Fear and its consequences can be eliminated only by action leading to continuous development. Action can bring the assurance of a development which is more welcome than either spiritual or material security. Only through the pursuit of a general development can the species acquire the unity of purpose which may, as one of its secondary consequences, eliminate unemployment and war. In the individual life the same is true: only in unitary development can fear be overcome. Every individual experiences countless shocks from his first breath to his last, and these challenges are necessary to his development. But a unitary tradition can assist the members of each maturing generation to turn these challenges to advantage and to retain their basic integrity. (p. 256)"

"The ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness represent attempts to interpret the process of development as a group of tendencies permanently directed towards certain permanent and universal ends. But human behaviour is not directed towards unchanging ends, not even towards those temporary ideals which each community sets up for itself. The formative tendency is displayed, not in any steady process of definite orientation, but in a rhythmic sequence of transformation which cannot be represented as tending towards any particular final condition. (p. 261-262)"

"The idealist seeks the security of a static harmony, and therefore considers every tension evil. Unitary man recognizes tension as an essential feature of the formative process operating in man. Man creates in resolving tensions, but never brings them to an end. The contrasts of past, present and future forms provide an inexhaustible source of tension. (p. 274)"

"By openly recognizing the inescapable rhythm of harmony and tension which is the form of all human processes unitary man achieves a far-reaching emancipation. Much that was concealed can now stand in the open. The neutrality and objectivity of the quantity symbolism seemed to dissociated man a guarantee of the liberation of the mind from anthropomorphic and subjective illusions. But at deeper level it expressed merely the desire to escape inner conflict in a harmony of static form. This escape was wholly illusory; the superficial neutrality of science left it open to abuse, and the spirit of man has been punished by its attempt to escape struggle in an intellectual harmony. Unitary man renounces such separation and partakes in the development of the whole. Man finds himself in the universal process, by finding the universal process within himself. Tension continues, but henceforward his struggle is with, not against, the process of nature. (p. 276)"

"We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours."

"It is widely believed that only those who can master the latest quantum mathematics can understand anything of what is happening. That is not so, provided one takes the long view, for no one can see far ahead. Against a historical background, the layman can understand what is involved, for example, in the fascinating challenge of continuity and discontinuity expressed in the antithesis of field and particle."

"A clue to the future must lie in the past... every scientist, and everyone with intellectual curiosity, can learn something useful from a brief study of the history of atomism."

"No scientist has yet provided an acceptable definition of "mind" or "mental" that reveals the character of "unconscious mental processes," and no physicist a lucid definition of "elementary particles" that shows how they can appear or disappear, and why there are so many."

"Did ever the history of the intellect so little conceal so much?"

"Physics and psychology are going somewhere, but where they do not know. But... they are traveling from: Democritan permanent particles and the Cartesian mind necessarily aware. ...they are both traveling away from the same point of origin and in the same general direction: from the isolation of supposedly permanent "substances" towards the identification of changing relations potentially affecting everything; briefly, from substance to changing relations and structures."

"The material particle or the conscious mind—has been discovered not to be sufficiently unchanging to be treated as a thing in isolation... but more often to be the opposite: a changing system in a changing environment."

"Nothing is more surprising than the surprises of history, and nothing more untrustworthy than the uncritical extrapolation of the tendencies of the recent past."

"There are good reasons to expect... a return to a concreteness of basic ideas, to simpler fundamentals easily understood, to principles that will bring exact science closer to the human perspective."

"The most productive novelties often spring, in thought as in biological evolution, from more primitive and simpler forms, rather than from differentiated ones which, through their elaboration, have become too specialized to be adaptable to new tasks."

"Systematic errors of theory can seldom be discovered by direct attack; it is easier to uncover them by studying how and why physical theory took the path it did. That is why a clue to the future can sometimes be found in the past, and this is my reason for studying the history of atomism."

"Every scientific generation, measured by its most vocal members, exaggerates the historical importance of its own members. ...there is a perpetual temptation to study the latest and to neglect the past."

"There is no doubt of the need for an up-to-date, balanced, and comprehensive work on the history of atomism, drawing ideas, mathematics, and experiment together into a single story. When available, it should become required reading for all students of the exact sciences."

"No one is so brilliant that he can afford to neglect what history can teach him."

"Discontinuity of its linguistic and logical terms is for the conscious analytical intellect psychologically and logically prior to notions of continuity. ...This functional priority... may not have been reflected in the history of the development of reason in all human communities. ...But it is relevant for the West that the Pythagoreans, with their discrete integers and point patterns, came before Euclid, with his continuous metrical geometry, and that physical atomism as a speculative philosophy preceded by some two thousand years the conception of a continuous physical medium with properties of its own."

"Atomism originally stood for iconoclasm, impiety, and atheism, because the Greek atomists conceived a universe under the reign of chance."

"Two extreme interpretations of atomism have persisted through centuries: the näive assumption of objectively real indivisible pieces of matter, and the sophisticated view that "atom" is merely a name given to abstractions which it is convenient to assume in simplifying complex phenomena. The second perhaps stems from Ockham, who wrote in 1330 of "the fiction of abstract nouns"; from John Troland, who in 1704 interpreted material particles as mental fictions; and from countless others down to Ernst Mach, who after starting as a physical atomist came to regard atoms as "mental artifices" or "economical ways of symbolizing experience." Both views have advantages..."

"Theory confronts experiment, and both sides are a mixture of obscurity and clarity."

"Dogmatism in science is usually mistaken, because the conviction of certainty expresses a psychological compulsion, never any truly compelling reasons or facts. When a view attains wide popularity and seems obviously beyond question, its decline has usually begun or will begin very soon."

"The idea of the unconscious mental processes was, in many of its aspects, conceivable around 1700, topical around 1800, and became effective around 1900, thanks to the imaginative efforts of a large number of individuals of varied interests in many lands."

"I consider that Curie's Principle has two major consequences:- First: It shows that the class of processes which can be isolated for causal representation, not requiring the inference of external causes, is wider than the class of energetically closed systems. One-way processes in which the system loses energy can be isolable, in the sense that they can be given complete representation without taking their environment into account. Second: It suggests the possibility of a geometrical physics treating 3D spatial relations , i.e., angles or lengths, as primary. Just as statistical mechanics, the theory of crystal symmetry, and Group theory in quantum mechanics, are useful without assumptions about forces, so Curie's principle, with an appropriate model, can determine the path of a one-way process without such assumptions..."

"We are sick today for lack of simple ideas which can help us be what we want to be."

"The basic challenge to mankind is not population, poverty, war, technology, pollution, religious or racial intolerance, or blind nationalism, but an underlying nihilism promoting violence and frustrating sane policies on these issues. ...the only hope lies in the emergence of a potentially worldwide consensus of heart, mind, and will, appealing to all sane men and women everywhere ...The time has come for the west to speak to the world in universal terms. ...the consensus, if it comes, is likely to surprise by its suddenness, timeliness, and universality."

"This essay touches bottom for twentieth century man. ...it is one many signals marking the end of "Antiman," with his hopeless relativism, and announcing "Unitary Man," ...able to be more harmonious because he has become aware of the ordering processes at all levels in nature, without and within. ...here at last subject and object are potentially fused in a single insight."

"We know nothing about the Christian transcendental God except His total indifference both to individual suffering and to the collapse of the pseudo Christian civilization which the Church supported. The pretension to a transcendental authority... was a hypnotic given to children and remaining with them as adults. During one period in history it served a purpose... its early rational opponents... were strangely naive, for they imagined that a half-developed faculty called "reason" should, and could, lead the species. But reason... is not a prime mover."

"Faced by the dire nihilism of our time, we need a greater honesty... The Western search for unifying truth did not come to an end with Christianity, any more than with the physical theories of forty years ago."

"The Christian fog of self deception still does its damage: we either deceive ourselves by pretending to believe or overreact into a contempt of all religion. So, away with the fog!"

"God doesn't give a damn."

"The "divine" in man: creative bliss, the experience of perfection, the surprising joys of love all human, not divine. ...It is time that God was put in his place, that is, in man, and no nonsense about it. But, to prevent misunderstanding, instead of speaking of the "divine" in man I will call it the human sense of perfection or unity. ...Need I add that we may retain the Sermon on the Mount, Saint Paul's poem to charity, and much else, though we discard the Christian God?"

"The author... has known for that for several centuries freethinkers have led mankind. Only recently... new to him though perhaps long understood by others, possibly Kant and certainly Nietzsche, there emerged into his mind a clarity that will remain... the conception of transcendental divinity is damaging to man."

"Belief in a transcendental divinity arose from a misinterpretation of intimations from the less conscious levels of the mind. ...God is in the unconscious, is the unconscious, perhaps."

"A naturalistic reinterpretation renders all that is authentic about the Christian doctrine greater not less, for it makes it a part of a new and stronger man, not of some fancied "superman," but simply man as he is but less distorted by a dissociating tradition."

"To rob man of his noblest faculty, the experience of and aspiration to perfection and unity in himself , we can now see to have been a truly hellish surgery."

"L.L. Whyte, in his marvellous account of the way in which the duality of the human nervous system became the conflicting dualism of reason against instinct, writes: "Intellectual man had no choice but to follow the path which facilitated the development of his faculty of thought, and thought could only clarify itself by separating out static concepts which, in becoming static, ceased to conform to their organic matrix or to the forms of nature.""

"L. L. Whyte, in a short but prophetic essay, Archimedes or the Future of Physics, pointed out that in each of the two great new physical theories of this century the fundamental role was played by a particular constant of nature: in Relativity by c, the velocity of light in vacuo, and in Quantum Theory by h, Plank's constant. He suggested that the next great advance in our understanding of nature would be associated with a new fundamental constant, and he prophesied that this would be concerned with the flow of time."

"Whyte showed how at the core of Newtonian physics lies the assumption that the elementary processes of nature are reversible, or would be if they could be isolated, and hence in the system of Natural Philosophy time would not appear as an explicit factor. ...In the cosmological theories of Einstein, de Sitter and Lamaître new ideas were introduced concerning the character of universal space, but no corresponding advance was made in connection with the idea of time, except in so far as the idea of expansion pointed to a finite rather than an infinite past."

"Although the anti-causal inclinations of an Eddington (or a Jeans) are most pertinent... they were not characteristic for their milieu. Far more typical for British natural-philosophical thought in this period is that interpretation of the conceptual situation in physics advanced by Lancelot Law Whyte in 1927 in Archimedes, or the Future of Physics, namely that "in order to straighten out its atomic problems physics will have to take a hint from biology." This notion, casually stated in the language of the work-a-day world, had come to Whyte two years before as a most powerful experience, a veritable revelation. "...That just as the Solution of Relativity demanded a fundamental reconsideration of the so-called limits of Science & their absorption into Science & reconstruction & a new understanding of them, So the solution of the Relativity-Quantum problem might involve the problem of life in such a way as to throw real light on the relation of Religion, Art & Science." ...while Whyte anticipates a revolution in science, indeterminism receives no explicit attention...Whyte is simply unconcerned with that aspect of Weyl's and Eddington's views. And this seems characteristic... [of] how very far the British were from focusing on causality."

"Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood. The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day."

"The most probable view is that adopted by Nesselmann, that the works which we know under the three titles formed part of one arithmetical work, which was, according to the author's own words, to consist of thirteen Books. The proportion of the lost parts to the whole is probably less than it might be supposed to be. The Porisms form the part the loss of which is most to be regretted, for from the references to them it is clear that they contained propositions in the Theory of Numbers most wonderful for the time."

"It may be in some measure due to the defects of notation in his time that Diophantos will have in his solutions no numbers whatever except rational numbers, in [the non-numbers of] which, in addition to surds and imaginary quantities, he includes negative quantities. ...Such equations then as lead to surd, imaginary, or negative roots he regards as useless for his purpose: the solution is in these cases ὰδοπος, impossible. So we find him describing the equation 4=4x+20 as ᾰτοπος because it would give x=-4. Diophantos makes it throughout his object to obtain solutions in rational numbers, and we find him frequently giving, as a preliminary, conditions which must be satisfied, which are the conditions of a result rational in Diophantos' sense. In the great majority of cases when Diophantos arrives in the course of a solution at an equation which would give an irrational result he retraces his steps and finds out how his equation has arisen, and how he may by altering the previous work substitute for it another which shall give a rational result. This gives rise, in general, to a subsidiary problem the solution of which ensures a rational result for the problem itself. Though, however, Diophantos has no notation for a surd, and does not admit surd results, it is scarcely true to say that he makes no use of quadratic equations which lead to such results. Thus, for example, in v. 33 he solves such an equation so far as to be able to see to what integers the solution would approximate most nearly."

"Nesselmann observes that we can, as regards the form of exposition of algebraic operations and equations, distinguish three historical stages of development... 1. ...Rhetoric Algebra, or "reckoning by complete words." ...the absolute want of all symbols, the whole of the calculation being carried on by means of complete words, and forming... continuous prose. ...2. ...Syncopated Algebra... is essentially rhetorical and therein like the first in its treatment of questions, but we now find for often-recurring operations and quantities certain abbreviational symbols. ...3. ...Symbolic Algebra ...uses a complete system of notation by signs having no visible connection with the words or things which they represent, a complete language of symbols, which supplants entirely the rhetorical system, it being possible to work out a solution without using a single word of the ordinary written language, with the exception (for clearness' sake) of a conjunction here and there, and so on. Neither is it the Europeans posterior to the middle of the seventeenth century who were the first to use Symbolic forms of Algebra. In this they were anticipated many centuries by the Indians."

"An edition is... still wanted which shall, while in some places adhering... to the original text, at the same time be so entirely remodelled by the aid of accepted modern notation as to be thoroughly readable by any competent mathematician, and this want it is the object of the present work to supply."

"Any satisfactory reproduction of the Conics must fulfil certain essential conditions: (1) it should be Apollonius and nothing but Apollonius, and nothing should be altered either in the substance or in the order of his thought, (2) it should be complete, leaving out nothing of any significance or importance, (3) it should exhibit under different headings the successive divisions of the subject, so that the definite scheme followed by the author may be seen as a whole."

"There is perhaps no question that occupies, comparatively, a larger space in the history of Greek geometry than the problem of the Doubling of the Cube. The tradition concerning its origin is given in a letter from Eratosthenes of Cyrene to King Ptolemy Euergetes quoted by Eutocius... "Eratosthenes to King Ptolemy greeting. "There is a story that one of the old tragedians represented Minos as wishing to erect a tomb for Glaucus and as saying, when he heard that it was a hundred feet every way,Too small thy plan to bound a royal tomb. Let it be double; yet of its fair form Fail not, but haste to double every side.But he was clearly in error; for when the aides are doubled, the area becomes four times as great, and the solid content eight times as great. Geometers also continued to investigate the question in what manner one might double a given solid while it remained in the same form."

"While then for a long time everyone was at a loss, Hippocrates of Chios was the first to observe that, if between two straight lines of which the greater is double of the less it were discovered how to find two mean proportionals in continued proportion, the cube would be doubled; and thus he turned the difficulty in the original problem into another difficulty no less than the former. Afterwards, they say, some Delians attempting, in accordance with an oracle, to double one of the altars fell into the same difficulty. And they sent and begged the geometers who were with Plato in the Academy to find for them the required solution. And while they set themselves energetically to work and sought to find two means between two given straight lines, Archytas of Tarentum is said to have discovered them by means of half-cylinders, and Eudoxus by means of the so-called curved lines. It is, however, characteristic of them all that they indeed gave demonstrations, but were unable to make the actual construction or to reach the point of practical application, except to a small extent Menaechmus and that with difficulty."

"The discovery of Hippocrates amounted to the discovery of the fact that from the relation (1)\frac{a}{x} = \frac{x}{y} = \frac{y}{b}it follows that(\frac{a}{x})^3 = [\frac{a}{x} \cdot \frac{x}{y} \cdot \frac{y}{b} =] \frac{a}{b}and if a = 2b, [then (\frac{a}{x})^3 = 2, and]a^3 = 2x^3.The equations (1) are equivalent [by reducing to common denominators or cross multiplication] to the three equations (2)x^2 = ay, y^2 = bx, xy = ab[or equivalently...y = \frac{x^2}{a}, x = \frac{y^2}{b}, y = \frac{ab}{x} ]thumb|Doubling the Cube the 2 solutions of Menaechmusand the solutions of Menaechmus described by Eutocius amount to the determination of a point as the intersection of the curves represented in a rectangular system of Cartesian coordinates by any two of the equations (2). Let AO, BO be straight lines placed so as to form a right angle at O, and of length a, b respectively. Produce BO to x and AO to y. The first solution now consists in drawing a parabola, with vertex O and axis Ox, such that its parameter is equal to BO or b, and a hyperbola with Ox, Oy as asymptotes such that the rectangle under the distances of any point on the curve from Ox, Oy respectively is equal to the rectangle under AO, BO i.e. to ab. If P be the point of intersection of the parabola and hyperbola, and PN, PM be drawn perpendicular to Ox, Oy, i.e. if PN, PM be denoted by y, x, the coordinates of the point P, we shall have \begin{cases}y^2 = b.ON = b.PM = bx\\ and\\ xy = PM.PN = ab\end{cases}whence\frac{a}{x} = \frac{x}{y} = \frac{y}{b}. In the second solution of Menaechmus we are to draw the parabola described in the first solution and also the parabola whose vertex is O, axis Oy and parameter equal to a. The point P where the two parabolas intersect is given by\begin{cases}y^2 = bx\\x^2 = ay\end{cases}whence, as before,\frac{a}{x} = \frac{x}{y} = \frac{y}{b}."

"Once the first principles are disposed of, the body of doctrine contained in the recent textbooks of elementary geometry does not, and from the nature of the case cannot, show any substantial differences from that set forth in the Elements."

"The efforts of a multitude of writers have rather been directed towards producing alternatives for Euclid which shall be more suitable, that is to say, easier, for schoolboys. It is of course not surprising that, in these days of short cuts, there should have arisen a movement to get rid of Euclid and to substitute "a royal road to geometry"; the marvel is that a book which was not written for schoolboys but for grown men (as all internal evidence shows, and in particular the essentially theoretical character of the work and its aloofness from anything of the nature of "practical" geometry) should have held its own as a schoolbook for so long."

"There has been a rush of competitors anxious to be first in the field with a new text-book on the more "practical" lines which now find so much favour. The natural desire of each teacher who writes such a text-book is to give prominence to some special nostrum which he has found successful with pupils. One result is, too often, a loss of a due sense of proportion... It is, perhaps too early yet to prophesy what will be the ultimate outcome of the new order of things; but it would at least seem possible that history will repeat itself and that, when chaos has come again in geometrical teaching, there will be a return to Euclid more or less complete for the purpose of standardising it once more."

"Euclid's work will live long after all the text books of the present day are superseded and forgotten. It is one of the noblest monuments of antiquity; no mathematician worthy of the name can afford not to know Euclid, the real Euclid as distinct from any revised or rewritten versions which will serve for schoolboys or engineers. And, to know Euclid, it is necessary to know his language, and, so far as it can be traced, the history of the "elements" which he collected in his immortal work."

"The researches of the last thirty or forty years into the history of mathematics (I need only mention such names as those of [Carl Anton] Bretschneider, Hankel, Moritz Cantor, [Friedrich] Hultsch, Paul Tannery, Zeuthen, Loria, and Heiberg) have put the whole subject upon a different plane. I have endeavoured in this edition to take account of all the main results of these researches up to the present date. Thus, so far as the geometrical Books are concerned, my notes are intended to form a sort of dictionary of the history of elementary geometry, arranged according to subjects; while the notes on the arithmetical Books VII.-IX. and on Book X follow the same plan."

"It is to be feared that few who are not experts in the history of mathematics have any acquaintance with the details of the original discoveries in mathematics of the greatest mathematician of antiquity, perhaps the greatest mathematical genius that the world has ever seen."

"Archimedes is said to have requested his friends and relatives to place upon his tomb a representation of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere within it, together with the inscription giving the ratio (3/2) which the cylinder bears to the sphere; from which we may infer that he himself regarded the discovery of this ration as his greatest achievement."

"In illustration of his entire preoccupation with his studies, we are told that he would forget all about his food and such necessities of life, and would be drawing geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, or, when anointing himself, in the oil on his body."

"Almost the whole of Greek science and philosophy begins with Thales."

"In geometry the following theorems are attributed to him [Thales]—and their character shows how the Greeks had to begin at the very beginning of the theory—(1) that a circle is bisected by any diameter (Eucl. I., Def. 17), (2) that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal (Eucl. I., 5), (3) that, if two straight lines cut one another, the vertically opposite angles are equal (Eucl. I., 15), (4) that, if two triangles have two angles and one side respectively equal, the triangles are equal in all respects (Eucl. I., 26). He is said (5) to have been the first to inscribe a right-angled triangle in a circle: which must mean that he was the first to discover that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle. He also solved two problems in practical geometry: (1) he showed how to measure the distance from the land of a ship at sea (for this he is said to have used the proposition numbered (4) above), and (2) he measured the heights of pyramids by means of the shadow thrown on the ground (this implies the use of similar triangles in the way that the Egyptians had used them in the construction of pyramids)."

"The Pythagoreans discovered the existence of incommensurable lines, or of irrationals. This was, doubtless, first discovered with reference to the diagonal of a square which is incommensurable with the side, being in the ratio to it of √2 to 1. The Pythagorean proof of this particular case survives in Aristotle and in a proposition interpolated in Euclid's Book X.; it is by a reductio ad absurdum proving that, if the diagonal is commensurable with the side, the same number must be both odd and even. This discovery of the incommensurable... showed that the theory of proportion invented by Pythagoras was not of universal application and therefore that propositions proved by means of it were not really established. ...The fatal flaw thus revealed in the body of geometry was not removed till Eudoxus discovered the great theory of proportion (expounded in Euclid's Book V.), which is applicable to incommensurable as well as to commensurable magnitudes."

"By the time of Hippocrates of Chios the scope of Greek geometry was no longer even limited to the Elements; certain special problems were also attacked which were beyond the power of the geometry of the straight line and circle, and which were destined to play a great part in determining the direction taken by Greek geometry in its highest flights. The main problems in question were three: (1) the doubling of the cube, (2) the trisection of any angle, (3) the squaring of the circle; and from the time of Hippocrates onwards the investigation of these problems proceeded pari passu with the completion of the body of the Elements."

"Hippocrates himself is an example of the concurrent study of the two departments. On the one hand, he was the first of the Greeks who is known to have compiled a book of Elements. This book, we may be sure, contained in particular the most important propositions about the circle included in Euclid, Book III. But a much more important proposition is attributed to Hippocrates; he is said to have been the first to prove that circles are to one another as the squares on their diameters (= Eucl. XII., 2) with the deduction that similar segments of circles are to one another as the squares on their bases. These propositions were used by him in his tract on the squaring of lunes, which was intended to lead up to the squaring of the circle. The latter problem is one which must have exercised practical geometers from time immemorial. Anaxagoras for instance is said to have worked at the problem while in prison."

"Hippocrates also attacked the problem of doubling the cube. ...Hippocrates did not, indeed, solve the problem, but he succeeded in reducing it to another, namely, the problem of finding two mean proportionals in continued proportion between two given straight lines, i.e. finding x, y such that a:x=x:y=y:b, where a, b are the two given straight lines. It is easy to see that, if a:x=x:y=y:b, then b/a = (x/a)3, and, as a particular case, if b=2a, x3=2a3, so that the side of the cube which is double of the cube of side a is found."

"The problem of doubling the cube was henceforth tried exclusively in the form of the problem of the two mean proportionals."

"Archytas of Tarentum found the two mean proportionals by a very striking construction in three dimensions, which shows that solid geometry, in the hands of Archytas at least, was already well advanced. The construction was usually called mechanical, which it no doubt was in form, though in reality it was in the highest degree theoretical. It consisted in determining a point in space as the intersection of three surfaces: (a) a cylinder, (b) a cone, (c) an "anchor-ring" with internal radius = 0."

"Menæchmus, a pupil of Eudoxus, and a contemporary of Plato, found the two mean proportionals by means of conic sections, in two ways, (α) by the intersection of two parabolas, the equations of which in Cartesian co-ordinates would be x2=ay, y2=bx, and (β) by the intersection of a parabola and a rectangular hyperbola, the corresponding equations being x2=ay, and xy=ab respectively. It would appear that it was in the effort to solve this problem that Menæchmus discovered the conic sections, which are called, in an epigram by Eratosthenes, "the triads of Menæchmus"."

"The trisection of an angle was effected by means of a curve discovered by Hippias of Elis, the sophist, a contemporary of Hippocrates as well as of Democritus and Socrates. The curve was called the quadratrix because it also served (in the hands, as we are told, of Dinostratus, brother of Menæchmus, and of Nicomedes) for squaring the circle. It was theoretically constructed as the locus of the point of intersection of two straight lines moving at uniform speeds and in the same time, one motion being angular and the other rectilinear."

"The actual writers of Elements of whom we hear were the following. Leon, a little younger than Eudoxus, was the author of a collection of propositions more numerous and more serviceable than those collected by Hippocrates. Theudius of Magnesia, a contemporary of Menæchmus and Dinostratus, "put together the elements admirably, making many partial or limited propositions more general". Theudius's book was no doubt the geometrical text-book of the Academy and that used by Aristotle."

"Theodorus of Cyrene and Theaetetus generalised the theory of irrationals, and we may safely conclude that a great part of the substance of Euclid's Book X. (on irrationals) was due to Theætetus. Theætetus also wrote on the five regular solids, and Euclid was therefore no doubt equally indebted to Theætetus for the contents of his Book XIII. In the matter of Book XII. Eudoxus was the pioneer. These facts are confirmed by the remark of Proclus that Euclid, in compiling his Elements, collected many of the theorems of Eudoxus, perfected many others by Theætetus, and brought to irrefragable demonstration the propositions which had only been somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors."

"Eudoxus was perhaps the greatest of all Archimedes's predecessors, and it is his achievements, especially the discovery of the method of exhaustion, which interest us in connexion with Archimedes."

"The method of exhaustion was not discovered all at once; we find traces of gropings after such a method before it was actually evolved. It was perhaps Antiphon. the sophist, of Athens, a contemporary of Socrates, who took the first step. He inscribed a square (or, according to another account, a triangle) in a circle, then bisected the arcs subtended by the sides, and so inscribed a polygon of double the number of sides; he then repeated the process, and maintained that, by continuing it, we should at last arrive at a polygon with sides so small as to make the polygon coincident with the circle. Thought this was formally incorrect, it nevertheless contained the germ of the method of exhaustion."

"Hippocrates... is said to have proved the theorem that circles are to one another as the squares on their diameters, and it is difficult to see how he could have done this except by some form, or anticipation, of the method [of exhaustion]."

"Eudoxes... not only based the method [of exhaustion] on rigorous demonstration... but he actually applied the method to find the volumes (1) of any pyramid, (2) of the cone, proving (1) that any pyramid is one third part of the prism which has the same base and equal height, and (2) that any cone is one third part of the cylinder which has the same base and equal height. Archimedes, however, tells us the remarkable fact that these two theorems were first discovered by Democritus, though he was not able to prove them (which no doubt means, not that he gave no sort of proof, but that he was not able to establish the propositions by the rigorous methods of Eudoxes. Archimedes adds that we must give no small share of the credit for these theorems to Democritus... another testimony to the marvellous powers, in mathematics as well as in other subjects, of the great man who, in the words of Aristotle, "seems to have thought of everything". ...Democritus wrote on irrationals; he is also said to have discussed the question of two parallel sections of a cone (which were evidently supposed to be indefinitely close together), asking whether we are to regard them as equal or unequal... Democritus was already close on the track of infinitesimals."

"It is... the author's confident hope that this book will give a fresh interest to the story of Greek mathematics in the eyes both of mathematicians and of classical scholars."

"For the mathematician the important consideration is that the foundations of mathematics and a great portion of its content are Greek. The Greeks laid down the first principles, invented the methods ab initio, and fixed the terminology. Mathematics in short is a Greek science, whatever new developments modern analysis has brought or may bring."

"Greek mathematics reveals an important aspect of the Greek genius of which the student of Greek culture is apt to lose sight."

"Aristotle would... by no means admit that mathematics was divorced from aesthetic; he could conceive, he said, of nothing more beautiful than the objects of mathematics."

"If one would understand the Greek genius fully, it would be a good plan to begin with their geometry."

"Dr. James Gow did a great service by the publication in 1884 of his Short History of Greek Mathematics, a scholarly and useful work which has held its own and has been quoted with respect and appreciation by authorities on the history of mathematics in all parts of the world. At the date when he wrote, however, Dr. Gow had necessarily to rely upon the works of the pioneers Bretschneider, Hankel, Allman, and (first edition). Since then the subject has been very greatly advanced... scholars and mathematicians... have thrown light on many obscure points. It is therefore high time for the complete story to be rewritten."

"It is true that in recent years a number of attractive histories of mathematics have been published in England and America, but these have only dealt with Greek mathematics as part of the larger subject, and in consequence the writers have been precluded... from presenting the work of the Greeks in suflicient detail. The same remark applies to the German histories of mathematics, even to the great work of Moritz Cantor..."

"The best history of Greek mathematics which exists at present is undoubtedly that of Gino Loria under the title Le scienze esatte nell' antica Grecia (second edition 1914...) ...the arrangement is chronological ...they raise the question whether in a history of this kind it is best to follow chronological order or to arrange the material according to subjects... I have adopted a new arrangement, mainly according to subjects..."

"Take the case of a famous problem which plays a great part in the history of Greek geometry, the doubling of the cube, or its equivalent, the finding of two mean proportionals in continued proportion between two given straight lines. ...if all the recorded solutions are collected together, it is much easier to see the relations, amounting in some cases to substantial identity, between them, and to get a comprehensive view of the history of the problem. I have therefore dealt with this problem in a separate section of the chapter devoted to 'Special Problems,' and I have followed the same course with the other famous problems of squaring the circle and trisecting any angle."

"It would be inconvenient to interrupt the account of Menaechmus's solution of the problem of the two mean proportionals in order to consider the way in which he may have discovered the conic sections and their fundamental properties. It seems to me much better to give the complete story of the origin and development of the geometry of the conic sections in one place, and this has been done in the chapter on conic sections associated with the name of Apollonius of Perga. Similarly a chapter has been devoted to algebra (in connexion with Diophantus) and another to trigonometry (under Hipparchus, Menelaus and Ptolemy)."

"The outstanding personalities of Euclid and Archimedes demand chapters to themselves. Euclid, the author of the incomparable Elements, wrote on almost all the other branches of mathematics known in his day. Archimedes's work, all original and set forth in treatises which are models of scientific exposition, perfect in form and style, was even wider in its range of subjects. The imperishable and unique monuments of the genius of these two men must be detached from their surroundings and seen as a whole if we would appreciate to the full the pre-eminent place which they occupy, and will hold for all time, in the history of science."

"It is a defect in the existing histories that, while they state generally the contents of, and the main propositions proved in, the great treatises of Archimedes and Apollonius, they make little attempt to describe the procedure by which the results are obtained. I have therefore taken pains, in the most significant cases, to show the course of the argument in sufficient detail to enable a competent mathematician to grasp the method used and to apply it, if he will, to other similar investigations."

"The work Was begun in 1913, but the bulk of it was written, as a distraction, during the first three years of the war, the hideous course of which seemed day by day to enforce the profound truth conveyed in the answer of Plato to the Delians. When they consulted him on the problem set them by the Oracle, namely that of duplicating the cube, he replied, 'It must be supposed, not that the god specially wished this problem solved, but that he would have the Greeks desist from war and wickedness and cultivate the Muses, so that, their passions being assuaged by philosophy and mathematics, they might live in innocent and mutually helpful intercourse with one another'. Truly,Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystàlline sea Of thought and its eternity."

"Between the time of the gift of the Portsmouth Papers and the 1930s... there was as yet no real discipline of the history of science and of mathematics. The number of individuals producing lasting historical contributions in the history of science and mathematics was small, including such heroic figures as J. L Heiberg, G. Eneström, Thomas Little Heath, and Paul Tannery."

"The only one of the works of Aristarchus which has been preserved, is the very interesting short treatise "On the distances of sun and moon". It is a great merit of Thomas Heath that he called attention to the mathematical value of this treatise and that he published a translation with an excellent historical astronomical commentary."

"Science... dominates all things, it alone is of any definite utility. No man, no institution shall henceforth have an enduring authority if they do not conform themselves to its precepts."

"The word truth can not be used outside of science without a misuse of terms."

"Science is the real moral school; she teaches man the love and respect for the truth, without which all hope is chimerical."

"Chemistry is not a primitive science, like geometry or astronomy; it is constructed from the debris of a previous scientific formation; a formation half chimerical and half positive, itself founded on the treasure slowly amassed by the practical discoveries of metallurgy, medicine, industry, and domestic economy. It has to do with alchemy, which pretended to enrich its adepts by teaching them to manufacture gold and silver, to shield them from diseases by the preparation of the , and finally to obtain for them perfect felicity by identifying them with the soul of the world and the universal spirit."

"There abides in nature a certain form of matter which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself, proportionally, all imperfect bodies that it touches. ...It rested on the indisputable appearance of an indefinite cycle of transformations, reproducing themselves in chemical operations, without either beginning or end."

"Your sympathy makes the lamp which is on the point of being extinguished in the everlasting night shine with a final brilliancy. The respect which humanity shows to aged persons is the expression of the solidarity which unites the present generations to those which have gone before and to those which will follow."

"In fact, what we are can only be attributed for a small part to our labour and personal individuality, because we owe it almost entirely to our forefathers, both of blood and mind."

"If each one of us adds something to the common weal in the domain of science, or art, or morality, the reason is because long series of generations have lived, worked, thought, and suffered before us. The science which you honour to-day has been created by the patient labours of our predecessors."

"Each one of us, whatever may have been his individual initiative, ought also to attribute a considerable portion of his success to his contemporaries who are working at the same time as himself at the great common task."

"In effect, it may be declared emphatically that no one has a right to claim the exclusive merit of the brilliant discoveries of the past century. Science is essentially a collective work, prosecuted during the course of time by the efforts of a multitude of workers of every age and every nation, succeeding each other and associated in virtue of a tacit understanding for the research of truth in its purity, and for the application of this truth to the continual transformation of the condition of all men."

"Gentlemen, formerly savants were looked upon as a little group of amateurs and leisured people, maintained at the expense of the labouring classes, and performing a work of luxury for the amusement and distraction of the favourites of fortune. This narrow and unjust view which took so little into account, our services and devotion to truth, this prejudice, ended by disappearing when the development of science showed that Nature's laws were applicable to practical industry, and their effect was to replace the old traditional receipts and empirics by profitable rules founded on observation and experience. To-day who would dare to look upon science as a sterile amusement in presence the general increase of national and private riches which resulted from it?"

"The most interesting of the services rendered by science is perhaps shown by comparing the servile and miserable condition of the popular masses in the past with their present state, already so much raised in dignity and comfort, without prejudice to the hopes which they are gradually realising."

"Is there still a statesman who doubts the services greater still that may be expected from this incessant progress?"

"Science is the benefactor of humanity."

"Thus it is that the tangible utility of scientific results has made the public authorities understand that laboratory work should be encouraged and sustained, because it is economically a benefit to all and for the public health."

"Science carries its legitimate pretensions further. To-day it claims the material, intellectual, and moral direction of society. Under its impulse modern civilisation marches with an increasingly rapid stride."

"Gentlemen, since the first half of the century that has terminated, without going further back, the world has strangely altered. The men of my generation have seen come into play, beside and above the nature known since antiquity, if not an antithesis, a counter-nature... but a superior nature, and to some extent transcendent, where the power of indıvidual is centupled by the transformation of forces until then unknown or not understood, borrowed from light, magnetism, and electricity."

"A new conception of human destiny results from a profound knowledge of the universe and the physical and moral constitution of man, directed by the fundamental notions of universal solidarity between all classes and all nations."

"According as the bonds uniting the peoples of the world together are multiplied and lightened by the progress of science and by unity of the doctrines and precepts that it deducts from facts, and imposes without violence and yet in a relentless manner to all convictions, these ideas have assumed a growing and more and more irresistible importance. They tend to become a purely human basis of nature, morality, and politics."

"Hence the rôle of savants, as individuals and as a social class, has unceasingly developed in modern states. But our duties towards other men increase in the same ratio, and let it never be forgotten; let it proclaimed in this hall, in this palace of French science."

"It not by reason of the egoistical satisfaction of our private vanity that the world-to-day pays homage to savants. No; it is because it knows that a savant really worthy of the name devotes a disinterested life to the great work of our epoch—I mean to say to the improvement, too slow, alas! for our taste, of the condition of every one, from the richest and happiest to the humble, the poor, and the suffering. That is what the public declared nine years ago in this same hall when honouring Pasteur. That is what my friend Chaplain has tried to express on the beautiful medal which the President of the Republic will presently offer me. I do not know if I have completely fulfilled noble ideal traced by the artist, but I have tried to make it object and end, the directing idea of my existence."

"Marcellin Berthelot... observed ants as a hobby. He published in 1886 under the title Science et philophie... several essays. One... "Les cités animales et leur évolution". ...He was convinced that the same instinct of sociability was active among human races and among animal ones. He considered the hypothesis of the social contract as a chimerical one. ...Ten years later, in another collection of essays... Science et morale... [h]e considered that it is more useful to compare human societies with ant colonies than with beehives, because while in the latter laws are uniform, in the former there is a place for individual intitiatives."

"[Berthelot] is not only a great chemist, but also a great philosopher. He possessed a universal spirit. His discovery of the synthesis of organic materials would be enough to immortalize his name. His work on explosive materials were also invaluable services..."

"Berthelot... says that alchemy rested partly on the industrial processes of the ancient Egyptians, partly on the speculative theories of the Greek philosophers, and partly on the mystical reveries of the Gnostics and the Alexandrians."

"In 1851, at the age of twenty-four, he entered the College de France, as préparateur of the lectures on chemistry (under Balard, the discoverer of bromine)."

"He produced over a thousand memoirs, embracing every department of chemistry."

"Although Wohler, in 1828, produced artificially, and Kolbe synthetized in 1845, Berthelot was undoubtedly the creator or founder of organic synthesis."

"[H]e was not only a great chemist, but a politician, philosopher, and author."

"Probably the most important syntheses of his are the production of acetylene from carbon and hydrogen, and methane or marsh gas, by means of the well-known Berthelot's reaction; and of dynamical chemistry, his most important discovery is "the law of maximum work.""

"His scientific labours were immense, and he completely revolutionized chemistry in more departments than one. He transformed agriculture; proved that inorganic and organic bodies obey the same laws; established "la théorie des affinités"; and invented thermo-chemistry."

"The first half of the nineteenth century was devoted to analytical chemistry—this being due to the great work of Berzelius. The second half, however, was the era of Berthelot or synthetical chemistry."

"Berthelot believed in the possibility of wheat-growing and cattle-raising being superseded by the discovery of artificial substitutes for the necessaries of life. ...Berthelot's idea of the synthesis of substances that will take the place of wheat and meat is the most audacious flight of fancy... but it need not... be classed among the impossibilities."

"Berthelot was justified by accomplished facts in stating that applied science has done more for mankind in the last three-quarters of a century than all the progress in all ages that preceded it."

"Berthelot was quite sure that physics and chemistry would soon solve the problem of aerial navigation, and he significantly remarked that when they do so " customhouses will fall of themselves.""

"Although glycerine was discovered by Scheele in 1779, and its formula established by Pelouze in 1836, it was not until 1854 that its true composition was known... [when] Berthelot... proved that it is an alcoholic compound capable of interacting with... acids as acetic and palmitic."

"In 1860 Berthelot's Chimie Organique fondée sur la Synthèse, was published. It was the first... based entirely on synthesis."

"His methods were simple and direct. By means of the electric spark, and united to form ; or [acetylene was also obtained] by... [sparking] a mixture of hydrogen and ...or by... spark[ing] a mixture of hydrogen with vapour, or ."

"He also formed by passing the vapour of and sulphuretted hydrogen over hot copper; and by the action of carbon monoxide on a hot solution of caustic potash, was produced, the formate yielding on distillation with ."

"He formed by the action of the electric spark on a mixture of and ."

"[O]f the numerous syntheses of Berthelot, or the building up of chemical compounds, many... were [previously] only obtained [naturally] through... life, either animal or vegetable."

"In 1864 Berthelot began his great work on thermo-chemistry, and in 1879... published... Essai de Mécanique Chimique fondée sur la Thermo-chimie."

"His laws are... (1) The heat disengaged in any reaction is a measure of the chemical and physical work accomplished in the reaction. (2) The total thermal value of a reaction is dependent only on the initial and final states of the changing system. (3) "The Law of Maximum Work," or "the theorem of the necessity of reactions"... This law is the fundamental principle of Berthelot's thermo-chemistry: "The quantity of heat evolved in a reaction measures the sum of the physical and chemical changes which occur in that reaction"—"ce principe fournit la mesure des affinités chimiques.""

"Berthelot's agricultural station and laboratory were at , and here experiments on vegetable soils, the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in soils by the agency of microbes, the action of electricity on the growth of plants, etc., were conducted. Berthelot states that twenty-five pounds of per annum per acre might be fixed by bacteria."

"During the siege of Paris, Berthelot was President of the Scientific Committee of National Defence, and was occupied in the manufacture of explosives, and in 1883 he published, in two volumes, his work, Sur la Force des Matieres Explosives... a valuable contribution to the science..."

"Between 's birth in 1632 and his death, drunk and drowned, in 1676, he was, at different stages of his convoluted career, classicist and underlibrarian at the , physician to the fashionable in England and Jamaica, publicist of chocolate as a stimulant to "moderate venery," gossip tittle-tattling on the nude tub-frolics of the king's mistress, defender and explainer of 's stroking cures of , and historian of early Christianity and Islam. A prolific pamphleteer, Stubbe's writings on religion and politics were among the most pungently provocative of mid-seventeenth-century England. Historians of science encounter Stubbe mainly as the perpetrator of prose muggings of the in the early 1670s."

"In 1680, Robert Boyle published the Second Part of his Continuation of New Experiments Physico-mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air. ...According to Boyle's preface, the experimental work... was mainly done by a remunerated technician... Denis Papin. The air-pump with which the experiments were performed was... of Papin's own design... At least some, and perhaps the greatest part, of the design of the experimental project was also owing to the technician. ...It seems also that the technician was partly, if not mainly, responsible for the composition of the experimental narratives."

"There is a crisis of for work in our field, as in many other academic disciplines. One of its causes is a pathological form of the professionalism that we so greatly value. “Hyperprofessionalism” is a disease whose symptoms include self‐referentiality, self‐absorption, and a narrowing of intellectual focus. This essay describes some features and consequences of hyperprofessionalism in the history of science and offers a modest suggestion for a possible cure."

"As I indicated, there is a very pronounced tendency to identify science with what’s done in academia—and especially in the great research universities. But the facts suggest otherwise. At least from early in the twentieth century, the majority of American scientists were employed not by institutions of higher education but by industry and government. And that remains true today. Yet much modern commentary, especially from academic social scientists, viewed industry as a problematic environment for science. I’m not at all sure that’s right. If we compare, so to speak, apples with apples, and look at the pure research done in industry and that done in academia, many of the most popular contrasts describe the situation rather poorly."

"Business is business, and scientists who work in the commercial sector are expected to contribute to profits. Yet a strong contrast between the search for profits and the search for knowledge doesn’t describe industrial science very well in the early twentieth century and describes it less well today. For one thing, the distinction between knowledge and commercial goods makes less sense in the “knowledge economy” than it once may have done. We now understand that both knowledge and durable goods may each have monetary value. For another, to say that people working in industry are driven by money may miss as much as it gets right. Scientists who want “interesting work” and good conditions for doing it may find these in industry, while money may be as much a sign that one’s work has succeeded as it is a motive for doing it. Nor should one neglect aspects of altruism, even utopianism, that one can readily find among scientists and engineers working in industry, and, of course, expecting to be rewarded: some pioneers of the internet thought they might make societies more democratic and less authoritarian; many scientists working in biotech reckon their labors might cure dread diseases."

"Entrepreneurs are often driven by vision and they embody that vision for those who choose to join and follow them. I spend some time in my book observing entrepreneurs “pitching” their companies to venture capitalists, and I note how often venture capitalists view the personal characteristics of the entrepreneur as about the most certain feature of an investable project. Technologies may change; markets may change; but the energies, vision, and commitment of the entrepreneur can be as durable, and as pertinent, as anything else in the scene."

"Mechanics... was an axiomatic construction; and... its problem could be solved quantitatively by algebraic methods."

"Plato makes the cosmos a living being by investing the world-body with a world-soul."

"[The mathematical character of Descartes' physics lies in its methodological nature, namely, the] axiomatic structure of the whole system, in the establishment of indubitable foundations and the deduction of the phenomena."

"Classical mechanics is mathematical not only in the sense that it makes use of mathematical terms and methods for abbreviating arguments which might, if necessary, also be expressed in the language of everyday speech; it is so also in the much more stringent sense that its basic concepts are mathematical concepts, that mechanics itself is a mathematics."

"Modern science was born in the period beginning with Copernicus's work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543) and ending with Newton's Philosophia Naturalis Philosophiae Mathematica."

"It is pointed out convincingly by George Sarton in The Life of Science that the development of science, as contrasted with that of art, is cumulative and progressive. Every scientist is educated in the current knowledge of his age and, making use of all he has learned, attempts to add something of his own to the existing body of knowledge. For this reason it is essentially impossible to isolate his personal achievements from the total pattern of scientific development. It follows that one cannot write the scientific life story of an isolated scholar, but only the history of the branches of science in which he participated."

"In the course of the fifteenth century, the sexagesimal division of the radius, in terms of which cords and goniometrical line-segments were expressed, was generally superseded, though not immediately replaced, by a decimal system of positional notation. Instead, mathematicians sought to avoid fractions by taking the Radius equal to a number of units of length of the form {\displaystyle 10^{n}} {\displaystyle 10^{n}}...The first to apply this method was the German astronomer Regiomontanus... the second half of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century... observed of a gradual development of this method of Regiomontanus into a complete system of decimal positional fractions. Yet none of the steps taken by... writers is comparable in importance and scope with the progress achieved by Stevin in his De Thiende."

"In opposition to Mach and his fellow positivists, Dijksterhuis felt it to be his historian's duty to regard the advance of science as an essentially continuous affair, whereas his equally firmly held conviction that the mathematical treatment of natural phenomena constitutes the essence of scientific method almost forced him to conceive of the origins of early modern science as a decisive break with the past. The inner tension that resulted from this unresolved dilemma is palpable in Dijksterhuis' pioneering Val en worp. Yet in his magisterial The Mechanization of the World Picture, written a quarter- century later, it is present in no lesser degree, although hidden much more deeply under the surface."

"The dangers inherent in the twentieth-century classifications of the ‘mechanistic’ are best illustrated by two important works from the early 1960s. Dijksterhuis’ classic work, The Mechanization of the World Picture, traces the history of the emergence of a concept by looking for antecedents of a modern notion of the ‘mechanistic’ in antiquity. His work illustrates the ways in which focus on the different senses of the term ‘mechanical’ affects the questions that are considered. Taking as a given that atomism is a ‘mechanistic’ theory, Dijksterhuis traces the prehistory, in antiquity, of ideas contributing to what came to be called a ‘mechanical’ world-view – the development of mathematical physics and corpuscular materialism – and scarcely considers the contributions made by the discipline of mechanics.6 Tellingly, he downplays the contribution of the machine analogy to the history he is writing, because of its incompatibility with atomism."

"Dijksterhuis distinguished five crucial years in the 16th and first half of the 17th century when modern science was born (Dijksterhuis 1950, p. 431):"

"The search for original cases and the "superior" rules that would emerge from them spread far outside legal practice. Wallace Donham, dean of the Harvard Business School from 1919 to 1942, was trained at the law school in the heady days of the case system's early and enthusiastic reception. Where law and business parted ways was in the contingent matter of the availability of ready- made cases — law faculty simply reached for their shelves, while professors of business needed to create a new literary species — the business case book."

"To Donham, the case study stood squarely in the legal and cultural tradition of Anglo-American thought. Unlike French or Spanish law. Donham emphasized, English law was grounded on the doctrine of stare decisis, in which the written case decisions of the past shape, and instantiate, the law. Just as the recording of cases allowed English common law to break the arbitrariness of local law. Donham argued in 1925, business needed to universalize its procedures by itself adopting the case system. The chaos of local law that ruled in England before the common law. Donham contended, "is exactly the same situation that we have [in the world of business] where practically every large corporation is tightly hound by traditions which are precedents in its particular narrow field and narrow held only The recording of decisions from industry to industry [enables] us to start from facts and draw inferences from those facts; [it] will introduce principle... in the field of business to such an extent that it will control executive action in the field where executive action is haphazard or unprincipled or bound by narrow, instead of broad precedent and decision" ( W. Donham, transcript of talk to the Association of Coll. School of Business Committee Reports and Other Literature, 5-7 May 1925. Harvard Business School, box 17, folder 10. 62)."

"Boyle entertains the hypothesis of a universal matter, the concept of atoms of different shapes and sizes, and the possibility of existence of substances that might properly be called elements... The atomic theory as originally conceived by Democritus and Epicurus, developed by Lucretius, and resurrected by Gassendi from about 1647 on, was doubtless the source from which Boyle derived his ideas, ...as he cites both Epicurus and Gassendi. Boyle, however... avoids any dogmatic assertion of these hypotheses. It is plain, however, that these atoms or "corpuscles" as he calls them are a constant element of his thought."

"Henri Poincaré thought the theory of infinite sets a grave malady and pathologic. "Later generations," he said in 1908, "will regard set theory as a disease from which one has recovered."

"As our survey indicates, the Hindus were interested in and contributed to the arithmetical and computational activities of mathematics rather than to the deductive patterns. Their name for mathematics was ganita, which means “the science of calculation”. There is much good procedure and technical facility, but no evidence that they considered proof at all. They had rules, but apparently no logical scruples. Moreover, no general methods or new viewpoints were arrived at in any area of mathematics."

"While the mathematicians were still looking askance at the Greek gift of the irrational number, the Hindus of India were preparing another brain-teaser, the negative number, which they introduced about A.D. 700. The Hindus saw that when the usual, positive numbers were used to represent assets, it was helpful to have other number represent debts."

"The Hindus saw clearly that if the arithmetic operations... were properly defined for negative numbers, these numbers could be employed to as good advantage as people had previously derived from positive numbers. ...To people to whom the word number had always meant positive whole numbers and positive fractions, the very idea that there could be other numbers came hard. For many centuries negative numbers were either rejected or treated as second-class citizens. What was especially difficult for mathematicians to swallow was that negative numbers could be acceptable roots of equations."

"The famous sixteenth-century algebraist Jerome Cardan called negative roots fictitious, and the founder of modern symbolic algebra, François Viète, discarded negative roots entirely. Descartes, called them false on the ground that they represented numbers less than nothing and so were meaningless."

"The unnaturalness of mathematical symbolism is attested to by history. The algebra of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Arabs was what is commonly called rhetorical algebra. ...on the whole they used ordinary rhetoric to describe their mathematical work. Symbolism is a relatively modern invention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries..."

"The chief innovator of symbolism in algebra was François Viète... an amateur in the sense that his professional life was devoted to the law... John Wallis... says that Viète, in denoting a class of numbers by a letter, followed the custom of lawyers who discussed legal cases by using arbitrary names [for the litigants]... and later the abbreviations... and still more briefly A, B, and C. Actually, letters had been used occasionally by the Greek Diophantus and by the Hindus. However, in these cases letters were confined to designating a fixed unknown number, powers of that number, and some operations. Viète recognized that a more extensive use of letters, and, in particular, the use of letters to denote classes of numbers, would permit the development of a new kind of mathematics; this he called logistica speciosa in distinction from logistica numerosa. ...the growth of symbolism was slow. Even simple ideas take hold slowly. Only in the last few centuries has the use of symbolism become widespread and effective."

"The historical associations of the word algebra almost substantiate the sordid character of the subject. The word comes from the title of a book written by... Al Khowarizmi. In this title, al-jebr w' almuqabala, the word al-jebr meant transposing a quantity from one side of an equation to another and muqabala meant simplification of the resulting expressions. Figuratively, al-jebr meant restoring the balance of an equation... When the Moors reached Spain... algebrista... came to mean a bonesetter... and signs reading Algebrista y Sangrador (bonesetter and bloodletter) were found over Spanish barber shops. Thus it might be said that there is a good historical basis for the fact that the word algebra stirs up disagreeable thoughts."

"Historically, it was Euclidean geometry that, developed to a large extent as a votive offering to the God of Reason, opened men's eyes to the possibility of design and to the possibility of uncovering it by the pursuit of mathematics."

"The use of canon raised numerous questions concerning the paths of projectiles. ...One might determine... what type of curve a projectile follows and.... prove some geometrical facts about this curve, but geometry could never answer such questions as how high the projectile would go or how far from the starting point it would land. The seventeenth century sought the quantitative or numerical information needed for practical applications, and such information is provided by algebra."

"Galileo had provided the methodology for the analysis of motions on and near the earth and had applied it successfully. Copernicus and Kepler had previously obtained the laws of motion of the planets and their satellites. ...But Galileo had succeeded in deriving numerous laws from a few physical principles and... the axioms and theorems of mathematics. ...The Keplerian laws ...were not logically related to each other. Each was an independent inference from observations. ...They seemed to be suspended in the same vacuum in which the planets moved. Galileo's laws had the additional advantage of supplying physical insight. The first law of motion and the law that the force of graviation gives... a downward acceleration of 32 ft/sec2... explain the vertrical rise and fall of bodies, motion on slopes, and projectile motion. Kepler's laws... had no physical basis. ...Kepler tried to introduce the idea of a magnetic force which the sun exerted... But he failed to related the behavior of the planets to the precise laws of planetary motion. ... The new astronomical theory was completely isolated from the theory of motion on earth. ...it bothered mathematicians and scientists who believed that all the phenomena of the universe were governed by one master plan instituted by the master planner—God."

"The goal of deriving all the phenomena of nature from a few basic physical laws and the axioms of mathematics had been set by Galileo... In studying curvilinear motions on the earth Galileo had found the parabola to be the basic curve. In the heavens... Kepler... had found the ellipse to be the basic curve. Why this difference? ...since parabola and ellipse are both conic sections there was the provocative suggestion that perhaps some physical law unified these related paths of motion. ... It has often happened in the history of mathematics and science that major problems remained outstanding... great minds... succeeded only in revealing the true difficulties... and in generating an atmosphere of dispair... Then a genius appeared... with ideas that seemed remarkably simple once propounded, clarified the entire situation, dispelled the confusion, restored order, and produced a new synthesis that embraced far more even than the phenomena under consideration. The genius who... picked up the torch of science dropped by Galileo, was Isaac Newton."

"The history of arithmetic and algebra illustrates one of the striking and curious features of the history of mathematics. Ideas that seem remarkably simple once explained were thousands of years in the making."

"Descartes... complained that Greek geometry was so much tied to figures "that is can exercise the understanding only on condition of greatly fatiguing the imagination." Descartes also deplored that the methods of Euclidean geometry were exceedingly diverse and specialized and did not allow for general applicability. Each theorem required a new kind of proof... What impressed Descartes especially was that algebra enables man to reason efficiently. It mechanizes thought, and hence produces almost automatically results that may otherwise be difficult to establish. ...historically it was Descartes who clearly perceived and called attention to this feature. Whereas geometry contained the truth about the universe, algebra offered the science of method. It is... paradoxical that great thinkers should be enamored with ideas that mechanize thought. Of course, their goal is to get at more difficult problems, as indeed they do."

"The Greeks failed to comprehend the infinitely large, the infinitely small, and infinite processes. They "shrank before the silence of the infinite spaces.""

"When an equation...clearly leads to two negative or imaginary roots, [Diophantus] retraces his steps and shows by how by altering the equation, he can get a new one that has rational roots. ...Diophantus is a pure algebraist; and since algebra in his time did not recognize irrational, negative, and complex numbers, he rejected equations with such solutions."

"Another feature of Alexandrian algebra is the absence of any explicit deductive structure. The various types of numbers... were not defined. Nor was there any axiomatic basis on which a deductive structure could be erected. The work of Heron, Nichomachus, and Diophantus, and of Archimedes as far as his arithmetic is concerned, reads like the procedural texts of the Egyptians and Babylonians... The deductive, orderly proof of Euclid and Apollonius, and of Archimedes' geometry is gone. The problems are inductive in spirit, in that they show methods for concrete problems that presumably apply to general classes whose extent is not specified. In view of the fact that as a consequence of the work of the classical Greeks mathematical results were supposed to be derived deductively from an explicit axiomatic basis, the emergence of an independent arithmetic and algebra with no logical structure of its own raised what became one of the great problems of the history of mathematics. This approach to arithmetic and algebra is the clearest indication of the Egyptian and Babylonian influences... Though the Alexandrian Greek algebraists did not seem to be concerned about this deficiency... it did trouble deeply the European mathematicians."

"The Pythagoreans associated good and evil with the limited and unlimited, respectively."

"Aristotle says the infinite is imperfect, unfinished, and therefore unthinkable; it is formless and confused. Only as objects are delimited and distinct do they have a nature."

"To avoid any assertion about the infinitude of the straight line, Euclid says a line segment (he uses the word "line" in this sense) can be extended as far as necessary. Unwillingness to involve the infinitely large is seen also in Euclid's statement of the parallel axiom. Instead of considering two lines that extend to infinity and giving a direct condition or assumption under which parallel lines might exist, his parallel axiom gives a condition under which two lines will meet at some finite point."

"The concept of the infinitely small is involved in the relation of points to a line or the relation of the discrete to the continuous, and Zeno's paradoxes may have caused the Greeks to shy away from this subject."

"The relationship of point to line bothered the Greeks and led Aristotle to separate the two. Though he admits points are on lines, he says that a line is not made up of points and that the continuous cannot be made up of the discrete. This distinction contributed also to the presumed need for separating number from geometry, since to the Greeks numbers were discrete and geometry dealt with continuous magnitudes."

"Because they [the ancient Greeks] feared infinite processes they missed the limit process. In approximating a circle by a polygon they were content to make the difference smaller than any given quantity, but something positive was always left over. Thus the process remained clear to the intuition; the limit process, on the other hand, would have involved the infinitely small."

"The attempt to avoid a direct affirmation about infinite parallel straight lines caused Euclid to phrase the parallel axiom in a rather complicated way. He realized that, so worded, this axiom lacked the self-sufficiency of the other nine axioms, and there is good reason to believe that he avoided using it until he had to. Many Greeks tried to find substitute axioms for the parallel axiom or to prove it on the basis of the other nine. ...Simplicius cites others who worked on the problem and says further that people "in ancient times" objected to the use of the parallel postulate."

"Closely related to the problem of the parallel postulate is the problem of whether physical space is infinite. Euclid assumes in Postulate 2 that a straight-line segment can be extended as far as necessary; he uses this fact, but only to find a larger finite length—for example in Book I, Propositions 11, 16, and 20. For these proofs Heron gave new proofs that avoided extending the lines, in order to meet the objection of anyone who would deny that the space was available for the extension."

"Aristotle had considered the question of whether space is infinite and gave six nonmathematical arguments to prove that it is finite; he foresaw that this question would be troublesome."

"The theory of perspective was taught in painting schools from the sixteenth century onward according to principles laid down by the masters... However, their treatises on perspective had on the whole been precept, rule, and ad hoc procedure; they lacked a solid mathematical basis. In the period from 1500 to 1600 artists and subsequently mathematicians put the subject on a satisfactory deductive basis, and it passed from quasi-empirical art to a true science. Definitive works on perspective were written much later by eighteenth-century mathematicians Brook Taylor and J. H. Lambert."

"The Hindus introduced negative numbers... The first known use is about 628; he also states the rules for the four operations with negative numbers. Bhāskara points out that the square root of a positive number is twofold, positive and negative. He brings up the matter of the square root of a negative number but says that there is no square root because a negative number is not a square. No definitions, axioms, or theorems are given. The Hindus did not unreservedly accept negative numbers. Even Bhāskara, while giving 50 and -5 as two solutions of a problem, says, "The second value is in this case not to be taken, for it is inadequate; people do not approve of negative solutions." However, negative numbers gained acceptance slowly."

"In arithmetic the Arabs took one step backward. Though they were familiar with negative numbers and the rules for operating with them through the work of the Hindus, they rejected negative numbers."

"As for negative numbers... most mathematicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not accept them... In the fifteenth century and, in the sixteenth, Stifel both spoke of negative numbers as absurd numbers. ...Descartes accepted them, in part. ...he had shown that, given an equation, one can obtain another whose roots are larger than the original one by any given quantity. Thus an equation with negative roots could be transformed into one with positive roots. Since we can turn false roots into real roots, Descartes was willing to accept negative numbers. Pascal regarded the subtraction of 4 from zero as utter nonsense."

"One of the first algebraists to accept negative numbers was ... who occasionally placed a negative number by itself on one side of an equation. But he did not accept negative roots. ... gave clear definitions for negative numbers. Stevin used positive and negative coefficients in equations and also accepted negative roots. In his L'Invention nouvelle en l'algèbre (1629), ... placed negative numbers on a par with positive numbers and gave both roots of a quadratic equation, even when both were negative. Both Girard and Harriot used the minus sign for the operation of subtraction and for negative numbers."

"Though Wallis was advanced for his times and accepted negative numbers, he thought they were larger than infinity but not less than zero. In his Arithmetica Infinitorum (1655), he argued that since the ratio a/0, when a is positive, is infinite, then, when the denominator is changed to a negative number, as in a/b with b negative, the ratio must be greater than infinity."

"Over and above the specific theorems created by men such as Desargues, Pascal and La Hire, several new ideas and outlooks were beginning to appear. The first is the idea of continuous change of a mathematical entity from one state to another... [i.e., of a] a geometrical figure. It was Kepler, in his Astronomiae Optica of 1604, who first seemed to grasp the fact that parabola, ellipse, hyperbola, circle, and the degenerate conic consisting of a pair of lines are continuously derivable from each other. ...The notion of a continuous change in a figure was also employed by Pascal. He allowed two consecutive vertices of his hexagon to approach each other so that the figure became a pentagon. In the same manner he passed from pentagons to quadrilaterals. The second idea to emerge from the work of the projective geometers is that of transformation and invariance. To project a figure from some point and then take a section of that projection is to transform the figure to a new one. The properties... of interest are those that remain invariant under transformation. Other geometers of the seventeenth century, for example, Gregory of St. Vincent... and Newton, introduced transformations other than projection and section."

"Fermat applied his method of tangents to many difficult problems. The method has the form of the now-standard method of differential calculus, though it begs entirely the difficult theory of limits."

"Brook Taylor... in his Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa (1715), sought to clarify the ideas of the calculus but limited himself to algebraic functions and algebraic differential equations. ...Taylor's exposition, based on what we would call finite differences, failed to obtain many backers because it was arithmetical in nature when the British were trying to tie the calculus to geometry or to the physical notion of velocity."

"To the scientists of 1850, Hamilton's principle was the realization of a dream. ...from the time of Galileo scientists had been striving to deduce as many phenomena of nature as possible from a few fundamental physical principles. ...they made striking progress ...But even before these successes were achieved Descartes had already expressed the hope and expectation that all the laws of science would be derivable from a single basic law of the universe. This hope became a driving force in the late eighteenth century after Maupertuis's and Euler's work showed that optics and mechanics could very likely be unified under one principle. Hamilton's achievement in encompassing the most developed and largest branches of physical science, mechanics, optics, electricity, and magnetism under one principle was therefore regarded as the pinnacle of mathematical physics."

"The minimum principle that unified the knowledge of light, gravitation, and electricity of Hamilton's time no longer suffices to relate these fundamental branches of physics. Within fifty years of its creation, the belief that Hamilton's principle would outlive all other physical laws of physics was shattered. Minimum principles have since been created for separate branches of physics... but these are not only restricted... but seem to be contrived... A single minimum principle, a universal law governing all processes in nature, is still the direction in which the search for simplicity is headed, with the price of simplicity now raised from a mastery of differential equations to a mastery of the calculus of variations."

"In the field of non-Euclidean geometry, Riemann... began by calling attention to a distinction that seems obvious once it is pointed out: the distinction between an unbounded straight line and an infinite line. The distinction between unboundedness and infiniteness is readily illustrated. A circle is an unbounded figure in that it never comes to an end, and yet it is of finite length. On the other hand, the usual Euclidean concept of a straight line is also unbounded in that it never reaches an end but is of infinite length. ...he proposed to replace the infiniteness of the Euclidean straight line by the condition that it is merely unbounded. He also proposed to adopt a new parallel axiom... In brief, there are no parallel lines. This ... had been tried... in conjunction with the infiniteness of the straight line and had led to contradictions. However... Riemann found that he could construct another consistent non-Euclidean geometry."

"Laplace made many important discoveries in mathematical physics... Indeed, he was interested in anything that helped to interpret nature. He worked on hydrodynamics, the wave propagation of sound, and the tides. In the field of chemistry, his work on the liquid state of matter is classic. His studies of the tension in the surface layer of water, which accounts for the rise of liquids inside a capillary tube, and of the cohesive forces in liquids, are fundamental. Laplace and Lavoisier designed an ice calorimeter (1784) to measure heat and measured the specific heat of numerous substances; heat, to them, was still a special kind of matter. Most of Laplace's life was, however, devoted to celestial mechanics."

"Laplace created a number of new mathematical methods that were subsequently expanded into branches of mathematics, but he never cared for mathematics except as it helped him to study nature."

"Fermat knew that under reflection light takes the path requiring least time and, convinced that nature does indeed act simply and economically, affirmed in letters of 1657 and 1662 his Principle of Least Time, which states that light always takes the path requiring least time. He had doubted the correctness of the law of refraction of light but when he found in 1661 that he could deduce it from his Principle, he not only resolved his doubts about the law but felt all the more certain that his Principle was correct. ...Huygens, who had at first objected to Fermat's Principle, showed that it does hold for the propagation of light in media with variable indices of refraction. Even Newton's first law of motion, which states that the straight line or shortest distance is the natural motion of a body, showed nature's desire to economize. These examples suggested that there might be a more general principle. The search for such a principle was undertaken by Maupertuis."

"By 1700 all of the familiar members of the [number] system... were known. However, opposition to the newer types of numbers was expressed throughout the century. Typical are the objections of... Baron Francis Masères... in 1759 his Dissertation on the Use of the Negative Sign in Algebra... shows how to avoid negative numbers... and especially negative roots, by carefully segregating the types of quadratic equations so that those with negative roots are considered separately; and... the negative roots are to be rejected."

"His martyrdom was the occasion for a massive outpouring of public grief throughout France, especially among the population of Paris. David painted his famous tribute to his friend and organized a spectacular funeral pageant; the torchlit procession wound through the streets of the capital for six hours, punctuated by a cannon salute every five minutes. A quasi-religious cult of Marat arose with eulogies likening Marat to Jesus. Busts, portraits, and medallions bearing the likeness of the People’s Friend were everywhere."

"Most significant of all was the success of Robespierre and the central Montagnard leadership to turn the revered memory of their fallen comrade to a potent weapon in the Jacobin triumph over the Gironde, who thereafter could convincingly be portrayed as destabilizers or fomenters of civil war for their role in the assassination of a great patriot."

"If modern science is likened to a the skyscraper, the... twentieth century triumphs are the sophisticated filigrees at its pinnacle that are supported by—and could not exist apart from—the massive foundation created by humble laborers."

"Although the authority of the ancient authors as the arbiters of all scientific knowledge had obviously been severely weakened, it did not immediately crumble. Too many professional, medical, ecclesiastical, and legal careers were founded on that authority for it to simply disappear without a struggle. The scientific elite resisted the infusion of new natural knowledge with all its might, but in the long run, its rearguard efforts were futile. ...The common sense of the working people prevailed and brought about the changes in worldview that have come to be known as the Scientific Revolution."

"The "Baconian" sciences were the kind Francis Bacon had in mind when he issued a call to revitalize science by basing it on craftsmen's knowledge of nature. Bacon is remembered as the most effective critic of the traditional learning promulgated the elite institutions of his day. ...Bacon advocated compiling a "history of arts," or encyclopedia of crafts knowledge..."

"Koyré based his analysis on a narrow definition of science that focuses only on its purely theoretical aspects. He saw the Scientific Revolution as the advent and triumph of what he called the "mathematization of nature." At the same time he downplayed experimentalism as a relatively unimportant aspect of the new science... Koyré's exaltation of the "Platonic and Pythagorean" elements of the Scientific Revolution... was based on a demonstrably false understanding of how Galileo reached his conclusions. ...By avoiding consideration of nonmathematical sciences, Koyré reduced the Scientific Revolution to the ideas of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton."

"The most important ploy that nineteenth-century European scholars devised to avoid acknowledging that the roots of civilization are Afroasiatic was to minimize the importance of Egyptian, Sumerian, and Semitic contributions and to focus instead almost entirely on the Greeks. According to this idea, the Egyptians, Sumerians, and Semites established rather static and uninteresting cultures, while the really worthwhile developments in the rise of civilization were the work of the dynamic and sophisticated Greeks, who were considered to be of Aryan stock because their language is part of the Indo-European family. ...It was claimed that the Greeks developed their culture all on their own, with virtually no contribution from the earlier civilizations."

"In the nineteenth century C.E., a small but influential group of German scholars led by Karl Otfried Müller decided that the ancient Greek authors did not know what they were talking about—that their traditions of external influences were simply "myths." …They were convinced that the principle of historical explanation was race, and they believed they had discovered the "scientific laws of race." …only the white race ...had the natural ability to create advanced civilizations. ...This "racial science" …served as a useful ideology to explain the "natural right" of white Europeans to dominate the darker peoples of the world."

"A blacksmith, Thomas Newcomen, in collaboration with a plumber, John Calley, produced the first commercially successful machine for "raising water by fire." Newcomen could not have based his design on prevailing scientific theory, White argued, because his engine relied on the dissolution of air in steam, and "scientists in his day were not aware that air dissolves in water." Evidently "the mastery of steam power" was a product of empirical science and was "not influenced by Galilean science.""

"The French Revolution qualitatively transformed all aspects of human culture, including science, for better or worse. The institutional ideological changes wrought in French science by the Revolution and its aftermath shaped the subsequent course of modern science everywhere. The essential underlying factor, as the Hessen thesis maintains, was the victory of capitalism, which the Revolution consolidated. The new social order spread to Europe and the rest of the world, everywhere subordinating the further development of science to capitalist interests."

"Modern science will continue to be blindly destructive as long as its operations are determined by the anarchism of market economic forces. The problem to be solved is whether science, technology, and industry can be brought under genuinely democratic control in the context of a global planned economy, so that all of us can collectively put our hard-won scientific knowledge to mutually beneficial use. I am confident it can be accomplished, but will it? If so, there is reason for optimism. If not... well, to paraphrase Keynes, "in the not-so-long run we're all dead.""

"Clifford D. Conner thinks... snobbery has distorted the writing of history from ancient times to the present, because historians are scribes themselves and it is a clean, soft hand that holds the pen. In writing about science, for instance, historians celebrate a few great names -- Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein -- and neglect the contributions of common, ordinary people who were not afraid to get their hands dirty. With "A People's History of Science," Conner tries to help right the balance. The triumphs of science rest on a "massive foundation created by humble laborers," he writes. "If science is understood in the fundamental sense of knowledge of nature, it should not be surprising to find that it originated with the people closest to nature: hunter-gatherers, peasant farmers, sailors, miners, blacksmiths, folk healers and others.""

"When I graduated from Georgia Tech I worked for Lockheed Aircraft Company, which in 1966 sent me to England for a year to work as a design engineer on the C-5A cargo plane. My time in England coincided with the escalation of the Vietnam War. Opposition to that war would become a central passion of my life for the next several years. When I returned from England to Georgia, I resigned from Lockheed in a public act of protest against its role as a war profiteer. As a result, I became virtually unemployable for a while as the FBI dogged my trail, warning prospective employers against hiring me. (I suspected this at the time and confirmed it years later when I got my FBI files via a Freedom Of Information Act request.)"

"One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti-smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers"

"By contrast with diamonds or asbestos or granite or the minerals we burn for fuel, the lowly agate is the victim of scientific disinterest, the same kinds of structured apathy I have elsewhere called 'the social construction of ignorance.' Agates seem to fall outside the orbit of geological knowledge, and therefore tend to be regarded — if at all — as geological accidents or oddities not really deserving systematic study."

"We live in a golden age of ignorance, and Trump and are part of that."

"In early October of 1939, designated by the government as the year of "the duty to be healthy," Hitler authored a secret memo certifying that "Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr Brandt are hereby commissioned to allow certain specified doctors to grant a mercy death [Gnadentod] to patients judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination.""

"In March 1937 the ' reported on the case of a farmer who had shot to death his sleeping son because the child was "mentally ill in a manner that threatened society""

"Nazi philosophers also commonly expressed concerns about cruelty toward animals. In early 1933, Nazi representatives in the Prussian parliament called for legislation banning vivisection."

"It is certainly true that, in one important sense, the Nazis sought to politicize the sciences."

"Yet in an important sense the Nazis might indeed be said to have "depoliticized" science (and many other areas of culture). The Nazis depoliticized science by destroying the possibility of political debate and controversy. Authoritarian science based on the "Fuhrer principle" replaced what had been, in the Weimar period, a vigorous spirit of politicized debate in and around the sciences. The Nazis "depoliticized" problems of vital human interest by reducing these to scientific or medical problems, conceived in the narrow, reductionist sense of these terms. The Nazis depoliticized questions of crime, poverty, and sexual or political deviance by casting them in surgical or otherwise medical (and seemingly apolitical) terms ... politics pursued in the name of science or health provided a powerful weapon in the Nazi ideological arsenal."

"Neutrality and objectivity are not the same thing. Neutrality refers to whether science takes a stand; objectivity, to whether science merits claims to reliability. The two need not have anything to do with each other. Certain sciences may be completely "objective" — that is, valid — and yet designed to serve certain political interests."

"The appropriate critique of [...] sciences is not that they are not "objective" but that they are partial, or narrow, or directed towards ends which one opposes. In general, knowledge is no less objective (that is true, or reliable) being in the service of interests."

"Why do we know what we know and why don't we know what we don't know? What should we know and what shouldn't we know? How might we know differently?"

"The rejection of concern for practical goals expressed in the German Society for Sociology's founding charter represented the culmination of a debate in the Social Policy Association, the so-called Werturteilsstreit, in which a group of young political economists, including , Werner Sombart, and Max Weber, attacked the older generation of political economists for mixing facts and values, science and politics."

"The case of Otto Neurath, first author of the Vienna Circle's manifesto, is a revealing one. In the years before the First World War, the young Austrian economist became interested in eugenics, translating (with his wife, Anna Schapire-Neurath) Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius for the first time into German. His most important early work, however, was his analysis of the war economy. War economics, in his view, was a science with well-defined laws and principles which, like ballistics, are "independent of whether one is for or against the use of guns.""

"The ideal of value neutrality is not a single notion, but has arisen in the course of protracted struggles over the place that science should have in society."

"We seem to know a lot about knowledge. What is remarkable, though, is how little we know about ignorance."

"Towards the end of his life Neurath referred to the ‘mosaic of the sciences’. In the spirit of this formulation we can arrive at an understanding of his life’s work by means of a kind of collage, employing the regulative idea of the unity of science and society."

"Many innovations of current history and philosophy of science were, in fact, anticipated in Neurath’s oeuvre. The rediscovery of Neurath was therefore not merely a phenomenon of academic nostalgia, but itself constitutes research into the conditions and possibilities of changing a paradigm in the philosophy of science."

"“What is the Vienna Circle?” is a question which is neither rhetorical nor trivial. It is perhaps an attempt to ‘square the circle’ – which is, meanwhile, mathematically possible, as Karl Menger described as early as 1934."

"The new historiography on Logical Empiricism sets in with the rediscovery of Ernst Mach (1838-1916) as a precursor of Gestalt theory, evolutionary epistemology, (possibly radical) constructivism and the modern historically oriented philosophy of science. But already in Mach’s reception of the Vienna Circle one can see not only a certain pluralism of views but also a polarization of the various positions (Mach’s influence on Carnap’s Aufbau / Logical Construction, the critical distancing to “psychologism” in the manifesto, the alternative to the principle of economy in Karl Menger, etc.) Nevertheless, this research program, which was interpreted differently by the Vienna Circle, actually represented a sort of prototype for Logical Empiricism in the interwar years – irrespective of whether one backs the bold claim as to the existence of a “typical Austrian philosophy” (as opposed to German idealism)."

"The history of the development of Logical Empiricist theories since the turn of the century does not allow any clear canonization of a philosophical school in the strict sense, since what we are dealing with is a dynamic between center and periphery. The varying receptions of Wittgenstein, Tarski and Popper have influenced the development of various philosophies of science inspired by rational reconstruction, on the one hand, and by encyclopedic models on the other."

"This message of scientific uncertainty has been reinforced by the public relations campaigns of certain corporations with a large stake in the issue. The most well known example is ExxonMobil, which in 2004 ran a highly visible advertising campaign on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Its carefully worded advertisements—written and formatted to look like newspaper columns and called op-ed pieces by ExxonMobil—suggested that climate science was far too uncertain to warrant action on it. One advertisement concluded that the uncertainties and complexities of climate and weather means that "there is an ongoing need to support scientific research to inform decisions and guide policies". Not many would argue with this commonsense conclusion. But our scientists have concluded that existing research warrants that decisions and policies be made today."

"Documents released during tobacco litigation demonstrate ... the crucial role that scientists played in sowing doubt about the links between smoking and health risks. ... The same strategy was applied not only to global warming, but to a laundry list of environmental and health concerns, including asbestos, secondhand smoke, acid rain, and the ozone hole."

"Then-Vice President George H. W. Bush ran for president of the United States pledging to combat the “greenhouse effect with the White House effect”. 1988 was also the year in which the world nations joined together to create the w:Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a scientific basis for policy action. Fossil fuel corporations might have begun to take steps to limit the damages their products caused to the global environment. Instead, leading investor-owned fossil fuel corporations, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and British Petroleum, created the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) to oppose greenhouse gas emission reduction policies. From 1989 to 2002, the GCC led an aggressive lobbying and advertising campaign aimed at achieving these goals by sowing doubt about the integrity of the IPCC and the scientific evidence that heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels drive global warming. They worked successfully to prevent the United States from signing the Kyoto Protocol after it was negotiated in 1997. When the GCC disbanded, they stated that they had achieved their goals.... Between 1988 and 2005, ExxonMobil invested over $16 million in a network of front groups that spread misleading claims about climate science. It also exploited its close relationship with the administration of President George W. Bush to pressure the administration to remove top scientists from leadership roles in the IPCC and the US National Climate Assessment and to promote federal policies driving further reliance on fossil energy"

"As early as 1977, one of Exxon’s senior scientists warned a gathering of oilmen of a “general scientific agreement” that the burning of fossil fuels was influencing the climate. A year later, he had updated his assessment, warning that “present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”... Exxon chose the path of disinformation, denial and delay. More damagingly, the company set a model for the rest of the industry. More than 30 years ago, Exxon scientists acknowledged in internal company memos that climate change could be catastrophic. Today, scientists who say the exact same thing are ridiculed in the business community and on the editorial page of w:The Wall Street Journal. We have lost precious time as a result: decades during which we could have built a smart electricity grid, fostered efficiency and renewables and generated thousands of jobs in a cleaner, greener economy. There is still time to prevent the worst disruptions of human-driven climate change, but the challenge is now much greater than it needed to be, in no small part because of the choices that Exxon Mobil made."

"Exxon Mobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications. Available documents show a systematic, quantifiable discrepancy between what Exxon Mobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change in private and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public.... In short, Exxon Mobil contributed quietly to climate science and loudly to raising doubts about it. We found that, accounting for reasonable doubt given the state of the science at the time of each document, roughly 80 percent of the company’s academic and internal papers acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. But 81 percent of their climate change advertorials in one way or another expressed doubt.... Even while Exxon Mobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale."

"This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change.... Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it. However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did.... Available documents show a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil's scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public. The company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal communications consistently tracked evolving climate science: broadly acknowledging that AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming] is real, human-caused, serious, and solvable, while identifying reasonable uncertainties that most climate scientists readily acknowledged at that time. In contrast, ExxonMobil's advertorials in the NYT [New York Times] overwhelmingly emphasized only the uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most climate scientists, including ExxonMobil's own. This is characteristic of what Freudenberg et. al. term the Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method (SCAM)—a tactic for undermining public understanding of scientific knowledge. Likewise, the company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal documents acknowledge the risks of stranded assets, whereas their advertorials do not. In light of these findings, we judge that ExxonMobil's AGW communications were misleading; we are not in a position to judge whether they violated any laws."

"The merchants of doubt adopted the tobacco strategy and applied it to a variety of domains, including climate change. In our work, we showed that the primary motivation for their activities was not so much financial as ideological. These men were market fundamentalists. By that, we mean that they believed that nearly all problems were best addressed not by government, but by the marketplace. They believed this not so much for economic reasons as for political ones:they believed that government action in the marketplace—even to address a threat as serious as tobacco use, which killed (and still does kill) millions of people every year, or the destruction of stratospheric ozone, which threatened the very existence of life on Earth—that such action was a threat to freedom, as it served as a step on a slippery slope towards tyranny."

"When I was a Christian I used to say, as did an uncle of mine who was one of the learned and eloquent men, that eloquence is not one of the signs of prophethood because it is common to all the peoples; but when I discarded (blind) imitation and (old) customs and gave up adhering to (mere) habit and training and reflected upon the meanings of the Qur'an I came to know that what the followers of the Qur'an claimed for it was true. The fact is that I have not found any book, be it by an Arab or a Persian, an Indian or a Greek, right from the beginning of the world up to now, which contains at the same time praises of God, belief in the prophets and apostles, exhortations to good, everlasting deeds, command to do good and prohibition against doing evil, inspiration to the desire of paradise and to avoidance of hell-fire as this Qur'an does. So when a person brings to us a book of such qualities, which inspires such reverence and sweetness in the hearts and which has achieved such an everlasting success and he is (at the same time) an illiterate person who did never learnt the art of writing or rhetoric, that book is without any doubt one of the signs of his Prophet-hood."

"We can never stress enough that the Latin Alchemy of the Latin West owes nothing to the Greeks, to the Arabs it owes more or less everything. For decades we have persisted in studying fragments from the alchemists as if the contents and essence of Latin alchemy could be explained by it... It was not the Greek alchemists but the translations from original Arabic works which paved the way to Western development."

"[The] transformation of the blind course of nature into one that is rational [...] is bound to appear to the learned as a disruption of order, although this order of theirs brings only disorder among men, striking them down with famine, plague, and death."

"How unnatural it is to ask, ‘Why does that which exist, exist?' and yet how completely natural it is to ask, ‘Why do the living die?"

"The learned, who have fragmented science into a multiplicity of branches, imagine that the calamities that strike and oppress us are within the competence of specialised disciplines to control, whereas in fact they constitute a single problem common to all of us, namely the lack of kinship relations between a blind force and rational beings. This blind force makes no demand on us other than to endow it with what it lacks: rational direction, or regulation. Yet no regulation is possible owing to our disunity, and our disunity persists because there is no common task to unite men. Regulation, the control of the blind force of nature, can and must become the great task common to us all."

"A truly moral being does not need compulsion and repeated orders to perceive what his duty is – he assigns to himself his task and prescribes what must be done for those from whom he has become separated, because separation (whether voluntary or not) cannot be irreversible. Indeed, it would be criminal to repudiate those from whom one descends and to forget about their welfare. For the learned to behave thus would be to reject their own welfare, to remain prodigal sons for ever and be permanent hirelings and servants of urban caprice. This would lead them to disregard completely the needs of rural communities, that is, real needs, because the needs of such communities, unspoilt by city influences, are limited to those essentials that ensure survival in the face of hunger and illness, which not only destroy life but also displace kinship relations and replace love by enmity and hostility."

"[T]he rural problem is (1) loss of kinship between men who, through ignorance, forget their relatedness, and (2) the hostility of nature to humans, which is felt most acutely if not exclusively in villages, where people confront the blind force directly; whereas townsfolk, being remote from nature, may think that man lives at one with nature."

"Only when all men come to participate in knowledge will pure science, which perceives nature as a whole in which the sentient is sacrificed to the insensate, cease to be indifferent to this distorted attitude of the conscious being to the unconscious force."

"To admit an absence of causality for the unbrotherly state leads not to peace and brotherhood but merely to playing at peace, to a comedy of reconciliation which creates a pseudo-peace, a false peace which is worse than open hostility because the latter poses a question whereas the former prolongs enmity by concealing it."

"The problem of the force which brings the two sexes to unite and give birth to a third being is also a problem of death."

"Internal discord reflects external disunion, that is, the separation of the learned and intellectual classes from the people. Intelligence without feeling becomes the knowledge of evil without any desire to root it out, and a knowledge of good without any wish to promote it. It is an admission of lack of kinship and not a plan to re-establish kinship bonds. The consequence of indifference is oblivion for the fathers and discord among the sons. The causes of lack of kinship extend to nature as a whole, for it is a blind force uncontrolled by reason."

"The principle of disunion and inactivity informs all three Critiques. The philosophy of art which he embodies in his Critique of Judgement does not teach how to create, but only how to judge the aesthetic aspects of works of art and of nature. It is a philosophy for art critics, not for artists and poets. In the Critique of Judgement, nature is regarded not as an object to be acted upon and transformed from a blind force into one governed by reason, but merely as an object of contemplation to be judged on its aesthetic merits; not from the point of view of morality, which would recognise it as destructive and death-bearing..."

"Our task is to make nature, the forces of nature, into an instrument of universal resuscitation and to become a union of immortal beings. The problem of God's transcendence or immanence will only be solved when humans in their togetherness become an instrument of universal resuscitation, when the divine word becomes our divine action."

"The grief of a son mourning the death of his father is truly universal, because death as a law (or, rather, an inevitable hazard) of blind nature could not fail to arouse intense pain in a being who has attained consciousness, and who can and must achieve the transition from a world dominated by this blind force of nature to a world governed by consciousness, and where there is no place for death. This universal grief is both objective because of the universality of death and subjective because mourning a father's death is common to all. Truly universal grief is the regret for having been lacking in love for the fathers, and for one's own excessive self-love. It is sorrowing for a distorted world, for its fail, for the estrangement of sons from fathers and of consequences from causes."

"Universal Christian grief is the sorrowing over disunity (that is, over enmity and hatred and their ensuing consequences such as suffering and death), and this sorrow is repentance; it is something active that includes hope, expectation and trust. Repentance is the recognition of one's guilt over disunity and of one's duty to work for unification in universal love in order to eliminate the consequences of disunity."

"The minorship of the human race is nowhere more evident than in the superstitious veneration of everything natural, the acceptance of the supremacy of blind nature over intelligent beings (natural morality). It is not the savages who are in this state of childishness and minority, not young nations, but the ageing ones which do not notice their superstitions and even pride themselves on being free from superstition. This happened in ancient history, it is happening now, and this state of childishness usually begins during the era of a nation's decline, though the nation believes itself to be at the zenith of its civilisation. The present puerility of Western Europe is a form of paganism, though secularised since the era of the so-called Renaissance. Death is venerated too, as being natural."

"Nature is regarded as a death-bearing, self-destructive force, but not because of its blindness. Yet where can a blind force lead except to death? Humans admit nature to be a blind force even when they regard themselves as part of it and accept death as a kind of law and not as a mere accident which has permeated nature and become its organic vice. Yet death is merely the result or manifestation of our infantilism, lack of independence and self-reliance, and of our incapacity for mutual support and the restoration of life. People are still minors, half-beings, whereas the fulness of personal existence, personal perfection, is possible. However, it is possible only within general perfection. Coming of age will bring perfect health and immortality, but for the living immortality is impossible without the resurrection of the dead."

"History as fact is mutual extermination, the extermination of people like ourselves, the pillage and plunder of nature (that is, the Earth) through its exploitation and utilisation, leading to degeneration and dying (culture). History as fact is always mutual extermination, either overt in times of barbarism or covert in times of civilisation, when cruelty is merely more refined and even more evil. This situation raises the question: must man be the exterminator of his own species and the predator of nature, or must he be its regulator, its manager, and the restorer to life of his own kin, victims of his blind unruly youth, of his past – that is, of history as fact?"

"By using the mass of Earth and transforming it into conscious force, the united human race will give to the telluric force, controlled by reason and feeling — that is, by a life-giving force — domination over the blind force of other celestial bodies, and will involve them in a single life-giving force of resuscitation."

"Apart from a slowly advancing end, we cannot be certain whether a sudden catastrophe may not befall the Earth, this tiny grain of sand in the vastness of the Universe."

"If, however, progress is the transformation of the spontaneous (procreation) into conscious work, we must regard parasites as an inherent evil. The control method used is undoubtedly immoral, since it takes advantage of the natural evil of an epidemic. Nor can the annihilation of any insect be considered moral. Only the complete transfiguration of a blind force (procreation) into a conscious act can be called moral."

"Man placed himself at the mercy of fate (that is to say, the annual rotation of the Earth), he submitted to the Earth; childbirth replaced the artistry of reproducing oneself in other beings, a process comparable to the birth of the Son from the Father, or the procession of the Holy Ghost. Later, proliferation increased the struggle, which was fostered by an unbridled surge of procreation; and with the increase in birth, mortality increased too. The conditions which could have regulated this concatenation of phenomena disappeared, and gradually there came revolutions, storms, drought and earthquakes; the solar system became an uncontrolled world, a star with an eleven-year cycle or some other periodicity of various catastrophes. Such is the system we know. One way or another, to confirm us in our knowledge, the solar system must be transformed into a controlled economic entity."

"What will nature — which, in its present, unconscious state, is a force that procreates and kills - become when it achieves consciousness, if not a force restoring what it has destroyed in its blindness ? How senseless are statements about the incommensurability of the forces of man, that is, of nature striving towards consciousness and control, and the forces of the same blind nature. And should one term 'human force' merely that of man's own hand, or include what he can achieve through nature ? And are human force and human activity to be limited to what man achieves now by using the forces of nature ? Why, the true, the natural task has not even begun..."

"Contrary to Schopenhauer's 'world as will and representation', it should be 'world as slavery and the project of liberation from enslavement', from dependence, from subordination to a blind force; for us the world has no will, and for beings endowed with feeling and capable of action and not mere contemplation, the world is not solely a representation but a project of liberation from bondage. The expression 'the world as will and representation' could be justifiably replaced by the expression 'the world as lust', for lust procreates and kills, giving birth to sons and destroying the fathers. For us the world is not a representation but a project, moreover one that does not oppose lust (the opposite of lust is asceticism) but transforms the procreating force into a re-creating one, the lethal into a vivifying. Then the world can no longer remain a representation but becomes a project of the restoration of the predecessors by the offspring, that is, a project of resuscitation. That is how it should be, but at the present time the world is as it is — lust and representation."

"The will to procreate, as lust, engenders wealth and leads the human race to demoralisation (of which the Universal Exhibition is a striking expression), whereas the will to resuscitate, when the problem of returning life is seen as the purpose of conscious beings, moralises all the worlds of the Universe, because then all the worlds that are moved by insensate forces will be governed by the brotherly feelings of all the resurrected generations. This involves both their moralisation and their rationalisation, because then the worlds of the Universe will no longer be moved by blind insensate forces but will be governed by the feelings and reason of the resurrected generations."

"Be perfect as God your Father is perfect, God the Father of the living, not of the dead. Where should we look for models of living? In the world of the animals, of blind nature, or in a world that is superior to the human race? Should the model for our society be an organism and the blind evolution of life, or should the model for our unity-in-pluralism be the Divine Trinity, within which unity is not a yoke and independence not discord? Would not then Divine creativeness, replacing our present destruction of life, serve us as a model for its re-creation?"

"[A]utocracy is the task of the sons which becomes, with the full union of those sons, the return of life to the dust of the fathers – that is to say, struggle not against members of our own species but against the dark force which procreates and destroys life."

"To abdicate the task of resuscitation leaves the human race only the choice between constitutional debating and despotism. To retain Easter as a feast only and the liturgy as a church service, an expression of an as yet incomplete love for the fathers which does not entail actual resuscitation, or, by abdicating completely brotherhood and filial love, to indulge on the graves of the fathers in bestial orgies followed by savage mutual extermination; to retain the art of dead likenesses or to annihilate any true likenesses; not merely to censure parents for giving life to their offspring without their consent, but to curse one's procreators; to retain academic class science or, rejecting all knowledge, to descend into the hopeless darkness of obscurantism; to remain in the perennial city of brides and bridegrooms, surrounded by toys and trifles, indulging in pleasures and entertainments, or else, rejecting not only fathers and forebears but even progeny, sons (artificially childless marriages), in order to indulge in boundless lechery; to retain will as either lust or mortification of the flesh; to retain sensuousness or to be satisfied by mere grieving for the dead or — the last and greatest evil — to plunge into nirvana, the product of total evil negation — such are the fruits of abdicating the task of resuscitation."

"Negative virginity is not yet a celestial virtue; chastity is not yet active wisdom; not to beget is not yet liberation from death — resurrection. It is essential that unconscious procreation be replaced by the task of resuscitation."

"When external regulation has been achieved, the inner psychophysiological force will tilt the balance away from sexual drive and lust towards love for the parents, and will even replace them, thus transforming the force of procreation into one of re-creation, the lethal into a vivifying force; in other words, childbirth will be replaced by patrification, in fulfilment of the will of the God of the fathers."

"[T]he present generation is too frightened by the magnitude of time and space revealed by geology and astronomy, and has been so conditioned by four centuries of nature worship that it feels only its insignificance, and fears even to contemplate such an endeavour as weather control."

"[M]an has always felt and recognised the imperfection of nature, and has never accepted it as law. He broke this law when he took his first step, because his vertical posture challenged gravity, the most universal law of nature. This upright position is not natural to man – it is supranatural – and he has achieved it artificially, through effort (by swaddling and other methods of adaptation). One cannot say of man that he is the creation of nature. On the contrary, he is the result of under-creation, of deprivation, of a natural pauperism which is shared by rich and poor alike; he is a proletarian, a pariah among living creatures. Yet in this lay the origin of his future greatness; deprived of natural cover and means of defence, he had to create all this himself by his own labour. Therefore man values only that which has been created by working, or which expands the area of application of work; it is not difficult to guess that the culmination of this forward movement must be that everything on which human life depends will ultimately be achieved through work, so that humans will depend solely on their labour. Consequently the entire world, the meteorological, telluric and cosmic processes, will be the responsibility of man, and nature will be his work. Man is driven towards this goal by hunger, disease and every other calamity, so that whenever he delays in expanding the area of work, the scope for disasters expands. Thus nature punishes man by death for his ignorance and sloth, and drives him to ever-expanding labour."

"Before talking about resurrection one must state firmly that, just as death is impossible where there exist sinlessness and knowledge that can control the forces of nature, so resurrection is impossible where there exist sin, ignorance and other misfortunes resulting from man's dependence on the blind forces of nature."

"Neither the universal return to life, universal resurrection, nor even death itself, have hitherto been the subject of knowledge or well founded judgement. For there would have been full, detailed investigations into the reasons and conditions that have given rise to the phenomenon. For most people, death appears to be an absolute, inevitable phenomenon; but just how unfounded is this conclusion is obvious from the fact that it is considered acceptable to talk about the opposite of death, about immortality, and even about resurrection; and it is talked about as a possibility, in circumstances where all sorts of sins prevail among people, and all sorts of calamities and evils, arising from the folly of nature. But if the coexistence of the one with the other is unthinkable, since the one excludes the other, then can one talk about the possibility of death where there is moral and physical sinlessness, where nature shows such a benign attitude both within and outside man, of the sort that is deemed possible when man's knowledge and control of nature are complete?"

"To solve the question, 'What should art be?' will be to solve the contradiction between rational being and the blind force of nature, to fathom the most abnormal relationship between man and nature, to solve the question of the subordination of rational being to blind force. Will nature always remain blind and, in its blindness, a destructive force, while art remains the creation of nothing but dead imitations? Will this division be temporary, or will it last for ever? Perfection lies in the unity of nature and art."

"Nature, within man, was conscious of the evil of death, of its own imperfection. So the rebellion of the living (the vertical posture) and the resurrection of the dead, in the form of tombstones, are natural acts for a feeling, rational being. It was when the living (who had suffered a loss) rebelled and turned to heaven, and when the dead were resurrected in the form of tombstones, that art began. Prayer was the beginning of art. Prayer and the (vertical) prayer posture constituted the first acts of art; this was theo-anthropurgic art, which consisted of God creating man through man himself. For man is not only a product of nature but also a creation and concern of art. The last act of divine creation was the first act of human art, for man's purpose is to be a free being and consequently self-created, since only a self-created being can be free. In this act of self-creation – that is, in rebelling and turning towards heaven – man discovers God and God reveals himself to man; or, more precisely, on discovering the God of the fathers, the being who has made the discovery becomes not just a man, but a son of man. And only in the abstract sense, forgetting the loss, is it possible to say that the being which has discovered God has become man."

"If the question, 'What has art become?', is synonymous with 'What are the reasons for the unbrotherliness between people and for the rift in the relations between nature and people?' then the question, 'What should art be?' is the same as the problem of establishing brotherly unity in order to transform the blind force of nature into a force guided by the reasoning powers of all the resurrected generations. In other words, what we are talking about is universal resurrection, since it is this that represents the complete restoration of kinship and that will provide art with the appropriate course to follow, and show it its goal. Transforming all the worlds into worlds guided by the reasoning powers of resurrected generations will constitute a complete resolution of the Copernican question and is at the same time identical to the primeval view – that is, the patrification of the heavens (the turning of the heavens into the fathers' abode), or catasterisation (the transferral of the fathers' souls to the stars) – which also finds its expression in church sculpture and painting. For children this primeval view is the most straightforward, an explanation and resolution of the Copernican question. To turn all the worlds into worlds guided by the reasoning powers of resurrected generations is also the most important goal of art."

"Till now consciousness, reason and morality were localised on planet Earth; by resurrecting all the generations who have lived on this Earth, consciousness will be disseminated to all the worlds of the Universe. Resurrection is the transformation of the Universe from that chaos towards which it is moving into cosmos — into the greatness of incorruptibility and indestructibility."

"Living cells respond to DNA damage by a variety of mechanisms, including a series of biochemical pathways called DNA repair. These include three discrete pathways for the excision of damaged bases, called base excision repair, mismatch repair and nucleotide excision repair (NER). NER in human cells is a complex biochemical process during which a large multiprotein complex is assembled at several types of base damage. This multiprotein complex (NER machine) catalyses the excision of damaged bases as oligonucleotide fragments."

"The aesthetic appeal of the DNA double helix initially hindered notions of DNA mutation and repair, which would necessarily interfere with its pristine state. But it has since been recognized that DNA is subject to continuous damage and the cell has an arsenal of ways of responding to such injury. Although mutations or deficiencies in repair can have catastrophic consequences, causing a range of human diseases, mutations are nonetheless fundamental to life and evolution."

"Because of the questions posed by Schrödinger and the nature of the problem of identifying and describing the gene itself, the early development of molecular biology relied greatly on scientists who brought insights from physics to biology—Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, George Gamow, Sir Lawrence Bragg, Francis Crick, Max Perutz, John Kendrew, Maurice Wilkins, Desmond Bernal, and Linus Pauling being the best known of these scientists."

"Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government."

"Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling."

"Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all others, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race—Mohammed… To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a messenger of God."

"The Koran abounds in excellent moral suggestions and precepts; its composition is so fragmentary that we can not turn to a single page without finding maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary construction yields texts, and mottoes, and rules complete in themselves, suitable for common men in any of the incidents of life."

"I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit can not be perpetuated forever. … The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe, as, before long, Christendom will have to confess; he has indelibly written it on the heavens, as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe."

""But, though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a wide-spread plain bordered by the waters, yet he [Magellan] comforted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, is the substance." It was a stout heart - a heart of triple brass - which could thus, against such authority, extract unyielding faith from a shadow."

"The name Charles Darwin calls to mind a man and a theory. The theory may refer to its classical formulations in various editions of the Origin of Species or to neo-Darwinism. Charles Darwin's name may also be employed as shorthand to stand for a wide range of subjects touching on evolution. Historians of science have important roles to play in elucidating all these uses of Darwin's name: establishing the details of the man's life, filling out its context and associations, and providing historical analysis of issues current in evolutionary biology."

"As a young man Darwin was known both popularly and professionally as a geologist. In February 1859 the Geological Society awarded him its highest honor, the , for his signal contributions to the field. In reading the citation for the medal, Charles Lyell noted Darwin's studies on the growth of s, on evidence for the modern elevation of Chile and the repeated elevation of the Andes, on South American geology generally, on the distribution of boulders in Britain, and on fossil s."

"Although Darwin was an innovator, his ideas rested on a foundation of fact and analysis that naturalists and explorers around the world had built up over the course of a century or more."

"The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal [essence] of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions. In spite of the fact that their color is in the first stage of blackness, which puts them in the same category as the blacks, Allah, in His glory, did not give them the low characters, the poor manners, or the inferior principles associated with this group and ranked them above a large number of white and brown peoples."

"The first nation (to have cultivated science) is India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, and a rich kingdom (possession). India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the branches of knowledge."

"The kings of China have stated that the kings of the world are five in number and all the people of the world are their subjects. They mentioned the king of China, the king of India, the king of the Turks, the king of the Furs (Persians) and the king of the Romans (1). They referred to the king of China as the "king of humans" because the people of China are more obedient to authority and are stronger followers of government policies than all the other peoples of the world. They referred to the king of India as the "king of wisdom" because of the Indians careful treatment of `ul?m (sciences) and their advancement in all the branches of knowledge. They referred to the king of the Turks as the "king of lions" because of the courage and the ferocity of the Turks. They referred to the king of Persia as the "king of kings" because of the richness, glory and importance of his kingdom, since Persia had subdued the kings of the center of the populated world, and because it controlled, to the exclusion of other kingdoms, the most fertile of the climatic regions. And they referred to the king of the Romans as the "king of men" because the Romans, of all the peoples, have the most beautiful faces, the best built bodies and the most robust physique."

"Some astrologers came up with an explanation for this condition; they said that both Saturn and Mercury control the destiny of the Indian people. Because of the influence of Saturn, their color turned black, while the influence of Mercury provided them with intellectual power and fine spirit. Saturn in partnership with Mercury gave them correctness of reasoning and depth of perception. This is why they enjoy the purity of talent and the power of distinction, making them totally different from the people of Sudan (Blacks) (2) such as the Zinj, the Abyssinians, the Ethiopians and others. To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers (3) and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances."

"That which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking and the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols and secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played and its pieces are being maneuvered, there appear the beauty of structure and the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions and noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies and points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers. And in this, there is considerable gain and useful profit."

"One who was well versed in that science was called in ancient India as samkhyajna (the expert of numbers), parimanajna (the expert in measuring), sama-sutra-niranchaka (Uinform-rope-stretcher), Shulba-vid (the expert in Shulba) and Shulba-pariprcchaka (the inquirer into the Shulba). Of these term, viz, 'sama-sutra-niranchaka' perhaps deserves more particular notice. For we find an almost identical term, 'harpedonaptae' (rope-stretcher) appearing in the writings of the Greek Democritos (c. 440 BC). It seems to be an instance of Hindu influence on Greek geometry. For the idea in that Greek term is neither of the Greeks nor of their acknowledged teachers in the science of geometry, the Egyptians, but it is characteristically of Hindu origin." The English word 'Geometry' has a Greek root which itself is derived from the Sanskrit word 'Jyamiti'. In Sanskrit 'Jya' means an arc or curve and 'Miti' means correct perception or measurement."

"Taxonomic systems of the past—particularly those found in , biology, and geology—are now seen to be one of the most important resources for understanding the interconnections of science and culture."

"The great majority of British naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in fact considered foreign organisms much more exciting and interesting than those found at home. This is not to say that local natural history suffered: David Allen's important book describing the Naturalist in Britain indicates the wealth of popular interest in animals and plants and the depth of knowledge relating to British organisms ... Yet the inexhaustible lure of travel and the anticipated pleasures of foreign lands, both mental, moral, and physical, were important components in the history of this subject. Excitement, change, and the thrill of difference were integral emotional factors in the growth of British interest in biogeographical topics—indeed crucial as the relaxed aura of eighteenth-century social life metamorphosed into a strait-laced Victorian era. Nevertheless, a love for natural history and a desire to travel were in no way sufficient reasons to account for the increase of overseas activitiy among naturalists. Far more significant was the hierarchical structure of British society and expansionist national ethos."

"Darwin was a traveler, a family man, a thinker, a much-loved husband, father, friend, and neighbor—a likeable and genial figure, as expressive in his letters as he must have been in life. Although his theories were first conceived in the smoky atmosphere of London, just after his return from the in 1836, his major books and articles were all researched and constructed in the domestic setting of his home at in Kent. There he lived for 40 years with his wife Emma Wedgwood and 10 children, of whom only seven survived to adulthood. The house still exists and is now a museum restored to show how it was in Darwin’s time. It is an inspiring place to visit, quiet and rural, and one can almost imagine Darwin stepping in through a doorway. Visitors used to record how he would greet them with an outstretched hand."

"But science fiction’s entanglement with theology goes far deeper... Writers in this genre explore the consequences of technological innovation for human communities and individual human lives, whether those consequences are intentional or accidental, emotional or economic. They consider the impact that scientific theories and concepts have had on our understandings of what it means to be human, and on the limits of individual human identity. They examine how the characteristics that make us human (big brains, tool-making hands) might also lead to the end of humanity, either with a bang (“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”) or a whimper (“Day of the Triffids”) or both (“Threads,” “The Day After”). As such, science fiction asks its audiences not just who they think they are, but who they want to be. It creates visions both of the world as it could be and as it must not be allowed to be, with science and technology together building the future of faith."

"Theology and science have got a lot in common. For one thing, they’re often considered too hard, or too abstract, for ordinary people to understand. Their study is — apparently — reserved to those rare brains who can understand the complexity of the natural or social world. Ordinary people can only begin to understand a simplified version of these subjects. But despite this stereotype, both subjects also form part of our common human heritage, helping us to ask and answer key questions about what makes up the world around us, as well as how and why it works. (2022)"

"Every time we think about the past, we rewrite history as part of bringing a moral order to the present. (2021)"

"The palaeoanthropologists of the early twentieth century were thus able to put together a view of human evolution which can be seen as an extension of the cyclic or rhythmic theory of progress advocated throughout the Victorian era. Despite its emphasis on struggle as the means by which higher types displaced their primitive antecedents, this was no product of Darwinian gradualism. Most of its supporters rejected natural selection as the motor of progressive evolution, preferring to invoke some vaguely defined creative force in the central Asian heartland. The fact that both the concept of progress through cycles and the fascination with Asia as the centre of development survived well into the twentieth century reveals the power these Victorian ages had to shape the imagination. The echoes of Max Muller's account of Aryan migrations can still be heard in the theories of human origins by archaeologists and anthropologists committed to the idea of continuous evolution. But once the faith in continuous progress was undermined by growing militarism in the age of imperial rivalries, the model of progress through conquest emerged from the wings to extend its influence over ideas on human origins. The early twentieth century merely extended the sense of racial destiny that had been growing throughout the Victorian era."

"Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the course of American health research was increasingly shaped by for two particular diseases, and . Even as national stakes rose, both in dollars spent and growing demands on the medical system, breast cancer and AIDS advocates made government policy-making for research ever more public and controversial. Through skillful cultivation of political strength, interest groups transformed individual health problems into collective demands, winning notable policy influence in federal agencies such as the (NIH) and (FDA). Activists directly challenged fundamental principles of both government and medical systems, fighting to affect distribution of research funds and questioning well-established scientific methods and professional values. In the contest for decision-making power, those players achieved remarkable success in influencing and infiltrating (some critics said, undermining) both the politics and science of medical research. Between 1990 and 1995, federal appropriations for breast cancer study rose from $90 million to $465 million, while in that same period, NIH AIDS research rose from $743.53 million to $1,338 billion."

"Engineering education in the United States has had a gendered history, one that until relatively recently prevented women from finding a place in the predominantly male technical world. For decades, Americans treated the professional study of technology as men's territory (Bix 2000b; Ogilvie 1986l Rossiter 1982, 1995). Until World War II and beyond, many leading engineering schools, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology, remained closed to women. The few women admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) struggled against a hostile intellectual and social environment. Women studying or working in engineering were popularly perceived as oddities at best, outcasts at worst, defying traditional gender norms. As late as the 1960s, women still made up less than 1 percent of students studying engineering in the United States, and critics either dismissed or ridiculed interest in the profession. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, activists fought to change that situation, to win acknowledgment of women's ability to become engineers."

"During the colonial era of American life, "" offered young girls elementary literacy, while s taught wealthier girls to raise their matrimonial prospects by becoming proficient in attractive arts, including , and , music, dancing, and . But by the Revolutionary and early national periods, influential figures such as , Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Rush argued for extending young women's education beyond such "ornamental" skills as a political and social asset to the country."

"Amy Bix's fine book, carefully researched and gracefully written, surveys the extent of everyday hardship during the . She concentrates on the debates over in the United States, debates that were "entwined with particular musings about the meaning of American history, the western frontier, and a sense of national destiny" (p. 8). She convincingly describes the lives and emotions of employed and unemployed Americans. She also summarizes some of the social research conducted during the depression years."

"I read a great many books without finding one that satisfied my needs and so I decided to write one myself. (About his book An Introduction to the Historiography of Science, 1987.)"

"I was not brought up in a religious milieu but was (like most Danes) born into the Lutheran-Protestant church. Religion did not play much of a role and when I was in my early twenties I left the church; not because I became an atheist but just because of lack of interest and a certain dislike of organized religion as practiced in my country. My interest in religion is of relatively new date and mostly a result of my studies in history of science which showed how important Christian religion has been for the development of science (and at some stage also Islam). Especially after I turned toward history of cosmology I began thinking about religion in connection with, for example, the perennial question of the origin of the universe. Although I do not believe in traditional religious dogmas I have sympathy and respect for religious thought whereas I have no sympathy for hard-core atheism and materialism. Somehow, it seems to me, there must be something above and beyond the physical universe, a mystical spirit or divine principle. If this principle is called God, I believe in God. But this god has no interest at all in human beings. In a sense, my kind of religiosity is somewhat the same as the one Einstein expressed on various occasions."

"I am rather sure that the ultimate origin of the universe cannot be explained in scientific terms. That is impossible. From this one cannot infer a creative divine being, however. And even if such a being existed (which is an appealing possibility) the God-hypothesis rests on faith and cannot possibly be justified scientifically. I share the belief of most experts that one cannot use science in the service of religion, nor religion in the service of science. By and large I am a supporter of what is called the “independence thesis” in the science-religion discussion."

"I have a certain weakness for alternative ideas, not because I think they are valid but because they tell us something about science and the psychological state of scientists."

"...It would be of value to have a comprehensive study of the relationship between philosophy and the physical sciences in the period after about 1970. My guess is that the impact of professional philosophers upon physics in this period has been minimal, but I am not sure."

"Science started having significant applications more than a hundred and fifty years ago (e.g., in the rising chemical and electrical industries) and those applications were based on theories that have been abandoned (e.g., on an ether-based electromagnetic theory)."

"In the early 1960s, Kuhn and Feyerabend pointed out that the meaning of scientific terms changes over time."

"Science is our century’s art."

"Doctrinaire formula-worship, that is our real enemy."

"I can still recall my astonishment when I discovered in 1972 some women's entries in the old directories, and when I read biographies of several scientists in the then-new '. Here were people who had been present at many of the familiar places and events, but were totally unknown even to those well versed in the history of American science. I felt like a modern Alice who had fallen down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of the history of science that was familiar in some respects but distorted and alien in many others. Learning more about these women and bringing their stories into closer connection with the rest of history of this period became a compelling and absorbing intellectual task. The initial stumbling block was locating material, since most of the women scientists bordered, for a variety of reasons, on the "invisible.""

"Although by all accounts the period 1940–72 was a golden age for science in America, it has generally been considered a very dark age for women in the professions. ... How could this have been? Were not women an integral part of American science by 1940? Why, then, in a period of record growth in almost every aspect of American science that one could count—money spent, persons trained, jobs created, articles published, even s won—were women so invisible?"

"We live in historic times. This is especially trued for American women in science and engineering. Opportunities have greatly expanded since the early 1970s because of a variety of factors, starting with but extending beyond —new expectations, new energy, a growing economy, new technical industries and opportunities, battles won and programs instituted. The women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired many women scientists and their supporters to new levels of activism, and legislators passed and President Richard M. Nixon signed significant legislation that greatly affected traditional patterns in academia."

"Margaret W. Rossiter, a historian whose trilogy, “Women Scientists in America,” documented in sharp detail the ways women were excised from the annals of science — and who coined the term “,” named for the 19th-century suffragist , to describe the age-old practice of attributing scientific achievements of women to their male colleagues — died on Aug. 3 in ... Among the scientists Dr. Rossiter wrote about was , who with the German chemist developed the theory of . He won the for that discovery; she did not. The “Matilda effect” was but one of the many career blows that were queasily familiar to female scientists. So was the “harem effect,” a term Dr. Rossiter coined to describe male scientists’ habit of surrounding themselves with, as she put it, a “bevy of competent female subordinates who would not be as threatening as an equal number of bright young men.” (And who would presumably stay put, because their opportunities were so limited.)"

"The of would have been a very different story had advances and applications in chemistry matched progress in . As it was, there wre no "green revolutions," and chemical knowledge played a minor role until almost the end of the nineteenth century. Margaret W. Rossiter's interesting monograph on the influence of shows that the indifference of s to the blandishments of science was as much a consequence of the meager fare offered by the scientists as of any ingrained anti-intellectualism on the part of cultivators."

"The systematic study of social numbers in the spirit of natural philosophy was pioneered during the 1660s, and was known for about a century and a half as political arithmetic. Its purpose, when not confined to the calculation of insurance or rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. ... , who invented the phrase "political arithmetic" and is thought by many to have had a hand in the composition of 's work, was in full accord with his friend as to the purpose of these studies. Political arithmetic was, in his view, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government."

"Although ' seems to work as a memorable , it can mislead. The book is not about implicit trust, but reluctance and hesitation. Numbers that appear sufficiently routine may pass under the radar, but when conflicting interests are at stake, they are readily challenged. They often require . This typically involves putting aside deep meanings and convictions in favor of compromise and convention. The title came to me in reaction to my editor's suggestion of "Truth in Numbers," which I rejected at once."

"Beginning in 1892, when he took up statistics as his scientific vocation, Karl Pearson devoted himself relentlessly to a project of almost universal quantification. This work, the invention of a , defined one of the landmark transitions in the history of the sciences, or indeed of public rationality."

"A bitter debate in the early twentieth century between "biometricians" and "Mendelians" about how best to study seemed to end in a victory for genetics, defined by a focus on discrete nuggets of hereditary causation for which in 1909 coined the term "." The new genetics emphasized , , and s. Despite geneticists' intense engagement with eugenics and medicine, Homo sapiens was not their preferred organism. It was too resistant to laboratory manipulation and had too long a generation time in comparison to , s, and viruses."

"Our scientific culture, and much of our public life, is based on trust in numbers. They are commonly accepted as the means to achieving objectivity in analysis, certainty in conclusions, and truth. Numbers tell us about the health of our society (as in the rates of occurrence of unwanted behavior), and they provide a demarcation between what is accepted as safe and what is believed to be dangerous. In Trust in Numbers, Theodore Porter ... unpacks this assumption and uses history to show how such a trust may sometimes be based less on the solidity of the numbers themselves than on the needs of expert and client communities. ... Porter is to be congratulated for showing how intimate can be the mixture of , real and pseudo-quantification, awareness and self-deception, and vision and fantasy, in the invocation of trust in numbers. His historical insights can provide the materials we need for a debate on quality in quantities, a debate which is long overdue."

"I was mystified one morning in an outpatient department by the numerous and vague complaints of an Italian boy—who, incidentally, neglected to mention his chief trouble—and in order to temporize he was told to return with a "24-hour specimen". The next morning he arrived in a Ford car with sundry members of his family and six jugs containing 20 litres of pale, clear ! I need scarcely remark that this was my first experience with ."

"Born of pioneering stock, with three generations of physicians behind him, it is not surprising that should turn the full force of his tremendous energies to charting a little known field — the human brain. After attending Yale College and , he went to the where, under the influence of , Osler and , he made himself eminent as a and as a leader in the reform of . Cushing was one of the earliest in the United States to use s; the first to take routinely during surgical operations and in general practice. The use of the in brain operations was first developed by him."

"I have chosen to place ... and ... side by side ... Both men were incredibly industrious., Osler's output running to 1,195 books and papers, as indicated in Maude Abbott's bibliography, ... while Choulant published sixty separate books (see Appendix IV); his journal contributions have never been counted or collected."

"John F. Fulton was one of the leading figures internationally in and history of medicine between the early 1930s and 1960. Working at the laboratory of physiology at Yale University, he was a pioneer in the study of the functional localisation of the cerebral cortex in primates. His 1938 treatise Physiology of the nervous system was a milestone in the development of neurophysiology. Fulton created a working environment at the laboratory where training was provided to important scientists who later directed centres in their home countries. He stood out as speaker, editor, communicator, and member of several committees, and established many links with foreign figures, including the Spanish physicians , Jaume Pi-Sunyer, , , and Francisco Guerra. Fulton was a student of and Harvey Cushing and showed a special interest for the world of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. A great bibliophile, he dedicated the last years of his short but intense life to the history of medicine, publishing studies on Michael Servetus."

"Of importance for the is that , in both his cycle books, had concentrated his energies on the statistical evidence of the economic interactions involved in the business cycle and the of these relationships rather than on the relation between the economic cycle and the exogenous causal factor. Moore's concern with evidence end statistical explanation compared to that of Jevons, and the matching change in contemporaries' responses, are both indicative of the development of the econometric approach by the early years of the twentieth century. Yet, it was some years before Moore's broad econometric approach to the explanation of economic cycles, involving a large number relationships linking different parts of the economy, was taken up by who produced the first macro econometric models in the late 1930s."

"From the late nineteenth century, economics gradually became a more technocratic, tool-based, science, using mathematics and statistics embedded in various kinds of analytical techniques. ... By the late twentieth century, economics had become heavily dependent on a set of reasoning tools that economists now call 's': small mathematical, statistical, graphical, diagrammatic, and even physical objects that can be manipulated in various different ways. Today, in the twenty-first century, if we go to an economics seminar, or read a learned scientific paper in that field, we find that economists write down some equations or maybe draw a diagram, and use those to develop solutions to their theoretical conundrums or to answer questions about the economic world."

"The joint work with from that research group, ' ..., is now seen as creating a new strand. The extant philosophy of science thought about s in relation to theory: models were ways of capturing the essence of a theory. What we were doing in that little research group – and what we did in the volume Models as Mediators – was to say, if you look at the way science is practised, you see that scientists treat models as autonomous objects on which they develop arguments. They manipulate them, argue with them, extend them. Models are not in a simple relationship between theory and the world, rather they are at angles to both, so you can use them to interrogate both sides. Models as Mediators is 20 years old, and you can definitely see now that the project as a whole changed the conversation in the philosophy of science about models. I don’t mean that everybody was convinced by it, but it created a big enough presence so that, even if you didn’t agree with it, you had to take it into account. This work was part of a wider move that has been happening toward ‘the philosophy of science in practice’."

"Harrison is no nostalgic reactionary. He acknowledges modernity’s gifts. But he warns against monochrome narratives of progress. One of his most provocative claims is that science, too, relies on “ implicita.” …As a scholar of new religious movements, I find Harrison’s thesis electrifying. He doesn’t mention my field, but I’ll extend his argument: many new religions are a renaissance of “fides implicita.” Converts don’t join because they’ve dissected theological treatises (although some may read them later). They join because they trust a guru, a prophet, a community. Just like early Christians and Muslims. The intellectual scaffolding may come later—or not at all. So, is “fides implicita” obsolete? Has secular science vanquished religion? Harrison—and I—say: not so fast. Belief, in its ancient form as trust, is alive and well. It’s just wearing new clothes."

"The 1940s and 1950s were marked by intense debates over the origin of drug resistance in microbes. ... Antibiotic resistance became a key issue among those disputing physiological (usually termed ‘’) vs. genetic ( and ) explanations of variation in . Postwar developments connected with the gave this debate a new political valence. Proponents of the weighed in with support for the genetic theory. However, certain features of drug resistance seemed inexplicable by mutation and selection, particularly the phenomenon of ‘multiple resistance’—the emergence of resistance in a single strain against several unrelated antibiotics. In the late 1950s, and his collaborators solved this puzzle by determining that resistance could be conferred by rather than . These could carry resistance to many antibiotics and seemed able to promote their own dissemination in bacterial populations. In the end, the vindication of the genetic view of drug resistance was accompanied by a recasting of the ‘gene’ to include extrachromosomal hereditary units carried on viruses and s."

"Laboratory instructions and recipes are sometimes edited into books with a wide circulation. Even in the late twentieth century, publications of this nature remained influential. For example, s from a 1980 summer course on at provided the basis for a bestselling laboratory manual by , and . Not only did the Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual become a standard reference for s (commonly called the ‘bible’), but also its recipes and clear instructions made gene cloning and technologies accessible to non-specialists. Consequently, this laboratory manual contributed to the rapid spread of genetic-engineering techniques throughout the , as well as in industry. As is often the case with how-to books, however, finding a way to update methods in this rapidly changing field posed a challenge, and various molecular-biology reference books had different ways of dealing with knowledge obsolescence. This paper explores the origins of this manual, its publication history, its reception and its rivals – as well as the more recent migration of such laboratory manuals to the Internet."

"There are many reasons to revisit the history of research on (TMV), beginning with the fact that it was the first virus to be identified and so marks the start of the field of . However, not every original example of a new biological category becomes a well-studied object in its own right ... As virology took off in the early twentieth century, TMV did become one of the best-studied viruses and remained at the forefront of the field. It was used to elucidate basic knowledge about the nature of viruses and served as a in as well as agriculture, where it had emerged. The fact that the first recognized virus came from plants—although es were rapidly identified—meant that virology was, from the outset, highly comparative ... Literature on the origins of often privileges and the contributions of the ... Yet early work with TMV inspired Max Delbrück and other early molecular biologists to take up the study of bacteriophages. Moreover, TMV itself became a prominent model system for understanding the molecular nature of heredity and the relationship between proteins and nucleic acids ... Notably, some of the main scientists involved in elucidating the double-helical structure of DNA were also studying TMV, which became a tool for cracking the ."

"By 1950 the nature of the virus was no longer a mystery. Viruses were known to be s, genetic units, parasites that depend on their hosts for and . But a funny thing happened on the road to this knowledge. The viruses that most shaped this emerging portrait were not the most dangerous s, but those examples, however innocuous to humans, that made good laboratory subjects. Researchers constructed general knowledge about viruses based on a few that, by reason of historical precedence or biological robustness, were intensively studied as representatives of the rest."

"Like ’’’’, is part of the biologist's . The best-known model systems—standardized organisms such as the and the —are investigated by an entire community of biologists. Model systems become prototypes within which key biological questions are defined and resolved, useful precisely because they have already been so well studied. was a model system in these respects, studied and discussed by a large contingent of s, s, and other agricultural and medical researchers ..."

"s used s to reveal the sequence of chemical reactions in . s followed the assimilation and turnover of key s and tagged molecules such as to track the movement and activity of s. s labeled s with radioisotopes to follow the replication and expression of s. Physicians utilized radioisotopes such as and to diagnose and detect s. Ecologists profited as well, using to trace through the living and nonliving parts of aquatic and terrestrial landscapes, giving concrete meaning to the notion of an ecosystem."

"put to work in , having induced in an inbred mouse strain (Strong A) that was particularly susceptible to the implantation of tumors ... He and K. G. Scott found that these leukemic mice concentrated more radiophosphorus in their s and s than did healthy mice after both groups received tracer doses. ... This finding stoked hopes that radioisotopes would be selectively absorbed and localized in cancer patients, where they could serve to irradiate tumors."

"In Life Atomic, Angela Creager weaves an engaging tale of the history of s. Much of her material came from government documents from the Manhattan Project that were declassified during the . ... Creager introduces the concepts and vocabulary of radioisotopes at a level that any reader can appreciate."

"... one of the virtues of Creager's admirable book is that the attentive, even if scientifically uninformed, reader will learn a great deal, not only about these subjects but more generally about the character of during the last two-thirds of the twentieth-century. By tracking the history of from the applied realm of through its acceptance as —a widely and conventionally accepted laboratory tool—Creager traces more general trends in the development of , genetics, and . ... The power of Creager's method lies in how it underlines the dynamic set of relationships between ideas and experimental practice, between the laboratory and its sources of support."

"was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as had been of the . When cholera first appeared in the United States in 1832, and smallpox, the great epidemic diseases of the previous two centuries, were no longer truly national problems. Yellow fever had disappeared from the , and had deprived smallpox of much of it menace. Cholera, on the other hand, appeared in almost every part of the country in the course of the century. ... Before 1817, there had probably never been a cholera epidemic outside the ; during the nineteenth century, it spread through almost the entire world ..."

"Far into the nineteenth century, Washington remained a small, rather provincial city. Life was seasonal. Oppressed by heat and malaria during the summer, the capital did not awake to its foreshortened and unnaturally frenetic life until fall and the convening of Congress."

"Medicine has always had its s, but until recently it was a history written by and for practitioners. Until the early nineteenth century, in fact, history and practice could hardly be distinguished. Galen and Hippocrates could be and were used to bolster arguments about the nature of fever or the logic of a particular therapeutic choice. A learned physician read Latin and , not simply to mystify the laity but to work with those master texts that still figured meaningfully in his intellectual life. By the late nineteenth century, of course, the writings of and were no longer alive in the thought and practice of even educated practitioners. History had become quite clearly history — something in the past. This is not to suggest that interest in the medicine of previous eras disappeared. It remained was to become gradually — if even today incompletely — an academic field. But the history of medicine was still populated almost entirely by scholars trained in medical schools, the great majority of whom made their living as physicians."

"Even the most optimistic advocate of innovation in medicine cannot ignore ever-increasing , costs associated in some measure with that we so much admire. And, as we are equally well aware, access to clinical services is far from universal or equitable. As I write this introduction, more than forty million Americans lack and medical expenses remain a major cause of bankruptcy. Still another paradox complicates the relationship between society and medicine. Though expectations of therapeutic efficacy have never been more euphoric and patients appear to trust their own physicians, respect for the medical profession has declined ... The is trusted even less."

"Physicians and since the days of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush have criticized the peculiar tensions of American life. The speculative pathologies which explain precisely how these tensions injured the mind and body have changed in form since the days of Rush, but the ambivalent attitudes which they express toward American life have not. Yet neither Benjamin Rush nor his successors later in the century—, , and , among others—were willing, warn as they might of the psychic perils of American life, to exchange its liberties for the placid tyranny of the Russian or Turkish empires (or, most Americans felt, their Protestantism for the formalistic reassurances of Catholicism)."

"Just as s and s assumed that their research illuminated the glory of God in His works, so did most nineteenth-century American physicians assume that there could be no conflict between their findings and the truths of morality. The human organism was a thing both material and divine, and offenses both physical and moral were necessarily punished with disease. Drinking, overeating, sexual excess, all carried with them inevitable retribution, not because the Lord deigned to intercede directly in human affairs, but because He had created man's body so that infringing on God's moral law meant disobeying the laws of . Moralism thus drew upon the prestige of science, while medicine was pleased that its findings supported the dictates of morality."

"... and Hugh Hodge, Philadelphia's leading teachers of in the 1840s and 1850s were vociferous in rejecting the suggestion that might be contagious, indeed often spread by the obstetrician himself ... The intensity of their response suggests that something more than mere intellectual difference was involved; one of the roots of their hostility to a contagionist point of view lay in the threat it implied for the physician's status, especially in relation to female patients."

"In an account that both travels over explored territory and covers new ground, Charles Rosenberg provides a vivid and complex history of a key institution. Rosenberg divides The Care of Strangers into two periods: the pre-Civil War era, before the advent of modern medicine, and from the war to the 1920s, by which time the had assumed modern form. The underlying theme of the book is that hospitals are a product of the interaction of and physicians. Hospitals were dominated by reformers as long as medical science was weak. But with its rise and the subsequent power of physicians, reformers and their social welfare goals faded."

"We need some citizens committed to exploring and producing knowledge, as well as consuming it, and the outcomes cannot be measured solely in economic terms (nor is the Ph.D. the only path to that end, but it is certainly an important one)."

"...After the more prosperous era of the mid-1990s through around 2008, we seem to have forgotten the truly dreadful market of the 1970s, the awful job market of most of the 1980s, some of the occasional downturns of the 1990s, and the fact that even the best of times has never offered the number of tenure-track jobs equal to the number of Ph.D.’s."

"...You will be offered a period in your life in which to learn and think, and see where it takes you. That is a rare and valuable thing. We have begun to assess the Ph.D. as if it were an M.B.A. It isn’t."

"A friend who did a lot of consulting work when tenure-track jobs were not readily forthcoming once told me that having a Ph.D. means two things: You know a lot about a little, and you know better than most people how to look things up—particularly at a time when there is so much cheap, unreliable, useless information out there."

"My great-grandmother would talk about her uncles who served in the Maine Regiment during the Civil War, my great-grandfather’s work helping to build the Canadian railroad and Halifax harbour, the first time she used a flush toilet, talked on the phone (she still had a party line), road in automobile, and so forth. It made me appreciate how much technology transformed the world within a century."

"The past contains many answers, but until we ask the right questions their meaning eludes us."

"...All historians are nonfiction writers, whether we know it or not."

"Technology...has become the prime source of material change and so determines the pattern of the total social fabric."