"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?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Television producersNon-fiction authors from Northern IrelandHistorians of scienceHistorians from Northern Ireland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Burke_(science_historian)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
James Burke (science historian)
29 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by James Burke (science historian) →
Related Quotes
"These are the great ancient temples of Karnak, on the edge of the Nile about 450 miles south of Cairo. They were the …"
"The Egyptians built an empire and ran it with a handful of technology... the wheel, irrigation canals, the loom, the …"
"Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods…"
"You see how increasingly the only way we in the advanced industrial nations, with our bewildering technology network,…"
"An invention acts rather like a trigger, because, once it's there, it changes the way things are, and that change sti…"
"Following the trail of events from some point in the past to a piece of modern technology is rather like a detective …"
"… That's all it takes to get you back to the late 18th century. Three grandfather's lifetimes. That's how close we ar…"
"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 abl…"
"Today, the nuclear bomb is like a Sword of Damocles hanging over us. Will it fall again?"
"… Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or ho…"