"Sir William Crookes was a great experimenter. His material discoveries are of lasting and fundamental value, though his theoretical speculations have not stood the test of time so well. While it is true that all scientific theories serve primarily only for the suggestion of further research, it must be admitted that Crookes's analytical power hardly equalled his gift as an investigator of new facts. His excursions into psychical research have been strongly criticized, and they certainly led him into some very curious situations, but they show that he thought all phenomena worthy of investigation, and refused to be bound by tradition and convention. He was a man of science in the broadest sense, an influential personality, and a doyen of his profession."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, in Dictionary of National Biography (1927)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Crookes
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
William Crookes
Sir William Crookes (June 17, 1832 – April 4, 1919) was an English chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, in London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer in the development of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube, and was controversial in his advocacy of research into psychic abilities and other paranormal phenomena.
35 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by William Crookes →
Related Quotes
"Which was first, Matter or Force? If we think on this question, we shall find that we are unable to conceive of matte…"
"The task I am called upon to perform today is to my thinking by no means a merely formal or easy matter. It fills me …"
"The most helpful quality which has aided me in psychical problems and has made me lucky in physical discoveries (some…"
"I am not disposed to bewail the limitations imposed by human ignorance. On the contrary, I feel ignorance is a health…"
"I will point out a curious, inveterate, and widespread illusion — the illusion that our earthly bodies are a kind of …"
"The human creature represents the most perfect thinking and acting machine yet evolved on this earth, developing thro…"
"It is curious that the popular conceptions of evil and malignant beings are of the type that would be produced by inc…"
"Popular imagination presupposes spiritual beings to be utterly independent of gravitation, while retaining shapes and…"
"A view of the constitution of matter which recommended itself to Faraday as preferable to the one ordinarily held app…"
"I have raised a question which may be regarded as heretical. At the time when our modern conception of chemistry firs…"