The Origins of Modern Science Quotes
Science books, Works about the history of science
Top Quotes
“History of science”
“Herbert Butterfield”
“Scientific Revolution”
“History of mathematics”
“It required... combined efforts to clear up... simple things which we now regard as obvious...”
“Works by Herbert Butterfield*orldCat.org”
“Even the greatest geniuses who broke through the ancient views in some special field... would remain stranded in... medievalism... outside their chosen field.”
“Little progress can be made if we think of the older... as merely a case of bad science or... imagine that only the achievements of... recent times are worthy of serious attention...”
“In the latter... seventeenth century... men have a vision of science as a young affair with... an ever expanding future—and Fontenelle points out that the sciences are still in their cradle.”
“Perhaps the lack of mathematics, or... mathematical ways of formulating... was partly responsible for... verbal subtleties and... straining of language... to find the way to... modern... mechanics.”
“[T]ake note of those cases in which men not only solved a problem but had to alter their mentality in the process, or... discovered afterwards that the solution involved a change in their mental approach.”
“[I]n... celestial and terrestrial physics... change is brought about... by transpositions... inside the minds of the scientists... [H]andling the same bundle of data... in a new system of relations... a different framework...”
“Herbert Butterfield and the Scientific Revolution: A Forum Historically Speaking Volume VIII, Number 1. The Historical Society.”
“It is not sufficient to read Galileo with the eyes of the twentieth century... we can only understand his work if we know something of the system which he was attacking... apart from the things which were said about it by his enemies.”
“It has proved almost more useful to learn something of the misfires and the mistaken hypotheses of early scientists... particular intellectual hurdles that seemed insurmountable... to pursues courses... that ran into a blind alley, but... had their effect on the progress of science...”
“It has been suggested that the modern idea of progress owes something to the fact that Christianity had provided a meaning for history and a grand purpose to which the whole of creation moved. ...[S]ecularisation of an attitude, initially religious ...a fine fulfilment ...leading to something.”
“In... 1277 a council in Paris condemned a large number of Aristotelian theses... as... even God could not create a void, or an infinite universe, or a plurality of worlds... apparently extended by the Archbishop of Canterbury...”
“[T]he peculiar character of that Aristotelian universe... things... in motion had to be accompanied by a mover all of the time. A universe... [that] had the door half-way open for spirits...unseen hands had to be in constant operation... sublime Intelligences had to roll the planetary spheres... Alternatively, bodies had to be endowed with souls and aspirations... [M]atter itself seemed to possess mystical qualities.”
“Previously... there had been an idea that a scientific revolution was necessary... that it would occur and complete itself as a great historical episode, putting a new view of the universe in place of the Aristotelian... Bacon had imagined that the work... could be achieved in a limited period, while Descartes had thought... the revolution should be carried out by a single mind. A cataclysmic view... was still prevalent... rather than as a growth...”
“Even the apostles of the new theory of impetus... regarded a projectile as moving in a straight line until the impetus had exhausted itself... then quickly curving... to make a direct vertical drop... [I]mpetus... gradually weakened and wore itself out... as a poker grows cold... Or, said Galileo, like the reverberations... in a bell... which gradually fades away.”