I would like to suggest that the history of science is the history of an enlarging understanding of the universe, its evolution, its history, and its structure. We have engaged the universe at the very limits of our capacity. We have explored the world of the microcosm and the world of the macrocosm. We have found at both extremes incredible complexity. The universe, beginning from an unimaginably hot and dense singularity, evolved through a series of stages, each producing the condition necessary for the succeeding stage. Our sun, our solar system, our planet, our own beings are all late stages of this evolving universe. The insights of cosmology and theoretical astronomy have served to tie us ever more tightly into the emerging story of the universe itself. The history of the universe is our history. We emerged from the same vast processes that created galaxies and suns and stars and planets. We are all of us recycled stardust.
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The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other.
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Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbably leading literature to the rejection, en masse, of all divine and social laws, towards practical and theoretical evil.
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The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced -- by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
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The physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations for he himself knows best and feels most surely where the shoe pinches.... he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified... The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
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In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.
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The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things...
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[Duke] wrote of his wish to support a form of education 'conducted along sane and practical lines,' ... He goes on to specify that he means 'sane and practical as opposed to dogmatic and theoretical.' At first hearing you might have thought he meant sane and practical as opposed to insane and impractical, or kooky and clueless.
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All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it
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The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
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The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.
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