Natural Philosophy Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Natural Philosophy". There are currently 38 quotes in our collection about Natural Philosophy. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Natural Philosophy!
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  • I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

    John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin
  • The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.

    John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.210, Jazzybee Verlag
  • In science its main worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to something beyond. Even [Newton's] Principia ... is truly but the beginning of a natural philosophy. Co-author with his brother Julius Hare.

  • We find sects and parties in most branches of science; and disputes which are carried on from age to age, without being brought to an issue. Sophistry has been more effectually excluded from mathematics and natural philosophy than from other sciences. In mathematics it had no place from the beginning; mathematicians having had the wisdom to define accurately the terms they use, and to lay down, as axioms, the first principles on which their reasoning is grounded. Accordingly, we find no parties among mathematicians, and hardly any disputes.

  • All the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and...however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.

  • The main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phænomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these, and to such like Questions.

    Sir Isaac Newton (1782). “Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia”, p.237
  • For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet.

    Aristotle (1815). “Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry”, p.66
  • Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then natural philosophy became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time theres a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.

    "Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?". Interview with Ross Andersen, www.theatlantic.com. Apr 23, 2012.
  • As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy.

    Optics Book III, Part I
  • Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.

    Alexander von HUMBOLDT (1869). “Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America”, p.288
  • Live in the fields, and God will give you lectures on natural philosophy every day.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson Forbes (1910). “Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872 [1876] Ed”
  • There is a ... matter - much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy . ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas.

  • The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal.

    Thomas Paine (1830). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar”, p.197
  • There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle

    Michael Faraday (2016). “The Chemical History of a Candle”, p.3, Library of Alexandria
  • Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy.

  • what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian; Mathematics; Natural philosophy; Natural History; Civil History; Ethics.

  • This incomparable Author having at length been prevailed upon to appear in public, has in this Treatise given a most notable instance of the extent of the powers of the Mind; and has at once shown what are the Principles of Natural Philosophy, and so far derived from them their consequences, that he seems to have exhausted his Argument, and left little to be done by those that shall succeed him.a

  • I do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics.

  • I am myself an empiric in natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts. I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation, because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited and science advanced in the end.

    Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.260
  • In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

    Francis Bacon, William Rawley (1863). “Philosophical works”, p.207
  • Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?

    John E. Thornes, John Constable (1999). “John Constable's Skies: A Fusion of Art and Science”, p.51, A&C Black
  • I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of dally life.

    Michael Faraday (1859). “Experimental researches in Chemistry and Physics ... Reprinted from the Philosophical Transactions of 1821-1857; the Journal of the Royal Institution ... and other publications”, p.477
  • The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

  • That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

    Thomas Paine (2016). “THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…”, p.415, e-artnow
  • We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect.

    "Hannes Alfvén: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents". Book by Anthony L. Peratt, p. 192, 1998.
  • If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.

  • The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.

    D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1992). “On Growth and Form”, p.326, Cambridge University Press
  • Scientific wealth tends to accumulate according to the law of compound interest. Every addition to knowledge of the properties of matter supplies the physical scientist with new instrumental means for discovering and interpreting phenomena of nature, which in their turn afford foundations of fresh generalisations, bringing gains of permanent value into the great storehouse of natural philosophy.

    Philosophy   Mean   Law  
  • Civil Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of Power in Nature for the use and convenience of man; being that practical application of the most important principles of natural Philosophy which has in a considerable degree realized the anticipations of Bacon, and changed the aspect and state of affairs in the whole world. The most important object of Civil Engineering is to improve the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal Trade.

    Art   Philosophy   Mean  
  • Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

    Wise   Witty   Philosophy  
    'Essays' (1625) 'Of Studies'
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