Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
Francis BaconRead
For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mathematics is essential for understanding and utilizing various aspects of nature.
In this quote, Francis Bacon emphasizes the indispensable role that mathematics plays in comprehending and manipulating the natural world. He suggests that many elements of nature cannot be effectively created, analyzed, or applied without the insights and tools provided by mathematical principles, covering various fields such as perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, and engineering.
Themes
MathematicsNatureScienceUnderstandingPerspectiveArchitecture
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of mathematics in science classes.
More from Francis Bacon
All quotes →Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis BaconRead
Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Francis BaconRead
Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
Francis BaconRead
Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
Francis BaconRead
Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
Francis BaconRead
Similar quotes
Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?
Richard DawkinsRead
The history is important because science is a discipline deeply immersed in history. In other words, every time you perform an experiment in science or in medicine, what you're actually doing is you're answering someone, answering a question raised by someone in the past.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.
Louis PasteurRead
If we examine the accomplishments of man in his most advanced endeavors, in theory and in practice, we find that the cell has done all this long before him, with greater resourcefulness and much greater efficiency.
Albert ClaudeRead
Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.
Robert WinstonRead
A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
Karl PopperRead