Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
Lord KelvinRead
Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.
Interpretation
Science is committed to confronting challenges with integrity and courage.
In this quote, Lord Kelvin emphasizes the duty of science to approach all problems with honesty and bravery. He suggests that scientists should not shy away from difficult questions or challenges, but rather engage with them with a commitment to truth and thorough investigation.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire students during a science fair to tackle tough scientific questions.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
We only know God in His works, but we are forced by science to admit and to believe with absolute confidence in a Directive Power-in an influence other than physical, or dynamical, or electrical forces.
In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.
Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it.
I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life.
I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.
One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.
Whoever wishes to acquire a deep acquaintance with Nature must observe that there are analogies which connect whole branches of science in a parallel manner, and enable us to infer of one class of phenomena what we know of another. It has thus happened on several occasions that the discovery of an unsuspected analogy between two branches of knowledge has been the starting point for a rapid course of discovery.
As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.
Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star. ... From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist. ... [K]nowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.
It is astonishing that human brains, which evolved to cope with the everyday world, have been able to grasp the counterintuitive mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.