Quote of the day, mostly related to astronomy.

[messier 111]

In my studies of astronomy and philosophy I hold this opinion about the universe, that the Sun remains fixed in the centre of the circle of heavenly bodies, without changing its place; and the Earth, turning upon itself, moves round the Sun.



— Galileo Galilei
Letter to Cristina di Lorena, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (the mother of his patron Cosmo), 1615. Quoted in Sedley Taylor, 'Galileo and Papal Infallibility' (Dec 1873), in Macmillan's Magazine: November 1873 to April 1874 (1874) Vol 29, 93.

[messier 111]

This will be my last quote for a while, I'm going to Mazatlan to see the eclipse and also Spain for our wedding anniversary.
I wish you all good weather for the eclipse.

[helicon]

This will be my last quote for a while, I'm going to Mazatlan to see the eclipse and also Spain for our wedding anniversary.
I wish you all good weather for the eclipse.

Enjoy your trips!

[messier 111]

Bacon himself was very ignorant of all that had been done by mathematics; and, strange to say, he especially objected to astronomy being handed over to the mathematicians. Leverrier and Adams, calculating an unknown planet into a visible existence by enormous heaps of algebra, furnish the last comment of note on this specimen of the goodness of Bacon’s view… . Mathematics was beginning to be the great instrument of exact inquiry: Bacon threw the science aside, from ignorance, just at the time when his enormous sagacity, applied to knowledge, would have made him see the part it was to play. If Newton had taken Bacon for his master, not he, but somebody else, would have been Newton.



— Augustus De Morgan
In Budget of Paradoxes (1872), 53-54

[messier 111]

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
— Rebecca West



As quoted in B. H. Liddell Hart, Europe in Arms (1937), 199. In Alfred F. Hurley, Robert C. Ehrhart, Air Power and Warfare: The Proceedings of the 8th Military History Symposium (1979), 47, and citation in footnote, 49

[messier 111]

Before counting the stars have a look underfoot.



— Anonymous
Attributed an “Oriental saying”, in a translation from the original Russian (1960), by David Sobolev of D.N. Trifonov and L.G. Vlasov, 107 Stories About Chemistry (1970), 215. New edition published as Silhouettes of Chemistry (1987), 196

[messier 111]

Break the chains of your prejudices and take up the torch of experience, and you will honour nature in the way she deserves, instead of drawing derogatory conclusions from the ignorance in which she has left you. Simply open your eyes and ignore what you cannot understand, and you will see that a labourer whose mind and knowledge extend no further than the edges of his furrow is no different essentially from the greatest genius, as would have been proved by dissecting the brains of Descartes and Newton; you will be convinced that the imbecile or the idiot are animals in human form, in the same way as the clever ape is a little man in another form; and that, since everything depends absolutely on differences in organisation, a well-constructed animal who has learnt astronomy can predict an eclipse, as he can predict recovery or death when his genius and good eyesight have benefited from some time at the school of Hippocrates and at patients' bedsides.



— Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Machine Man (1747), in Ann Thomson (ed.), Machine Man and Other Writings (1996), 38.

[messier 111]

But if anyone, well seen in the knowledge, not onely of Sacred and exotick History, but of Astronomical Calculation, and the old Hebrew Kalendar, shall apply himself to these studies, I judge it indeed difficult, but not impossible for such a one to attain, not onely the number of years, but even, of dayes from the Creation of the World.



— James Ussher
In 'Epistle to the Reader', The Annals of the World (1658). As excerpted in Wallen Yep, Man Before Adam: A Correction to Doctrinal Theology, "The Missing Link Found" (2002), 18.

[messier 111]

But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually.



[Co-author with South African mathematician, Seymour Papert (1928- )]
— Marvin Minsky
Artificial Intelligence (1973), 25

[messier 111]

Chemistry is not a primitive science like geometry and astronomy; it is constructed from the debris of a previous scientific formation; a formation half chimerical and half positive, itself found on the treasure slowly amassed by the practical discoveries of metallurgy, medicine, industry and domestic economy. It has to do with alchemy, which pretended to enrich its adepts by teaching them to manufacture gold and silver, to shield them from diseases by the preparation of the panacea, and, finally, to obtain for them perfect felicity by identifying them with the soul of the world and the universal spirit.



— Marcellin Berthelot
From Les Origines de l’Alchimie (1885), 1-2. Translation as quoted in Harry Shipley Fry, 'An Outline of the History of Chemistry Symbolically Represented in a Rookwood Fountain', The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (1 Sep 1922), 14, No. 9, 868.

[messier 111]

Chemistry must become the astronomy of the molecular world.



— Alfred Werner
Autograph Quotation for a Charity, (1905). In G. B. Kaufman, Alfred Werner (1966), iii.

[messier 111]

Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:– so various yet so uniform–so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.



— Sir Roderick Impey Murchison
The Silurian System (1839), 574.

[messier 111]

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do.



— Edsger W. Dijkstra
In G. Michael Schneider, Judith L. Gersting, Sara Baase, An invitation to Computer Science: Java version (2000), 2.

[messier 111]

Copernicus and Lobatchewsky were both of Slavic origin. Each of them has brought about a revolution in scientific ideas so great that it can only be compared with that wrought by the other. And the reason of the transcendent importance of these two changes is that they are changes in the conception of the Cosmos. … Now the enormous effect of the Copernican system, and of the astronomical discoveries that have followed it, is … the change effected by Copernicus in the idea of the universe. But there was left another to be made. For the laws of space and motion…. So, you see, there is a real parallel between the work of Copernicus and … the work of Lobatchewsky.



— William Kingdon Clifford
In 'The Postulates of Time And Space', Lectures and Essays (1901) Vol. 1, 354-359

[messier 111]

Cosmology does, I think, affect the way that we perceive humanity’s role in nature. One thing we’ve learnt from astronomy is that the future lying ahead is more prolonged than the past. Even our sun is less than halfway through its life.



— Sir Martin Rees

[messier 111]

Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.



— Stephen Jay Gould

[messier 111]

Each science and law is … prospective and fruitful. Astronomy is not yet astronomy, whilst it only counts the stars in the sky. It must come nearer, and be related to men and their life.



— Ralph Waldo Emerson
From Notes to 'Progress of Culture' in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and Social Aims (1875, 1904), Vol. 8, 409

[messier 111]

Early Greek astronomers, derived their first knowledge from the Egyptians, and these from the Chaldeans, among whom the science was studied, at a very early period. Their knowledge of astronomy, which gave their learned men the name of Magi, wise men, afterwards degenerated into astrology, or the art of consulting the position of the stars to foretel events—and hence sprung the silly occupation of sooth saying, for which the Chaldeans were noted to a proverb, in later ages.



— Noah Webster
In Elements of Useful Knowledge (1806), Vol. 1, 8-9.



Note “foretel” is as printed in this text.

[messier 111]

Essentially all civilizations that rose to the level of possessing an urban culture had need for two forms of science-related technology, namely, mathematics for land measurements and commerce and astronomy for time-keeping in agriculture and aspects of religious rituals.



— Frederick Seitz
From The Science Matrix: The Journey, Travails, Triumphs (1992, 1998), Preface, x

[messier 111]

Firm support has been found for the assertion that electricity occurs at thousands of points where we at most conjectured that it was present. Innumerable electrical particles oscillate in every flame and light source. We can in fact assume that every heat source is filled with electrons which will continue to oscillate ceaselessly and indefinitely. All these electrons leave their impression on the emitted rays. We can hope that experimental study of the radiation phenomena, which are exposed to various influences, but in particular to the effect of magnetism, will provide us with useful data concerning a new field, that of atomistic astronomy, as Lodge called it, populated with atoms and electrons instead of planets and worlds.



— Pieter Zeeman
'Light Radiation in a Magnetic Field', Nobel Lecture, 2 May 1903. In Nobel Lectures: Physics 1901-1921 (1967), 40