Commonplace

Or – I wish I had said that.*

 "A photon
Appeared
And
Touched!
Ah...
Time
To see
To know" 

"A policy will be effective in one school not another, in one place not another, in one person not another, not because these places have done something 'wrong', but because what constitutes doing it 'right' will be subtly, contextually, different to the extent we might never discover the critical factors. This is in the very nature of probability. High-level regulairities are consistent with the appearance of lower-level mess. Governments can be tempted to blame each case for its own supposed failure. When they do, they're often passing the buck for their ignorance."

Blastland {author and broadcaster}

"As far as meaning and truth value are concerned, the judgment of fact cannot be divorced from that of principle, for there is not a single factual conclusion that does not contain an implicit assumption of principle. Every judgement concerning an individual case, in so far as it purports to be a proposition in physics, already includes a whole system of physics."

Ernst Cassirer {1874 – 1945, philosopher}

"…either we have no idea at all of force and energy, and these words are altogether insignificant, or they can mean nothing but that determination of the thought, acquired by habit, to pass from the cause to its usual effect."

David Hume {1711 – 1776, Scottish philosopher)

"…even the simple communication of an item of knowledge can by no means be compared with the translocation of a rigid body in Euclidean space. Communication never occurs without a transformation, and indeed always involves a stylised remodelling…"

Ludwik Fleck {1896 – 1961, biologist}

"If the conscious motives of Sioux warfare and Ifaluk ritual are not sufficient explanations for their performance, neither are the unconscious motives: both are necessary, both are genuine, neither is sufficient. To assume that only unconscious motives are genuine is to perpetuate that vulgar interpretation of psychoanalytic theory in which schoolteaching, for example, is 'nothing but' the sublimation of an unconscious sexual motive, or surgery is 'nothing but' the displacement of unconscious aggression."

Melford E. Spiro {1920 – 2014, cultural anthropologist }

"For a genuine realist, what we are trying to know is precisely what the answer may be, independently of our cognitive activities, our interests and our preferences, to those questions to which we do not yet know the answer, but hope to find this one day."

Jacques Bouveresse {1940 – 2021, philosopher}

"Given the same world, it might have been construed differently. We might have spoken of it, thought of it, perceived it differently."

Norwood Russell Hanson {1924 – 1967, philosopher of science}

"Hardly any question in Natural History is more vague and difficult to decide than what forms within any large group ought to be considered as the highest; for all are excellently adapted to their conditions of life."

Charles Darwin {1809 – 1882, naturalist}

"…hypotheses have often an eminent use: and a facility in framing them, if attended with an equal facility in laying them aside when they have served their turn, is one of the most valuable qualities a philosopher can possess; while, on the other hand, a bigoted adherence to them, or indeed to peculiar views of any kind, in opposition to the tenor of facts as they arise, is the bane of all philosophy."

John F. W. Herschel {1792 – 1871, polymath: mathematician, astronomer, chemist…}

"I cannot impress upon you strongly enough never to operate without the necessary controls. You will thus protect yourself against grave errors and faulty diagnoses, to which even the most competent investigator may be liable if he [or she] fails to carry out adequate controls. This applies above all when you perform independent scientific investigations or seek to assess them. Work done without the controls necessary to eliminate all possible errors, even unlikely ones, permits no scientific conclusions.

I have made it a rule, and would advise you to do the same, to look at the controls listed before you read any new scientific papers …. If the controls are inadequate, the value of the work will be very poor, irrespective of its substance, because none of the data, although they may be correct, are necessarily so."

Julius Citron {1878-1954, immunologist and physician}

"…it must not be forgotten that there are two orders of scholars, the 'intensive' and the 'extensive' school, both necessary to this world – those whose function is original research, and those whose function is to interpret and make available the labours of the former class, whose work would otherwise remain buried under its own weight."

Reginald Farrar {1861-1921, medical doctor, health administrator and inspector, and author}

"…large parts of science arose…by running over hostile facts with the promissory note that things would soon look different – or even without any promise whatsoever."

Paul Feyerabend {1924 – 1994, philosopher of science

"…man alone invents new problems: he [sic] is the only problematising being, the only one which can feel a need to and a pleasure in adding difficulties to those posed by the natural and social environment."

Mario Bunge {Physicist and philosopher of science}

"Man is not merely made for science, but science is made for man. It expresses his deepest intellectual needs as well as his careful observations. It is an effort to bring internal meanings into harmony with external verifications. It attempts therefore to control, as well as to submit, to conceive with rational unity, as well as to accept data. Its arts are those directed towards self-possession as well as toward an imitation of the outer reality we find. It seeks therefore a disciplined freedom of thought. The discipline is as essential as the freedom; but the latter also has its place. The theories of science are human, as well as objective, internally rational, as well as (when that is possible) subject to external tests."

Josiah Royce {1855 – 1916, philosopher)

"Natural scientists' reliance on mathematical rigour has an obvious deficiency: what they constantly use is in fact applied mathematics, that is, precisely the area of study where mathematicians say goodbye to rigour, while remaining loyal to mathematical methods in all other respects. Traditional mathematics has achieved its rigour by adopting idealisations which do not correspond to anything in reality."

Aleksandr Esenin-Vol'pin {1924 – 2016, mathematician & poet}

"Of course, if we want to know nature, we must read the Book of Nature, that is, the physical world. But if we want to know what Copernicus thought about Venus, the Book of Nature cannot help us. We must read the book of Copernicus; and if its first edition contains a crucial misprint, comparison of texts will help us to detect that fact."

Edward Rosen {1906-1985, historian of science}

"Of course there will occur a limit beyond which it is useless for merely human faculties to enquire; but where that limit is placed, experience alone can teach us; and at least to assert that we have attained it, is now universally recognized as the sure criterion of dogmatism."

John F. W. Herschel {1792 – 1871, polymath: mathematician, astronomer, chemist…}

"On the Day of Judgment, when all laws are known, these may suffice to explain all phenomena. But in the meantime we do give explanations; and it is the job of science to tell us what kinds of explanations are admissible."

Nancy Cartwright {b.1944, philosopher of science}

"Our understanding of the world is built up of innumerable layers. Each layer is worth exploring, as long as we do not forget that it is one of many. Knowing all there is to be known about one layer – a most unlikely event – would not teach us much about the rest."

Erwin Chargaff {1905 – 2002, biochemist}

"Physics constitutes a logical system of thought which is in a state of evolution, whose basis cannot be distilled, as it were, from experience by an inductive method, but can only be arrived at by free invention."

Albert Einstein

"Physics is blind to the qualities, blind therefore to all essence. It sees only what is indeed outermost, and thus what stands at the furthest remove from the ontological core of the integral cosmos."

Wolfgang Smith {mathematician, physicist, philosopher of science}

"Poets and moralists, judging from our English trees and fruits, have thought that small fruits always grew on lofty trees, so that their fall should be harmless to man, while the large ones trailed on the ground. Two of the largest and heaviest fruits known however, the Brazil-nut fruit (Bertholletia) and Durian, grow on lofty forest trees, from which they fall as soon as they are ripe, and often wound or kill the native inhabitants. From this we may learn two things: first, not to draw general conclusions from a very partial view of nature; and secondly, that trees and fruits, no less than the varied productions of the animal kingdom, do not appear to be organised with exclusive reference to the use and convenience of man."

Alfred Russel Wallace (naturalist)

"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."

Henri Poincaré {1854 -1912, mathematician, physicist and philosopher}

"Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldy, it is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualisation."

Albert Einstein {1879 – 1955, theoretical physicist and peace campaigner}

"Scientific problems can be forgotten, eliminated, clarified, solved, shown to be unsolvable, or left for the entertainment of future generations. In no case is a scientific problem declared to be a mystery beyond human reason…qualified solvability does not say that every problem is solvable but rather that every well-formulated scientific problem is solvable in principle, i.e., if the adequate means (data, theories and techniques) are found."

Mario Bunge {physicist and philosopher of science}

"Scientific progress, like moral progress, is possibly only on the basis of recognising imperfections"

Mario Bunge {physicist and philosopher of science}

"…the development of science showed at every step that although questions of content and method are logically distinct, conclusions as to the possibility or necessity of their complete separation cannot be based on this difference in the concrete work of scientific research itself. Here there is rather a constant reciprocal influence and mutual fertilisation on the part of both factors. Every extension of the domain of a science reacts on the concept of its method; every step taken beyond its former territory drives it to deeper reflection on the character and individuality of the means by which it acquires knowledge."

Ernst Cassirer {1874 – 1945, philosopher}

"The difference between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain' isn't of any great importance at all, except where "I know' is meant to mean: I can't be wrong."

Ludwig Wittgenstein {1889 – 1951, philosopher}

"The layman must learn physics before he can see what the physicist sees.
If one must find a paradigm case of seeing it would be better to regard as such not the visual apprehension of colour patches. but things like seeing what time it is, seeing what key a piece of music is written in, and seeing whether a wound is septic."

Norwood Russell Hanson {1924 – 1967, philosopher of science}

"The main rationale for the invention and test of hypotheses, laws, and theories, is the solution to why-problems, i.e. the explanation of facts and their patterns. We do not rest content with finding facts, but wish to know why they should occur rather than not; and we do not even rest content with establishing explanatory constant conjunctions of facts, but attempt to discover the mechanism explaining such correlations."

Mario Bunge {physicist and philosopher of science}

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

Friedrich Nietzsche {1844 – 1900, philosopher}

"The neglect of ontology protects half-based metaphysics: we have not the choice of making metaphysical commitments or avoiding them, but of adopting a good or bad metaphysics."

Mario Bunge {physicist and philosopher of science}

"…the notion of the individual is, biologically, only to be defined as a limiting concept."

Ludwig von Bertalanffy {1901 – 1972, biologist}

"…the quantum theory seems to show, in the precise manner beloved by the admirers of science, that reality is either one, which means there are no observers and no things observed, or it is many, including theoreticians, experimenters, and the things they find, in which case what is found does not exist in itself but depends on the procedure chosen."

Paul Feyerabend {1924 – 1994, philosopher of science

"…the scientific endeavour is a human endeavour. Of the infinite number of experiments that we might perform, surely our human sense of what is important helps narrow the selection. Of the infinite number of ways that we might imagine a process, surely our human culture and language help provide the images and metaphors at our disposal. In the understanding of new results, surely our own world view plays a role Science aims for an impersonal and objective truth, but the search for that truth is a human activity."

Alan Lightman {physicist}

"The virtue of models is, of course, that they bring some order into the chaos of raw observations and achieve some measure of intellectual economy."

Frederic Raphael Jevons {1929-2012, biochemist and educator}

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. It is for this reason that the critical thinking of the physicist cannot possibly be restricted to the examination of the concepts of his [or her] own specific field. He [or she] cannot proceed without considering critically a much more difficult problem, the problem of analysing the nature of everyday thinking."

Albert Einstein {1879 – 1955, theoretical physicist and peace campaigner}

"There are no 'naked' facts-no facts other than those that can be ascertained by reference to, and with the aid of, determinate conceptual premises."

Ernst Cassirer {1874 – 1945, philosopher}

"…there always remains a gaping chasm, unbridgeable from the point of view of exact science, between the real world of phenomenology and the real world of metaphysics. This chasm is the source of a constant tension, which can never be balanced, and which is the inexhaustible source of the insatiable thirst for knowledge within the true research scientist."

Max Planck {1858-1947, theoretical physicist}

"there is no 'scientific worldview' just as there is no uniform enterprise 'science' – except in the minds of metaphysicians, schoolmasters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche."

Paul Feyerabend {1924 – 1994, philosopher of science}

"…there is nothing superfluous or deficient or accidental or indifferent in nature…"

Michael Faraday {1791 – 1867, physicist/chemist}

"Things that we expect to be the same – and therefore think we understand – are often not really…We dream of laws and general truths; the practicality is often a patchwork of unexpected anomalies."

Michael Blastland {author and broadcaster}

"This is the perfection of a law, that it includes all possible contingencies, and ensures implicit obedience,–and of this kind are the laws of nature."

John F. W. Herschel {1792 – 1871, polymath: mathematician, astronomer, chemist…}

"To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking."

Henri Poincaré {1854 -1912, mathematician, physicist and philosopher}

"To the analytical work of the concept, which is indispensable, there must be joined the synthetic work of the imagination."

Ernst Cassirer {1874 – 1945, philosopher} (disccusing Goethe)

"We perceive with astonishment how short a space of time separates us from the era of scientific barbarism, and can no longer marvel that the barbarism of the social order still so oppresses us."

Ernst Mach {1838-1916, physicist and philosopher}

"We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself; it never cheapens or debases him who reaches for it but ennobles and honours him."

Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (c.801-66)

"What we do not understand, we explain to each other." [Motto for the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton]

J. Robert Oppenheimer {1904 – 1967, physicist}

"Whatever be the qualifications of your tutors, your improvement must chiefly depend upon yourselves. They cannot think or labour for you. They can only put you in the best way of thinking and labouring for yourselves. If, therefore, you get knowledge, you must acquire it by your own industry. You must form all conclusions, and all maxims, for yourselves, from premises and data collected, and considered by yourselves."

Joseph Priestley {1733-1804, free-thinker and chemist}

"Whatever is known has always seemed systematic, proven, applicable, and evident to the knower. Every alien system of knowledge has likewise seemed contradictory, unproven, inapplicable, fanciful, or mystical."

Ludwik Fleck {1896 – 1961, biologist}

"…whether we like it or not, we can never sever our links with the past, complete with all its errors. It survives in accepted concepts, in the presentation of problems, in the syllabus of formal education, in everyday life, as well as in language and institutions."

Ludwik Fleck {1896 – 1961, biologist}

"Whoever denies the existence of subjective realities has not recognised the foundations of his or her own environment."

Jakob von Uexküll {1864 – 1944, biologist}

"Whoever wants to hold on to the conviction that all living things are only machines should abandon all hope of glimpsing their environments."

Jakob von Uexküll {1864 – 1944, biologist}

Commonplace?

Reflecting the centuries-old tradition of noting down sayings and quotes that seem worth recording in a commonplace (book)

"Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts. Each one is unique to its creator's particular interests but they almost always include passages found in other texts, sometimes accompanied by the compiler's responses"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book

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