These are a rather random collection of quotations that I have bothered to write down. They are not “the most important” things I have read. They are merely the things I thought to note at the time of reading.
p. 7
For if that which plainely appeared to the sight, and might easily be measured and demonstrated
Geometrically by fit Instruments, was yet subject to so great variety and difference of Iudgements:
how much more those things which are not discernable by the senses, nor subject to humaine
industry, but are so full of doubts and perplexities, that truth (which is alwayes but one,
as the center of a Circie) is very hardly ever found out.
p. 50
In the middle of all is the seat of the Sun. For who in this most beautiful of temples would
put this lamp in any other or better place than the one from which it can illuminate everything
at the same time?
p. 296
Here also what the ancient mathematicians thought they had derived on the basis of a fixed Earth,
we shall perform by assuming that it moves, and perhaps with greater brevity and more appropriately.
p.32
Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.
There is no conflict between the Bible and science. The Bible is always right; but the understanding of man can be in error. Additional observation: At no point does the Bible attempt to teach science or even address scientific issues.
Quoted in Koestler
The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.
An Outline of Philosophy, p. 163
Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but
because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
p. 96
I do not even think that “right” and “wrong” are good categories for
assessing complex mental models of external reality—for models in science are judged
as useful or detrimental, not as true or false.
II, ch. 19, as quoted in Koestler, p. 322
Who would have thought it possible? This hypothesis, which so closely agrees with the
observed oppositions, is nevertheless false….
p. 268
The constancy of the laws of nature, and of effects and causes, is the foundation of all human
knowledge; and if, without any previous observable symptoms or indications of a change, we
can infer that a change will take place, we may as well make any assertion whatever, and think
it as unreasonable to be contradicted in affirming that the moon will come in contact with
the earth to-morrow, as in saying that the sun will rise at its expected time.
p. 294
It is a subject often started in conversation, and mentioned always as a matter of great surprise, that
notwithstanding the immense sum which is annually collected for the poor in this country, there is still so much
distress among them. Some think that the money must be embezzled for private use; others that the churchwardens and
overseers consume the greatest part of it in feasting. All agree that somehow or other it must be very ill managed.
In short, the fact that even before the late scarcities three millions were collected annually for the poor, and yet
that their distresses were not removed, is the subject of continued astonishment. But a man who looks below the
surface of things would be much more astonished if the fact were otherwise than it is observed to be, or even if a
collection universally of eighteen shillings in the pound instead of four were to materially alter it.
p. 249
Another rule of Menard's was: when drawing on napkins during a discussion, each individual
must have her or his own pencil. Many a joint conversation was put on hold after the first
sentence while he went to fetch that second pencil. Our conversations were so geometric
that the person without a pencil was rendered voiceless.
p. 236
First, do something rather than nothing. Second, have ideas and test them. Third, respect
data but remember that 'data' are elusive and observer-controlled. Fourth, think big and
do not let senior people dominate you and tell you what to do.
Advice from Teddy Bullard, Cambridge
p. 138
In his observation-oriented analysis of scientific discovery, Dan McKenzie, in a later
essay in this volume, separates scientific observations into four categories: (1) observations
that are wrong, (2) observations that are correct and can be described by existing theories,
(3) observations that are correct but are too complex to be described by any simple model,
and (4) observations that are correct but there is no theory that describes them. A scientific
advance occurs when a model that accounts for the data in Category 2 also accounts for
the observations grouped in Category 4.
p. 265
…and his [Hutton's] paper affords a specimen of what is perhaps rare in any of the sciences,
and certainly most rare of all in geology, viz. a philosophic induction carried just as far
as the facts will bear it out, and not a single step beyond that point.
p. 7
And so, in general, we have to state that the heavens are spherical and move spherically; that
the earth, in figure, is sensibly spherical also when taken as a whole; in position lies right
in the middle of the heavens, like a geometrical centre; in magnitude and distance, has the
ratio of a point with respect to the sphere of the fixed stars, having itself no local motion
at all. And we shall go through each of these points briefly to bring them to mind.
p. 12
And it seems to them there is nothing against their supposing, for instance, the heavens immobile
and the earth as turning on the same axis from west to east very nearly one revolution a
day;…nothing would perhaps keep things from being in accordance with this simpler conjecture,
but that in the light of what happens around us in the air such a notion would seem altogether absurd.
Ptolemy lacked Occam's Razor, since Occam didn't live until the 14th century, but the fact that not only the fixed stars, but also almost all other heavenly bodies move with respect to the same axis on a diurnal schedule argues strongly in favor of the earth rotating, though it wasn't proved until Foucault in 1851.
A second application of the razor would argue that Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, explaining why they are never seen distant from the Sun, as pointed out by Copernicus.
p. 135
For it behooves those going forward with this theory inquiringly and for the love of truth
to use the new and surest methods found, not only for the correction of the old hypotheses
but also of their own if they need it; and not to think it disgraceful (for it is a great and
divine profession) even if they happen upon a correction for greater accuracy due to others
and not only to themselves.
p. 205
Concern over such a fractional degree [2/60] is more vanity than love of truth. [Yet, elsewhere,
he gives values to within one part in 1010.]
p. 270
Now, since our problem is to demonstrate, in the case of the five planets as in the case of
the sun and moon, all their apparent irregularities as produced by regular and circular motions
(for these are proper to the nature of divine things which are stranger to disparities and
disorders)….