Edwin Slosson Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Most people think of science as a serious and solemn thing, a strain upon the strongest intellect. So it is for the pioneers of scientific progress, but not for those who merely follow along behind.

Edwin Slosson
The Book of Nature is issued only in uncut editions, and the scientist has to open its pages one by one as he reads.

Edwin Slosson
Facts and figures that the lecturer cannot keep in his own head for fifty minutes are not likely to get into the heads of the students.

Edwin Slosson
The conquest of nature, not the imitation of nature, is the whole duty of man.

Edwin Slosson
The method of science is economy of thought. The aim of science is control of the future.

Edwin Slosson
The highest reward of science, the secret satisfaction of standing where no mortal man has ever stood before, is rightly reserved to those who contribute most to its advance.

Edwin Slosson
Science consists in learning from nature how to surpass nature.

Edwin Slosson
Nitrogen is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks by its wild lone.

Edwin Slosson
The scientific man, especially the scientific investigator, holds his theories with a light hand, but keeps a firm grip on his facts.

Edwin Slosson
For nitrogen plays a double role in human economy. It appears like Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Destroyer.

Edwin Slosson
Every university should have a Department of Applied Greek and a complementary Department of Humanized Physics, and the benefits of these departments also should be extended as freely as is practicable to those who need them most, that is, to those whose main work is in another field.

Edwin Slosson
Plants obey the injunction of Tennyson and rise on the stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things. Each successive generation lives on what is left of the last in the soil plus what it adds from the air and sunshine.

Edwin Slosson
The scientist does not abandon a theory because it has inconsistencies any more than he divorces his wife because she has inconsistencies.

Edwin Slosson
A warp in nature has been found, No line is straight, no circle round; For Isaac Newton had unsound Ideas of gravitation.

Edwin Slosson
In the course of time man often finds that he can make something new which is better than anything in nature or naturally produced. The savage discovers. The barbarian improves. The civilized man invents. The first finds. The second fashions. The third fabricates.

Edwin Slosson
One obstacle in the way of spreading science, that is, of inculcating the scientific habit of mind, is that people have learned to read too well. Books may become an impediment to learning. Our students are taught how to learn to read but not always how to read to learn.

Edwin Slosson
One cannot, of course, become a scientist by merely reading science, however diligently and long. For a scientist is one who makes science, not one who learns science. A novelist is one who writes novels, not one who reads them. A contortionist is one who makes contortions, not one who watches them.

Edwin Slosson
Chaos is the "natural" state of the universe. Cosmos is the rare and temporary exception.

Edwin Slosson
The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.

Edwin Slosson
[The] ordinary American crowd, the best-natured, best-dressed, best-behaving, and best-smelling crowd in the world.

Edwin Slosson