Gerald Holton Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

It is precisely because the drive toward discovery is in a sense irrational that it is so powerful.

Gerald Holton
Persons living in this modern world who do not know the basic facts that determine their very existence, functioning, and surroundings, are living in a dream world. Such persons are, in a very real sense, not sane.

Gerald Holton
The flight of most members of a profession to the high empyrean, where they can work peacefully on purely scientific problems, isolated from the turmoil of real life, was perhaps quite appropriate at an earlier stage of science; but in today's world it is a luxury we cannot afford.

Gerald Holton
But making science again a part of every intelligent person's educational resource is the minimum requirement — not because science is more important than other field, but because it is an integral part of a sound contemporary worldview.

Gerald Holton
Poets rush in where scientists fear to tread.

Gerald Holton
The cliché became, erroneously, "everything is relative"; whereas the point is that out of the vast flux one can distill the very opposite: "some things are invariant."

Gerald Holton
And yet, on looking into the history of science, one is overwhelmed by evidence that all too often there is no regular procedure, no logical system of discovery, no simple, continuous development. The process of discovery has been as varied as the temperament of the scientist.

Gerald Holton
The study of nature is a study of the artifacts that appear during an engagement between the scientist and the world in which he finds himself.

Gerald Holton
Hence it will be useful to develop a field that can fairly be called the aesthetics of science.

Gerald Holton
Being built on concepts, hypotheses, and experiments, laws are no more accurate or trustworthy than the wording of the definitions and the accuracy and extent of the supporting experiments.

Gerald Holton