Gilbert N. Lewis Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

It was not easy for a person brought up in the ways of classical thermodynamics to come around to the idea that gain of entropy eventually is nothing more nor less than loss of information.

Gilbert N. Lewis
There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.

Gilbert N. Lewis
As we continue the great adventure of scientific exploration our models must often be recast. New laws and postulates will be required, while those that we already have must be broadened, extended and generalized in ways that we are now hardly able to surmise.

Gilbert N. Lewis
Indeed it seems hardly likely that much progress can be made in the solution of the difficult problems relating to chemical combination by assigning in advance definite laws of force between the positive and negative constituents of an atom, and then on the basis of these laws building up mechanical models of the atom.

Gilbert N. Lewis
The theory that there is an ultimate truth, although very generally held by mankind, does not seem useful to science except in the sense of a horizon toward which we may proceed, rather than a point which may be reached.

Gilbert N. Lewis
The strength of science lies in its naivete.

Gilbert N. Lewis
The average scientist, unequipped with the powerful lenses of philosophy, is a nearsighted creature, and cheerfully attacks each difficulty in the hope that it may prove to be the last.

Gilbert N. Lewis
To inquire into the origin of life is like seeking the origin of electrical machinery, or the origin of music.

Gilbert N. Lewis
I claim that my eye touches a star as truly as my finger touches this table.

Gilbert N. Lewis
I have no patience with attempts to identify science with measurement, which is but one of its tools, or with any definition of the scientist which would exclude a Darwin, a Pasteur, or a Kekule.

Gilbert N. Lewis
When we analyze the highly refined concept of space used by mathematicians we find it to be quite similar to the concept of number.

Gilbert N. Lewis
In the struggle of life with the facts of existence, Science is a bringer of aid; in the struggle of the soul with the mystery of existence, Science is the bringer of light.

Gilbert N. Lewis
In every new and growing science there are many working hypotheses that never attain to any sort of reality. On the other hand, in the old and abstract sciences of mathematics, where it is hard to tell how much is mere definition or convention, the problem of reality is not so much doubtful as it is meaningless.

Gilbert N. Lewis
A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound; use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.

Gilbert N. Lewis
See all electrons are alike, and presumably leave no trail behind them, we cannot say that atom A loses an electron to atom B and atom C to atom D, but only that Atoms A and C have each lost an electron and atoms B and D have each gained one.

Gilbert N. Lewis