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Hermann von Helmholtz Quotes
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It [geometry] escapes the tedious and troublesome task of collecting experimental facts, which is the province of the natural sciences in the strict sense of the word; the sole form of its scientific method is deduction.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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We are convinced that whatever contributes to the knowledge of the forces of nature or the powers of the human mind is worth cherishing, and may, in its own due time, bear practical fruit, very often where we should least have expected it.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravity remains as before, but it can no longer do work.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Of all branches of human knowledge, there is none which, like it [geometry], has sprung as a completely armed Minerva from the head of Jupiter; none before whose death-dealing Aegis doubt and inconsistency have so little dared to raise their eyes.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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If an optician sent it [the eye] to me as an instrument, I would send it back with reproaches for the carelessness of his work and demand the return of my money.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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The universe has its limited supply of energy, which works in it under ever-varying forms, indestructible, incapable of increase, eternal, and unchangeable like matter.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Happy ideas come unexpectedly without effort like an inspiration, as far as I am concerned. They have never come to me when my mind was fatigued or when I was at my working table.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Not that I wish by any means to deny, that the mental life of individuals and peoples is also in conformity with law, as is the object of philosophical, philological, historical, moral, and social sciences to establish.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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The world of ice and of eternal snow, as unfolded to us on the summits of the neighbouring Alpine chain, so stern, so solitary, so dangerous, it may be, has yet its own peculiar charm.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in the comparative ease with which laws can be stated, that this difference exists.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Accurate experiments have shown that the quantity of heat which is developed by a chemical process - for instance, in burning a pound of pure carbon into carbonic acid - is perfectly constant, whether the combustion is slow or rapid, whether it takes place all at once or by intermediate stages.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by striking flint against steel, or when an iron bar is worked for some time by powerful blows of the hammer.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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The aim of the natural sciences is to resolve themselves into mechanics.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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The ultimate aim of physical science must be to demonstrate the movements which are the real causes of all other phenomena and discover the motive powers on which they all depend; in other words, to merge itself into mechanics.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Time does not sleep when all things sleep, Only Time stands straight when all things fall. Is, was, and shall be are Time's Children. Is, was, and shall be are Time's Children.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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It is not enough to be acquainted with the facts; scientific knowledge begins only when their laws and their causes are unveiled.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Reason we call that faculty innate in us of discovering laws and applying them with thought.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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A single remarkable discovery may, of course, be the result of a happy accident and may not indicate the possession of any special gift on the part of the discoverer...
Hermann von Helmholtz
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The artist cannot transcribe Nature; he must translate her
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Every educated man who tries to understand the forces at work in the world in which he is living... must have some interest in that peculiar kind of mental labour, which works and acts in the sciences in question.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Mathematics and music! the most glaring possible opposites of human thought! and yet connected, mutually sustained!
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Music stands in a much closer connection with pure sensation than any of the other arts.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Hermann von Helmholtz
Creative Commons
Born:
August 31, 1821
Died:
September 8, 1894
(aged 73)
Bio:
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science.
Known for:
Sensations of Tone
On the Conservation of Force
Treatise on Physiological Optics
Epistemological writings
Handbuch der physiologischen Optik
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