John Arthur Thomson Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

Religious interpretation and scientific description must not be inconsistent, but they are incommensurable.

John Arthur Thomson
Science as science never asks the question Why? That is to say, it never inquires into the meaning, or significance, or purpose of this manifold Being, Becoming, and Having Been.... Thus science does not pretend to be a bedrock of truth.

John Arthur Thomson
Science begins with measurement and there are some people who cannot be measurers; and just as we distinguish carpenters who can work to this or that traction of an inch of accuracy, so we must distinguish ourselves and our acquaintances as able to observe and record to this or that degree of truthfulness.

John Arthur Thomson
Our inheritances are diverse and unequal, and they limit us; yet much can be gained by "nurture" and much lost for the lack of it.

John Arthur Thomson
Science never destroys wonder, but only shifts it, higher and deeper.

John Arthur Thomson
All roads lead to Rome, and he must be a bold man who will declare any of Nature's beckonings to be unworthy of attention.

John Arthur Thomson
In the heavens the navigator sails in a practically infinite ocean; for leagues and leagues beyond there is always more sea. There is room for wonder.

John Arthur Thomson
The hosts of living organisms are not random creatures, they can be classified in battalions and regiments. Neither are they isolated creatures, for every thread of life is inter-twined with others in a complex web.

John Arthur Thomson
Science makes so many permanent discoveries, which are never contradicted though often transcended, that she acquires an assured confidence which has only been equaled by that of Theology.

John Arthur Thomson
It is part of "man's chief end" not only to know Nature - which is Science, but to enjoy her forever. We are men of feeling, and Nature speaks to our heart, though we are not fond, unless we are poets, of saying much about it. But we listen with gladness, with awe, sometimes, perhaps, with fear, surely always with wonder.

John Arthur Thomson
The shore is almost noisy with the conjugation of the verb to eat in its many tenses.

John Arthur Thomson
Is it science that satisfies man's soul, or is it the attendant feeling and imagining which the study of Nature evokes?

John Arthur Thomson
There is no counting the unsolved problems of Natural History.

John Arthur Thomson
Nowadays the serpent that bites Man's heel is in nine cases out of ten microscopic.

John Arthur Thomson
Biology has a particular end - that of describing the life of plants and animals, and that end is not necessarily achieved by discoveries in the physics and chemistry of living bodies.

John Arthur Thomson
Science brings in great wealth of raw material, but the architectural genius must be sought in Philosophy.

John Arthur Thomson
Was it not the great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz who said that the more knowledge advances the more it becomes possible to condense it into little books?

John Arthur Thomson
Warned by such errors as that of Comte, who declared that Man could never know anything as to the chemical composition of the heavenly bodies, we have learned to be cautious in not putting in "full stops".

John Arthur Thomson
It may be granted, too, that science, like a child pulling a flower to bits, is apt and biology is one of the worst of the offenders to dissect more than it constructs, and to lose in its analysis the vision of unity and harmony which the artist has ever before his eyes.

John Arthur Thomson
When science makes minor mysteries disappear, greater mysteries stand confessed. For one object of delight whose emotional value science has inevitably lessened — as Newton damaged the rainbow for Keats — science gives back double.

John Arthur Thomson
Science always begins - not at the beginning, for that is impossible, but from something "given" which it does not explain.

John Arthur Thomson
Science is frankly empirical in method and aim; it seeks to discover the laws of concrete being and becoming, and to formulate these in the simplest terms, which are either immediate data of experience or verifiably derived therefrom.

John Arthur Thomson
The first steps towards an appreciation of animal life must be taken by the student himself, for no book-lore can take the place of actual observation. The student must wash the quartz and dig for the diamonds, though a book may help him to find these, and thereafter to fashion them into a treasure.

John Arthur Thomson
Scientific inquiry may be likened to fishing in the sea of reality with a particular kind of tackle. The tackle has well-known excellences, but it has also recognized limitations; and there may be much in the sea that the net used will not catch, being of too wide a mesh.

John Arthur Thomson
Great stores of wealth are awaiting the scientific "Open Sesame"; a great heightening of the standard of health will be attainable in a few generation if men of good-will take science as their torch.

John Arthur Thomson
The same word is used with many meanings, and, like a tool put to many uses, becomes blunted and fallacious.

John Arthur Thomson
The scientific imagination devises a possible solution - an hypothesis - and the investigator proceeds to test it. He makes intellectual keys and then tries whether they fit the lock. If the hypothesis does not fit, it is rejected and another is made. The scientific workshop is full of discarded keys.

John Arthur Thomson
The picture of the Universe which the astronomer offers to us is imperfect; the lines he traces are often faint and uncertain. There are many problems which have been solved, there are just as many about which there is doubt, and notwithstanding our great increase in knowledge, there remain just as many which are entirely unsolved.

John Arthur Thomson
Many animals are delightfully good, but only man is moral.

John Arthur Thomson
Whether we gather shells on the shore or collect snow crystals; whether we study birds or brambles, hydroids or hawkweeds, we get the same impression of an overflowing form-fountain, of prodigal multiplicity, of endless resources.

John Arthur Thomson