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[Precision] is the very soul of science; and its attainment afford the only criterion, or at least the best, of the truth of theories, and the correctness of experiments.
John Herschel
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When we look through nature and observe the manifest indications of design which every point of it exhibits, it would be very presumptuous in us to assert that comets are of no use, and serve no purpose in our system.
John Herschel
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If science may be vilified by representing it as opposed to religion, or trammeled by mistaken notions of the danger of free enquiry, there is yet another mode by which it may be degraded from its native dignity, and that is by placing it in the light of a mere appendage to and caterer for our pampered appetites.
John Herschel
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According to this view of the matter, there is nothing casual in the formation of Metamorphic Rocks. All strata, once buried deep enough, (and due TIME allowed!!!) must assume that state,—none can escape. All records of former worlds must ultimately perish.
John Herschel
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A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific enquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations.
John Herschel
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Of the splendid constellation of great names... we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory,"—so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence,—so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.
John Herschel
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Time! Time! Time! — we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as the days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years.
John Herschel
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Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks, in the scale of the sciences, next to astronomy.
John Herschel
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To ascend to the origin of things and speculate on the creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher. An humbler field is sufficient for him in the endeavor to discover, as far as our faculties will permit; what are these primary qualities impressed on matter, and to discover the spirit of the laws of nature
John Herschel
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The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.
John Herschel
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Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.
John Herschel
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Speculations apparently the most unprofitable have almost invariably been those from which the greatest practical applications have emanated.
John Herschel
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Almost all the greatest discoveries in astronomy have resulted from what we have elsewhere termed Residual Phenomena, of a qualitative or numerical kind, of such portions of the numerical or quantitative results of observation as remain outstanding and unaccounted for, after subducting and allowing for all that would result from the strict application of known principles.
John Herschel
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It can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences.
John Herschel
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In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.
John Herschel
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Every student who enters upon a scientific pursuit, especially if at a somewhat advanced period of life, will find not only that he has much to learn, but much also to unlearn.
John Herschel
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To the natural philosopher, there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. From the least of Nature's works he may learn the greatest lessons.
John Herschel
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Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one.
John Herschel
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The sparks of information from time to time struck out, instead of glimmering for a moment, and dying away in oblivion, began to accumulate into a genial glow, and the flame was at length kindled which was speedily to acquire the strength and rapid spread of a conflagration.
John Herschel
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No doubt the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must, of necessity, stop short of those truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; still it places the existence and personal attributes of the Deity on such grounds as to render doubts absurd and atheism ridiculous.
John Herschel
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Experience has been declared, with equal truth and poetry, to adopt occasionally the tone, and attain to something like the certainty, of Prophecy. In the contemplating mind the past and the future are linked by a bond as indissoluble as that which connects them in their actual sequence.
John Herschel
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He must have studied astronomy to little purpose, who can suppose man to be the only object of his Creator's care, or who does not see in the vast and wonderful apparatus around us provision for other races of animated beings.
John Herschel
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The great mystery, however, is to conceive how so enormous a conflagration [as the sun] can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science here leaves us completely at a loss, or rather, seems to remove farther the prospect of probable explanation.
John Herschel
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The constellations seem to have been almost purposely named and delineated to cause as much confusion and inconvenience as possible. Innumerable snakes twine through long and contorted areas of the heavens, where no memory can follow them; bears, lions and fishes, large and small, northern and southern, confuse all nomenclature.
John Herschel
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The Milky Way is like sand, not strewn evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls (and both hands at once), leaving dark spaces in between.
John Herschel
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Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
John Herschel
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Born:
March 7, 1792
Died:
May 11, 1871
(aged 79)
Bio:
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath, mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, and experimental photographer, who also did valuable botanical work.
Known for:
A treatise on astronomy (1833)
Familiar lectures on scientific subjects (1866)
Memoirs of the Analytical Society
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