John Tyndall Quotes

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Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles.

John Tyndall
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.

John Tyndall
Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.

John Tyndall
Scientific theories sometimes float like rumours in the air before they receive complete expression.

John Tyndall
Truth is often of a dual character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the differences which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one-half of the duality in forgetfulness of the other.

John Tyndall
Man never has been and he never will be satisfied with the operations and products of the understanding alone; hence physical science cannot cover all the demands of his nature.

John Tyndall
It is the function of science, not as some think to divest this universe of its wonder and its mystery, but, as in the case here before us, to point out the wonder and the mystery of common things.

John Tyndall
Whether the other fixed stars have similar planetary companions or not is to us a matter of pure conjecture, which may or may not enter into our conception of the universe. But, probably, every thoughtful person believes, with regard to those distant suns, that there is in space something besides our system on which they shine.

John Tyndall
Half of our book writers describe experiments which they never made, and their descriptions often lack both force and truth; but, no matter how clever or conscientious they may be, their written words cannot supply the place of actual observation.

John Tyndall
Scientific men fight shy of the word [imagination] because of its ultrascientific connotations; but the fact is that without the exercise of this power our knowledge of Nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistences and sequences.

John Tyndall
To the eye of science these ice-crystals are as precious as the diamond - as purely formed, as delicately built. Where no disturbing causes intervene, there is no disorder in this crystalline architecture. By their own constructive power molecule builds itself on to molecule with a precision far greater than that attainable by the hands of man.

John Tyndall
Experiments have two great uses - a use in discovery and verification, and a use in tuition. They were long ago defined as the investigator's language addressed to Nature, to which she sends intelligible replies. These replies, however, usually reach the questioner in whispers too feeble for the public ear.

John Tyndall
We cannot think of space as finite, for wherever in imagination we erect a boundary we are compelled to think of space as existing beyond that boundary. Thus by the incessant dissolution of limits we arrive at a more or less adequate idea of the infinity of space.

John Tyndall
We have been scourged by invisible throngs, attacked from impenetrable ambuscades, and it is only today that the light of science is being let in upon the murderous dominion of our foes.

John Tyndall
The ultimate problem of physics is to reduce matter by analysis to its lowest condition of divisibility, and force to its simplest manifestations, and then by synthesis to construct from these elements the world as it stands.

John Tyndall
Experience... can only deal with the past; and the moment we attempt to project experience a hair's breadth beyond the point it has at any moment reached, we are condemned by reason.

John Tyndall
Between the mind of man and the outer world are interposed the nerves of the human body, which translate, or enable the mind to translate, the impressions of that world into facts of consciousness and thought.

John Tyndall
With accurate experiment and observation to work upon... imagination becomes the architect of physical theory.

John Tyndall
Observation tends to chasten the emotions and to check those structural efforts of the intellect which have emotion for their base.

John Tyndall
Brightness and freshness take possession of the mind when it is crossed by the light of principles, shewing the facts of Nature to be organically connected.

John Tyndall
I have... tried to show [how physicists] pass from the world of the senses to a world where vision becomes spiritual, where principles are [formed], and from which the explorer emerges with [concepts] to be approved or rejected as they coincide] with sensible things.

John Tyndall
Time and intensity are the main factors in geologic change, and they are in a certain sense the convertible. A feeble force acting through long periods, and an intense force acting through short ones, may produce approximately the same results.

John Tyndall
The outward facts of nature are insufficient to satisfy the mind. We cannot be content with knowing that the light and heat of the sun illuminate and warm the world. We are led irresistibly to enquire, 'What is light, and what is heat?' and this question leads us at once out of the region of sense into that of imagination.

John Tyndall
After the discoverer comes the teacher, whose function it is so to exalt and modify the experiments of his predecessor as to render them fit for public presentation.

John Tyndall
I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for beyond the nebulae scientific thought has never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken.

John Tyndall
The scientific mind can find no repose in the mere registration of sequence in nature. The further question intrudes itself with resistless might, Whence comes the sequence?

John Tyndall
Secured from the danger of putrefaction, it is amazing how, under the hands of a really able surgeon, the human, flesh and bones may be cut, torn, and crunched with impunity.

John Tyndall
Experimental facts alone cannot satisfy the mind: we desire to know the cause of the fact; we search after the principle by the operation of which the phenomena are produced.

John Tyndall
The term Physics, as made use of in the present Lecture, refers to that portion of natural science which lies midway between astronomy and chemistry. The former, indeed, is Physics applied to 'masses of enormous weight,' while the latter is Physics applied to atoms and molecules.

John Tyndall
The centrifugal form in which knowledge, as a whole, advances, spreading ever wider on all sides, is due in reality to the exertions of individuals, each of whom directs his efforts, more or less, along a single line.

John Tyndall