John Tyndall Quotes

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

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
There is no discovery so limited as not to illustrate something beyond itself.

John Tyndall
Extraordinary effects are produced by the accumulation of small impulses.

John Tyndall
In his efforts to cross the common bourne of the known and the unknown, the effective force of the man of science must depend, to a great extent, upon his acquired knowledge.

John Tyndall
One of the most important functions of physical science, considered as a discipline of the mind, is to enable us by means of the tangible processes of Nature to apprehend the intangible.

John Tyndall
But is it in the human mind to imagine motion without at the same time imagining something moved? Certainly not. The very conception of motion includes that of a moving body.

John Tyndall
When the student of physical science has to investigate the character of any natural force, his first care must be to purify it from the mixture of other forces, and thus study its simple action.

John Tyndall
Science must grow. Its development is as necessary and as irresistible as the motion of the tides, or the flowing of the Gulf-Stream.

John Tyndall
The ancients supposed light to be produced and vision excited by something emitted from the eye. The moderns hold vision to be excited by something that strikes the eye from without. What that something is we shall consider more closely subsequently.

John Tyndall
Presented rightly to the mind, the discoveries and generalizations of modern science constitute a poem more sublime than has ever yet addressed the human imagination.

John Tyndall
To him [Faraday], as to all true philosophers, the main value of a fact was its position and suggestiveness in the general sequence of scientific truth.

John Tyndall
It behooves us, who are examining the power and function of the imagination, to keep constantly before us the physical images which underlie our terms.

John Tyndall
A modern discovery illustrates the manner in which our present mastery over nature has been obtained.

John Tyndall
I claim for the study of Physics the recognition that it answers to an impulse implanted by nature in the human constitution, and he who would oppose such study must be prepared to exhibit the credentials which authorize him to contravene Nature's manifest designs.

John Tyndall
The first experiment a child makes is a physical experiment: the suction-pump is but an imitation of the first act of every new-born infant.

John Tyndall
Taking him for all and all, I think it will be conceded that Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen.
Of the English scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

John Tyndall
[Faraday's] third great discovery is the Magnetization of Light, which I should liken to the Weisshorn among mountains—high, beautiful, and alone.

John Tyndall
I allude to Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abrabam of scientific men—a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God.

John Tyndall
The contemplation of Nature, and his own relation to her, produced in Faraday, a kind of spiritual exaltation which makes itself manifest here. His religious feeling and his philosophy could not be kept apart; there was an habitual overflow of the one into the other.
Of Michael Faraday

John Tyndall
The experimental researches of Faraday are so voluminous, their descriptions are so detailed, and their wealth of illustration is so great, as to render it a heavy labour to master them. The multiplication of proofs, necessary and interesting when the new truths had to be established, are however less needful now when these truths have become household words in science.

John Tyndall
The Italian wind, gliding over the crest of the Matterhorn, is as firmly ruled as the earth in its orbital revolution round the sun.

John Tyndall
Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.

John Tyndall
Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence.

John Tyndall
We can trace the development of a nervous system, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connexion between them...Man the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man the subject.

John Tyndall
His soul was above all littleness and proof to all egotism.
Of Michael Faraday

John Tyndall
Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific men — a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God.

John Tyndall
It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.

John Tyndall
The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence.

John Tyndall
It is not possible for me to purchase intellectual peace at the price of intellectual death.

John Tyndall