Max Planck - Science Quotes

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Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.

Max Planck
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

Max Planck
Physics is an exact Science and hence depends upon measurement, while all measurement itself requires sense-perception. Consequently all the ideas employed in Physics are derived from the world of sense-perception.

Max Planck
In Physics... as in every other science, common sense alone is not supreme; there must also be a place for Reason.

Max Planck
It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts.

Max Planck
Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.

Max Planck
Religion belongs to that realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.

Max Planck
Physics would occupy an exceptional position among all the other sciences if it did not recognize the rule that the most far-reaching and valuable results of investigation can only be obtained by following a road leading to a goal which is theoretically unobtainable. This goal is the apprehension of true reality.

Max Planck
Is there something in the nature of man, some inner realm, that science cannot touch?.Or to speak more concretely, is there a point at which the causal line of thought ceases and beyond which science cannot go?

Max Planck
Science is not contemplative repose amidst knowledge already gained, but is indefatigable work and an ever progressive development.

Max Planck
Axioms are instruments which are used in every department of science, and in every department there are purists who are inclined to oppose with all their might any expansion of the accepted axioms beyond the boundary of their logical application.

Max Planck
Conscientiousness and truth are as necessary in research in pure science as in practical life.

Max Planck
No science can rest its foundation on the dependability of single human individuals.

Max Planck
Exact science — what wealth of connotation these two words have! They conjure up a vision of a lofty structure, of imperishable slabs of stone firmly joined together, treasure-house of all wisdom, symbol and promise of the coveted goal for a human race thirsting for knowledge, longing for the final revelation of truth.

Max Planck
Every measurement first acquires its meaning for physical science through the significance which a theory gives it.

Max Planck
No doctrinal system in physical science, or indeed perhaps in any science, will alter its content of its own accord. Here we always need the pressure of outer circumstances. Indeed the more intelligible and comprehensive a theoretical system is the more obstinately it will resist all attempts at reconstruction or expansion.

Max Planck
Long and tedious reflection cannot enable us to shape our decisions and attitudes properly; only that definite and clear instruction which we gain can form a direct inner link to God. This instruction alone is able to give us the inner firmness and lasting peace of mind which must be regarded as the highest boon in life. And if we ascribe to God, in addition to His omnipotence and omniscience, also the attributes of goodness and love, recourse to Him produces an increased feeling of safety and happiness in the human being thirsting for solace. Against this conception not even the slightest objection can be raised from the point of natural science, for as we pointed it out before, questions of ethics are entirely outside of its realm.

Max Planck
Every hypothesis in physical science has to go through a period of difficult gestation and parturition before it can be brought out into the light of day and handed to others, ready-made in scientific form so that it will be, as it were, fool-proof in the hands of outsiders who wish to apply it.

Max Planck
The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea.

Max Planck
The roots of exact science feed in the soil of human life.

Max Planck
There is scarcely a scientific axiom that is not nowadays denied by somebody. And at the same time almost any nonsensical theory that may be put forward in the name of science would be almost sure to find believers and disciples.

Max Planck
Experimenters are the shocktroops of science.

Max Planck
I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science.

Max Planck
Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.

Max Planck
We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.

Max Planck
Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence — love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.

Max Planck
Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be: "On to God!"

Max Planck
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

Max Planck
Natural science wants man to learn, religion wants him to act.

Max Planck
No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. On the contrary, we find a complete concordance in the very points of decisive importance. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as many contemporaries of ours would believe or fear. They mutually supplement and condition each other. The most immediate proof of the compatibility of religion and natural science, even under the most thorough critical scrutiny, is the historical fact that the very greatest natural scientists of all times — men such as Kepler, Newton, Leibniz — were permeated by a most profound religious attitude.

Max Planck