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Simon Newcomb Quotes
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My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men.
Simon Newcomb
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My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher.
Simon Newcomb
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He who through vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe; Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle suns, What varied being peoples every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
Simon Newcomb
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If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.
Simon Newcomb
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It is remarkable that modern science has shown us more mysteries in the sun than it has explained; so that we find ourselves farther than before from a satisfactory explanation of solar phenomena.
Simon Newcomb
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My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology.
Simon Newcomb
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Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.
Simon Newcomb
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It is, therefore, contrary to all the analogies of nature to suppose that life began only on a single world.
Simon Newcomb
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Ten decimals are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to a fraction of an inch, and thirty decimals would give the circumference of the whole visible universe to a quantity imperceptible with the most powerful microscope.
Simon Newcomb
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Life not totally unlike that on the earth may therefore exist upon this planet [Mars] for anything that we know to the contrary.
Simon Newcomb
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The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as useful knowledge. His domain is as wide as nature itself, and he best fulfills his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying the knowledge he gives to the world.
Simon Newcomb
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So small is the earth in comparison with the celestial spaces, that if one should shut his eyes and fire a gun at random in the air, the chance of bringing down a bird would be better than that of a comet of any kind striking the earth.
Simon Newcomb
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In the motions of the stars we are brought face to face with eternity and infinity, covered by no veil whatever.
Simon Newcomb
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I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.
Simon Newcomb
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Great and numerous as are the unsolved problems of our science, knowledge is now advancing into regions which, a few years ago, seemed inaccessible. Where it will stop none can say.
Simon Newcomb
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Our solar system is like a little colony, separated from the rest of the universe by an ocean of void space almost immeasurable in extent.
Simon Newcomb
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If we admit the hypothesis of immortality, it is difficult to see how we could ever reach any proof of it derived from experience.
Simon Newcomb
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All scientific conclusions drawn from statistical data require a critical investigation of the basis on which they rest.
Simon Newcomb
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The fact is that our knowledge of the universe has been in the nature of a slow and gradual evolution, commencing at a very early period in human history, and destined to go forward without stop, as we hope, so long as civilization shall endure.
Simon Newcomb
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It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, not only animated, but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds in space.
Simon Newcomb
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The so-called problems of astronomy are not separate and independent, but are rather the parts of one great problem, that of increasing our knowledge of the universe in its widest extent.
Simon Newcomb
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As the great captain of industry is moved by the love of wealth, and the politician by the love of power, so the astronomer is moved by the love of knowledge for its own sake, and not for the sake of its application.
Simon Newcomb
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So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.
Simon Newcomb
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The result was that, if it happened to clear off after a cloudy evening, I frequently arose from my bed at any hour of the night or morning and walked two miles to the observatory to make some observation included in the programme.
Simon Newcomb
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The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.
Simon Newcomb
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When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck.
Simon Newcomb
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In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.
Simon Newcomb
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The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.
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In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate.
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One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.
Simon Newcomb
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Simon Newcomb
Creative Commons
Born:
March 12, 1835
Died:
July 11, 1909
(aged 74)
Bio:
Simon Newcomb was a Canadian American astronomer, applied mathematician and autodidactic polymath, who was Professor of Mathematics in the U.S. Navy and at Johns Hopkins.
Known for:
The reminiscences of an astronomer (1903)
The ABC of Finance (1877)
Side Lights of Astronomy (1906)
Essentials Of Trigonometry
Simon Newcomb on Wikipedia
Simon Newcomb works on Gutenberg Project
Simon Newcomb works on Wikisource
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