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Nicolas Steno Quotes

Nicolas Steno was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years. Steno was trained in the classical texts on science; however, by 1659 he seriously questioned accepted knowledge of the natural world. Importantly he questioned explanations for tear production, the idea that fossils grew in the ground and explanations of rock formation. His investigations and his subsequent conclusions on fossils and rock formation have led scholars to consider him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and modern geology.Born to a Lutheran family, Steno converted to Catholicism in 1667. After his conversion, his interest for natural sciences rapidly waned giving way to his interest in theology. At the beginning of 1675, he decided to become a priest. Four months after, he was ordained in the Catholic clergy in Easter 1675. As a clergyman, he was later appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nordic Missions and Titular Bishop of Titopolis by Pope Innocent XI. Steno played an active role in the Counter-Reformation in Northern Germany. The canonization process for him was begun in 1938. Pope John Paul II beatified Steno in 1988.

✵ 11. January 1638 – 5. December 1686
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Nicolas Steno: 4 quotes1 like

Famous Nicolas Steno Quotes

“Beautiful is what we see, More Beautiful is what we know, most Beautiful by far is what we don't.”

Nicolas Steno

quoted by Addison Anderson in a TED-Ed lesson. https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-most-groundbreaking-scientist-you-ve-never-heard-of-addison-anderson

“There are those among us who would have us say that the mysteries of the brain are completely solved and little needs to be added to its knowledge. It is as if these fortunate persons had been present when this magnificent organ was created.”

Nicolas Steno

quoted in Minds Behind the Brain. A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries by S. Finger, 2000

“We need only view a Dissection of that large Mass, the Brain, to have ground to bewail our Ignorance…We admire…the Fibres of every Muscle, and ought still more to admire their disposition in the Brain, where an infinite number of them contained in a very small Space, do each execute their particular Offices without confusion or disorder.”

Nicolas Steno

quoted in Minds Behind the Brain. A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries by S. Finger (Introduction; A Voyage Across time) (2000)

“In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them.”

Nicolas Steno

The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno's Dissertation Concerning a Solid https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/54340#/summary : (Page 217)

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