Christian Huygens citations (18 citations)

Christian Huygens: 18 citations2 J'aime

Christian Huygens Citations

“C’est donc à l’occasion d’un problème précis, mais essentiel, que Huygens aborde la question du fondement physique des consonances. II s’agit alors de montrer qu’une bonne intelligence des principes physico-mathématiques de la théorie musicale découvre des possibilités plus vastes que celles léguées par les théoriciens précédents, mais aussi de proposer une réorganisation de l’étendue sonore susceptible de servir l’actualisation de ces nouveaux rapports.”

Christian Huygens

“Le souvenir du grand Hollandais est resté particulièrement vivant dans nos milieux scientifiques, et il nous reporte au premières années de notre Compagnie. De tous les savants français et étrangers appelés au 17”

Christian Huygens

Christian Huygens: Citations en anglais

“Here we may mount from this dull Earth, and viewing it from on high, consider whether Nature has laid out all her Cost and Finery upon this small Speck of Dirt.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 10
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“These Gentlemen must be told, that they take too much upon themselves when they pretend to appoint how far and no farther Men shall go in their Searches, and to set bounds to other Mens Industry; as if they knew the Marks that God has placed to Knowledge…”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 8
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“…the power of this line [the cycloid] to measure time.”

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Christiaan Huygens livre Horologium Oscillatorium

Horologium Oscillatorium (1673) as quoted by Joella G. Yoder, "Christiaan Huygens, Book on the Pendulum Clock" in Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics 1640-1940 ed., Ivor Grattan-Guinness (2005)

“I do not mind at all that [Newton] is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Letter to Fatio de Duillier (11 July 1687), quoted in René Dugas, Mechanics in the seventeenth century (1958), p. 440

“I esteem his [Newton's] understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of this work, where the author studies things of little use or when he builds on the improbable principle of attraction.”

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Christiaan Huygens

(1692) writing five years after the appearance of Newton's Principia, as quoted in A. R. Manwell, Mathematics Before Newton (Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 56 – «He [Huygens] said, indeed, that the idea of universal attraction [gravitation] 'appears to me absurd'.»

“One finds in this subject a kind of demonstration which does not carry with it so high a degree of certainty as that employed in geometry; and which differs distinctly from the method employed by geometers in that they prove their propositions by well-established and incontrovertible principles, while here principles are tested by inferences which are derivable from them. The nature of the subject permits of no other treatment. It is possible, however, in this way to establish a probability which is little short of certainty. This is the case when the consequences of the assumed principles are in perfect accord with the observed phenomena, and especially when these verifications are numerous; but above all when one employs the hypothesis to predict new phenomena and finds his expectations realized.”

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Christiaan Huygens livre Treatise on Light

Treatise on Light (1690) - preface, Translated by Michael R. Matthews, Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy. 1989. p. 126

“Since 'tis certain that Earth and Jupiter have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they be clear. This Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its own Waters of such a temper not liable to Frost.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book I http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/huygens/huygens_ct_en.htm, p. 27 <br class="br">Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Letter to Pierre Perrault, 'Sur la préface de M. Perrault de son traité de l'Origine des fontaines' (1673), Oeuvres Complètes de Christiaan Huygens http://books.google.com/books?id=9IVA7sK_Bh8C (1897), Vol. 7, 298. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 163

“Now since in so many Things they… agree, what can be more probable than that in others they agree too; and that the other Planets are as beautiful and as well stock'd with Inhabitants as the Earth? Or what shadow of Reason can there be why they should not?”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 18
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“I had not thought of this regular decrease of gravity, namely that it is as the inverse square of the distance; this is a new and highly remarkable property of gravity.”

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Christiaan Huygens

(1691) quoted in Popular Astronomy, Vol. 56 (1948), pp. 189–190.

“We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 11
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“It's evident God had no design to make a particular Enumeration in the Holy Scriptures, of all the Works of his Creation.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 7
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“A Man that is of Copernicus’s Opinion, that this Earth of ours is a Planet, carry’d round and enlighten’d by the Sun, like the rest of the Planets, cannot but sometimes think, that it’s not improbable that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, and perhaps their Inhabitants too as well as this Earth of ours…”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 1
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.”

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Christiaan Huygens

Book 1, p. 10
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?”

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Christiaan Huygens

Quam mirabilis igitur, quamque stupenda mundi amplitudo, & magnificentia jam mente concipienda est. Tot Soles, tot Terrae atque harum unaquaeque tot herbis, arboribus, animalibus, tot maribus, montibusque exornata. Et erit etiam unde augeatur admiratio, si quis ea quae de fixarum Stellarum distantia, & multitudine hisce addimus, pependerit. <br class="br"> Book 2 http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/huygens/huygens_ct_en.htm, pp. 150-151 <br class="br">Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

“The world is my country, to promote science is my religion.”

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Christiaan Huygens

The earliest found citation is in K.O. Meinsma, Spinoza en zijn kring. Historisch-kritische studiën over Hollandsche vrijgeesten (Martinus Nijhoff, 's-Gravenhage, 1896). This influential study was translated in French and German, but not in English. In the original Dutch context it seems as though this is not a quote from Huygens, but a characterisation by the author (Meinsma) of what 'could haven been' Huygens' devise.
In Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Episode 6) from 1980 it is phrased The world is my country, science my religion.
Also in The Making of Modern Europe, 1648-1780 (1985) by Geoffrey Treasure, p. 474, it is declared that this was Huygens' "motto" — but this seems very similar to the much more famous and long attested declaration of Thomas Paine in Rights of Man (1791): "My country is the world, and my religion is to do good" which has long been paraphrased "The world is my country, and to do good is my religion."
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