“Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.”

—  Niels Bohr

"The Unity of Human Knowledge" (October 1960)
Context: Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 7, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of method…" by Niels Bohr?
Niels Bohr photo
Niels Bohr 37
Danish physicist 1885–1962

Related quotes

Paulo Freire photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo

“The development (rather than the history) of operations research as a science consists of the development of its methods, concepts, and techniques. Operations research is neither a method nor a technique; it is or is becoming a science and as such is defined by a combination of the phenomena it studies.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1950s, The development of operations research as a science, 1956, p. 265, the lead paragraph ; Cited in: Joe Kelly (1969) Organizational behaviour. p. 26.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“In this book we turn to the study of new patterns of energy arising from man’s physical and psychic artifacts and social organizations. The only method for perceiving process and pattern is by inventory of effects obtained by the comparison and contrast of developing situations.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 8

Dorothy Day photo

“I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky … by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.)”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

"On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (December 1968)
Context: I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky … by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.) In the Acts of the Apostles there are constant references to the Way and the New Man.

Charles Cooley photo

“A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 36

Bill Hybels photo

“Developing prayer fitness is similar to developing physical fitness: we must follow a pattern in order to stay balanced.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Richard von Mises photo

“The main interest of physical statistics lies in fact not so much in the distribution of the phenomena in space, but rather in their succession in time.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

Sixth Lecture, Statistical Problems in Physics, p. 187
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

Alice A. Bailey photo

“Dharma means duty, or obligation, and it is your definite and specific obligation to develop the intuition. The means or methods whereby this development is to be brought about, can be by the study of symbols.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

Werner Erhard photo

“Of all the disciplines that I studied, practiced, learned, Zen was the essential one. It was not so much an influence on me, rather it created space. It allowed those things that were there to be there. It gave some form to my experience. And it built up in me the critical mass from which was kindled the experience that produced est.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 121, 0-517-53502-5]

Related topics