“There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.”
The Chemical History of a Candle (1860)
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Michael Faraday 30
English scientist 1791–1867Related quotes
Preface
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
Quote of Escher, from his essay on Tessellation 1957; as cited by Tony Thomas, in 'The Strange Worlds of M C Escher' http://www.escapeintolife.com/essays/the-strange-worlds-of-m-c-escher/
1950's
Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch
Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: If to-day you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the æther or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised.... this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world.<!--III, p.30
“The door is wide open and all may enter, but all do not enter with equal thoughtlessness.”
Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry (1853)
Context: Geometry, to which I have devoted my life, is honoured with the title of the Key of Sciences; but it is the Key of an ever open door which refuses to be shut, and through which the whole world is crowding, to make free, in unrestrained license, with the precious treasures within, thoughtless both of lock and key, of the door itself, and even of Science, to which it owes such boundless possessions, the New World included. The door is wide open and all may enter, but all do not enter with equal thoughtlessness. There are a few who wonder, as they approach, at the exhaustless wealth, as the sacred shepherd wondered at the burning bush of Horeb, which was ever burning and never consumed. Casting their shoes from off their feet and the world's iron-shod doubts from their understanding, these children of the faithful take their first step upon the holy ground with reverential awe, and advance almost with timidity, fearful, as the signs of Deity break upon them, lest they be brought face to face with the Almighty.
“I like to consider my mind an open door. It's just not a revolving door.”
[ATTN JMS: Are you a millionaire ?, J. Michael Straczynski, 2002-07-20, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, 20020720000422.11234.00000533@mb-fx.aol.com, http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/msg/5d0fa989a5c65112]
“I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.”
Interview with Gunther Schuller (1965, p. 34), quoted in Sound Structure in Music (1975) bu Robert Erickson; University of California Press. .
Context: I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena. As a child, I was tremendously impressed by the qualities and character of the granite I found in Burgundy, where I often visited my grandfather... So I was always in touch with things of stone and with this kind of pure structural architecture — without frills or unnecessary decoration. All of this became an integral part of my thinking at a very early stage.
"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction