Edward Mailly, Essai sur la vie et les ouv rages de Quetelet in the Annuaire de Vacadimie royale des sciences des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique (1875) Vol. xli pp. 109-297 found also in "Conclusions" of Instructions populaires sur le calcul des probabilités p. 230
“…the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air.”
about using old-fashioned chemistry to describe molecular structure, in Molecular Scientists and Molecular Science: Some Reminiscences, J. Chem. Phys. 43, S2 (1965).
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Robert S. Mulliken 1
American physicist and chemist 1896–1986Related quotes
Diary entry (16 December 1846).
“Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
“No more fiction for us: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.”
Sec. 624, as translated by Tobias Dantzig in Number, the Language of Science. Fourth edition, New York: Doubleday 1954, p 141. See discussion of this entry for details.
The Will to Power (1888)
“They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.”
Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 69, Farewell to Nemi
Context: In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.
“At a better pace
Slower and more calculated
No chance of escape”
"Fitter Happier"
Lyrics, OK Computer (1997)
“Nowhere are our calculations more frequently upset than in war.”
Book XXX, sec. 30
History of Rome
“Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price.
I'm throwing the dice in the air.”
"Walking On Thin Ice" on Season of Glass (1981) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1DHm7p1sm4
Context: Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price.
I'm throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?