“It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost.”

“It is indeed a striking thought that the same region of central Italy twice, in the shape of ancient Etruria and modern Tuscany, been the source of civilization in Italy. Since the seventh century BC and from the fifteenth century onwards, in the dawn of antiquity as well as at the beginning of modern times, the same region of the peninsula has been distinguished by exceptional qualities. The birth and re-birth or Renaissance of Italy had the same cradle.”

“It is not that science proves that the world is not moral. Science as such is not concerned with values, and proves nothing of the sort. Nevertheless, as a matter of history, it is science which has suggested this view to the modern mind by its insistence on mechanistic categories.”

“For many centuries before modern science, and for the first two and a half centuries of modern science, the division of reality into matter and light seemed self-evident. …As long as the separation between the massive and the massless persisted, a unified description of the physical world could not be achieved.”

“Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.”

“Religion can probably out live any scientific discoveries which could be made. It can accommodate itself to them. The root cause of the decay of faith has not been any particular discovery of science, but rather the general spirit of science and certain basic assumptions upon which modern science, from the seventeenth century onwards, has proceeded.”

“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.”

“Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.”

“Man’s search for metals goes back to prehistoric times. Metals have been used for several thousands of years in India. Certain periods in history are associated with specific periods used extensively during that period”

“The unnaturalness of mathematical symbolism is attested to by history. The algebra of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Arabs was what is commonly called rhetorical algebra. …on the whole they used ordinary rhetoric to describe their mathematical work. Symbolism is a relatively modern invention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…”