“Science is not inevitable; this question is very fruitful indeed.”

—  Edgar Zilsel

In personal correspondence, quoted in Elisabeth Nemeth's chapter "Logical Empiricism and the History and Sociology of Science" in the Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism (2007) edited by Alan W. Richardson and Thomas Uebel.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Science is not inevitable; this question is very fruitful indeed." by Edgar Zilsel?
Edgar Zilsel photo
Edgar Zilsel 1
Austrian historian and philosopher 1891–1944

Related quotes

Jerry Coyne photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"How Easy to See the Future", Natural History magazine (April 1975);
General sources

Mary Wortley Montagu photo

“But the fruit that can fall without shaking
Indeed is too mellow for me.”

Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) writer and poet from England

The Answer.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Useful quantification is so often the key to fruitful science.”

"Exultation and Explanation", p. 184
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)

Dennis M. Ritchie photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“Natural science must therefore, in truth, be declared silent on this question of pantheism; as indeed it is, and from the nature of the case must be, upon all theories of the supersensible alike — theistic, deistic, atheistic, pantheistic. Natural science has no proper concern with such theories.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.97

Harvey Mansfield photo
George Sarton photo

“The whole iconography of ancient science is simply the fruit of wishful thinking.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Louis Pasteur photo

“There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are sciences and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Revue Scientifique (1871)
Variant translation: There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Carl Sagan photo

Related topics