Carl B. Boyer (1906–1976) American mathematician
Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 204
“Newton's proof of the law of refraction is based on an erroneous notion that light travels faster in glass than in air, the same error that Descartes had made. This error stems from the fact that both of them thought that light was corpuscular in nature.”
Source: Before Galileo, The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), p. 189
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John Freely8
American physicist 1926–2017Related quotes
“A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism (1914)
1910s
Context: People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)
Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless
Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless
Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer
"1896", p. 20
A Writer's Notebook (1946)
“Light travels faster than sound. Isn't that why people appear bright before you hear them speak?”
Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author
Francis Bacon book Novum Organum
Aphorism 42
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
