“The ascertainment and illustration of truth are the objects; and structures and machines are looked upon merely as natural bodies”

"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
Context: The ascertainment and illustration of truth are the objects; and structures and machines are looked upon merely as natural bodies are; namely, as furnishing experimental data for the ascertaining of principles and examples for their application.<!--p. 176

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 "The ascertainment and illustration of truth are the objects; and structures and machines are looked upon merely as natu…" by William John Macquorn Rankine?
William John Macquorn Rankine photo
William John Macquorn Rankine 28
civil engineer 1820–1872

Related quotes

Kazimir Malevich photo
William John Macquorn Rankine photo

“Is there a real temporal process in nature? Is the passage of irreversible time a necessary element in any view of the structure of nature? Or, alternatively, is the subjective experience of time a mere illusion of the mind which cannot be given objective expression? These are not metaphysical questions that can still be neglected with impunity.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Archimedes or the Future of Physics (1927)
Context: The question of the reversibility of natural processes provides the key to a great intellectual struggle which is now behind the complexities of philosophic and scientific thought. The issue can be formulated thus: Is there a real temporal process in nature? Is the passage of irreversible time a necessary element in any view of the structure of nature? Or, alternatively, is the subjective experience of time a mere illusion of the mind which cannot be given objective expression? These are not metaphysical questions that can still be neglected with impunity. For just as Einstein made his advance by analysing conceptions such as simultaneity, which had been thought to be adequately understood for the purposes of experimental science, so the next development of physical theory will probably be made by carrying on the analysis of time from the point at which Einstein left it.

Gerhard Richter photo

“The systematic principle is based upon the hypothesis that there is a structure in the real world that transcends the distinctions of subjective and objective experience.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

J.G. Bennett (1963) " Geo-physics and Human History: New Light on Plato's Atlantis and the Exodus http://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm." Systematics vol 1, no 2 (1963): p. 127–156.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Philosophie ... hat zwar ihre Gegenstände zunächst mit der Religion gemeinschaftlich. Beide haben die Wahrheit zu ihrem Gegenstande, und zwar im höchsten Sinne - in dem, daß Gott die Wahrheit und er allein die Wahrheit ist.
Logic, Chapter 1

Thomas Paine photo
Karl Mannheim photo

“All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: This first non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. The norms arising out of such actual life situations do not exist in a social vacuum, but are effective as real sanctions for conduct. Relationism signifies merely that all of the elements of meaning in a given situation have reference to one another and derive their significance from this reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought. Such a system of meanings is possible and valid only in a given type of historical existence, to which, for a time, it furnishes appropriate expression. When the social situation changes, the system of norms to which it had previously given birth ceases to be in harmony with it. The same estrangement goes on with reference to knowledge and to the historical perspective. All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.

U.G. Krishnamurti photo

“There is no such thing as truth. The only thing that is actually there is your "logically" ascertained premise, which you call "truth."”

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 1: The Certainty That Blasts Everything

Felix Adler photo

“It is not possible to enter into the nature of the Good by standing aloof from it — by merely speculating upon it.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: It is not possible to enter into the nature of the Good by standing aloof from it — by merely speculating upon it. Act the Good, and you will believe in it. Throw yourself into the stream of the world's good tendency and you will feel the force of the current and the direction in which it is setting. The conviction that the world is moving toward great ends of progress will come surely to him who is himself engaged in the work of progress.
By ceaseless efforts to live the good life we maintain our moral sanity. Not from without, but from within, flow the divine waters that renew the soul.

Related topics