“Very few experiments can, in the nature of things, be really crucial.”
Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)
Context: It is necessary to guard against a possible danger... of submitting too readily to the result of a so-called "crucial experiment". Very few experiments can, in the nature of things, be really crucial. One so-called "crucial experiment" which decided between Newton's corpuscular theory of light and Huyghens' wave-theory, viz. the relation between the law of refraction and the velocity of light, was not at all decisive.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
J. R. Partington 38
British chemist 1886–1965Related quotes
“Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“There are very few things that can be proved rigorously in condensed matter physics.”
Nobel Lecture http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2003/leggett-lecture.pdf, December 8, 2003.
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
Variant trans: Everybody sees what you seem, but few know what thou art.
Ch. 18
Variant: Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are
Source: The Prince (1513)
Context: Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature
Context: The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.