Quotes about astronomy

A collection of quotes on the topic of astronomy, science, use, universe.

Quotes about astronomy

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg

Love, Life, World, Religion

“Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:

"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Law, Literature, Knowledge, Appearance

“The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Book II: Astronomy, Ch. I: General View
The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853)

Law, Hope, Mathematics, Learning

“Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”

Arno Allan Penzias (1933) American physicist

http://www.unm.edu/~hdelaney/cosmoquotes.html, Arno Penzias, quoted by Walter Bradley in "The Designed 'Just-so' Universe", 1999.

Life, Support, Universe, Science

“I don't know where my expertise is; my expertise is no disciplines. I would recommend to drop disciplinarity wherever one can. Disciplines are an outgrowth of academia. In academia you appoint somebody and then in order to give him a name he must be a historian, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, a biophysicist; he has to have a name. Here is a human being: Joe Smith -- he suddenly has a label around the neck: biophysicist. Now he has to live up to that label and push away everything that is not biophysics; otherwise people will doubt that he is a biophysicist. If he's talking to somebody about astronomy, they will say "I don't know, you are not talking about your area of competence, you're talking about astronomy, and there is the department of astronomy, those are the people over there," and things of that sort. Disciplines are an aftereffect of the institutional situation.”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Von Foerster (1995) " Interview Heinz von Foerster http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/interviewvonf.html" S. Franchi, G. Güzeldere, and E. Minch (eds) in: Constructions of the Mind Volume 4, issue 2. 26 June 1995 <br class="br">1990s

People

“Religion can get on with any sort of astronomy, geology, biology, physics. But it cannot get on with a purposeless and meaningless universe. If the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends, money, fame, art, science, and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center. Hence the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless, spirit of modern man.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p.7-6.

Life, Money, Pleasure, Religion

“There is one alternative to dark matter, and that is the assumption that Newton's laws don't hold over distances as great as galaxies. But we know that Newton's laws hold over a very large domain. And virtually one hundred percent of the physics and astronomy community believes that there is matter in the universe that does not radiate.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

As quoted in [Astronomer Vera Rubin—The Doyenne of Dark Matter, Discover Magazine, http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/breakdialogue] (1 June 2002)

Law, Communication, Universe

“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

La superstition est à la religion ce que l’astrologie est à l’astronomie, la fille très folle d’une mère très sage. Ces deux filles ont longtemps subjugué toute la terre.
"Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration (1763)
Citas

Religion, Daughters, Madness

“The philosophy of nature must not be unduly terrestrial; for it, the earth is merely one of the smaller planets of one of the smaller stars of the Milky Way. It would be ridiculous to warp the philosophy of nature in order to bring out results that are pleasing to the tiny parasites of this insignificant planet. Vitalism as a philosophy, and evolutionism, show, in this respect, a lack of sense of proportion and logical relevance. They regard the facts of life, which are personally interesting to us, as having a cosmic significance, not a significance confined to the earth's surface. Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naive humanism; the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance and are best corrected by a little astronomy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, What I Believe (1925)

Life, World, Way, Star

“That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

Wisdom, God, Nature, Study

“Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis.”

Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Variant translation: I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover … I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)

Men, Way, Support, Thinking

“This [experimentation] is the custom—and properly so—in those sciences where mathematical demonstrations are applied to natural phenomena, as is seen in the case of perspective, astronomy, mechanics, music, and others where the principles, once established by well-chosen experiments, become the foundations of the entire superstructure.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Salviati, Third Day. Change of Position
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)

Music, Mathematics, Nature, Science

“In Indian astronomy, the prime meridian is the great circle of the Earth passing through the north and south poles, Ujjayinī and Laṅkā, where Laṅkā was assumed to be on the Earth's equator.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

In Aryabhatiya quoted in: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson Aryabhata the Elder http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Aryabhata_I.html, School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland.

“Socrates: Shall we set down astronomy among the objects of study? Glaucon: I think so, to know something about the seasons, the months and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and for navigation. Socrates: It amuses me to see how afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should accuse you of recommending useless studies.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Socrates as quoted by Plato. In Richard Garnett, Léon Vallée, Alois Brandl (eds.), The Universal Anthology: A Collection of the Best Literature (1899), Vol. 4, 111.
Attributed

People, Thinking, Study, Season

“Thus, not merely what it can do, but the rate at which it can do it, has to be considered in estimating the value of photography as an ally in astronomy.”

Agnes Mary Clerke book The System of the Stars

Source: The System of the Stars (1890), p. 33.

“Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe … every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy.”

Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist

Source: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents (1988), p. 196.

People, Universe

“I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Voltaire, quoted in Sanskrit Reader 1: A Reader in Sanskrit Literature by Heiko Kretschmer
Citas

People, Learning

“It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Life, God, School, Error

“Be not, O Greeks, so very hostilely disposed towards the Barbarians. To the Babylonians you owe astronomy; to the Persians, magic; to the Egyptians, geometry; to the Phoeicians, instruction by alphabetic writing. Cease, then, to miscall these imitations inventions of your own. Orpheus, again, taught you poetry and song; from him, too, you learned the mysteries.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Ante-Nicene Christian library: v. 3 p. 5
Address to the Greeks

Learning, Hostility

“He lived in a period of competitive patronage of the sciences, especially mathematics and astronomy, in the Middle East and Central Asia. He is said to have been a high administrative official in a small principality made up of Basra, in what is now Iraq, and the adjacent region of Ahwâz.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Abdelhamid I. Sabra, in “Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003)”

Science, Mathematics

“He has made contributions to many areas of science; among them are agronomy, anthropology, astronomy, bacteriology, botany, economics, forestry, meteorology, psychology, public health, and-above all-genetics, in which he is recognized as one of the leaders. Out of this varied scientific research and his skill in mathematics, he has evolved systematic principles for the interpretation of empirical data; and he has founded a science of experimental design. On the foundations he has laid down, there has been erected a structure of statistical techniques that are used whenever people attempt to learn about nature from experiment and observation.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

W. Allen Wallis (1952) at the University of Chicago while honoring Fisher with the Honorary degree of Doctor of Science; cited in: George E. P. Box (1976) " Science and Statistics http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Ian.Jermyn/philosophy/writings/Boxonmaths.pdf" Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 71, No. 356. (Dec., 1976), pp. 791-799.

People, Learning, Health, Nature

“Use of better planetary parameters, the innovations in astronomical methods, and the concise style of exposition of Aryabhatiya makes it an excellent text book on Astronomy. As opposed to the geostationary theory, Aryahabata held the view that the earth rotates on its axis. His estimate of the period of the sidereal rotation of earth was 23 hours 56 min, and 4.1 s is close to the actual value.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

In, p. 254.
Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

Books, Making love

“Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Religion

“Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: The Book Of Military Quotations

War, Science

“I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Source: The Simple Art of Murder

Pleasure, Art, Mathematics, Reading

“Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Selfishness

“I do not design a machine which will give the ignorant in astronomy a just view of the solar system, but would rather astonish the skilful and curious observer by a most accurate correspondence between the situations and motions of our little representatives of our heavenly bodies and the situations and motions of those bodies themselves. I would have my orrery really useful by making it capable of informing us truly of the astronomical phenomena for any particular point of time, which I do not find that any orrery yet made can do.”

David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) American astronomer

Letter to Thomas Barton (Jan 28, 1767) as quoted by Florian Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890) p. 39.

Time

“Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished from other subjects by a specific approach to a subject-matter independent of it. Chemistry deals with chemicals, biology with life and astronomy with very large, very distant objects. Philosophy can boast no such definite subject-matter.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 69

Life, Literature, Distant

“The existing and long-standing use of the word 'evolution' in our state's textbooks has not adversely affected Georgians' belief in the omnipotence of God as creator of the universe, There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy. There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Carter slams Georgia's 'evolution' proposal, 30 January, 2004 http://edition.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/30/georgia.evolution/ <br class="br">Post-Presidency

God, Faith, Star, Universe

“School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system?... from the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy. The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn't agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation. Then one day this student brought me Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983), First conversation, p. 8

God, Hate, Books, Youth

“Joseph Ratzinger has stood still because as a Bavarian Catholic in the Hellenistic tradition, interpreted in Roman terms, he wanted to stand still. To this degree he represented and represents a different basic model of theology and church, as different from mine as in astronomy Ptolemy's geocentric picture of the world is different from Copernicus' heliocentric picture.”

Hans Küng (1928) Swiss Catholic priest, theologian and author

Disputed Truth: Memoirs Volume 2 (2008), p. 329

World

“Perfect knowledge of the space an object should occupy in a picture, and of the space that separates one object from another, establishes a new astronomy of things attached to our planet by the magic law of gravity. Canons of the Metaphysical aesthetic lie in the minutely-accurate and precisely-estimated use of surfaces and volumes.... We are building in paint a new Metaphysical psychology of things.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 233
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Lie, Law, Knowledge, Painting

“Great talents are not, before God, a substitute for love for Himself; the possession of a profound intellect does not free any man from the obligations resting on the heart for purity and holiness; a reputation for attainments in science does not settle the question whether he is righteous before his Maker; refined manners are not, in the sight of God, a substitute for the graces of the Spirit; God does not justify man on the ground of human learning; attainments in chemistry, anatomy, geology, botany, astronomy, or skill in sculpture and painting, — these do not prepare a man to die.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 114.

Love, God, Question, Learning

“The concepts of purposive behavior and teleology have long been associated with a mysterious, self-perfecting or goal-seeking capacity or final cause, usually of superhuman or super-natural origin. To move forward to the study of events, scientific thinking had to reject these beliefs in purpose and these concepts of teleological operations for a strictly mechanistic and deterministic view of nature. This mechanistic conception became firmly established with the demonstration that the universe was based on the operation of anonymous particles moving at random, in a disorderly fashion, giving rise, by their multiplicity, to order and regularity of a statistical nature, as in classical physics and gas laws. The unchallenged success of these concepts and methods in physics and astronomy, and later in chemistry, gave biology and physiology their major orientation. This approach to problems of organisms was reinforced by the analytical preoccupation of the Western European culture and languages. The basic assumptions of our traditions and the persistent implications of the language we use almost compel us to approach everything we study as composed of separate, discrete parts or factors which we must try to isolate and identify as potential causes. Hence, we derive our preoccupation with the study of the relation of two variables. We are witnessing today a search for new approaches, for new and more comprehensive concepts and for methods capable of dealing with the large wholes of organisms and personalities.”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

L.K. Frank (1948) "Foreword". In L. K. Frank, G. E. Hutchinson, W. K. Livingston, W. S. McCulloch, & N. Wiener, Teleological mechanisms. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sc., 1948, 50, 189-96; As cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) "General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications". p. 16-17

Law, Behavior, Search, Fashion

“The pioneering practitioners of the new science knew that they were producing a new kind of knowledge and so they declared this newness in the titles of their books and articles. Thus we have Galileo's Two New Sciences, Boyle's New Experiments, Kepler's New Astronomy, and Tartaglia's New Science. When Ben Jonson presented a masque entitled "News from the New World," his new world was not the newly found continent of North America, but the new world of science, the world revealed by the telescope of Galileo.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (2005)

Books, World, Knowledge, Science

“From Pythagoras to Boethius, when pure mathematics consisted of arithmetic and geometry while applied mathematics consisted of music and astronomy, mathematics could be characterized as the deductive study of 'such abstractions as quantities and their consequences, namely figures and so forth' (Acquinas ca. 1260). But since the emergence of abstract algebra it has become increasingly difficult to formulate a definition to cover the whole of the rich, complex and expanding domain of mathematics.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

Music, Mathematics, Study

“Ralegh's own circle, which turned Christopher Marlowe into a rationalist, was dominated by… Thomas Hariot. For navigation is dependent on astronomy; it went hand in hand with the new speculations about the world and the solar system… in turn, the voyages of the great navigators inspired the literature of Elizabethan England. The worlds of art and science and the physical world unfolded then together. It was not by accident that the first table of logarithms was published within a few years of the First Folio.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

World, Art, Literature, Science

“Somehow, the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry or biology normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today seem endemic among, say, psychologists or sociologists. Attempting to discover the source of that difference led me to recognize the role in scientific research of what I have since called “paradigms.” These I take to be universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Preface, p. xiii (2012 ed.)

Communication, Problem, Universe, Time

“Modern science was born in the period beginning with Copernicus's work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (l543) and ending with Newton's Philosophia Naturalis Philosophiae Mathematica.
For reasons not to be entered into here, mediaeval scholasticism had not succeeded in finding an effective method for the investigation of natural phenomena. And Humanism, though indirectly instrumental in the creation of natural science through the promotion of knowledge of Greek works on mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy, had not been able to find the new paths that science would have to follow. The conviction shared by the two movements, viz. that science was something which mankind had once possessed, but had since lost, turned men's eyes towards the past instead of to the future — to ancient books instead of to new investigations and experiments.
The creation of modern science required a different philosophy. Man had to realize that if science is to grow, each generation must make its own contribution; and that the accumulated wisdom of antiquity is useful only as a starting-point for new research.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

Source: Simon Stevin: Science in the Netherlands around 1600, 1970, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Wisdom, Men, Books, Mathematics

“I guess the other thing I find a little bit on the downside is that all the papers can now be downloaded off the web. That bothers me a little because I think in the old days, when you picked up the journal, you kind of looked at everything on the back of it, the titles, and there were things you didn’t know that much about or that you had a faint connection with, and maybe you looked at the paper; maybe you read the abstract at least. Nowadays, you just dial up what you’re interested in; you don’t see any of the rest of the literature. I do worry over this kind of compartmentalization of astronomy, which I think has gotten to be a bit out of hand…”

Robert Kraft (astronomer) (1927–2015) American astronomer

Interview of Robert Kraft by Patrick McCray on August 1-2, 2002, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Literature, Thinking, Reading

“The reader has by now probably become accustomed to the reversals of fortune so common in astronomy.”

Dennis Sciama (1926–1999) British physicist

Source: Modern Cosmology (1971), p. 73

“For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Chapter I http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-01/cvgn1-03.txt. <br class="br">Genesis (1554)

Wisdom, God, Art

“It has never been in my power to study anything, — mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Victoria (23 December 1908)

Women, Men, History, Mathematics

“I do not believe that anything really worthwhile will come out of the exploration of the slag heap that constitutes the surface of the moon…Nobody should imagine that the enormous financial budget of NASA implies that astronomy is now well supported.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars, Harper and Row, New York, 1965

Imagination, Support

“In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied, universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing the whole character of man’s existence. By this time every human being throughout the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where American capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the aether reverberated with echoes of New York’s pleasures and the religious fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This, perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give of her very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of these crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people’s baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America herself, were irrevocably corrupted.
For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped to emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had served science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of the stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also created a new and brilliant architecture. And their genius for organization worked upon a scale that was scarcely conceivable, let alone practicable, to other peoples. In fact their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up. One who looks back across the aeons to this remote people can see their fate already woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 1, “Europe and America” (p. 33)

Fate, People, Pleasure, Youth

“I cannot refrain… from expressing my surprise that, according to the report in The Times there should be so much complaint about the difficulty of understanding the new theory. It is evident that Einstein's little book "About the Special and the General Theory of Relativity in Plain Terms," did not find its way into England during wartime. Any one reading it will, in my opinion, come to the conclusion that the basic ideas of the theory are really clear and simple; it is only to be regretted that it was impossible to avoid clothing them in pretty involved mathematical terms, but we must not worry about that. …
The Newtonian theory remains in its full value as the first great step, without which one cannot imagine the development of astronomy and without which the second step, that has now been made, would hardly have been possible. It remains, moreover, as the first, and in most cases, sufficient, approximation. It is true that, according to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost straight lines.
It is not necessary to give up entirely even the ether. …according to the Einstein theory, gravitation itself does not spread instantaneously, but with a velocity that at the first estimate may be compared with that of light. …In my opinion it is not impossible that in the future this road, indeed abandoned at present, will once more be followed with good results, if only because it can lead to the thinking out of new experimental tests. Einstein's theory need not keep us from so doing; only the ideas about the ether must accord with it.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Books, Way, Imagination, Mathematics

“[T]here is a tremendous egotism and conceit in those popular articles and lectures entitled,"My Idea of Religion," or "My Idea of God." An individual religion can be as misleading and uninformed as an individual astronomy or an individual mathematics.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 4, p. 59

God, Religion, Mathematics, Idea

“Under the old dispensation, before the advent of science, when this little world was all, and the sun, moon, and stars were merely fixtures overhead to give light and warmth, the conception of a being adequate to create and control it all was easier. The storms were expressive of his displeasure, the heavens were his throne, and the earth was his footstool. But in the light of modern astronomy one finds himself looking in vain for the God of his fathers, the magnified man who ruled the ancient world. In his place we have an infinite and eternal Power whose expression is the visible universe, and to whom man is no more and no less than any other creature.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. XI: Points of View

God, World, Star, Light

“I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of redemption absolutely incredible”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124

“The word "Sanskrit" means "prepared, pure, refined or perfect". It was not for nothing that it was called the "devavani" (language of the Gods). It has an outstanding place in our culture and indeed was recognized as a language of rare sublimity by the whole world. Sanskrit was the language of our philosophers, our scientists, our mathematicians, our poets and playwrights, our grammarians, our jurists, etc. In grammar, Panini and Patanjali (authors of Ashtadhyayi and the Mahabhashya) have no equals in the world; in astronomy and mathematics the works of Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskar opened up new frontiers for mankind, as did the works of Charak and Sushrut in medicine.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On Sanskrit, as quoted in the transcript of a speech, titled "Sanskrit as a Language of Science" http://www.iisc.ernet.in/misc/bang_speech.html and delivered on 13 October 2009, published by Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

God, World, Mathematics, Perfection

“Wallis was in sympathy with Greek mathematics and astronomy, editing parts of the works of Archimedes, Eutocius, Ptolemy, and Aristarchus; but at the same time he recognized the fact that the analytic method was to replace the synthetic, as when he defined a conic as a curve of the second degree instead of as a section of a cone, and treated it by the aid of coordinates.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

Mathematics, Time, Parting

“Many T. V. channels show astrology. Astrology is not to be confused with astronomy. While astronomy is a science, astrology is pure superstition and humbug. Even a little common sense can tell us that there is no rational connection between the movements of the stars and planets, and whether a person will die at the age of 50 years or 80 years, or whether he will be a doctor or engineer or lawyer.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On astrology, as quoted in "Justice Markandey Katju on the role of media in India" http://www.thehindu.com/news/justice-markandey-katju-on-the-role-of-media-in-india/article2600319.ece, The Hindu (5 November 2011)

Age, Star, Sense, Science

“It is not known whether Martin ever completely accepted as a gentleman-scholar the Clay Tredgold who was devoted to everything about astronomy except studying it.”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925), Ch. 22

Study

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

God, War, People, Books

“Microeconomics, including the study of individual choice and of group choice in market and nonmarket processes, has generally been considered a field science as distinct from an experimental science. Hence microeconomics has sometimes been classified as "non-experimental" and closer methodologically to meteorology and astronomy than to physics and experimental psychology (Marschak, 1950, p. 3; Samuelson, 1973, p. 7). But the question of using experimental or nonexperimental techniques is largely a matter of cost, and generally the cost of conducting the most ambitious and informative experiments in astronomy, meteorology, and economics varies from prohibitive down to considerable. The cost of experimenting with different solar system planetary arrangements, different atmospheric conditions, and different national unemployment rates, each under suitable controls, must be regarded as prohibitive.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Relevance of laboratory experiments to testing resource allocation theory," 1980, p. 345.

Question, Study, Science

“I went to Cambridge to do higher mathematics, that was my first goal and appearing in the university exams in mathematics. You are given a menu of various branches of mathematics, pure as well as applied. So I found that applied aspects, especially application to astronomy were very interesting. And the speakers on both courses, that is the lecturers were also very good. At that time, I also read a book by Fred Hoyle called ‘Frontiers of Astronomy’, which gave a very readable account for a layman for what was happening in astronomy. So, all these factors made me go into the research field of astronomy. Because one is required to choose which branch of mathematics one takes as research field. In Cambridge, astronomy is treated as a branch of mathematics. So I choose that.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

Books, Mathematics, Universe, Appearance

“We will next proceed by the lamp of experience, consulting with care the observations deposited in the records of astronomy.”

Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) German mathematician, physicist and astronomer

The System of the World (1800)

“[P]erhaps one of the most valuable results to be derived from a truly intellectual study of Astronomy is, the habit of keeping up a sustained attention to all the successive steps of a long series of reasonings. Power, and with it dignity, are gained to the mind by this noble exercise.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

Exercises, Study, Success

“The direct tendency of (Astronomy) is to dilate the heart with universal benevolence, and to enlarge its views.”

David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) American astronomer

An Oration delivered February 24, 1775, before The American Philiosophical Society held at Philiadelphia, for promoting useful knowledge in [William Barton, Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, Somerset Publishers, Incorporated, 1813, 569] http://books.google.fr/books?id=L1oUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA569

Universe, Heart

“His [Sarpi's] career soon revealed another cause of his return; he evidently felt the same impulse which stirred his contemporaries, Lord Bacon and Galileo, for he began devoting himself to the whole range of scientific and philosophical studies, especially to mathematics, physics, astronomy, anatomy, and physiology. In these he became known as an authority, and before long was recognized as such throughout Europe. It is claimed, and it is not improbable, that he anticipated Harvey in discovering the circulation of the blood, and that he was the forerunner of noted discoverers in magnetism. Unfortunately the loss of the great mass of his papers by the fire which destroyed his convent in 1769 forbids any full estimate of his work; but it is certain that among those who sought his opinion and advice were such great discoverers as Acquapendente, Galileo, Torricelli, and Gilbert of Colchester, and that every one of these referred to him as an equal, and indeed as a master.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 4-5

Mathematics, Study, Loss

“Of all of the many mysteries of modern astronomy, none is more vexing than the nature of dark matter… This dark matter has eluded every effort by astronomers and physicists to bring it out of the shadows. A handful of us suspect that it might not really exist, and others are beginning to consider this possibility seriously.”

Mordehai Milgrom (1946) Israeli physicist

"Does Dark Matter Really Exist?" 2002

Nature, Effort

“The slogan "Stop climate change" is a very public advertisement of absolute total ignorance as it is not cognisant of history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, ocean sciences, atmospheric sciences and the life sciences.”

Ian Plimer book Heaven and Earth

Heaven and Earth (2009)

Life, History, Science, Change

“… It was (in part) Gross’s excessive enthusiasm for string theory in the mid-80s that drove me (as an impressionable grad student at Princeton) away from theoretical physics (and into astronomy). String theory may have been a beautiful idea, but it made no predictions that could be tested experimentally in the then-foreseeable future. That’s not science.  A quarter century later and the theoretical physics community has yet to wake up and realize that there is new physics right under their noses – just not the new physics they’ve been expecting (GUTs, strings, membranes, etc.). Galaxy dynamics are consistent with a single, universal force law, but this unexpected behavior has largely been ignored because it doesn’t fit with particle theorists’ dreams of super symmetric dark matter particles. That we do not understand the observed behavior makes it more interesting than the “expected” (but unobserved) new physics: who ordered this?”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

Law, Beauty, Dreams, Behavior

“Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"Uniformity and Catastrophe", p. 147
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

God, Home, Science, Time

“Unfortunately… the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Source: A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Ch.3 Of Cosmical Phenomena

Age, Law, Nature, Science

“It is not simply that a clear understanding is acquired of the movements of the great bodies which we regard as the system of the world, but it is that we are introduced to a perception of laws governing the motion of all matter, from the finest particle of dust to the largest planet or sun, with a degree of uniformity and constancy, which otherwise we could hardly have conceived. Astronomy is pre-eminently the science of order.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

World, Law, Understanding, Science

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life, Men, Truth, Age

“My poem (Love -Kisses XL1) is like a nugget of gold or clump of earth it contains within itself the seeds rhetoric, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, geography, music, astronomy, medicine, nature, law, writing”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Love-Kiss XL1

Love, Law, Music, Mathematics

“Two other sciences in the same way will accurately treat of 'size': geometry, the part that abides and is at rest, [and] astronomy, that which moves and revolves.”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Book I, Chapter III, p.184
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Way, Science, Parting

“In my childhood I had natural interests. I got a microscope from someone, I made a telescope myself, very poor quality, but I could see the moon. First, I wanted to become an astronomer. I read books about astronomy of James Jeans, I even read Arthur S. Eddington, which I did not quite understand. On the other hand, a huge impression on me was made by Jan Dembowski's Natural History of One Protozoan.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

I decided that I would go in the biological direction that I would become a doctor.
Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

Books, History, Understanding, Nature

“Tadzik Gumiński (later a reader in pediatry), who was also fascinated by astronomy, lived at Szpitalna Street and I lived at Garncarska Street. Not far from our homes, at Podwale, where the scientific bookstore is now located, was the optical shop Maruńczak and the Company. And in this store, as little kids, we bought lenses and other parts necessary to build the telescope. This telescope, of course, was primitive. But thanks to it, we spent many nights observing the sky, deciphering star systems. It was really great fun.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). "Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny" http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Home, Star, Parting, Night

“Without the aid of these, then, it is not possible to deal accurately with the forms of being nor to discover the truth in things, knowledge of which is wisdom, and evidently not even to philosophize properly, for "just as painting contributes to the menial arts toward correctness of theory, so in truth lines, numbers, harmonic intervals, and the revolutions of circles bear aid to the learning of the doctrines of wisdom," says the Pythagorean Androcydes. Likewise Archytas of Tarentum, at the beginning of… On Harmony, says… in about these words: "It seems to me that they do well to study mathematics, and it is not at all strange that they have correct knowledge about each thing, what it is. For if they knew rightly the nature of the whole, they were also likely to see well what is the nature of the parts. About geometry, indeed, and arithmetic and astronomy, they have handed down to us a clear understanding, and not least also about music. For these seem to be sister sciences; for they deal with sister subjects, the first two forms of being."”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Wisdom, Truth, Art, Music

“If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first century. Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A. D., and besides telescopes are unnatural.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

"The Seven Tongues of God"
The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)

Life, Religion, Study, Learning

“A long standing prediction (Milgrom 1983) of MOND is that rotating galaxy curves will fall on a single mass-velocity relation with slope 4: Mb \propto Vf4. This prediction is realized in multiple independent data sets. Gas rich galaxies fall where predicted by MOND with no free parameters. There are not many predictions in extragalactic astronomy that fare so well a quarter century after their publication. … a physical understanding for why galaxy formation in the context of ΛCDM should pick out the particular phenomenology predicted a priori by MOND remains wanting.”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

[Stacy McGaugh, 2011, The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation of Gas-Rich Galaxies as a Test of ΛCDM and MOND, p. 16, ApJ, http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.2934]

Understanding

“Much of the skill of the true mathematical physicist and of the mathematical astronomer consists in the power of adapting methods and results carried out on an exact mathematical basis to obtain approximations sufficient for the purposes of physical measurements. It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of Mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in Physics, Engineering Science, and Astronomy, and no doubt it would be possible to develop, to some extent at least, a species of Mathematics on these lines. Such a system would, however, involve an intolerable awkwardness and prolixity in the statements of results, especially in view of the fact that the degree of approximation necessary for various purposes is very different, and thus that unassigned grades of approximation would have to be provided for. Moreover, the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration, the ideals of exactitude and logical rigour, as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form. The history of the actual movements of mathematical thought through the centuries shows that these ideals are the very life-blood of the science, and warrants the conclusion that a constant striving toward their attainment is an absolutely essential condition of vigorous growth. These ideals have their roots in irresistible impulses and deep-seated needs of the human mind, manifested in its efforts to introduce intelligibility in certain great domains of the world of thought.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), pp. 285-286; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 229): Mathematics and Science.

Life, World, History, Intelligence

“[H]ow much of the fundamentals of Astronomy may be obtained with the coarsest observation with the unaided eye. …the science which is thus obtained by personal observations is vastly superior (as far as it goes) to that which is obtained by any other method. …The knowledge …inferred from actual personal observation carries with it a degree of reality and certainty, as the veritable science of external objects, which nothing else can give.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

Knowledge, Reality, Science, Personality

“Copernicus published his manuscript in 1543 just in time for the council of Trent. So you're a church father and what this new system of Copernicus is saying is this: The Earth moves, although the Bible says it doesn't. It's no longer at the center of God's universe, although the Bible says it is. It's a planet, so heaven and Earth are no longer separate. And Aristotle was wrong, although church authority depends on him being right. You're a church father and you pick up this subversive, heretical, revolutionary piece of lunacy and you start foaming at the mouth, right? Wrong. When the council finally got around to reading Copernicus they were delighted. His new system had made calendar reform more precise. And the business of it turning every basic belief about the universe on its head? A mere fairytale since from the church's viewpoint he was talking nonsense. Astronomy drew lines and circles in the sky but they weren't really there, they're a mathematical convenience for measuring or teaching astronomy. While the Copernicus system might well have been brilliant mathematics, no one thought for a minute that he was actually suggesting the earth was whizzing around the sun. That kind of talk would blow holes in everything.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

God, Mathematics, Business, Fairytale

“In one of my early books I suggested that the potential significance of LSD and other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the value the microscope has for biology or the telescope has for astronomy. My later experience with psychedelics only confirmed this initial impression. These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the cathexis (energetic charge) associated with the deep unconscious contents of the psyche and make them available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviours to a depth that cannot be matched by any other method and tool available in modern mainstream psychiatry and psychology. In addition, it offers unique opportunities for healing of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

Foreword to the MAPS edition of LSD: My Problem Child (October 2005) by Dr. Albert Hofmann

Books, Study, Personality

“Apocatastasis. What it means:
1) Restoration, re-establishment, renovation
2) Return to a previous condition
3) (Astronomy) Return to the same apparent position, completion of a period of revolution.
Think about it.”

Neil Gaiman book Signal to Noise

Signal to Noise (1992)

Thinking

“The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own; Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta…. I have, however, mentioned [in The Foundations of Indian Culture] that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semi-barbaric.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

September 12, 1923
India's Rebirth

World, School, Religion, Art

“Oh! sweet and sudden fire that springs
With but a look to light its wings;
How false to say thou needest time
The bright ascent of hope to climb;
A star thou art, that may not be
Reckoned by dull astronomy!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Hope, Art, Star, Spring

“Ptolemy… against the champions of this or that cosmology of the heavens… had dared to claim that it is legitimate to interpret the facts of astronomy by the simplest geometrical scheme which will 'save the phenomena,' no matter whose metaphysics might be upset. His conception of the physical structure of the earth, however, prevented him from carrying through in earnest this principle of relativity, as his objections to the hypothesis that the earth moves amply show.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 35

“Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. As pointed out above, the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.”

Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975) geneticist and evolutionary biologist

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (1973)

Faith

“From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of the theory of sundials.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 10

Star, Knowledge

“Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

C 23
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

Understanding, Learning, Appearance, Science

“Of all the sciences, astronomy was the one the superstitious liked least.”

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 4 “A Moving Point of Light” (p. 51)

Science

“I want to see the gardens and palace of the Alcazar where the Moorish Kings used to live. It is as perfect an architecture as the Egyptian, Greek or Gothic and just as beautiful, maybe more beautiful and it is well built for it looks as new as if it had just been done. We have to thanks these Moors for our greatest sciences, they did the big work for us, they started them, Algebra, Chemistry, Astronomy. They are our masters.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Thomas Eakins, in Vistas de España, Mary Elizabeth Boone, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 77.

Beauty, Science, Perfection

“It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called "fanatic," and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time. The term "fanatic" is not applied to professors of religion only…I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Christ is the light of this planet. God gives light to our eyes.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 13:271 (July 24, 1870)
1870s

Life, God, Truth, Age

“He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.”

Tom Wolfe book Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine

"The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America"
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)

Night

“It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

20 July 1848
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

History, Learning, Universe

“Babylonian mathematics and astronomy have left an indelible impression on our exact sciences. We still call some of the planets by their Babylonian names in translation.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
Adventures in the Nearest East (1957)

Mathematics, Science

“More evidently still astronomy attains through arithmetic the investigations that pertain to it, not alone because it is later than geometry in origin—for motion naturally comes after rest—nor because the motions of the stars have a perfectly melodious harmony, but also because risings, settings, progressions, retrogressions, increases, and all sorts of phases are governed by numerical cycles and quantities. So then we have rightly undertaken first the systematic treatment of this, as the science naturally prior, more honorable, and more venerable, and, as it were, mother and nurse of the rest; and here we will take our start for the sake of clearness.”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Book I, Chapter V
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Star, Nature, Science

“Other job markets may lay claim to the title, but astronomy is actually the world's oldest profession.”

Philip Plait (1964) astronomer, skeptic

Source: Death from the Skies! (2008), p. 2

World

“I tend to keep books of art more than anything else now. I'm interested in visual things. And astronomy books. Things you can look at over and over and over again and see something new. … My notions of God and the universe have always been too small. And limited by language. So now I'm looking at picture books. My children say I'm just beginning to enter my dotage: can't read, just looks at picture books.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King

God, Children, Books, Art

“As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, p. 318

Sense, Universe

“A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habbit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into impartiality; and that prejudice in favour of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876)

Love, Life, Men, World

“It took from a hundred to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years for the astronomy of Kepler to become the astronomy of Newton and Laplace], and for the mechanics of [[Galileo to become the mechanics of d'Alembert and Lagrange. On the other hand, less than a century has elapsed between the publication of Adam Smith’s work and the contributions of Cournot, Gossen, Jevons, and myself.”

Léon Walras (1834–1910) French mathematical economist

In : John Cunningham Wood (1993), Léon Walras: The life of Léon Walras and perspectives on his thought. Taylor & Francis, p. 32-33.

“His writings include works on mechanics, sound, astronomy, the tides, the laws of motion, the Torricellian tube, botany, physiology, music, the calendar (in opposition to the Gregorian reform), geology, and the compass,—a range too wide to allow of the greatest success in any of the lines of his activity. He was also an ingenious cryptologist and assisted the government in deciphering diplomatic messages.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

Law, Music, Success

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

World, Law, Problem, Sun

“If I were the king of the forest, and I’m not, we would have more astronomy.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Mark Bennett, Bill Nye still rocking science - TV personality making weekend appearance in town to help open Children's Museum, The Tribune-Star, Terre Haute, Indiana, September 24, 2010]