Quote of the Day for 2016-05-29

"Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it."

— Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) Quoted in Harper's Bazaar (August 6, 1870)

Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition by Cristiano Banti (1857)

Quote of the Day for 2016-05-02

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."

— Max Planck (1858-1947) "Epilogue: A Socratic Dialogue," Where is Science Going? (1932)

Hand with Reflecting Sphere by M.C. Escher (January 1935)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-28

"The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion."

— Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) "Lectures on Education" delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1855) "What Knowledge is of Most Worth," The Westminster Review (July 1859)

Frontispiece by F. Curtus Bon for Almagestum Novum by Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1651)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-24

"There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys—it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not."

— Kim Stanley Robinson (1952-    ) Interview in Locus magazine, September 1997

Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in the Star Trek episode: The City on the Edge of Forever (April 6, 1967) Trapped on Earth in the 1930's, they're constructing "a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bear skins" aka vacuum tubes

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-04

"We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove."

— Alain (1868-1951) Système des Beaux-Arts, Forward

Second International Eugenics Conference logo (1921)

Quote of the Day for 2016-02-13

"All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods."

— William James (1842-1910) Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School, March 13, 1884

The Oracle lattice by Justin DaCosta

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-05

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'"

— Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Attributed

Master Isaac Newton in His Garden at Woolsthorpe, in the Autumn of 1665 (circa 1856) by Robert Hannah (1812-1909)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-03

"We must be on our guard against giving interpretations [of scripture] which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers."

— Saint Augustine (354-430) The Catholic Encyclopedia's terse distillation of De Genesi ad Litteram, volume 1, chapter 19, paragraph 39

Greeting card by Dan Regan for the Shoebox division of Hallmark.

Quote of the Day for 2015-09-06

"Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings."

— Helen Keller (1880-1968) My Religion, chapter 6

The decomposed body of a German soldier, killed near the village of Beaumont-Hamel during the Battle of the Somme, November 1, 1916.

Quote of the Day for 2015-08-11

"The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes."

— George Sand (1804-1876) Letter to Juliette Lambert-Adam, April 7, 1868

Translation: Which animals are most like each other? – Rabbit and Duck.

Uncredited illustration from Fliegende Blätter, issue #2645 (October 23, 1892).

"What were ducks in the scientist's world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards."

– Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chapter 10.