During a library visit I noticed another encyclopedia of scientific quotations, and then found this one. It is quite a piece of work. I've just started reading it, first by topic and now by the particular scientist's entry. The depth and breadth are excellent, and will be especially appreciated by people with a science background or those who have taken a philosophy of science course, either at college or by seeing a "Great Courses" video. The best way I can write about the unusually good quality of this book is to provide some quotes here:
John Dewey: "Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. What are now working conceptions … were once speculative hypotheses".
Denis Diderot: "I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism." (this may relate to the "fox and the hedgehog" analogy, described by Freeman Dyson in "A Many Colored Glass" and by Isaiah Berlin in "The Crooked Timber of Humanity")
Sheldon Lee Glashow: "Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics." (this may, just possibly, remind some philosophy of science researchers of the ideal goal of keeping "World 3", or the world of ideas, clear of the imperfections of "World 1" and "World 2", the physical and social worlds, according to this model of knowledge and experience written about by Karl Popper. To put it another way, there have been some scientists and mathematicians, for example, Alan Turing, whose private life did, at least during the early part of the 20th century, temporarily impair the use of his ideas, which were actually found to be valuable by scientists working in later years, and in the early 21st century. Many more examples exist of the historical context of an early scientific idea being tainted, but which is then later used in the right way, in the right context, by other scientists, and even by scientists of later generations.
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: "I found the best ideas usually came, not when one was actively striving for them, but when one was in a more relaxed state … I usually take long solitary walks on Sundays, during which I tended to review the current situation in a leisurely way."
Erwin Schrodinger: "Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees".
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Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2018
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Top reviews from other countries
Shivam L Srivastava
A distractingly good way to waste time
Reviewed in India on April 22, 2017
Dr P.
Quotations means spontaneous ideas about reality.
Reviewed in India on July 1, 2018