Quotes About Observation

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.

I hope it will not shock experimental physicists too much if I say that we do not accept their observations unless they are confirmed by theory.

You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.

Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.

Our knowledge of human nature is for the most part empirical; and it would often be better, if, instead of endeavouring to say some new things ourselves, we were to confirm without more words the sayings of another.

Second, Aristotle restores the reality, even the dignity, of the individual. Aristotle's forms, unlike Plato's Forms, do not exist separately from individuals. They appear only through the individual. We would know nothing about dogs without individual dogs in the world to observe and study; we would know nothing about justice without individual examples to examine and analyze.

Aristotle's philosopher is always an observer of reality, not the creator of it. Instead of laying out the perfect blueprint, then turning reluctantly to the real world, Aristotle starts with the real world itself.

Using his observations of the different shadows cast by sundials along the same meridian and a little number crunching, Eratosthenes made a calculation of the earth's diameter that was amazingly accurate: 7,850 miles, only about 60 off the actual mark.

Leonardo da Vinci. His voluminous notebooks reveal his peculiar fascination with observation and invention. This is his Aristotelian side. But his famous etching of Vitruvian Man reveals his more mystical, Platonic side.

Aristarchus's observations led him to propose a completely new model of the universe and solar system, based on the hypothesis that the planets revolved around the sun and that the earth itself revolved every twenty-four hours around its axis. Aristarchus was also a formidable mathematician, who made calculations of the distance from the earth to the sun and the diameter of the sun based on solar eclipses.

All of Aristotle's works point out, however, that the most vital knowledge we have comes a posteriori, meaning "after the fact" or from experience, as we link up a given visible effect to its preceding cause.

Aristotle insisted, the source of that justice is always the same: observation of the underlying order of nature.

Aristotle is the true father of science and scientific method, by which we still mean a methodical process of observation, classification, and discovery.

Aristotle's bias toward observation and classification also led him to break completely with the concept of Plato's Forms. He did so not only because they seemed too abstract and logically unwieldy,13 but because they missed certain essential features of reality.

So I have seen a man killed! An experience that, among others! Yes, I suppose I hav; although I can hardly be certain, And in a court of justice could never declare I had seen it. But a man was killed, I am told, in a place where I saw Something: a man was killed, I am told, and I saw something.

Unlike Dyson, he [Phillipps] walked fast, with his eye on the pavement, absorbed in his thoughts, and oblivious of the life around him; and he could not have told by what streets he had passed, when he suddenly lifted up his eyes and found himself in Leicester Square.

I am inclined to notice the ruin in things, perhaps because I was born in Italy.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.

So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.

Oh, see the tiger!" Johnnie Green shouted. "And the lions! And the monkeys! And the bear!" "See them!" Spot yelped. "I say, smell them!" He felt better when the animals in their cages had gone creaking past. And he forgot his uneasiness as he watched dozens of horses, ridden by folk whose bespangled clothes glittered in the sunlight.

Relativity physics is especially interested in invariants, and it has discovered and named a few more. It is a common mistake to suppose that Einstein's theory of relativity asserts that everything is relative. Actually, it says: 'There are absolute things in the world but you must look deeply for them. The things that first present themselves to your notice are for the most part relative'.

The influence of the sensory equipment with which we observe, and the intellectual equipment with which we formulate the results of observation as knowledge, is so far reaching that by itself it decides the number of particles into which matter in the universe appears to be divided.