|
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
(1698 - 1759)
French mathematician and natural philosopher.
|
Science Quotes by Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (2)
In order to turn natural history into a true science, one would have to devote oneself to investigations capable of telling us not the particular shape of such and such an animal, but the general procedures of nature in the animal's production and preservation. 'Lettre sur le progress des sciences' in Oeuvres de Mr. De Maupertuis (1756), Vol. 2, 386.
— Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 392.
See also: | Animal (63) | Investigation (28) | Natural History (8) | Preservation (3) | Procedure (6) | Production (12) | Science (463) | Shape (7)
Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature's production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in all species that exist today? Chance, one might say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number turned out to be constructed in such fashion that the parts of the animal could satisfy its needs; in another, infinitely greater number, there was neither suitability nor order: all of the later have perished; animals without a mouth could not live, others lacking organs for reproduction could not perpetuate themselves: the only ones to have remained are those in which were found order and suitability; and these species, which we see today, are only the smallest part of what blind fate produced.
— Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
'Essai de Cosmologie' in Oeuvres de Mr. De Maupertuis (1756), Vol. 1, 11-12. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 381.
See also: | Evolution (237) | Fate (7) | Mouth (3) | Reproduction (28) | Species (52) | Survival (15) | Survival Of The Fittest (23)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) --