Assertion Quotes (3)
Firm support has been found for the assertion that electricity occurs at thousands of points where we at most conjectured that it was present. Innumerable electrical particles oscillate in every flame and light source. We can in fact assume that every heat source is filled with electrons which will continue to oscillate ceaselessly and indefinitely. All these electrons leave their impression on the emitted rays. We can hope that experimental study of the radiation phenomena, which are exposed to various influences, but in particular to the effect of magnetism, will provide us with useful data concerning a new field, that of atomistic astronomy, as Lodge called it, populated with atoms and electrons instead of planets and worlds.
'Light Radiation in a Magnetic Field', Nobel Lecture, 2 May 1903. In Nobel Lectures: Physics 1901-1921 (1967), 40.
See also: | Astronomy (65) | Atom (85) | Conjecture (8) | Data (24) | Electricity (30) | Electron (27) | Experiment (199) | Flame (7) | Light (39) | Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (10) | Particle (13) | Ray (4) | Research (208) | Support (4)
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
Life (10 Oct 1949). Quoted in Lincoln Kinnear Barnett, Writing on Life (1951), 380.
See also: | Barrier (4) | Dogma (9) | Doubt (27) | Enquiry (58) | Error (97) | Freedom (13) | Politics (18) | Question (45) | Scientist (71)
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
In Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature (2000), 427.
See also: | Complexity (18) | Contradiction (8) | Difference (25) | Facet (2) | Idea (83) | Reality (20) | Reconcile (4) | Succession (8)