Natural Science Quotes (17)

As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.
Man on his Nature (1942), 290.
See also:  |  Brain (58)  |  Knowledge (330)  |  Relation (5)  |  Thinking (56)

Darwin was a biological evolutionist, because he was first a uniformitarian geologist. Biology is pre-eminent to-day among the natural sciences, because its younger sister, Geology, gave it the means.
Presidential Address to the Geology Section, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1892), 696.
See also:  |  Biology (42)  |  Charles Darwin (170)  |  Evolution (229)  |  Geology (109)  |  Uniformitarian (2)

Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies not only is the death-blow dealt here for the first time to 'teleology' in the natural sciences, but their rational meaning is empirically explained.
Karl Marx
Marx to Lasalle, 16 Jan 1861. In Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, 1846-95, trans. Donna Torr (1934), 125.
See also:  |  Book (39)  |  Charles Darwin (170)  |  Deficiency (2)  |  Development (20)  |  Empiricism (7)  |  England (8)  |  Explanation (20)  |  Importance (14)  |  Meaning (11)  |  Origin Of Species (30)  |  Rational (9)  |  Teleology (2)

Factual assertions and fundamental principles are... merely parts of theories: they are given within the framework of a theory; they are chosen and valid within this framework; and subsequently they are dependent upon it. This holds for all empirical sciences—for the natural sciences as well as those pertaining to history.
Critique of Scientific Reason (1983), 106.
See also:  |  Empiricism (7)  |  Fact (139)  |  History (61)  |  Principle (31)  |  Theory (179)

I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that 'the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.'
Letter to Burke A. Hinsdale, president of Hiram College (10 Jan 1859), commenting on the audience at Garfield's debate with William Denton. Quoted in John Clark Ridpath, The Life and Work of James A. Garfield (1881), 80.
See also:  |  Age Of The Earth (8)  |  Evidence (31)  |  Geology (109)  |  Ignorance (62)

I wish the lecturers to treat their subject as a strictly natural science, the greatest of all possible sciences, indeed, in one sense, the only science, that of Infinite Being, without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exception or so-called miraculous revelation. I wish it considered just as astronomy or chemistry is.
Statement in deed of foundation of the Gifford Lectures on natural theology (1885).
Quoted in Michael A. Arbib and Mary B. Hesse, The Construction of Reality (1986), 1.
See also:  |  Lecture (18)  |  Science And Religion (76)

If it is impossible to judge merit and guilt in the field of natural science, then it is not possible in any field, and historical research becomes an idle, empty activity.
Reden und Abhandlungen (1874). Trans. W. H. Brock.
See also:  |  Merit (5)  |  Research (208)

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.
Philosophia Botanica (1751), final sentence. Trans. Frans A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linneans: The Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735-1789 (1971), 31.
See also:  |  Observation (142)  |  Principle (31)  |  Truth (241)

It is by mathematical formulation of its observations and measurements that a science is able to form mathematically expressed hypotheses, and it is through its hypotheses that a natural science is able to make predictions.
The Nature of Science, and Other Essays (1971), 14.
See also:  |  Experiment (199)  |  Express (4)  |  Formulation (2)  |  Hypothesis (83)  |  Mathematics (221)  |  Prediction (10)

Let us not fear that the issues of natural science shall be scepticism or anarchy. Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the Throne.
Living Words (1861), 117.
See also:  |  God (121)  |  Truth (241)  |  Universe (138)

Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged, or exalted by experiments, in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. The body of natural science, then, consists of facts; is analogy,—the relation of resemblance of facts by which its different parts are connected, arranged, and employed, either for popular use, or for new speculative improvements.
'Introductory Lecture to the Chemistry of Nature' (1807), in J. Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (1839-40), Vol 8, 167-8.
See also:  |  Experiment (199)

Natural Science treats of motion and force. Many of its teachings remain as part of an educated man's permanent equipment in life.
Such are:
(a) The harder you shove a bicycle the faster it will go. This is because of natural science.
(b) If you fall from a high tower, you fall quicker and quicker and quicker; a judicious selection of a tower will ensure any rate of speed.(c) If you put your thumb in between two cogs it will go on and on, until the wheels are arrested, by your suspenders. This is machinery.
(d) Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one kind comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.
Literary Lapses (1918), 130.
See also:  |  Electricity (30)  |  Fall (6)  |  Force (14)  |  Machinery (5)  |  Motion (24)

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.
Karl Marx
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1975),304. In Terence Ball and James Farr, After Marx (1984), 229.

One of the differences between the natural and the social sciences is that in the natural sciences, each succeeding generation stands on the shoulders of those that have gone before, while in the social sciences, each generation steps in the faces of its predecessors.
Skinner's Theory of Teaching Machines (1959), 167.
See also:  |  Difference (25)  |  Face (4)  |  Generation (9)  |  Predecessor (3)  |  Social Science (8)  |  Stand (3)  |  Step (4)

The progress of mankind is due exclusively to the progress of natural sciences, not to morals, religion or philosophy.
Letter to Schoenbein (1 Aug 1866). In Liebig und Schoenbein: Briefwechsel (1900), 221. Trans. W. H. Brock.
See also:  |  Mankind (34)  |  Moral (11)  |  Philosophy (72)  |  Progress (117)  |  Religion (68)

Unless social sciences can be as creative as natural science, our new tools are not likely to be of much use to us.
Proceedings of the 3rd Congress of Psychiatry, Montreal, 1961, 42
See also:  |  Social Science (8)

[Herschel and Humboldt] stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these two. I copied out from Humboldt long passages about Teneriffe and read them aloud on one of [my walking excursions].
Autobiographies, (eds.) Michael Neve and Sharon Messenger (2002), Penguin edn., 36.

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